Whenever I find articles like this one, I become almost giddy as I read through them. Revelations, such as this one, make me so fascinated with this world and all its mysteries. "Scientists learn what makes Northern Lights flare". I always thought they did know and I just hadn't looked into it yet. Apparently, 5 NASA satellites were used as sources so it's legit stuff we got going on here.
I'm not going to go really detailed into it but I will recap: explosions of magnetic energy that happen 1/3 of the ways between the Earth and moon create the lights in what's called "magnetic reconnection". Technically, when solar wind (electrically charged particles that are constantly spurt out of the sun, in essence, fiery sun beams) and the earth's magnetic field lines (that store energy from this wind) get closer together, a maximum is reached and everything becomes reconnected. When this shenanigan goes down, magnetic energy is turned into kinetic energy and heat that in turn spark the pretty flares of the Northern/Southern lights. So maybe it doesn't sound thaaaaat cool but I'm just taken aback with wonderment of science and the Earth.
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