#10: Aurorae in a ski lodge

TRANSCRIPT

Moiya McTier 0:29

Welcome to Pale Blue Pod, the astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but want to be its friend.

Corinne Caputo 0:36

Ah, I'm Corinne Caputo. I am a comedian writer, half of the Pale Blue Pod hosting team and a friend to the universe.

Moiya McTier 0:46

Hell yeah, you are and I am Dr. Moiya McTier, astrophysicist folklorist so happy to be one of the halves of this hosting team and yeah, the universe and I we have friendship bracelets.

Corinne Caputo 0:57

Oh, yeah. Top top eight on my space for sure. It took a

Moiya McTier 1:01

really long time to make the universe of friendship bracelet Corinne like that. I'm sure that was wrist huge.

Corinne Caputo 1:07

Oh my god.

Moiya McTier 1:10

But Corinne, where are we recording today?

Corinne Caputo 1:12

Okay, today we are in a ski lodge at the top of the mountain and it's cozy. It's like a log cabin. There's fire burning. There's snow crunching outside. I'm not a skier. So this is really just a chance to get like french fries and hot chocolate.

Moiya McTier 1:27

I'm also not a skier. We Yeah, we came here together to the screen.

Corinne Caputo 1:32

Here for the vibes only. And it's some of the comfiest couches you can get love

Moiya McTier 1:36

a comfy couch. But everything smells of leather and it's

Corinne Caputo 1:40

leather. It's wood. It's pine.

Moiya McTier 1:43

Yes, no. Do you Corinne? Corinne? Do you think Snow has a scent?

Corinne Caputo 1:49

I think that there is a scent in the air when it's snow.

Moiya McTier 1:52

Yeah, I agree. I think Snow has a scent. And I'm not just saying that because in so many of my fantasy novels, the romantic male lead. Smells like snow. Yes. I really do. I agree. Really, you

Corinne Caputo 2:04

can kind of tell it's going to snow based on the scent sometimes. And then once a tear. It's like quiet cold. Smells different. It has. There's a presence just

Moiya McTier 2:15

for sure. For sure. So excited to smell that when I skip step out of the ski lodge not to go ski but just to go home because I got here. I haven't left and then I'll go home.

Corinne Caputo 2:27

Yeah, how do we get down?

Moiya McTier 2:28

I don't know that our lifts or something? Right? I think so. Oh, God. I hope so. Well, we're here now. So let's talk about some of

Corinne Caputo 2:38

rora. Yeah, Louis. It's good. we're this far north.

Moiya McTier 2:41

Yes. Yeah. That's why we came here. Not to ski but but to see the aurora from from the Windows

Corinne Caputo 2:48

safely from the windows inside my warm house. Yes.

Moiya McTier 2:52

The ski lodge is very nice. Windows actually has a balcony. We can go out and see the aurora over over the pine trees with their smelly snow. But that's what we're talking about today.

Corinne Caputo 3:04

I'm so excited.

Moiya McTier 3:05

Do you have you ever seen an aurora?

Corinne Caputo 3:06

I've never seen it. It's definitely like, I feel like it's on everyone's bucket list to like see it? But it's definitely this magical thing in my head about you gotta see it. But every time I look it up online, it's like do not plan a trip around this. Like, if you want to go to Iceland go but do not expect to see this because you might not see

Moiya McTier 3:29

it. Mm hmm. Yeah, cuz it's not. It's not there all the time. Yeah. And I certainly thought it was as a kid. Me too. It seemed like almost like a magical portal, you know, like, like in the what's it called? Philip Pullman's the golden? Is it the Golden Compass? Yeah, yeah, like how Aurora there are kind of like like the dust and the transporting to other worlds like I'm

Corinne Caputo 3:50

pretty sure did you ever see Balto it's like animated movie. It's not Disney it's like you know some off brand thing but I loved it as a kid and he's this dog who has to go get meds for his like the young girl who takes care of him and they live in like this isolated community so used to like run to the next town and get meds but he's there really far north in the snow and I'm pretty sure there's some kind of scene with the Aurora

Moiya McTier 4:21

I hope the Aurora guide him to where the where the medicine is. I'm trying to

Corinne Caputo 4:24

remember if he got the meds he must have it was a child stuff.

