Hello there {$name|default('reader')}! I hope you're having a great week.

Did you see the Northern Lights this week? If you lived almost anywhere in the northern hemisphere (and the skies were dark enough) you probably did. Since it looks like we're going to be seeing increased solar activity for a time, I figured I'd dedicate a newsletter to the topic...

We're lucky enough here to live where it's relatively dark at night. There is a little light pollution, but when the clouds stay at bay we can see a decent swath of the night sky. As such, when the aurora kicked off on Thursday night we had a great view. Sadly my DSLR camera wasn't charged (something I've since remedied) so the best I could manage was this on my aging iPhone.

There are some gorgeous images out there from folks who were better prepared than me, such as this selection sent in to the Independent. independent.co.uk

Space News

So what are they?

I've seen a few folks on social media confused about why the lights are so 'suddenly' everywhere - it's a widely held belief that you need to travel to Norway or Iceland to have a chance of viewing them. Some people are concerned it's yet another effect of global warming, and as always there are the conspiracy theorists who believe... something?

So for anyone similarly stumped, the linked article is a great explainer, but here's my simple version.

The Earth has a magnetic field, which we tend not to think about unless we're using a compass to check which direction is North. That field is incredibly weak, compared even to something like a fridge magnet, but it actually protects us from dangerous cosmic rays and similar radiation from space. Like the magnets you played with in science class (remember trying to get the iron filings back off the magnet?), we have a north and a south pole, where the field lines concentrate.

The sun sends out heat, light, and also charged particles. These spray out in all directions, and some of them will eventually intercept the earth. When they do, the magnetic field acts on them and changes their path. This is the same physics as electric motors use - a moving charge in a magnetic field gets pushed. In this case, the particles get funnelled down towards the north and south magnetic poles of the Earth, and eventually collide with the atmosphere. When they do, the air acts like a neon sign, each element glowing with its own unique colour. Green is oxygen, blue is nitrogen, and so on.

The sun works on an eleven year cycle, alternating between low activity and high activity. Right now we're in a high activity part of the cycle, so we're seeing more particles. When the sun burps out a lot of particles, we get stronger aurora - and the lower the latitudes it can be seen from. Imagine a hosepipe spraying water: when there's more water pressure, things further away get wet. There's also solar flares, giant eruptions of matter from the sun's surface that cause events like Thursday's incredible display.

And yes, other planets get them too!

Source: rmg.co.uk

Other Books To Check Out

https://ares.watch/z/B00KAFLRT8

Alternative History Steampunk at its best.

The computer age has arrived a century ahead of time with Charles Babbage's perfection of his Analytical Engine. The Industrial Revolution, supercharged by the development of steam-driven cybernetic Engines, is in full and drastic swing. Great Britain, with her calculating-cannons, steam dreadnoughts, machine-guns and information technology, prepares to better the world's lot...

https://ares.watch/z/B0CNF12VGM

An Astrobiologist's Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life

Over the last few decades, space exploration has revolutionised our understanding of our place in the cosmos. We now know that there are many habitable environments within our solar system. Yet a profound question remains: are we alone in the universe?

Nathalie A. Cabrol, leading astrobiologist and director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, takes us to the frontiers of the search for life. This book's odyssey begins by searching for how life began on Earth in order to understand what's necessary for life to exist elsewhere. What role did our moon play? And could life on Mars, or another world, have seeded life on Earth?

https://ares.watch/z/0141981539

The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer

Meet two of Victorian London's greatest geniuses... Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron: mathematician, gambler, and proto-programmer, whose writings contained the first ever appearance of general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. And Charles Babbage, eccentric inventor of the Difference Engine, an enormous clockwork calculating machine that would have been the first computer, if he had ever finished it.

Strange News

Legends of the Northern Lights

As you might expect, something so unpredictable and beautiful has a long mythology associated with it. Most of the legends naturally concentrate in the more northern countries, where the appearance of the lights was at least slightly more common, but it's interesting that even the ancient Greeks were aware of them, and viewed them as important signs. In fact, our name for them (Aurora Borealis) comes from the Greek words for 'sunrise' and 'wind'.

The further south you are, the redder the lights tend to appear, and the more likely that they are viewed as a bad omen. Naturally once you believe this, you tend to see patterns and correlations between an appearance of lights in the sky and plagues, famines, wars and even the French Revolution!

The nordic countries tended to view them more benignly, some even maintaining that their appearance could ease the pain of childbirth. Be careful that the delivering mother didn't look at them, though, as that might cause her child to be born cross-eyed. The aurora was also believed to be the Bifrost bridge that fallen warriors would cross into Valhalla.

The range of beliefs among Native Americans is truly remarkable: anything from fires for giants to cook over, the paths of ravens, spirits holding torches to guide the departed to walrus playing football with a man's skull.

Read through the article to see just how varied and wonderful our explanations for these mystical lights can be.

Source: theaurorazone.com

Other Books To Check Out

Miscellany

Get a free app to warn you when the aurora might be visible at your location.

Source: aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk

Great advice for taking photos, whatever your device might be. Includes app recommendations for smartphones.

Source: visitnorway.com

The current geomagnetic situation.

Source: aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk

And Finally

There seems to be some discussion about whether or not you can hear the northern lights too. Lots of people report a faint whistling, travelling up and down the scale, like a whisper from space. Others hear a crackling like static, or a sound like two sheets of silk rubbing together. There isn't an agreed upon mechanism for the auroral display to create any sound, so most scientists tend to believe it's a kind of hallucination or synesthetic effect.

But a Finnish study in 2016 seems to suggest that it might in fact be a real phenomenon!

I think we did hear something in Iceland a few years ago when we got a beautiful display, but even then I wasn't sure if it was real or not. For me it just adds to the mystery and wonder of this enticing phenomenon.

Source: theconversation.com