This three frame animation of THEMIS/ASI images shows auroras colliding on Feb. 29, 2008.
Credit: Toshi Nishimura/UCLA
A network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA’s THEMIS mission has made a startling discovery about the Northern Lights. Sometimes, vast curtains of aurora borealis collide, producing spectacular outbursts of light. Movies of the phenomenon were unveiled at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union today in San Francisco.
“Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time,” said space scientist Larry Lyons of the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), a member of the team that made the discovery. “These outbursts are telling us something very fundamental about the nature of auroras.”
The collisions occur on such a vast scale that isolated observers on Earth — with limited fields of view — had never noticed them before. It took a network of sensitive cameras spread across thousands of miles to get the big picture.
NASA and the Canadian Space Agency created such a network for THEMIS, short for “Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms.” THEMIS consists of five identical probes launched in 2006 to solve a long-standing mystery: Why do auroras occasionally erupt in an explosion of light called a substorm?
Twenty all-sky imagers (ASIs) were deployed across the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic to photograph auroras from below while the spacecraft sampled charged particles and electromagnetic fields from above. Together, the on-ground cameras and spacecraft would see the action from both sides and be able to piece together cause and effect-or so researchers hoped. It seems to have worked.
The breakthrough came earlier this year when UCLA researcher Toshi Nishimura assembled continent-wide movies from the individual ASI cameras. “It can be a little tricky,” Nishimura said. “Each camera has its own local weather and lighting conditions, and the auroras are different distances from each camera. I’ve got to account for these factors for six or more cameras simultaneously to make a coherent, large-scale movie.”
The first movie he showed Lyons was a pair of auroras crashing together in Dec. 2007. “It was like nothing I had seen before,” Lyons recalled. “Over the next several days, we surveyed more events. Our excitement mounted as we became convinced that the collisions were happening over and over.”
Twenty all-sky imagers (ASIs) were deployed by researchers from the University of California Berkeley, the University of Calgary, and the University of Alaska in support of the THEMIS mission. This map shows their locations and field of view.
Credit: THEMIS/UC Berkeley.
› Larger Image The explosions of light, they believe, are a sign of something dramatic happening in the space around Earth-specifically, in Earth’s “plasma tail.” Millions of kilometers long and pointed away from the sun, the plasma tail is made of charged particles captured mainly from the solar wind. Sometimes called the “plasma sheet,” the tail is held together by Earth’s magnetic field.
The same magnetic field that holds the tail together also connects it to Earth’s polar regions. Because of this connection, watching the dance of Northern Lights can reveal much about what’s happening in the plasma tail.
THEMIS project scientist Dave Sibeck of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. said, “By putting together data from ground-based cameras, ground-based radar, and the THEMIS spacecraft, we now have a nearly complete picture of what causes explosive auroral substorms.”
Lyons and Nishimura have identified a common sequence of events. It begins with a broad curtain of slow-moving auroras and a smaller knot of fast-moving auroras, initially far apart. The slow curtain quietly hangs in place, almost immobile, when the speedy knot rushes in from the north. The auroras collide and an eruption of light ensues.
How does this sequence connect to events in the plasma tail? Lyons believes the fast-moving knot is associated with a stream of relatively lightweight plasma jetting through the tail. The stream gets started in the outer regions of the plasma tail and moves rapidly inward toward Earth. The fast knot of auroras moves in synch with this stream.
The five spacecraft of THEMIS were built to answer fundamental questions about auroras.Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
› Larger Image Meanwhile, the broad curtain of auroras is connected to the stationary inner boundary of the plasma tail and fueled by plasma instabilities there. When the lightweight stream reaches the inner boundary of the plasma tail, there is an eruption of plasma waves and instabilities. This collision of plasma is mirrored by a collision of auroras over the poles.
National Science Foundation-funded radars located in Poker Flat, Alaska, and Sondrestrom, Greenland, confirm this basic picture. They have detected echoes of material rushing through Earth’s upper atmosphere just before the auroras collide and erupt. The five THEMIS spacecraft also agree. Last winter, they were able to fly through the plasma tail and confirm the existence of lightweight flows rushing toward Earth.
Dr. Tony Phillips
Heliosphysics News Team
Three dimensional primates contemplating a multi-dimensional universe.
Ground-bound, Ego impaired, often shrill and spittle flecked discourse,passing
for “Reason”. IT IS AMAZING, ASTOUNDING, THAT WE UNDERSTAND ANYTHING.