Moiya McTier 4:28

Yeah, that all they always work out in the children's movies. As long as you're not, you know, like the mother of the character. You'll be fine. Fine.

Corinne Caputo 4:36

To live forever.

Moiya McTier 4:38

I've also never seen an aurora but I would I would love to. It's basic, but it's definitely on my bucket list. Yeah. And maybe by the end of this episode, we'll know a bit more about impliment for Yeah, well, we'll be able to plan our trips better and you listeners will also be able to plan your trips maybe a little bit better. In general, just like a like a one on one on on a road. And then we'll dig into each of these parts deeper over the episode. Aurora are caused when charged particles from the Sun interact with Earth's magnetic field, and also the particles in our atmosphere. Okay, so there there are three steps, they're particles coming from the sun. That's step number one, step number two is interacting with our, our magnetic field. And then step number three, is those particles interacting with our atmosphere. Okay, so let's start first by saying what the Sun is doing, like what are these charged particles, where are they coming from? So the sun is actually constantly giving off what we call in, in the Astro community, a solar wind. The solar wind is a stream of electrically charged particles. So if you remember back to your chemistry class, these ions that have either too many electrons, or too few electrons, they are coming from the sun's corona. And I think we talked about this in the Eclipse episode, but the corona is the atmosphere around the sun. So it's not the sun surface, but it is the atmosphere of gas and plasma surrounding the sun. And for some reason that we don't totally understand the atmosphere of the Sun is like 1000 times hotter than the surface of the sun, whoa, the surface of the Sun is like 6000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the corona is like, millions, whoa, million degrees. I know it's weird, it's wacky. But because the corona is so hot, the particles in the app in the sun's atmosphere in the corona, they move really quickly, because temperature and energy and speed, they're related. The reason water or like other things evaporate is because if you add heat to a pot of water, you're also adding energy, and those particles will start moving faster. And eventually, they'll move so fast that they like uncoupled from each other and the water evaporates. So that's what's happening to particles in the corona, and the particles get so hot, and they move so fast that they can actually escape the sun's gravity, just like the hydrogen and the helium escaping Earth's atmosphere. We talked about this a little bit in the space junk episode. It's called atmospheric loss. And a similar thing happens to the sun. Those particles from the corona of the sun, they travel along the magnetic field lines of the sun. And these lines, they're messy. They change shape, they move, they snap apart, and then they recombine in different places. And we are still actively trying to, like pin down the mechanisms that operate the sun's magnetic field. But those charged particles will travel along the sun's magnetic field, and then they'll get shot out through these things called coronal holes,

Corinne Caputo 7:49

t shirt candidates.

Moiya McTier 7:51

Yes, the coronal hole is just the t shirt cannon of the Saudi original t shirt cannon. But these holes, they're like leftover sunspots. And sunspots are these Dark Spots on the Sun caused by magnetic activity really, really strong magnetic activity in that area of the Sun decreases the temperature in that area. I'm not totally sure why. I'm also not totally sure that if I didn't know why the explanation would fit into this podcast. But strong magnetic activity causes sunspots, which are these dark dim spots on the surface of the sun. And those sunspots can become coronal holes where the stream of particles shoots out. The solar wind was theorized in 1957 by a man named Eugene Parker at the University of Chicago where fun goes to die just what I've always heard about University of Chicago, especially in the at the grad student level, but people were really skeptical about the idea of the solar wind Corinne does the idea of like particles being shot off by the Sun sound weird or impossible to you?

Corinne Caputo 9:09

I think it feels like how i i certainly imagine the sun and there's this like fluid thing happening around it of like, like the similar to smoke, like we were talking about this fluid of smoke is fluid. But I definitely picture like certainly when I would draw the sun like my favorite drawing to the Sun were like a little more, you know, like Van Gogh with the like swirls and things around. And I that makes sense. I think solar wind implies to me like a windy winter day. And there's like gusts of stuff and I know it's not that but it feels more like you know when when wind comes across snow and like that top layer of snow goes in the air.

