Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights 97
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.'"
Oh NYTimes will you ever learn? (Score:2, Informative)
Fixed!
Re:Oh NYTimes will you ever learn? (Score:1, Informative)
You just need to enable cookies and you can access the page without logging in.
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: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...."
AP article on Fox. No registration req'd (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390941,00.html
Re:Scientists Find Trigger For Northern Lights (Score:4, Informative)
Northern Lights in the Polar Regions (Score:1, Informative)
FYI, the Northern Lights only occur in one Polar Region. At the South Pole, then call them the Southern Lights.
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.
Re:Huh? Dilbert speak from a "scientist" (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!
As a space physicist... (Score:2, Informative)