Question Time!

[such_heights]

Calling my geologically inclined friends: please excuse a little lazy-webbing and help me resolve a debate with my father. Is there a non-arbritrary way of distinguishing a planet's north from its south, one that doesn't simply rely on convention? And if not, does that make all sci-fi talk of an unhabitated planet's southern hemisphere etc completely nonsensical?

... These are the things that keep me up at night.

Comments

[skywaterblue]

All planets with active plate tectonics and cores have a magnetosphere, I believe. From there I would assume that north is the positive polarity end of the planet and south the negative polarity.