Moiya McTier 9:51

Yeah, I mean, wind is a weird word. Yeah, it can mean different things in different contexts on Earth, the wind that we expect laureates in our everyday life is air being pushed around, most likely due to differences in temperature and pressure in different pockets of air moving towards and with each other. But the solar wind is just this like charge particle stream coming off, and people didn't think it was possible. They're like, No, the sun is just there, we would have noticed if there were particles coming off of it, we would have detected them because we, you know, were humans and they know everything. They really thought they knew so much. They really did. But it was confirmed just five years later, in 1962, when the Mariner two spacecraft detected particles coming off of the sun, as it was traveling to Venus, the Mariner two spacecraft was was going to Venus to study it. And its atmosphere and stuff. Yeah. We really have learned so much in the last 50 years, we really did me. So then everyone had to be like, Oh, okay, Eugene, your solar wind is real sure. And the solar wind is valuable, we should all be very grateful for the solar wind. Because it protects planets in our solar system from dangerous high energy cosmic rays are cosmic particles coming from other parts of the galaxy. But it does have a downside. The solar wind can also strip away planet atmospheres. Oh, we're pretty sure that the solar wind stripped away most of Mars's atmosphere that it had a bigger one in the past. It is partially responsible for the atmospheric loss that Earth experiences every year. But we are protected from the worst effects of the solar wind by our own magnetic field. Okay, so like our magnetic field kind of repels some of the solar wind and the charged particles in it. Mars is not so lucky, it doesn't have a strong magnetic field like we do. So it couldn't keep all of its atmosphere, very sad. For tomorrow. I'm crying right now, from Mars. And then, sometimes the sun gets more magnetically active. It's on this this 11 year magnetic activity cycle. So the sun gets more and less active over time, and Aurora, are brighter that solar wind is stronger when it's at the peak of that cycle. And when it's at the peak of that cycle there there are things called coronal mass ejections that become more likely have you ever heard of it? Yeah, yeah, a solar flare. These are flares of magnetic activity that shoot out even more charged particles. So it just gets more intense. And

Corinne Caputo 12:34

I'm like, well tell me if this is just your science fiction. But those can mess with satellites and things? Yes,

Moiya McTier 12:39

they can. They can mess with satellites, they can mess with our electric grid here on the surface, they can they can really do a number, they can do some damage on a lot of our electronics. So the solar wind, great. Let's be happy for it, because it's protecting us from dangerous stuff out in the galaxy. But also, if we didn't have Earth's magnetic field, it would focus on a lot. Yeah, sure. So that's what the Sun is doing. That's where the charged particles are coming from the charged particles come from the sun, towards the all of the planets in the solar system, because it's happening spiritually, right. But some of those charged particles will reach us at Earth. And they'll get trapped by our magnetic field by our Magneto sphere, which is this like sphere of magnetic energy surrounding the earth, and they'll get transported to the poles of our planet. But where does that magnetic field come from? For the Earth? I'd say basically speaking, the Earth's magnetic field is produced by the motion of our planets, iron and nickel cores. So at the very center of our planet, we have a solid iron and nickel core, and surrounding that is liquid iron, and nickel. And as the liquid sloshes around the the motion creates electrical charges, which then generates a magnetic field, when you have electrical charges moving, that generates a magnetic field. And we have a lot of nickel and iron in our core. So it's a really strong magnetic field. Yeah. You know, that does come with some concerns, right? Like, initially, the, the entire core was liquid, it was molten, and then the inner core, condensed it it's solidified. The the liquid core, around the solid core might also start to solidify and slow down, and the shape and the strength and, and like the motion of our magnetic field depends on the motion of that core. And it's changing all the time. So our magnetic field might get weaker over time. There's also this weird thing where sometimes the poles just shift it's like the North Pole becomes the South Pole. What and that happens every like 300,000 years.

Corinne Caputo 14:46

Wait, but Santa, he can't just move all the time.

Moiya McTier 14:49

Oh, Corinne. That's it. That's a great point. That brings me to the very important difference between a magnetic pole and a geographic pole. Okay, so our our earth rotates. We have an equator, and we rotate on an axis. As the Earth spins, we can see geographic north and south poles like that's just, you know, like the, the opposites of the equator. Right? Those are the geographic poles. Santa lives at the geographic North Pole.

