Electric Space Weather Baffles Scientists

[MGmirkin]

(Electric Space Weather Baffles Scientists; May 16, 2009)

Atmospheric researchers are puzzled by a "newly discovered form of space weather" observed over the African continent.

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[MGmirkin]

This common disregard for electricity has a long history. More than 100 years ago, one of the electrical pioneers, Kristian Birkeland, proposed that the auroras were part of an electrical exchange between Earth and the Sun. But by the middle of the 20th century, traditional dogma in astronomy had virtually precluded that possibility. Then, a few decades later, our satellites detected UNDENIABLE streams of charged particles from the Sun entering Earth's upper atmosphere to provoke the auroras. Until that point, it had been blindly asserted that Earth's magnetosphere must be an impenetrable envelope, "squeezed" by the solar wind, to induce auroral activity.

Specifically:

Roundabout 1973, the TRIAD satellite confirmed current sheets coming in at the pole on one side, and flowing back up the other side.

(Electric Currents From Space)
http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wcurrent.html

(Electric Currents From Space - History)
http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/whcurren.html

At the end of 2007, the THEMIS project rediscovered Birkeland currents under the name "magnetic flux ropes." Where does the "magnetic flux" comes from if not sourced from electric currents, per Maxwell?

(NASA Spacecraft Make New Discoveries About Northern Lights)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themi ... ights.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007 ... themis.htm

Good times!
~Michael Gmirkin