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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...
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...
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/
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
I must be tired. I read that as "How long until they find out how to rick roll the universe?"
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.
That's not the trigger, it's the battery.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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.