Corinne Caputo 15:17

Okay, good. Good. But amazing news. Yeah, there you go.

Moiya McTier 15:23

But our magnetic field isn't constrained by the Earth's rotation, you know, it doesn't. The north and south magnetic poles are not the same as the geographic poles. So the magnetic poles are also sometimes called dip poles. Okay, so we'll talk about the North dip pole and the south dip pole. But the North dip pole is about 300 miles south of the geographic North Pole, and it moves all the time because our magnetic field is in such flux. And that's probably why we use the geographic north and south poles as reference points because they are not moving. Okay, but the magnetic ones are Yep. So the electrically charged particles coming from the sun and the solar wind, they get caught up by our magnetosphere because they are electrically charged. So they're like attracted to these magnetic field lines. And because the field lines run towards the north and south dip poles, that's where the particles get taken. So you get this concentration of charged particles at the north and south dip poles. And that's where you get Aurora. Is that like the these polls? So the northern Aurora is called the Aurora Borealis. I think most people saw and I know, yeah, most people know about the Aurora Borealis. And it's called Borealis because Borealis was the Greek god of the Northwind. Ooh, got to add in a little mythology there.

Corinne Caputo 16:50

Borealis, what a name.

Moiya McTier 16:52

They all they all had all of the wind directions had names. There was Borealis in the north. Zephyr I think is the is the west wind which I really I had an office mate in grad school named Zephyr for

Corinne Caputo 17:04

filling severs a name. We're going to start hearing little kids be called like,

Moiya McTier 17:07

I hope so. It's a great name. Zephyr was his middle name. Like his parents gave him a totally normal name like and then normal first name like John, but then gave him Zephyr as a middle name and he chose to go by Zephyr. Of course. I would do that too. Yeah, me too. So that's aurora borealis in the north. And then Aurora Australis is in the south and Australia. No, actually. Australis was just Latin for South. So then when we named Australia, they're just like, oh, the land to the south. It's over there. That's all it means is like the British were like, oh, that's the land to the south where we send all our all our convicts like that.

Corinne Caputo 17:48

Just the bad. We've like really colonized this in the worst ways. You could.

Moiya McTier 17:53

They really did. Oh, sad, sad pause. But once the once the particles have been transported to the poles to the dip poles, by the magnetic field lines, then they can interact with particles in Earth's atmosphere. So we are now at step number three to generating an aurora. Now

Corinne Caputo 18:12

you really need this perfect cocktail to get them. Yes, you do. Yeah. It's

Moiya McTier 18:17

it makes it I think it makes them even. Yeah, knowing all of the stuff that has to go into it. Exactly.

Corinne Caputo 18:22

That's, that's the websites are like, you're just going to be disappointed.

Moiya McTier 18:30

Yeah, oops. Alright, so let's talk about what, what Earth's atmosphere is made up. Okay, what what are these charged particles actually interacting with? So our atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, it's 72% molecular nitrogen. So two nitrogen atoms together. And two, it's 21%. molecular oxygen, oh two, which is two oxygen atoms together. And then the other. The remaining 1% is just like a bunch of other particles. It's the carbon dioxide and the water vapor and the methane and the ozone and like everything else makes up just 1% of our atmosphere. Wow, that's

Corinne Caputo 19:10

so crazy. I know. It's only 1%.

Moiya McTier 19:13

I know. I know. And I've known for a while that the atmosphere is 78% Nitrogen but it blew my mind that first time I learned it because who who would think when when you're talking about Earth's atmosphere when you're talking about the air we breathe like no one no one mentions the nitrogen.

