According to Earnshaw's theorem, a system of static magnets cannot be stable. I have a though experiment and I'm wondering what would happen in real life. If one were to take a ball and cover it with magnets such that all of the north poles pointed inward and all the south poles pointed outwards and place it in a bowl lined with magnets with all their south poles inwards, what would happen? The south poles would repel each other but there would be no way for the north poles to ever meet up with the south poles since they all point towards the inside of the ball and outside of the bowl. What would make this system unstable?
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