Aurora Borealis what is the cause of this phenomenon....?

Question

( northern lights)

Answer 1

The source of the auroras is the sun. The sun gives off high-energy charged particles (also called ions) that travel out into space at speeds of 200 to 440 miles per second. A "cloud" or gas of such ions and electrons is called a plasma. The stream of plasma coming from the sun is known as the solar wind. As the solar wind interacts with the fringes of the earth's magnetic field, the particles are "shocked" into flowing around the earth. Some of the particles are trapped by the earth's magnetic field. They follow the magnetic lines of force down to the ionosphere. The particles strike the gases in the ionosphere, causing them to glow, the same way electrons passing through the gases in a neon tube make a neon sign light up. The colors correspond to the different gases in the ionosphere. Oxygen atoms give off red and green light, depending on how high they are in the ionosphere. Nitrogen molecules give off blue and violet light.

Answer 2

The solar "wind" (or current, as it actually is an electric current).

You see the solar wind is actually a bunch of charged particles that is believed to be electrically neutral. THis is not the truth, however, because the solar wind is so BIG and the charge difference per cubic meter is SO small our satellites cannot detect it. We know it's not electrically neutral though because often times auroras occur directly over our magnetic poles when it comes flowing in.

The amount of energy required to reproduce this phenomenon is incredible, with nothing short of a nuclear explosion to produce even the slightest of similar results. The glowing rings of the aurora also resemble elves, which are glowing rings that form along our ionosphere above powerful lightning storms.

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e397/Bigpappadiaz/discharge.gif

This also shows us where the charge separation required for lightning comes from. It it mostly accepted that lightning is strictly a local phenomenon, and that the charge is separated in our atmosphere with clouds rubbing together and cold air hitting warm moist air. Elves and sprites show us that this energy is travelling high above the tropopause where there is little atmosphere at all. It most likely does not stop there, but as far as being able to visibly see where it is going the ionosphere is our last glimpse.

This ought to help you understand why Earth has a magnetic field, and why we rotate on our axis. Like any electric current, we also have a spinning magnetic field. This picture shows you the right-hand thumb test:

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e397/Bigpappadiaz/magcur.gif

The reason why we still haven't detected this had a lot to do with the reluctance of the scientific community to discard their old theories and accept new ones, but it also has a lot to do with our inability to detect the subtle differences in Earth's energy fields after we've been zapped upon. The energy quickly disperses over the entire area of the Earth, and everything is in equilibrium again.

Out of the 4 main forces (strong force, weak force, electromagnetism and gravity) gravity remains the only mystery, but with our massive magnetic field, natural electric field, auroras and elves and sprites.... is there really that much left to wonder about?

Answer 3

Before we can understand auroras, we need a few facts about the space around our Earth. There are many things in this space that we can't see.

One thing is the air we breathe, our atmosphere. It is really a mixture of several gases, mostly nitrogen and oxygen, with traces of hydrogen, helium and various compounds.

A Field of Earth
Another thing we can't see is a magnetic field that surrounds the Earth. If you've ever played with a bar magnet and iron filings you've seen the curved patterns the filings form in the magnetic field. The next picture shows how the magnetic field around the earth's core is like the field of a bar magnet.

The Earth's "magnet" is deep in the core. Since we can't see the magnetic field, we draw lines to represent it. The field lines go into and out of the Earth around the Earth's magnetic poles. Where the lines are closest together the field is strongest. Where they are furthest apart it is weakest. Can you tell where the magnetic field is the strongest? Where is it weakest?

Charged Particles
A third invisible thing in the space around the Earth is a plasma, made of lots of charged particles. There are always electrons and positive ions in the surrounding magnetic field. Charged particles in a magnetic field move in a special way: they are guided by the field. The particles travel along magnetic field lines as if they were wires, circling around the lines in a long spiral as they go. Charged particles are the "ammunition" of an aurora.