Corinne Caputo 19:29

I know. It's like relatively useless for I mean, for at least learning in school. I've never been brought up. It's never been told to me like this is how planned slave or like this is what? Yeah,

Moiya McTier 19:42

yeah, it's not photosynthesizing anything. It's it's just extra, but it's most of the atmosphere and actually, that when I learned that I felt encouraged to do more interesting world building work imagining planets with different types of atmospheres because they can still be oxygen breathing, and just have a look drastically, yeah, like the thing they breathe doesn't have to be the majority of the atmosphere. And yeah, I felt very free after I learned this. The creative. Mm hmm. The possibilities are endless. So that's what the particles in the earth are. The particles coming from the Sun are mostly protons, like hydrogen nuclei, basically, they took a hydrogen atom, the all of the, the motion and the temperature and the energy in the sun's corona stripped away, the one little electron, okay. And then you're just left with a hydrogen nucleus, which is just like a proton and maybe a neutron. But then there are also some helium nuclei. Remember, hydrogen and helium are the two most abundant gases or elements in the universe. And then there are some heavier ions like you'll see, you'll see some carbon, some iron ions floating around in the solar wind. When the particles when the particles from the Sun collide with particles and earth, that energy from the collision excites the particles, meaning that it sends the electrons around those atoms and the molecules to higher energy levels. So shout out to the light episode

Corinne Caputo 21:13

that's really shaping up to be like a prerequisite episode. Good,

Moiya McTier 21:18

good, because that's one of my favorites. The electron moves to the higher energy level, or maybe several electrons move to higher energy levels, but the particles can't stay there, they aren't staying excited for a long amount of time, once the energy of the collision has gone. So they'll then drop back down to their original energy levels, what what scientists call their ground state. And you'll remember from the light episode, hopefully, that when an electron drops back down to a lower energy level, a photon, a particle of light is produced with exactly the same amount of energy that the electron dropped.

Corinne Caputo 21:55

Yeah, it was like this perfect balance of one for one.

Moiya McTier 21:58

Exactly, yeah. You know, energy matter, it can't be destroyed or created. So the energy lost by the electron gets put out into the universe in the form of a photon. And all of these collisions happening together generate enough photons for us to see what's happening. And then the colors that we see all those beautiful swirling greens and yellows, occasionally, you'll see a red, or maybe some purple, those colors depend on the kind of particle being hit, and also the height and the atmosphere where the collision happens. So it depends on the type of particle being hit, because each atomic configuration will produce a photon with a specific wavelength and color, because that photon has exactly the same amount of energy that the electron lost. Okay. So for example, if you have a collision with oxygen atoms at around like 200 kilometers above the surface of the Earth, you'll see a green yellow light, oh, because that's the color that's produced when the oxygen electrons drop back to their levels. But if you see collisions with those same oxygen atoms, but 100 kilometers higher, above 300 kilometers from the surface, you'll actually see those collisions produce red light. Oh, and that is because the extra atmosphere in the way filters out the bluer and greener colors of light, so you're just seeing the red light that gets left behind. So you can see, you know, if it hits sulfur dioxide, it's a different color. If it hits some of the nitrogen, it's a different color. And it depends on the on the level you are, but most of the aurora you're going to see are going to be green and yellow. Because oxygen is very common in our atmosphere. You're probably not going to see a lot of blues and purples even though they get produced because they're hard to see against the backdrop of the

Corinne Caputo 23:47

sky. Yeah, sure. But

Moiya McTier 23:49

yeah, you can you can get all sorts of colors, you can get all sorts of shapes, actually of Aurora and we are still discovering new Aurora shapes and like classifying the types of Aurora based on their shape and motion. That's cool. Hi, Mel, right.

Hey, it's Moya, and I'm here to give a quick shout out to some of our amazing patrons who helped keep Pale Blue Pod going. Thank you, as always, to our sunlike stars Siân Llewellyn and Finn, y'all are so awesome. Just holding it down out there with your impressive gravitational field. Thank you so, so much. And also thank you to our latest pre main sequence stars Damien avanse, Hilary Mazar, Michael Braun, and Francis Carter. I hope you're enjoying that deuterium burning in your course. Maybe one day you'll get to the hydrogen and helium burning in your course. I believe in you. And you too can support us hear your name on this podcast and make it to our patrons star chart by supporting us on Patreon. You can find the star chart, Patreon info and more at our website palebluepod[dot]com where you can just go right to the source head to patreon[dot]com/palebluepod, when I'm recording this right now we have 33 patrons. When we get to 50 patrons, I'll be giving out free autographed copies of my book, The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy. So go on support us at patreon[dot]com/palebluepod, we would really appreciate it and I think you'd enjoy it too.

