Exploring What Causes the Beautiful Northern Lights
The Science Channel joined aurora hunter Emma Spanswick of the University of Calgary on her search for answers about what causes the Northern Lights. Spanswick explained to the camera that this is slow and cold work as they waited for the Aurora Borealis to appear, as they are unpredictable.
This is absolutely part of the life of an auroral chaser. You need a lot of patience in this line of work, but it'll come out". It's -20 and it's going to be a long night. That's because Emma doesn't know exactly when the lights are going to appear.
The Northern Lights are driven by the sun with a solar wind that would be harmful to the Earth if it weren't for the magnetic field that protects the planet. Yet, the lights are so terrifyingly beautiful.
The northern lights are driven by our sun. 93 million miles away, the surface of the sun throws out a constant stream of charged particles called the solar wind. Left unchecked, this wind could strip away Earth's atmosphere and extinguish all life on the planet. But luckily, the Earth has a magnetic field that cocoons the whole globe. The magnetic field funnels the solar winds energy towards the Earth's poles where it excites the gases in our atmosphere and produces the spectacular lights we call the aurora.
They also spoke with NASA scientist Dr. Nicky Fox, who is investigating how and why the lights are pushing southward. Fox witnessed the solar storms and aurora in 2003 from her backyard in Baltimore and studied the event from a scientific point of view.
When it actually comes to the earth, it is carrying a magnetic field in it. And the earth also has a magnetic field. When they're in opposite directions, they actually connect. This sudden connection between the solar storm and Earth releases huge amounts of energy into Earth's upper atmosphere. Unleashing the aurora across huge bands of the northern hemisphere, lighting up continents that normally remain shrouded in darkness.
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