Solar Powered Display
The short answer to how the aurora happens is that energetic electrically charged particles (mostly electrons) accelerate along the magnetic field lines into the upper atmosphere, where they collide with gas atoms, causing the atoms to give off light. But why does that happen? To find the answer, we must look further away, to the Sun. The spectacular, "great" auroras in "What do they look like?" are powered by what is called the solar wind.

The Sun also has an atmosphere and a magnetic field that extend into space. The Sun's atmosphere is made of hydrogen, which is itself made of subatomic particles: protons and electrons. These particles are constantly boiling off the Sun and streaming outward at very high speeds. Together, the Sun's magnetic field and particles are called the "solar wind."

This wind is always pushing on the Earth's magnetic field, changing its shape. You change the shape of a soap bubble in a similar way when you blow on its surface. We call this compressed field around the earth the magnetosphere. The Earth's field is compressed on the day side, where the solar wind flows over it. It is also stretched into a long tail like the wake of a ship, which is called the magnetotail, and points away from the Sun.

Squeezing the Earth's magnetic field takes energy, just the way it takes energy to compress a balloon with air in it. The whole process is still not fully understood, but energy from the solar wind is constantly building up in the magnetosphere, and this energy is what powers auroras.

The Big Push
So we have the Earth's magnetosphere, with the solar wind squeezing the magnetosphere and charged particles everywhere in the field. Solar particles are always entering the tail of the magnetosphere from the solar wind and moving toward the Sun. Now and then, when conditions are right, the build-up of pressure from the solar wind creates an electric voltage between the magnetotail and the poles, like the voltage between the two terminals of a battery. It can reach about 10,000 volts!

The voltage pushes electrons (which are very light) toward the magnetic poles, accelerating them to high speeds, much like the electrons in a TV picture tube that accelerate to hit the screen. They zoom along the field lines towards the ground to the north and south, until huge numbers of electrons are pushed down into the upper layer of the atmosphere, called the ionosphere.


In the ionosphere, the speeding electrons collide violently with gas atoms. This gives the gas atoms energy, which causes them to release both light and more electrons. In this way, the gases of the ionosphere glow and conduct flowing electric currents into and out of the polar region. The electrons flowing back out don't have as much energy as the speedy incoming ones had - that energy went into creating the aurora!


The way the aurora works is a lot like a neon sign, except that in the aurora, the conducting gas is in the ionosphere, instead of a glass tube, and the current travels along magnetic field lines instead of copper wires.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/auroras/

Answer 4

My position on this question is that the grid energy from the sun which flows from normally to the grounds (ley lines to vortexes) is prevented from reaching the grounds readily because of snow and ice and builds up in the northern area and is more pronounced in fall and winter because of more snow and ice covering the grounds.Grid energy(Same as sun emanations) is frequency ,so colors are frequency of gases produced.Flames with oxygen burn blue because of oxygen,the sky is blue because of oxygen frequency coming from sun,even though there is less oxygen in upper atmosphere,it accumulates near the earths surface as only the aetheric force that carries it here is grounded.

Answer 5

Amazing!! Of all the answers only one says anything about the beauty of the 'nothern lights'. I have seen them in northern Canada and even the big highway truckers stop and look!
They get weaker as they come south so just watch and dont even worry about what causes such beauty.Its one of lifes 'things' to see in a lifetime.

Answer 6

caused by the collision of the solar electromagnetic radiation with the upper atmosphere

Answer 7

the magnetic pole sucking in some of the radiation from the sun and dispersing it everywhere in the sky.

Answer 8

ME the god you were commanded to worship in the 1st commandment.
[
i
L
II
E and M=IVI stitched together

Thus ME is IVI stitched together [iL

and all things commanded to praise HIM thus pat answer is TODD.

Answer 9

its the reflection of the polar ice cap

Answer 10

Such comprehensive answers, I shall not trouble you with repetition, Well done all!!!!!!!