Corinne Caputo 25:19

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Moiya McTier 26:47

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Now now is the part where we might be able to give you some helpful advice. If you're planning an aurora viewing trip. They do happen year round. It doesn't happen when we're at a certain point in our orbit around the sun. They do happen year round, but they are obviously easier to see at night without the light of the sun blocking them. And so there is this auroral zone in Scandinavia where they like market this, so maybe I shouldn't believe them totally like maybe, like maybe it's a marketing scheme. Yeah, but they do market this auroral zone in Scandinavia as the place where Aurora are most frequently visible, okay, because they can be seen year round, but they are not you need to have enough charged particles from the sun coming to interact with our atmosphere. And that auroral zone is again in Scandinavia between 66 and 69. Nice degrees latitude. I couldn't I couldn't not can't resist. Yeah. But go maybe go to these northern or southern extremes at a time when they're experiencing a very dark period. Once you get North enough. There are places in northern and southern latitudes that experience months of darkness out of the year. So if you're going during a very extended dark period, that will probably increase your chances of seeing some Aurora just because there's more nighttime. Yeah, that makes sense. And and maybe go to the auroral zone where there supposedly are more frequent Aurora happening. Um, but one thing that I really love about Aurora is that they actually make a sound white. I know you think of it as a light show you think of it as something that's just visual, but they do make a sound and we've only recently realized one that the sound is real and to how it happens

Corinne Caputo 30:24

it okay, that makes Well now they feel like a firework. Is this light show with an accompanying noise? Yes.

Moiya McTier 30:32

It's a natural firework. You're right. Wow.

Corinne Caputo 30:36

What does it sound like?

Moiya McTier 30:37

Tell me everything. I'll tell you everything. I'll tell you everything. So, people have been reporting these sounds for a long time. People living in northern settlements have reported hearing sounds from the Aurora Borealis for hundreds of years

Corinne Caputo 30:52

that would have scared the shit out of Oh, yes, absolutely. I would be like God is real. He's coming for me. He's sending me a message.

Moiya McTier 31:01

And it's an angry, not pleased. God, just that UK period. Yeah.

Corinne Caputo 31:09

hey.dot.we need to talk Oh,

Moiya McTier 31:10

and then remember the typing bubbles, but it basically goes away. So for hundreds of years, they've been talking about these noises. And in the 1930s we see reports in the Shetland newspaper that people heard something that sounded like rustling silk, or buzzing, maybe a humming or a whistling sound coming from from the air, when there's Aurora happening. And a lot of people were very skeptical. They're like, No, it's just people in the North Woods being drunk and making stuff up. They're like, actually, you know, it's it's probably just the the rustling pine leaves from all these trees making this crackling sound. But there is this one Finnish acoustic scientist named unwto Lane, probably probably who really wanted to capture the noises from the Aurora and prove that, you know, it's not just people getting drunk in Scandinavia and making stuff up like these noises are real there go in there. It's the aliens. So in 2016, until Elaine published his study on the sounds of the Aurora. And for 15 years before he published that study, he was monitoring solar activity so that he could be sure to catch the strongest Aurora. That's that's longer than the 11 year cycle. So yeah, like he was guaranteed to see Oh, to get the solar activity. Yeah, totally. Because he did it for 15 years. And he monitored the solar activity and monitored the Aurora happening in his area. And he published the first ever recorded Salchow of an aurora. Misha, if we can please put that here. He found that the crackling noise was coming from an inversion layer in the atmosphere about 70 meters above the ground. This is high above the trees that people thought were producing the sound but their little needles. So in an inversion layer is this phenomena that happens in our atmosphere, sometimes when you know it's supposed to get colder as you move up in altitude. But in an inversion layer, it flips so that the temperature increases for a little bit as you move higher for the atmosphere. And that inversion layer somehow can separate the positive and negative electrical charges in the air. And during an era there are a lot there are a lot more electrical charges in the air. So a lot of these positive and negative charges are getting separated. And then the particles coming from the sun can release that inversion layer trap and force the particles to interact. And when you get negative and positive charges interacting, you get static. So the noise that people have been hearing from these Aurora were was static shocks, static charges in the air. But they're only produced by the strongest Aurora maybe about 5% of them. But we do now have a recording of the aurora borealis making us out. Wow. That's

Corinne Caputo 34:19

so cool. And that's so crazy. It's from 2016. Why? Because if I'd be like thinking in my head, I'm like, I mean, we come across this again and again where I'm like, Oh, how are we still figuring stuff out? Especially when like people have been watching this for hundreds of years. Yeah.

