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Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights
daftna writes "The New York Times (registration required) is reporting that NASA researchers 'have identified the trigger for the colorful electrical storms in the polar regions ... Scientists knew two events that occur in the tail of the magnetic field during substorms, but did not know which event acted as the trigger for the auroras.'"
Just don't leave the trigger lying around, anyone could find that and we'd be up to our armpits in borealis...
Task Mangler
WTF does that mean?
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I alone will possess the secret of the Northern Lights. Watch as I wield the subtle knife and merge the worlds within worlds that exist beyond our own!
AURORAL ADVERTISING! Soon the sky will be filled with huge flickering corporate logos and slogans.
It's not electrical storms, it's dust! Don't let the Magisterium tell you otherwise!
ilovegeorgebush
> "The New York Times (BugMeNot required) is reporting that NASA ...
Fixed!
They found the trigger under the couch...
Have they found who's been switching on and off all this time?
Each substorm generates a current of about one million to two million amps over one to two hours, or a total energy equivalent to a magnitude-5 or magnitude-6 earthquake, Dr. Angelopoulos said.
The question is, can we harness this energy? Is this a form of the limitless solar energy that we can enslave to our use, or are we limited to the radiated visible and near-visible spectrum?
And if this is too far up and unavailable to us surface-dwellers, is it something that the LEO/MEO satellites could use for propulsion or power? I thoght I remembered reading something about a mag field powered satellite somewhere...
In fact, no registration is required. I just read the article without logging in.
Triggers? How long til they find out how to ROLLBACK; the Universe?
THEMIS launched in the first half of 2007. I remember because my plasma physics professor canceled class the day of the launch and invited us to the launch party...
The cause of the aurora borealis is something that has not been adequately explained up to now. It seems that magnetic reconnection phenomena in the tail are the trigger, but where exactly? That's what THEMIS was designed to figure out.
This is a very interesting result for plasma physicists and astrophysicists.
http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/themis/flash.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/main/
DON'T PULL IT!!!
So they start with 2 choices, then declare one the winner. Knowing the amount of testing NASA does (foam+shuttle), you have a 50/50 chance of proving them wrong some day!
If the Dover school board was run by Vikings they'd have to teach this theory alongside the 'theory' that the Northern Lights are the glow from Asgard.
So now that they know what the trigger is, can they use the HAARP to excite the Northern Lights?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAARP
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390941,00.html
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Yes. And its called the SUN.
Eclipse PDE and Me
Can't be true. The Asgard went instinct, but not before transferring their wealth of knowledge to man kind. If it was from the Asgard, they would have been gone when the replicators got them!
When all else fails, try.
Oh, yes. Good ol' trustworthy Fox.
Have Reuters picked this story up yet?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
So when can I get my thinkgeek-branded aurora generating cubicle desk lamp?
stuff |
Ahh, so it's for Aurora Borealis, and NOT Northern Lights...
Thanks for ruining my hopes... :(
Yeah Reuters is great -- quick and to the point. There appears to be some discussion of allowing people to remove Fox news from personalized news in Google groups.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
FYI, the Northern Lights only occur in one Polar Region. At the South Pole, then call them the Southern Lights.
It's buried at the end of the article, but Near Earth Neutral Line wins, current disruption loses. The real kicker is that the aurora were detected before the cross-tail current was disrupted, so the auroral currents are apparently not caused by closure of the cross-tail current. That should be very interesting.
The mission planners had the foresight to include a substantial ground-observation component, which made this second result possible.
Add a favourite to your browser containing the following text:
javascript:document.body.innerHTML='<a id=xyzzyautoclick href="'+(function(u){if(/^http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\//.test(u))return u+"&pagewanted=all";return u;})(prompt("Please enter the URL to navigate to:","http://"))+'">Please wait...';document.getElementById("xyzzyautoclick").click();undefined
It turns out that visitors coming from some sites (such as news.google.com) don't need to register. Go to such a site. Click your favourite. Enter address. Presto!
This 21+ year old article basically describes all this, too bad the PI is not old enough to remember. But at least he pushed getting the spacecraft to gather hard data rather than models.
http://space.unh.edu/~rlk/research/reprints/jgr_92_7471_1987_image.pdf
A bizarre cool evening following a friend's hot rod v8 car with new headers, had a colorful storm underneath it at high speed on the highway. upon checking, nothing was burned. It just hovered there,under the belly pan, no explanation. Never explained the ball of light...can an auto engine create a mini storm? There are other details to talk about this scientifically,such as new higher powered coil, moist road, etc. and no hallucinations involved. It really happened, as colorful as northern lights...
I hope they decipher it. I bet it is as simple as the true explanation, just a matter of finding answers.
The New York Times no longer requires registration, and hasn't for quite a long time now. If you're still getting registration prompts, clear your NY Times cookies.
I have to say... electrical storms?? The aurora is not electrical. It is caused by charged particles moving along magnetic field lines. These are called auroral substorms (or magnetic substorms depending on your definition). Ground detection by magnetometers is possible as is electrical disruption caused by magnetic induction (and a slew of other things). While I have not directly looked at the data from THEMIS (I finished my PhD before the data rolled in and am now elsewhere working on other things) I am skeptical that this "solves the problem". I extensively studied over two years of data and concluded that some substorms appear to occur without reconnection (paper pending). All I have to say is that a few case studies will make it very hard remove any other possible models, such as current distruption, despite what those in the Near Earth Neutral Line camp want to make everyone believe.
...go bathroom!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I am not sure that the observation that reconnection is not always involved leads to the conclusion that reconnection is not involved most of the time. (I don't know enough to have an opinion.) Many effects are robust in that they can be triggered in multiple ways. The aurora could be one such.
various ultra liberal groups have proposed mandatory trigger locks on these auroras.
Have they found who's been switching on and off all this time?
It was Steven Wright. He had no idea what that switch did. Then he got a call from a woman in Germany. She said "Cut it out!"
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
"Funny mods give no karma."
+1 Funny.
It happens from letting the Earth idle for too long.
I'm sure if it idles for too much longer after the SkySaver kicks in, the Sky will just go into standby mode and go blank...
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/24jul_plasmabullets.htm
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
Wow, that's quite interesting. I didn't know that HAARP was an ionospheric heater [wikipedia.org]. Who would have thought that scientists would be blasting megawatts of RF into space to investigate it.
Your Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionospheric_heater says that "An ionospheric heater is an array of antennas which are used for heating the ionosphere, and which can create artificial aurora borealis." So I guess the answer is probably a "yes."
Aww, you've become creative in your trolling now! You've even learned how to rhyme? Good job! You get a gold star.