Mystery Of Auroras Borealis Solved?

Thanks to a quintet of NASA satellites stationed over the Northern Hemisphere, scientists believe they now know what causes the strange phenomena of the auroras borealis, or the Northern Lights.

The Associated Press reports new data from the THEMIS mission found the lights are the result of a stream of charged particles from the sun, flowing like an energy current along streams of magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun.

When those particles hit the jumbled magnetic fields in the atmosphere, the energy is abruptly released -- causing the shimmering display of lights, according to principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California at Los Angeles.

As ANN reported, the five microsatellites comprising the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission were launched February 17. In March, the satellites recorded a two-hour-series of Northern Lights over Alaska and Canada, allowing the on-orbit measurement of particle flow and magnetic fields.

Angelopoulos said the storm that caused the auroras sped across the sky at 400 miles per minute... and carried a punch equivalent to a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.

"Nature was very kind to us," Angelopoulos said.

Observations from the satellites confirmed suspicions within the scientific community of what caused the auroras... but questions still remain. Now, scientists hope to record a geomagnetic storm next year... to put to rest the debate about when such storms are triggered.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/main/index.html