Energy source of northern lights found

AP on Yahoo ^ | 12/11/07 | AP

[NormsRevenge]

SAN FRANCISCO - Scientists think they have discovered the energy source of the spectacular color displays seen in the northern lights. New data from NASA's Themis mission, a quintet of satellites launched this winter, found the energy comes from a stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun.

The energy is then abruptly released in the form of a shimmering display of lights visible in the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, said principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Results were presented Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting.

In March, the satellites detected a burst of northern lights, or auroras borealis, over Alaska and Canada. During the two-hour light show, the satellites measured particle flow and magnetic fields from space.

To scientists' surprise, the geomagnetic storm powering the auroras raced 400 miles in a minute across the sky. Angelopoulos estimated the storm's power was equal to the energy released by a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.

"Nature was very kind to us," Angelopoulos said.

Although researchers have suspected the existence of wound-up bundles of magnetic fields that provide energy for the auroras, the phenomenon was not confirmed until May, when the satellites became the first to map their structure some 40,000 miles above the Earth's surface.

Scientists hope the satellites will record a geomagnetic storm next year that's now in the making, and end the debate about when the storms are triggered.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Is this really news? I thought we knew about this since the Argus tests in ‘58.

[SunkenCiv]

a stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun

Imagine the auroras one would see on Io...

[RightWhale]

I wish we could see that here —

Now and then it is interesting. But, it is never completely dark in the Arctic, and that also goes for the subarctic where Fairbanks is. There is always some kind of light and the aurora is there even when the display is so diffuse and dim that no pattern can be seen--it is a glow to the whole sky. It is so light that once the snow has fallen in the fall a person can walk around in the woods any time without flashlights and see quite well.

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

What is the best time of year (and how far south) to see the northern lights?

[RightWhale]

Here in Fairbanks the aurora is invisible May-August due to sunlight all night. Although the sun sets, it doesn’t set far enough and the stars are also lost. The aurora would be independent of season but it might have something to do with time of day. For some reason some great displays come after midnight although that is not a rule. Since the normal aurora is directly overhead in Fairbanks, it would be pretty far north for most locations in the Lower 48. But, it works the other way, too. We have never seen either the Space Shuttle nor the ISS from Fairbanks.

[Swordmaker]

Is this really news? I thought we knew about this since the Argus tests in ‘58.

Actually, it is. The key words here are:

"...the energy comes from a stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields..."

That description is important. These are actually circuits... braided flows of plasma of opposite charges flowing both directions... called Birkeland Currents.

"A Birkeland current generally refers to any electric current in a space plasma, but more specifically when charged particles in the current follow magnetic field lines (hence, Birkeland currents are also known as field-aligned currents). They are caused by the movement of a plasma perpendicular to a magnetic field. Birkeland currents often show filamentary, or twisted "rope-like" magnetic structure." - Source

This discovery is recognition that there IS a flow of charged particles (say, electrons?) moving through space which before the current orthodoxy has always maintained was neutral.

Here is a NASA photograph of an interstellar Birkeland Current... a flow of charges that Cosmologists claim is impossible and doesn't exist... that spans distances of many lightyears.

Why is this important? Because the very nature of how we understand the Cosmos is affected by whether charge separations can occur in space or not... and how they affect the formation of galaxies:

The simplest model that may be investigated experimentally or simulationally is that of two adjacent currents (for technology applications as many as several hundreds of pinches are used).

The simplest geometry for galaxy formation, two adjacent Birkeland currents of width 35 kiloparsecs separated 80 kiloparsecs across. By scaling the current flows in astronomical objects by size, it is determined that the average flow in a galactic Birkeland current is approximately 1019 amperes; IA, the Alfvén galactic current. In contrast to the experiment above, where the plasma currents are 30 millimeters in length, the galactic currents may extend 400 megaparsecs or more. Economy in simulation, gained from observing laboratory experiments, suggests that the active region, where large electric fields build up, is about 10 kiloparsecs in length. That is, the salient phenomena can be modeled with two stubby pinches. The pinches are driven, of course, by the energy carried in the long length currents.

That's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 Amperes! 10 Quintillion Amps of moving electrons that flow over 1,304,800,000 Light Years (7,670,430,386,929,000,000,000 miles - that's another hugh-mungous number, 7.67 Sextillion to be less precise...) that orthodox cosmologists claim cannot exist or happen.

Some people will tell you that Electric Universe Cosmologists and theorists are kooks... ignoring people like Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfvén and the source of the information above, The Los Alamos National Laboratory, who are most certainly, not "kooks."

[aruanan]

Now, how about a way to harness this energy for human use?

[RightWhale]

The perps were interviewed on Coast. Heard it from the horse’s mouth. They are getting better after 30 years.

[Fred Nerks]

Image Link.

caption:Flares and prominences are clouds of gas that erupt from disturbed regions near sunspots. The sun's magnetic field can hold them in place for days...

Not always!

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.thunderbolts.info/home.htm

‘“Today, nothing is more important to the future and credibility of science than liberation from the gravity-driven universe of prior theory. A mistaken supposition has not only prevented intelligent and sincere investigators from seeing what would otherwise be obvious, it has bred indifference to possibilities that could have inspired the sciences for decades.”’

[Zathras]

Looks allot like "the hole in the ozone layer" doesn't it.
:-)

[Fred Nerks]

When Astronomers Fall Into a Black Hole.LINK.

...Throughout the Space Age, every new discovery has been interpreted through a lens that views gravity alone as the force that shapes the heavens.

This model of the cosmos also underpins our view of the Sun and our solar system. Ironically, as 20th century astronomers codified this perspective, the leading pioneers of plasma science were observing stupendous electric forces in space, and documenting the analogs in laboratory discharge phenomena. Through systematic observation and experiment, Hannes Alfven, the father of modern plasma science, came to a viewpoint contrary to that of mainstream astronomy. In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, he warned astronomers that the study of plasma behavior requires attention to experimental plasma dynamics. But Alfven's warning went unheeded, allowing the cosmos to become, in Alfven's words, "...the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulae which we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong."

[bvw]

Thanks for the more detailed explanation.

My comments above, thus, are sad excuses of a contribution to intelligent science discussion, and I apologize for them, science-wise.

I do not apologize for them with regard to the popular view of NASA as high priests, nor for the reliance NASA has used that aggrandizes itself, viz the stances of regarding the fad of "Global Warming" cf http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html

That priest-like attitude of some "Holy NASA" infects articles such as the posted, and leads to less than careful expositions.

[Fred Nerks]

Let's make an Aurora.LINK.

The aurora is formed in the rarefied upper atmosphere when the solar wind meets a planet's magnetic field. The earth is not the only body in our solar system to have an aurora; Jupiter and Saturn have been observed to possess them too. In fact, you can make an aurora yourself, using only an electrical power source, a magnet and a vacuum pump.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks SM.