Northern Lights energy source discovered

San Fransisco, California
12/13/07

Scientists may have discovered the energy source of auroras borealis, spectacular color displays have been spotted in the upper lattitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

NASA's latest data from the "Themis" mission a quintet of satellites have recently launched this winter and has discovered that the energy comes from a stream of charged particles from the sunwhich flows like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting the Earth's upper atmosphere ton the sun.

That energy is suddenly released into a shimmering display of lights, says principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California at Los Angeles.

The results were presented on Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting.

In March the satellites detected bursts of Northern Lights over Alaska and Canada. While the two-hour light show was occuring the satellites measured particle flow and magnetic fields from space.


Scientists were surprised to the fact that the geomagnetic storm powering the auroras raced at 400 miles in one minute through the sky. Angelopoulos estimated the storm's power wes equal to the energy released in a 5.5 earthquake.

Though reseachers have suspected the existence of wound up bundles of magnetic fields which provide energy for thr auroras, the phenomenon was not confirmed until May when when the satellites became the fitst to map out their structure some 40,000 miles above the Earth's surface


Article from: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/13/northern.lights.ap/index.html