Northern Lights Research Paper

What is the aurora? It is like a neon sign. You have particles streaming that collide with particle; molecules or atoms, they can either excite molecules and atoms or break them apart. When the molecules are broken apart they release photons. So its like a shower of breaking molecules and creates these cascades. So it’s like a shower happening all the way down to the lower atmosphere. So what I learned is that is all quantum mechanics. It is very interesting to know that it is a chemical process going on. Since the beginning of time, people have told stories and legends to explain natural, but mysterious, occurrences. The Northern Lights is one example. The Vikings thought the shining weaponry of immortal warriors caused the Northern Lights.

There are various references in Roman, Russian and English records. There are have records in 1192 of this great Aurora observed by many throughout the world. It’s kind of interesting that this global event, the Aurora, was recorded and a lot of people experienced it but they couldn’t really talk about it like we do today across countries and cultures. People saw that it was recorded in many places in the early 1700’s. There were multiple accounts of intense Aurora from China, New England, and Europe. In 1859, there was the Carrington solar and in the days following there was the brightest of Aurora events that have been accurately recorded and written down. It was observed all the way to South America. This intensity hasn’t been seen since and unlikely to be seen before that. In the 1500’s people believed that the Aurora was kind of like a birthday cake in the sky with candles dancing around according to some drawings found. People didn’t know that it was electrical currents flowing from the Sun.

Electricity is used to excite the atoms in the neon gas within the glass tubes of a neon sign. That’s why these signs give off their brilliant colors. The aurora works on the same principle – but at a far more vast scale.

The aurora often appears as curtains of lights, but they can also be arcs or spirals, often following lines of force in Earth’s magnetic field. Most are green in color but sometimes you’ll see a hint of pink, and strong displays might also have red, violet and white colors. The lights typically are seen in the far north – the nations bordering the Arctic Ocean – Canada and Alaska, Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Greenland and Russia. But strong displays of the lights can extend down into more southerly latitudes in the United States. And of course, the lights have a counterpart at Earth’s south polar regions.

The colors in the aurora were also a source of mystery throughout human history. But science says that different gases in Earth’s atmosphere give off different colors when they are excited. Oxygen gives off the green color of the aurora, for example. Nitrogen causes blue or red