This has to be massive enough that it offsets the gravitational attraction of the entire earth and pulls "vertical" askew by 5 or 10 degrees. Let's say we bury a bunch of neutronium in Gold Hill, Oregon. But localized in this way, and strong enough to affect objects as massive as people? No. Posted by Steven Den Beste at 5:35 AM on Febru There's nothing unnatural about the Oregon Vortex and it should be enjoyed for what it is. But in this as in so much else about physics, our native intuition is wrong. We've evolved with an intuitive sense of gravity as being "down", so when "down" isn't actually toward the center of the earth it seems strange and wonderful. It is counter-intuitive but not counter to the laws of science. The Vortex is interesting as being one of the few places where the effect is particularly strong and localized, to the point where its effects happen on a human scale and are visible to the naked eye. Any continental mass does this and mountain ranges do it particularly well. For a system like GPS, which requires the satellites to stay in precisely known orbits, they constantly have to fiddle using thrusters to keep them in the predefined orbits. The big ones have been mapped pretty well, though, because they cause low-earth-orbit satellites to change orbit. These kinds of things happen all over the world only they're usually much larger and less intense, so that they're not perceptible to the naked eye. But sometimes they don't, and then the results will seem strange. In both cases the tool ordinarily gives the answer we want, which is why we use them. Equally, a bubble-level doesn't match the terrain but rather points along the lines of gravitational influence.
A compass doesn't point to the rotational axis of the Earth it points to the magnetic North/South which is actually offset a bit. Like compasses, a bubble level isn't measuring what people think it is. The reason all the buildings are built the way they are is that the people who built there didn't understand what was happening, and they used bubble levels to get "vertical" and "horizontal" on the buildings - only the levels were lying. The center of the Vortex is at the gravitational center. It's a localized gravitational anomaly caused by a concentration of particularly dense mass below the ground. The phenomenon is real but not inexplicable under the laws of physics. The Oregon Vortex was explained a long time ago.
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