5 HARD-TO-BELIEVE FACTS ABOUT THE ARCTIC THAT ARE 100% TRUE
In Svalbard in Norway, the sun never fully sets for 125 days from mid-April to mid-August. The ‘midnight sun’ is a natural phenomenon that occurs during the summer in locations north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle. Polar night is the opposite of midnight sun when the sun is not at all visible above the horizon. In Svalbard, the polar night lasts from mid-November to late January. THE MIDNIGHT SUN AND THE POLAR NIGHT There is more than one North Pole. The northernmost point on the Earth’s surface is the Geographic North Pole, also known as True North. To the south lies the Magnetic North Pole towards which all magnetic compasses point. This point is not fixed and is constantly changing. THERE IS MORE THAN ONE NORTH POLE
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault currently stores 980,000 samples to protect against future natural or manmade disasters. THE ARCTIC HOUSES THE WORLD'S LARGEST SECURE SEED STORAGE
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STAND IN EVERY TIME ZONE AT ONCE
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If you stand at the North Pole, you would be in every time zone at once because all the lines that demarcate time zones start at the North Pole. It comprises 5.4 million square miles. By comparison, the Atlantic Ocean covers 41.1 million square miles, and the Pacific 62.46 million square miles. THE ARCTIC OCEAN IS THE WORLD’S SMALLEST
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