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Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights

Posted by timothy on from the when-aliens-are-tickled dept.

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.'"

11 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Oh NYTimes will you ever learn? by Hackerlish · · Score: 2, Informative

    > "The New York Times (BugMeNot required) is reporting that NASA ...
    Fixed!

    1. Re:Oh NYTimes will you ever learn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      You just need to enable cookies and you can access the page without logging in.

  2. That was quick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/

  3. Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    WTF does that mean?

    Scientists have been using the phrase Paradigm Shift for years. Marketing types took it up because it sounded scholarly.

    "This defies our old paradigms," means "this does not fit into our current sets of theories & hypothesis...."

    --
    There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
  4. AP article on Fox. No registration req'd by olddoc · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390941,00.html

    --
    Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  5. Re:Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights by ScrewMaster · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's not the trigger, it's the battery.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  6. Northern Lights in the Polar Regions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    FYI, the Northern Lights only occur in one Polar Region. At the South Pole, then call them the Southern Lights.

  7. The result, for those who care... by jnik · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" by Taibhsear · · Score: 2, Informative

    A Paradigm is 20 cents.

    Informative?
    WOOSH!
    Let me lay it out to those of you with wind blown hair.
    Paradigm
    PAIRo'DIME
    DIME=$0.10
    Now THAT is informative.

  9. Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some moderators will mod a funny post "informative" to counter the negate karma of others who mod it "offtopic" or "troll". Funny mods give no karma.

    WHOOSH!

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  10. As a space physicist... by NotNormallyNormal · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.