Figure 5-19 Earth’s Magnetic Field Earth’s magnetic field appears to stream from one pole to the other, like a giant bar magnet inside Earth, but Earth’s field is produced in a different way—by electric currents in the liquid portion of our planet’s interior. This bar magnet is not exactly aligned with Earth’s rotation axis, which is why the magnetic north and south poles are not at precisely the same locations as the geographic poles. A compass needle points toward the north magnetic pole, not the geographic north pole.