Saturday, February 12, 2011

Aurora Borealis



11 February 2011
Sender: JasuHeppa
In Finnish, Aurora Borealis is "Revontulet" = Foxes Fire. In the olden days, Finnish people believed that they are the tails of firefoxes who live in the sky..
What a wonderful natural phenomenon. 
"The Aurora Borealis, also called the Northern Lights, are beautiful curtains of light created when fast electrons from the  solar wind slam into the rarefied gas of the upper atmosphere. The mechanism of action is similar to the way electrons in a television generate specks of light when they impact the phosphor-coated inside of the screen. However, the physics of the Aurora Borealis are complex, and not perfectly understood. The energy of certain types of aurora probably derives from adynamo effect of the interplanetary (solar wind-caused) magnetic field against the Earth's magnetic field. This is similar to the way electricity can be generated by rotating a magnet within an electromagnetic coil."



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