US Space agency NASA, has made a remarkable discovery which would help relate Northern Lights or Auroras Borealis and geomagnetic storms.
Data collected by Nasa satellites show that rope like structure of magnetic fields (they are actually twisted bundles of magnetic fields), connect earth’s upper atmosphere to the sun. A current with stream of charged particles flows through these ropes. The energy is then suddenly released, causing a scintillating color display near the poles, in the sky.
As Dr. David Sibeck, project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight centre, puts it,
We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms and auroras. THEMIS encountered its first magnetic rope on May 20. It was very large, about as wide as Earth, and located approximately 40,000 miles above Earth’s surface in a region called the magnetopause.
The geomagnetic storm that was monitored along with the Northern lights was powerful enough to be an equal to the energy released by a 5.5 magnitude earthquake. The storm as it raced across the sky covered a distance of 400 miles in a minute!
Scientists became interested in knowing the energy source behind the Northern lights after a quintet of satellites discovered play of northern lights over Alaska and Canada this March. NASA’s 5 identical micro-satellites, Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substroms (Themis), had showed traces of particle flow and magnetic fields, during the luminous show that lasted over two hours, some 40,000 miles above the Earths surface.
Themis mission was launched this year by the US’s space agency as a part of two year project in co ordination with university of Berkley in California, and since then has been responsible for quite a few revelations.
The quintet will be recording a geomagnetic storm expected next year and hopefully some relevant information about when they are triggered will be made.
Via: Telegraph
