What Causes The Northern Lights?

[Applause] Welcome to Alaska! I'm just outside of Fairbanks, and I'm trying to find the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis. But the conditions haven't been ideal because tonight it's a bit cloudy, a bit hazy, and we've got a moon out which is nearly full. So, it makes it very difficult to spot these Northern Lights.

So, what are we actually looking at up there with the Aurora? The electromagnetic fields working through gravity, you know, and the particles that work off of that. What do you have to have happen in order to get those lights? Cold? You're going to be looking at solar activities that have to do with solar flares. As the flares are coming, I know it has to be something with the sun and discharge, and it's a solar flare.

The sun has just put on quite a show. Take a look at these amazing pictures captured by a NASA spacecraft yesterday. It's a powerful solar flare shooting superheated particles and plasma deep into space. No one knows what's really going on; those pictures, they just look cool, don't they? That's all! They just look cool! So, we put it on the news.

Yeah, so what sort of stuff is coming from the Sun? Um, it is, uh, I believe it's solar radiation. Other than that, I don't know—photons and, you know, neurons, superfluity of neurons. What's the sun made of? Mostly hydrogen, I believe?

Yeah, so if the sun spits out some of that stuff, right? It would be what? What is a hydrogen atom? What's it made of? Just hydrogen? Uh, neutrons, electrons. You know, so in the case of hydrogen, it's the simplest atom—it's just a proton and an electron. Okay, that's it. So when we're talking about stuff coming from the Sun, we're just talking about streams of protons and electrons.

Okay, there's stuff coming from the Sun. Yes, and then what does it do? Uh, lights up, 'cause just, that's—I'm, they're just there. They're just there? Yeah, they just happen.

Well, I've had a little bit of luck, and I've been trying to shoot them, so I'll put up some of that footage so you can check it out. And you can think about these particles that must be streaming in from the Sun, colliding with our upper atmosphere, and then exciting it. So it releases that light when it de-excites.

Why does it come to Alaska and not, say, Hawaii or the Caribbean? It's the Northern Lights. It is the—well, why are you guys so special? I'm not sure, honestly. Like, it's been seen down in like Mexico and stuff. It's like the Reds have been seen down in Mexico. I've actually seen it in Mexico by where my grandmother lives. I think it just has to do with the Northern Hemisphere and how much little less Sun we get, so you can see it more.

I'm sure it happens in the southern hemisphere. You just have a lot of light down there; like their sky is brighter at night. Well, oh God, I'm just asking. I don't know. I don't know; it has to do with magnetic fields, and the closer you get to the magnetic fields, the more the lights you're able to see.

And then, yeah, you're right about the magnetosphere. It deflects them around towards the poles, then they hit the atmosphere and they excite the atmosphere. When it de-excites, it’s okay, giving off that light.

So, I'm here in Fairbanks with T. Neil Davis, and thank you for speaking to me today. You're welcome! All right, so we were out looking for the Aurora. I guess one major question that a lot of people would have is: What is it? The roar is the result of charged particles coming down the magnetic long magnetic field lines, which is essentially vertical here. The high-speed particles then strike the gases in the upper atmosphere and impart energy to those gases.

Excite the atoms and molecules. Fairly shortly thereafter, the atoms and molecules, the exoti, by giving off Quantum Light, and that's what we see. What about the weather? You know, last night it seemed like it was a bit overcast; there were some clouds up there. Does that also hinder? Oh yes, it wasn't a thick Cloud layer, but it just seemed to be a bit of a haze. We had the moon out.

Oh, well then you're really in trouble! Yeah, with the moon out and a little haze, it's pretty tough to see the—so do you have any advice for us? How do we deal with conditions like that? I mean, well, that's it—go to a bar and have a drink! [Laughter] I guess.

But I just want to give you an idea because I have a different colored image behind me just to kind of give you a sense of scale. The sun right here, that would be the size of the Earth. You could put 20 Earths or so inside just that Circle where the explosion occurred.