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Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Jul 25, 2008 02:22 AM
from the when-aliens-are-tickled dept.
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.'"
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That's great (Score:5, Funny)
Just don't leave the trigger lying around, anyone could find that and we'd be up to our armpits in borealis...
Re:That's great (Score:5, Funny)
How many times can you pull the trigger before you run out of borealis?
When you run out, can you switch to australis?
I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six borealis or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 aurora, the most powerful light show in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
But being as this is a .44 aurora, the most powerful light show in the world, and would blow your head clean off
Surely you meant "blow your mind"!
Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF does that mean?
Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" (Score:5, Informative)
WTF does that mean?
Scientists have been using the phrase Paradigm Shift [wikipedia.org] 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...."
Parent
Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" (Score:5, Funny)
A Paradigm is 20 cents.
Parent
Re: (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.
Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" (Score:5, 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!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Have you ever seen his karma? It can use all the boosting it can get.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So what you're essentially saying is that Captain Planet is what you get when you eat a really spicy burrito?
Wind? Check.
Watery eyes? Check.
Heartburn? Check
I think you might have forgotten something like Earth, but that one links in quite well with Wind.
Wind, Watery eyes, Heartburn... (Score:2)
With this knife, I will rent the very fabric ... (Score:2, Funny)
This means one thing... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I can imagine Aurora Snow having a great way of advertising herself and her business to the world.
*jerks off*
Re: (Score:2)
Lies! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Its the His Dark Materials series.
The Golden Compass
The Subtle Knife
The Amber Spyglass
http://www.hisdarkmaterials.org/ [hisdarkmaterials.org]
Oh NYTimes will you ever learn? (Score:2, Informative)
Fixed!
Re: (Score:2)
I can search old articles without logging in, and the editorials are no longer locked behind the wall.
So, you CAN log in, but there is no registration required anymore.
To save you time... (Score:3, Funny)
Can we haz energy? (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The overall movement of charged particles tends to trickle down though the many layers of the Earth's electromagnetic and ionized radiation fields, before it works it's way down to the lower layers of the atmosphere, and beyond that into the strata of the earth.
Sometimes "windows" appear that allow easier transversal of a layer, such as in violent thunderstorms where "jet" or "sprite" movements of charge can be visibly seen.
Logically, any system that could bridge one or more upper layers should be able to c
Re:Can we haz energy? (Score:5, Interesting)
We've been trying to put the Aurora to use for years. Back in the 60's, my father spent a lot of time in Homer, Alaska working on a Stanford Research Institute project to determine whether we could use the Aurora Borealis as a distant early warning system to detect Soviet transpolar ICBM launches. The theory was that, because the Aurora was a big electromagnetic storm, tossing a large hunk of ferromagnetic metal through it would cause a disruption that could be detected over the horizon.
I don't what the ultimate results of the project were (though I suspect that it was not successful since we didn't use the aurora for that purpose), but Dad fell in love with the environment and the community up in Alaska. The place had such an impact that he made my mother promise to move there before they got married. That's why I grew up with this [tobinphoto.com] as the view from my bedroom window.
--AC
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Nice photo. I grew up a few hundred KM east of there, in Whitehorse. ;) Similar view out the window, but without all the blue stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, that's an amazing vista. You sure were lucky, especially since from what friends from alaska have told me, it's more typical to grow up with this view [50webs.com] out their window.
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That was quick (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 [berkeley.edu]
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/main/ [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Very well summarized, except I disagree with "has not been adequately explained up to now." It's true that there were things (and remain things!) that we don't understand, but this result is really more incremental than ground-breaking. It's a very good result and nice work all around, but I think that the press-hype is probably a bit over the top.
Teach the controversy! (Score:5, Insightful)
as per Stargate: (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The Asgard went instinct
Say what? They stopped reasoning for themselves and started going with whatever their gut response was for everything?
Trigger by HAARP? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAARP [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
AP article on Fox. No registration req'd (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390941,00.html
Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Aurora desk lamp (Score:2)
So when can I get my thinkgeek-branded aurora generating cubicle desk lamp?
The result, for those who care... (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.
No registration required! (Score:2)
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.
As a space physicist... (Score:2, Informative)
IANASP (Score:2)
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.
In response to this (Score:2)
various ultra liberal groups have proposed mandatory trigger locks on these auroras.
It's just the SkySaver.... (Score:2)
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...
NASA Science News Article (Score:2)
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/24jul_plasmabullets.htm [nasa.gov]
Answered my own question... (Score:2)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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."
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I must be tired. I read that as "How long until they find out how to rick roll the universe?"
Re: (Score:2)
The answer is yes they have, it was Ceiling Cat.