I’m not sure what discovery warrants the title of ‘mystery’, but it was accepted and published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. I guess we have all become aware that ECMs research is ahead of its time, but to frame it beyond mysteries is a bit exorbitant.
I am pretty sure all or most of you have been aware of my research on charged particles going as far back as 1998 when I published my first Equation. To think of this finding as new or mysterious, is well, mysterious.
Sunspots → Solar Flares (charged particles) → Magnetic Field Shift → Shifting Ocean and Jet Stream Currents → Extreme Weather and Human Disruption (mitch battros 1998).
For years, scientists have contemplated what triggers the formation of auroral substorms and the sudden bursts of brightness. Appearing in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the current study overthrows existing theories about the mechanism behind this phenomenon.
Auroras are dimly present throughout the night in polar regions, but sometimes these lights explode in brightness. Now Japanese scientists have unlocked the mystery behind this spectacle, known as auroral breakup.
Now Japanese scientists from the Kyoto-Kyushu research team has revealed that hot charged particles, or plasma, gather in near-Earth space just above the upper atmosphere of the polar region. This makes the plasma rotate creating a sudden electrical current above the polar regions.
“This isn’t like anything that us space physicists had in mind,” said study author Yusuke Ebihara of Kyoto University….. ‘Okay, if you say so’. (writers satirical comment) Ebihara based the study on a supercomputer simulation program developed by Takashi Tanaka, professor emeritus at Kyushu University.
Auroras originate from plasma from the Sun, known as the solar wind. In the 1970s, scientists discovered that when this plasma approaches the Earth together with magnetic fields, it triggers a change in the Earth’s magnetic field lines on the dayside, and then on the night side. This information alone couldn’t explain how the fluttering lights emerge in the sky, however.
Scientists had come up with theories for separate parts of the process. Some suggested that acceleration of plasma from the reconnection of magnetic field lines caused auroral breakup. Others argued that the electrical current running near the Earth diverts a part of the electrical current into the ionosphere for some unknown reason, triggering the bright bursts of light. This theory was widely accepted because it offered an explanation for why upward-flowing currents emerged out of our planet. But the pieces of the puzzle didn’t quite fit well together.
Tanaka’s supercomputer simulation program, on the other hand, offers a logical explanation from start to finish.
“Previous theories tried to explain individual mechanisms like the reconnection of the magnetic field lines and the diversion of electrical currents, but there were contradictions when trying to explain the phenomena in its entirety,” said Ebihara. “What we needed all along was to look at the bigger picture.”
The current paper builds on earlier work by Ebihara and Tanaka about how the bursts emerge. This explores the succeeding processes, namely how the process expands into a large scale breakup.
The research also has the potential to alleviate hazardous problems associated with auroral breakups that can seriously disrupt satellites and power grids.