Actually I think it is rather exciting, it is what real science is about. Here we have a natural phenomenon never observed before which we are going to have to continue to observe, measure and we hope eventually explain.
How important it might turn out to be remains to be seen but as I said fascinating stuff.
Kindest Regards
I can get quite enough woo-woo science from the MSM. I don’t need any ‘electric universe’ coprolite science.
JonesII (08:36:37) :
The farthest from reality the hardest to comprehend.
Is false, as you can see by rewriting it: “the easiest to understand, the closest to reality”. By that standard, the planet-pushing angels explanation or ‘the stork brings the babies’ wins hands down.
“Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time,”
Maybe this is old hat for some (nothing wrong with old hat).
But they say SEEING is believing. This would be new don’t cha think?
WE SAW, wow that is cool.
kuhnkat (09:08:17) :
The FLATEARTHERS ALWAYS END UP IN CHARGE!!! Scientific advance is done by the lunatic fringe who are not wedded to conventional ideas and theories taught in institutions of propaganda and status quo. Why is that?? Because most of the Lunatic fringe ARE nuts. The rest of us can not tell who is and isn’t nuts until the conventional science has nearly caught up with them!!
attributed to Niels Bohr:
“Your theory is crazy, but it isn’t crazy enough to be true.”
Leif Svalgaard (06:54:24) :
Birkeland was completely wrong:
Leif there are currently NO scientists, even mainstream ones, who would make such a sweeping statement of ignorance of the facts. Birkeland currents are, after all, not named after Leif Svalgaard…
[“Looking back through history, every time there was a real advance in our understanding, there were all those conventional types who COULD NOT ADMIT THEY WERE WRONG AND WORKED TO PREVENT THE ADVANCE FROM BEING ACCEPTED!!!”
And yet the same sort of people who promote electric universe, iron sun, etc also tend to buy into debunked ideas like steady state universe, infinite size/age universe, hollow earth, Nibiru, etc etc.
Just as correlation does not equal causation, being nuts doesn’t automatically make you right.]
I cannot believe that the bulk of these post.
My god who are the deniers now.
The vitriol is something I’d expect from Joe Romm or Al Gore but not from the supposedly open minded group of loyal followers of WUWT.
Birkeland’s theory were confirmed by NASA 40 years ago. The “twisted ropes” of NASA are called Birkeland Currents and have been called that name for just as long.
And who decides what is pseudo-science?
Do you honestly think James Hanson and Gavin Schmidt are the only ones at NASA misrepresenting the underlying science.
Electric Universe theory and Plasma Cosmology are part of mainstream science, a part of the Institute or Electrical and Electronic Engineers. These are the guys who work with and experiment on electric plasma every day and have done since the Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir discovered most of its properties and named it 70 years ago. This work was followed by Hannes Alfven who received the Nobel Prize in 1970 and considered by most as the father of plasma physics. His work was carried by Anthony Perratt who currently works at Los Alamo.
Do you honestly think that; subversion of peer review, ad hom attacks by “expert” websites, denial of grants and job opertunities, misrepresentation of data and continual ad hoc addition to a theory that has no predictive capability are ONLY present in Climatology.
Wake up and smell the deception.
Why do you think the bulk of scientific bodies EXCEPT the IEE&E have all backed Global Warming; because they stand to lose just as much if the theory falls and the possibility that their own underlying theories and more importantly funding could be called into question.
If modern cosmology/astronomy is so “settled” how come every time they point a new telescope at the cosmos or launch a new satellite on a far-flung mission they are constantly “amazed and surprised”, how it can’t be explained or it “back to the drawing board” (back to the computer models) to ad yet another ad hoc assumption to list of failures to predict an outcome.
The current orthodoxy (Big Bang Theory) “can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory’s supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.”
Does this sound familiar?
When people with open minds delved beneath the “pseudo-science” of Global Warming Skeptics they found a staggering amount of contrary evidence that was well researched and based on solid observational evidence.
If the same open minds are truly open they will find that beneath the facade of orthodox cosmology they will find exactly the same modus operandi that exist in Climatology only it is more deep seated and has been going on for a lot longer that anyone could ever guess.
Read this and see the list of signators.
