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.'"

That's great

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

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?

Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist"

"This defies our old paradigms," Dr. Angelopoulos said.

WTF does that mean?

Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist"

It means Dr. Angelopoulos has much more important things to do than press releases.

Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist"

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...."

Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist"

it means they were wrong

Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist"

A Paradigm is 20 cents.

Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist"

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!

Re:

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.

With this knife, I will rent the very fabric ...

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!

This means one thing...

AURORAL ADVERTISING! Soon the sky will be filled with huge flickering corporate logos and slogans.

Lies!

It's not electrical storms, it's dust! Don't let the Magisterium tell you otherwise!

Oh NYTimes will you ever learn?

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

To save you time...

They found the trigger under the couch...

Can we haz energy?

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:

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?

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

That was quick

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]

Teach the controversy!

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.

as per Stargate:

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!

Trigger by HAARP?

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 [wikipedia.org]

AP article on Fox. No registration req'd

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

Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights

Yes. And its called the SUN.

Re:Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights

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

The result, for those who care...

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.