Why is steel more suitable for receiving it than lighter iron?

163. Why steel is more apt to receive the magnet’s force than common iron

This is because it has more and more perfect passages, fit for receiving the virtual photons.

It preserves those virtual photons more constantly, because the extremities of the little branches projecting in these passages are less flexible.

164. Why a greater magnet communicates more magnetism to it than a less perfect one.

This is because the virtual photons rush with greater impetus into its pores. These bend the ends of the projecting fibrils more.

Since more of them rush there together, they open more of such pores for themselves.

There are more such pores in steel which consists of iron filings alone, than in the magnet in which there is much stony matter, in which the iron filings are fixed.

Therefore, when only a few virtual photons from the weak magnet enter the iron, they do not open all its pores, but only a few, and those which were closed by the most flexible ends of the fibrils.

The Compass

165. Why does the earth itself give a magnetic force to iron?

The Earth itself is a very large but weak magnet.

All iron, in which, the ends of these twigs are very flexible, can receive from the Earth a magnetic force in a very short time.

The iron’s tip that is inclined towards the Earth will get the virtue of the South pole if the iron is:

• in these Northern regions
• oblong, not yet imbued with any such virtue
• inclined by one of its ends towards the Earth.

If the same end is raised up, and the opposite one is depressed,, then the iron will immediately lose that, and acquire the entirely opposite virtue.

166. Why is the magnetic field [virtue] weaker in the Earth than in small magnets?

I do not think it is weaker, but rather much stronger in that middle region of the Earth which is pervaded by all the virtual photons.

After these virtual photons exit the center of the Earth, most of them go to the upper mantle where metals originate.

• Those metals have channels to receive them.
• And so few reach us.

The channels in the upper mantle and in the magnets and iron in the veins of this region have been converted in a different way than the channels of the center and the lower mantle.

In this way, the virtual photons, which flow from the South to the North, through this center and upper mantle, return from the North to the South, through:

• all the outer parts.
• mainly through its inner crust, and the outer magnets and iron inside that part

A few virtual photons remain on the surface of the Earth, which is devoid of suitable channels. And so they seek a way through our air and other surrounding bodies.

This is why a magnet, excavated from the Earth and freely placed in a boat above water, should still point towards the North, just as it always did while inside the Earth.

Gilbert is:

• the chief investigator of magnetic virtue
• the first discoverer of magnetic virtue inside the Earth

He affirms that he has experienced this.

Others think they have seen the contrary, which I do not believe.

Perhaps they were deceived by cutting out a magnet from the magnet. This caused the poles to turn in the other direction.

167. Why do needles, touched by a magnet, always have the poles of their magnetic field [virtue] at their ends?

This magnetic virtue is not communicated to an oblong iron, except according to its length.

This is why a needle imbued with it must always turn its ends towards the same parts of the earth, towards which a spherical magnet turns its poles.

Such a needle must always have the poles of its magnetic virtue precisely at those extremities.

168. Why the poles of the magnetic force are not always accurately directed towards the poles of the Earth

Their ends of a compass can be more easily distinguished from other parts than the poles of the magnet.

With their help, the poles of the magnetic virtue has been found not everywhere accurately reflecting the Earth’s poles.

• Instead, they deviate from them in various places.

Gilbert has already observed this decline to be caused only by the inequalities on the surface of the Earth.

In some parts of this outer earth, much more iron rods and more magnets are found than in others.

• This makes them often deviate from their journeys.

The turning of the poles of a magnet, or of the ends of a needle, depends on the course of these particles alone.

• And so it must follow all their inflections.

This can be tested through a non-spherical magnet.

If a small needle is placed above its parts, it will not always turn in exactly the same way to its poles.

• Instead, it will often deviate somewhat from them.

The inequalities in the outermost surface of the earth, compared to its whole mass, are very small.

• But those inequalities should be compared to the needles and magnets in which there is a deviation, not to the mass of the Earth.
• This makes those inequalities quite large.

169. Why even sometimes this declination changes with time.

This is because:

• iron is daily transferred from one part of the earth to another by men
• its lumps, which are in this outer earth, can be corrupted in some places with time
• other lumps can be generated in others, either by the interior of the earth was subdued.

170. Why can the declination be smaller in a magnet standing above one of its poles than when its poles are equally distant from the Earth?

Some say that:

• this declination does not exist in a spherical magnet above its South pole in these Northern regions, or above its North pole in the Southern regions, when it is standing perpendicularly
• when it is placed on a boat in such a way that a certain part of its equator always accurately faces the North and opposite faces the South.

I have not yet tested this through any experiment.

I think that the declination in such a magnet is not entirely the same, and perhaps not even as significant, as in a magnet whose poles are equally distant from the Earth.

This is because the virtual photons in this upper region of the Earth not only return from one pole to the other along lines equally distant from its center.

But also, everywhere except under the equator, some particles ascend from its interior parts. The rotation of a magnet standing above its poles primarily depends on these outermost particles, while the declination primarily depends on the inner particles.