The Dancing Lights
Auroras have been emitting in our, and other planets’ skies as long as the Solar System has been in motion. In 1619 A.D., Galileo Galilei coined the term "aurora borealis" after Aurora, the Roman goddess of morning. He had the misconception that the auroras he saw were due to sunlight reflecting from the atmosphere. (Angelopoulos, 2008). In 1741, Hiorter and Celsius noted that the polar aurora is accompanied by a disturbance of the magnetic needle. In 1820, Hans Christian Oersted discovered electromagnetism. André-Marie Ampére deduced that magnetism is basically the force between electric currents. In 1851, Samuel Schwabe, a German amateur astronomer, announced the discovery of the 11-year sunspot cycle, and in 1859, Richard Carrington in England observed a violent and rapid eruption near a sunspot; 17 hours later a large magnetic storm began. In 1900-3, Kristian Birkeland experiments with beams of electrons aimed at a magnetized sphere ("terrella") in a vacuum chamber. The electrons hit near the magnetic poles, leading him to propose that the polar aurora is created by electron beams from the Sun. Birkeland also observes magnetic disturbances associated with the aurora, suggesting to him that localized "polar magnetic storms" exist in the auroral zone. In 1958, Eugene Parker (Chicago) proposes the theory of the solar wind. 1981, High resolution images are obtained by Lou Frank's group in Iowa of the entire auroral zone, using the Dynamics Explorer satellite. (Stern & Peredo, 2005) This is the major timeline of how auroras came to be discovered and understood.
Now that the history is covered, I can get down to the nitty gritty of how they are able to appear in the sky. Auroras are caused by the collision of e...
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5th Feb, 2014. Wolf, Johnathan. " The Spotlights." Wolf, Johnathan. AP Physics B. Barron’s:
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Hope has the incredible ability to make or break someone. People are always told to make large goals in school and employment, and try to reach those ambitions no matter how far they are. Hope is the motivation behind accomplishing dreams, but it also has the ability to break people who have hoped for something so desperately, yet never came to fruition. Only determination and personal situations can persuade hope to fly or fall. A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly highlights this ambiguous hope we depend on through the use of symbolism, characterization, and inner conflict.
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Stars are born in the interstellar clouds of gas and dust called nebulae that are primarily found in the spiral arms of galaxies. These clouds are composed mainly of hydrogen gas but also contain carbon, oxygen and various other elements, but we will see that the carbon and oxygen play a crucial role in star formation so they get special mention. A nebula by itself is not enough to form a star however, and it requires the assistance of some outside force. A close passing star or a shock wave from a supernova or some other event can have just the needed effect. It is the same idea as having a number of marbles on a trampoline and then rolling a larger ball through the middle of them or around the edges. The marbles will conglomerate around the path of the ball, and as more marbles clump together, still more will be attracted. This is essentially what happens during the formation of a star (Stellar Birth, 2004).
Because the Sun is so influential, imperfections of the Sun, such as sunspots will continue to impact life on Earth. The discovery of sunspots is correlated with the invention of the telescope in 1608, although there are earlier recordings of sunspot like activity from China (Schaefer 35). Galileo was one of the astronomers who decided to publish his findings and use sunspots in one of his theories of Chief World Systems (Schaefer 35-6).
TheSpaceRace.com - Timeline of Space Exploration. (n.d.). TheSpaceRace.com - Timeline of Space Exploration. Retrieved April 27, 2014, from http://www.thespacerace.com/timeline/
Bailey, P., & Worthington, N. (n.d.). History and Applications of HAARP Technologies: The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. Pegasus Research Consortium. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45patrick_bailey/03files/HAARP97.html
they get a sense of who they are and have the ability to reason and
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The research that established Faraday as the foremost experimental scientist of his day was, however, in the fields of electricity and magnetism. In 1821 he plotted the magnetic field around a conductor carrying an electric current; the existence of the magnetic field had first been observed by the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted in 1819.