Moiya McTier 34:36

And reporting the sounds for hundreds of years. Yeah, yeah, they didn't have sensitive enough. recording equipment. Yeah, capture the sound.

Corinne Caputo 34:44

Wow. How great that we finally got it.

Moiya McTier 34:48

And how great that the technology was probably developed for porn or war.

Corinne Caputo 34:52

Yeah, exactly. Certainly, that's like football is like pioneering like motion capture Like whatever so that the Super Bowl can be gorgeous.

Moiya McTier 35:04

I kind of hate how technology gets advanced in our world, but whatever, it's fine. So we do know that Aurora on Earth exist, we know how they work. And we know that they make a sound and we know how that sound works. But we also know that there are Aurora on other worlds. Earth is not the only planet or world that has Aurora on it. We have seen Aurora on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, we know they have magnetic fields, or maybe we've just seen them on Jupiter and Saturn. But we know that all of these planets have magnetic fields. And we are interested in studying these Aurora and their magnetic fields. So if we can study the way that our Aurora react to the minut changes in Earth's magnetic field, then when we observe Aurora on other worlds, we'll be able to learn about their magnetic fields. Okay, because yeah, because we know how the relationship works here on Earth. And again, this is all that deductive reasoning astronomers have to do, we can look at an Aurora and work backwards to figure out what must be happening in in that world's magnetic field. Sure. And it will be easier to do for planets in our solar system, because we can see them better. But eventually, the hope is that we'll also be able to do this for exoplanets, planets outside of our solar system. But it's not just planets, moons, moons can have Aurora. Whoa. So Ganymede is one of the moons around Jupiter. And it is the only moon that we have confirmed to have its own magnetic field. So it has Aurora that we have detected. The the Juno spacecraft flew around the Jupiter system and absorbed a lot of really cool stuff. So we know Ganymede has Aurora, because of Ganymede own magnetic field interacting with Jupiter's magnetic field. And I just think it's so cool. That's really fun. We can find these all over in our solar system, and hopefully soon outside of the solar system. But we're at this point in Aurora science, where just having more data about where the Aurora are, when they happen and what they look like is really helpful to science and can help us learn a lot. And so there there's a citizen science project. And I'm, I'm such a big fan of citizen science projects, because the more people we can get interacting and like involved with the scientific process, the better the more people who have the experience of being involved with science, the better like I'm Yeah, I'm a huge fan. And it's citizen of the world. It is not citizen of the US science, just making that clear. But they have this awesome citizen science project called Aurora Soros. And it's kind of just like, I don't know, a hotline, I guess, like you can it started because this researcher saw a lot of tweets about an aurora happening that like she didn't expect to be happening. And so she collected data from these tweets, and then she she made over a Soros where people can

Corinne Caputo 37:59

This is so fun. I'm on the website right now. And it's like a map. You know, you're charting out everyone's tweets reporting it and you can see like a positive sighting and negative sighting and unverified tweet. Verified dude. That is so fun.

Moiya McTier 38:14

Listeners if you subscribe to our Patreon, I give you research notes for every episode and and that that page is definitely in in the research notes. You can like just track the scientists logging, with help from people all over the world about where Aurora are and what they look like.

Corinne Caputo 38:31

So fun. So you can plan a trip? Things for this tool?

