Thu, Dec 13, 2007
Mystery Of Auroras Borealis Solved?
Thanks to a quintet of NASA satellites stationed over the
Northern Hemisphere, scientists believe they now know what causes
the strange phenomena of the auroras borealis, or the Northern
Lights.
The Associated Press reports new data from the THEMIS mission
found the lights are the result of a stream of charged particles
from the sun, flowing like an energy current along streams of
magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun.
When those particles hit the jumbled magnetic fields in the
atmosphere, the energy is abruptly released -- causing the
shimmering display of lights, according to principal investigator
Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California at Los
Angeles.
As ANN reported, the five
microsatellites comprising the Time History of Events and
Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission were launched
February 17. In March, the satellites recorded a two-hour-series of
Northern Lights over Alaska and Canada, allowing the on-orbit
measurement of particle flow and magnetic fields.
Angelopoulos said the storm that caused the auroras sped across
the sky at 400 miles per minute... and carried a punch equivalent
to a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.
"Nature was very kind to us," Angelopoulos said.
Observations from the satellites confirmed suspicions within the
scientific community of what caused the auroras... but questions
still remain. Now, scientists hope to record a geomagnetic storm
next year... to put to rest the debate about when such storms are
triggered.
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