Robert sent in some interesting links to this story, and William also. They provide different links to the big story of last week – a space hurricane at the poles. See for example https://phys.org/news/2021-03-space-hurricane.html … and www.yahoo.com/news/space-hurricane-hovered-above-north-205542209.html … where we are told a cirtical ingredient for auroral phenomena exists somewhat higher than expected, or previously entertained. The study is in Scientific Reports of March 2021 – see https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79665-5 – but see an earlier post at https://phys.org/news/2021-03-story-polar-aurora-bigger-unknown.html … for further illumination on what is an interesting development.
The new, magic ingredient is located 30,000 km above the earth's surface, in the territory of the Apophis flyby. Auroras have an origin in supersonic plasma propelled from the sun. High speed charged particles stream in along the planet's m agnetic field, flowing towards the poles like a school magnet used to excite iron filings on a sheet of paper. These are known as space weather events, and this year, 2021, has seen the sun wake up and become far more active and throwing streams of plasma in all directions through the solar system. Most electrons that reach the magnetosophere do not seem to reach the ionosphere. They have been neutralised, one might say, or brought to heel. However, some particles seem to receive a boost, a burst of energy in fact. Accelerating them into earth's upper atmosphere where they collide and excite oxygen and nitrogen atoms at an altitude of 1000km. Subsequently they go on to create the auroral light show.
However, an unknown magnetospheric mechanism seems at play, it is suggested. Further information on the subject can be found at https://phys.org/news/2021-03-source-hazardous-high-energy-particles-sun… … for illumination. At the first link, above, it is all about a space hurricane in earth's upper atmosphere which is said to shed noew light on the relationship between planets and space. A 3D image has been created of a 1000km wide snarling mass of plasma serveral hundred km above the North Pole, raining electrons instead of water, and in many ways it resembles hurricanes seen in earth's lower atmosphere. See Nature Communications [2021] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21459-y … Robert, however, links to https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a012500/a012550/Rossby_Waves_North… … and https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12550 and robert also provides a link to the Thunderbolts forum at www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16299&start=225#p…