How many are crackpots, flat earthers or pseudo-scientists?
http://www.cosmologystatement.org/
davesmith1au (15:09:06) :
“Birkeland was completely wrong”
Leif there are currently NO scientists, even mainstream ones, who would make such a sweeping statement of ignorance of the facts. Birkeland currents are, after all, not named after Leif Svalgaard…
I have read all of Birkeland’s papers, so my statement is not rooted in ignorance. The issue was not whether currents exists in the ionosphere. Every scientist in this field knows that currents flow easily along field lines, but not across them, and once the magnetosphere was discovered, field-aligned currents were a given [and BTW there are currents named after me 🙂 ] as the result of changing magnetic field in near-Earth space. The issue was the origin of these currents. And there is where Birkeland was completely and utterly wrong [as was pointed out by Lindeman already back in 1919]. Birkeland believed that the currents came from the Sun as streams or narrow beams of electrons [BTW, he got into a big discussion with another Norwegian giant in space physics: Stoermer, who believed the particles in the beam were of positive sign – they were both as wrong as one could be on this].
Geez, this thread is wandering. I thought the full moon had already passed.
.
Leif Svalgaard (08:23:51) :
It is a lot simpler to believe that angels push the planets around in their orbits …
They don’t ?
.
pwl (08:14:59) :
In the (very cold) decade (70’s) I lived in Edmonton we were treated to spectacular auroras.
I was based up in Minot, ND back then. The aurorae often folded like hanging draperies, and sometimes they drifted enough south that we got an edge-on view, really brilliant.
Why has everyone forgotten about the HAARP weapon system in Gakona, AK? Something like this has HAARP written all over it.
IT’s almost as if we have HAARP amnesia. Maybe HAARP’s mind controls work better than planned!
Funny, I thought Lindeman’s critique of Birkeland was invalidated…
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1958ApJ…127..731B
Paulmwho (15:09:32) :
Read this and see the list of signators.
Sounds like sour grapes to me. Give me some more funding, and I might sign too. 🙂
too many of your statements are just plain wrong or half-truths, so I shall limit myself to just one: “Electric Universe theory and Plasma Cosmology are part of mainstream science”. This is clearly not the case as you yourself point out [mainstream science all corrupt, etc].
Aris (18:07:32) :
Funny, I thought Lindeman’s critique of Birkeland was invalidated…
Bennett’s ideas was quickly invalidated by the discovery of the solar wind and in-situ measurements showing that his ideas didn’t hold. So, not ‘funny’ at all.
Paulmwho (15:09:32) :
Why do you think the bulk of scientific bodies EXCEPT the IEE&E have all backed Global Warming;
From the IEEE website:
IEEE to Host Free Workshop on Lowering Greenhouse Emissions Through Technology Standards 13 June
16 May – The IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) will host a free workshop on the use of technology standards to help lower greenhouse gases and fight global warming.
The event, “IEEE Workshop on Standards to Help Mitigate Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Global Warming, and their Impact on the Environment,” will be held Friday, 13 June 2008 at the IEEE Operations Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854.
kuhnkat (09:08:17) :
The FLATEARTHERS ALWAYS END UP IN CHARGE!!! Scientific advance is done by the lunatic fringe who are not wedded to conventional ideas and theories taught in institutions of propaganda and status quo. Why is that?? Because most of the Lunatic fringe ARE nuts. The rest of us can not tell who is and isn’t nuts until the conventional science has nearly caught up with them!!
I did go to the thunderbolt link given by somebody. The glaring statement that”
“The naked electric force is 39 orders of magnitude (a thousand billion billion billion billion times) stronger than gravity. ”
made me click off. Poor strong force !
It is easy to see who is nuts and who is pushing unconventional theories against the current fashion, if you are versed in the current fashion. The true lunatics are hand wavers. The true innovators have hard differential equations and solutions to them. They may be ignored, and their proposals become accepted after the old guard dies off, or not, and become accepted by the force of the data.
All innovations that I know of in physics have sprung from people who were very well versed in their current physics and simply thought out of the box. They presented their theories based in solid mathematics and physics of their time, with a different outlook.
Hand waving science belongs to science fiction, enjoyable for a read maybe.
Looking back through history, every time there was a real advance in our understanding, there were all those conventional types who COULD NOT ADMIT THEY WERE WRONG AND WORKED TO PREVENT THE ADVANCE FROM BEING ACCEPTED!!!
This is true, a new theory goes against the current, but if it is a theory with all the necessary attributes, it will survive and if closer to data, will be vindicated.
