i know this sounds painfully stupid— but my native language isn’t english. when i looked up how they happen, i got a bunch of big words thrown at me and didn’t understand a single thing.
so, in light of recent events, how the hell does it happen? what causes this phenomenon????? surely there’s a less intense way of explaining it.
In: Planetary Science
The Sun is constantly spitting out energy and radioactive particles. That’s how it makes light for us to see.
Here on the ground, the really strong particles can’t make it down here, because the Earth is (more or less) a giant magnet. That magnetic field pulls the strong particles away from us, toward the north and south poles.
Up very very high in the atmosphere, those strong particles get bunched up near the north and south pole. Because they are strong particles, they have lots of energy inside them. When they get bunched up, they give some of that energy to the gas of the upper atmosphere. But the gas can’t hold that energy very well, so it releases the energy again, this time as light. Different gases glow in different colors, oxygen is usually greenish-yellow, nitrogen is usually blue. The strong particles make the “sheets” of light because of the way the giant Earth magnet pulls on the strong particles.
Latest Answers