Moiya McTier 38:36

At Yes, follow that? Absolutely. Oh, maybe you can use that to see if the rural zone is actually where Aurora are the most common you can you can check how much propaganda the overdose zone is. Yeah. But this citizen science project over a Soros has already helped researchers learn that Aurora are often visible at more southern latitudes than our models predicted. Oh, okay, cool already learning stuff in the year 2020 to 2022. It's all been been one very long year. Learning stuff today. And we're still finding I said this a little bit earlier, we are still finding different types of Aurora that have different shapes and motion patterns. So there's this one that was discovered. Justin like 2020, I think called, they called the dunes. That's the name they gave to the shape because it looks like these undulating waves in the sky, kind of like sand dunes being blown around in the desert. And that was discovered, in part, thanks to citizen scientists reporting their findings, not aurorasaurus but like a different a different project. And then another new shape that we recently discovered, actually, I think, I think the dunes were discovered in 2016. And then this new shape is from 2020. And it is it's not really a shape of an aurora but more of a mechanism that happens. They have named it the diffuse auroral eraser. Okay, I know, they found an old video from like 19 years ago that had a video of an aurora on it. They studied the video and they're like, huh, we've never seen that before. And it's interesting, because when the video was taken, the camera captured more of the lights than the human eyes could see. So you can see this effect that I'm about to describe in the video, but in person, you when they recorded 19 years ago, they couldn't see it. So what the diffuse a rural eraser is like, you see an aurora, and there's a little patch of light, like a little blurry patch of light, and then it goes away for like a minute. And then it comes back. Oh, so they're like something something is blocking out or like erasing this light but then But then bringing it back and they were they're unsure how that could work. So that's that's a new Aurora type right there discovered because of a decade's old recording. That's really cool. So I just love to think that this magical mysterious thing that, like so many of our ancestors talked about and incorporated into their myths is still kind of mysterious. Yeah, we're still learning a lot about it. I love that they're

Corinne Caputo 41:25

still mystery and something that like the Aurora kind of connects human life from the beginning of people being there. Because it's just up there. It's always been,

Moiya McTier 41:36

you know, it's on people's bucket list for a reason it's one of the most visually striking parts of our night sky, which I think is already visually striking.

Corinne Caputo 41:43

Oh my gosh, so moving. Yeah,

Moiya McTier 41:45

it's just another example of the way that the night sky can really bring us all together Yeah, across cultures across time. I love thinking about the fact that some human 5000 years ago was looking up at the at the northern lights or the southern lights, and they were wondering how how does that work? Yeah, and here I am. 5000 years later, still kind of wondering. Yeah, how does that work? Even though I know so much more than they did about it? I just like feeling that connection.

Corinne Caputo 42:11

Yeah, it's really nice. Like you would have something to bond over if they came to modern day they wouldn't just be screaming about the phones we have in our No no no, we both don't know what's going on.

Moiya McTier 42:24

Look like the width we both don't know what what that starts doing.

Corinne Caputo 42:27

We have a lot of confidence.

Moiya McTier 42:30

So yeah, that's that's all I have to say about Aurora.

Corinne Caputo 42:34

I love it. I hope we catch some. Should we stay till dark in the ski lodge? I hope we catch

Moiya McTier 42:40

let's do it. Let's let's stay till dark. Let's go get a refill on our hot chocolate maybe. And then we'll do we'll do a look out for the Aurora. Oh, a stick out and over a stakeout stakeout

Corinne Caputo 42:52

for stocking

Moiya McTier 42:54

look if there's anything I would stock it would be it would be the Aurora.

Corinne Caputo 42:59

Everybody listening remember tonight as you look up in the night sky and hope to see something green and dancing but you are space.

Moiya McTier 43:09

You're just as much space as that Aurora is Uh huh. Bye

Pale Blue Pod was created by Moiya McTier and Corrine Caputo with help from the Multitude Productions team. Our theme music is by Evan Johnston and our cover art is by Shea McMulln. Our audio editing is handled by the incomparable Mischa Stanton.

Corinne Caputo 43:36

Stay in touch with us and the universe by following @PaleBluePod on Twitter and Instagram. Or check out our website palebluepod[dot]com we're a member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio. If you like Pale Blue Pod you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude[dot]productions.

Moiya McTier 43:55

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Corinne Caputo 44:21

Thanks for listening to Pale Blue Pod. You'll hear us again next week. Bye!