Larry Butler (17:05:47) :
> IT’s almost as if we have HAARP amnesia. Maybe HAARP’s mind controls work better than planned!
Not at all. I wondered when some idiot would bring it up but hoped everyone has moved on.
http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/
anna v (21:25:24) :
It is easy to see who is nuts and who is pushing unconventional theories against the current fashion, if you are versed in the current fashion.
Well said, anna. The situation is, however, a bit asymmetrical: if you are well-versed, spotting a nut is easy. It is harder for the nut to see the difference, because the ‘current fashion’ is unintelligible to him in the first place.
Moderators: I believe you misssed a necessary snip here: AdderW (05:11:05) :
[Fixed – RT – mod]
Paulmwho (15:09:32) :
The current orthodoxy (Big Bang Theory) “can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory’s supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.”
There is a misunderstanding about the theory of epicycles. The misunderstanding is that it is not wrong. It is just a cumbersome inelegant method of describing the observed world. If one took the trouble to calculate a geocentric system, the epicycles are there in all their glory. True, they required new parameters every time a new planet was seen, but so does present gravitational theory: mass, angular momentum,.. Are these not new parameters?
So it is only inelegance that makes us deride the epicycle model. One would not think that ineleganc has much to do with science, but it is one of the absolute guiding lights. Not only because it satisfies an inherent human desire for order and beauty, but because it clears the veils and one can see how one can make predictions rather than observations.
Now it may be true that a lot of the niche assignments of new data withing the general theory of gravitation and big bang are a form of epicycles, i.e. that a higher more elegant theory will get rid of ad hoc assignments and offer greater predictive views. This remains to be seen.
But it is also true that alternative theories have to offer an elegance not found in what is being offered here as the “electric or plasma” universe.
Forces, ha!
Modern mathematical tools are far removed from forces, which are just the final solutions of elegant derivations of differential equations. One starts with Action. Give me a link for the Action of a plasma universe.
Old scientists don’t change their opinions with new evidence…they just pass from the scene and new scientists more open to new ideas take their place.
[Fixed – RT – mod]
May require a flow-on snip here: DirkH (06:11:16) :
[Fixed again – thanks]
James F. Evans (23:20:40) :
Old scientists don’t change their opinions with new evidence…they just pass from the scene and new scientists more open to new ideas take their place.
It is almost a truism: Einstein against quantum mechanics, Feynman resisting QCD come to mind.
There is a big BUT. Ideas are necessary for new breakthroughs but ideas are nut sufficient. For physics particularly solid mathematical derivations are the sine qua non for something to be considered a theory. We have progressed since the time of Demokritos. Both quantum mechanics and QCD come with the full rigorous panoply of mathematical modeling.
It is not enough to say “the physics of the moon is consistent with its being made of cheese” and expect others to do the math for you. Otherwise you are positing a science fiction world, delightful, but not physics. I take great pleasure in reading and even rereading Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld series, where he has developed a completely zany amalgam of magic, science and anthropology/sociology. I do not confuse it with the physics of the world as I know it, though.
Electric universe? Jeesh, I understand why Leif gets fed up at times.
If you go over to:
http://www.universetoday.com/
some of these crackpots pollute those threads as well.
anna v (00:36:38) wrote: “For physics particularly solid mathematical derivations are the sine qua non for something to be considered a theory.”
Yes, mathematics is the language of Nature or at least it’s how Man quantifies the relationships of Nature in exact ways so we can predict and harness natural forces and relationships (technology).
But before the mathematical relationships are established, observation & measurement of physical phenomenon is required, i.e., empirical science.
Too many times, mathematicians act like mathematics can create its own reality. So-called “string theory” is an example.
No observation & measurement supports it AT ALL.
And, yet, respected peer-reviewed journals will publish this fantasy.
beng (06:59:41):
“Everybody in the community knows that these are plasmas, and so by definition dominated by electromagnetic forces.” — anonymous IBEX mission researcher for 4 years
The game’s up and the cat’s out of the bag. Electric Double Layers, aka “magnetic reconnection”, has been documented by in situ satellite probes, that’s what causes the aurora ask Dr. Leif Svalgaard.
Electric fields and electric currents are present in space plasma, again, ask Dr. Leif Svalgaard, he is on record on this website as acknowledging both.
Get to know it.
Or do you desire I provide his quotes?