Kind: captions
Language: en
Welcome to Alaska. I'm just outside of
Fairbanks and I'm trying to find the
northern lights, the Aurora Borealis.
But the conditions haven't been ideal
because tonight [music] it's a bit
cloudy, a bit hazy, and we've got a moon
out which is nearly full. So, it makes
it very difficult [music] to spot these
northern lights. So, what are we
actually looking at up there with the
aurora?
The electromagnetic fields working
through the gravity, you know, and and
the particles that work off of that.
What do you have to have happen in order
to get those lights?
Cold. [laughter]
You're going to be looking at solar
activities. It has to do with solar
flares as the flares are coming.
I know it has to do something with the
sun and discharge and it's solar flare.
[music]
The sun has just put on quite a show.
Take a look at these amazing pictures
captured by a NASA spacecraft [music]
yesterday. It's a powerful solar flare
shooting superheated particles and
plasma deep into space.
No one knows what's really going on
those pictures. They just look cool.
That's all it is. They just look cool.
So, we put it on the news. Yeah.
So, what sort of stuff is coming from
the sun?
Um, it is uh
uh I believe it's solar radiation. Uh
other than that, I don't know.
Photons and you know, neurons,
superfluidity of neurons.
What's the sun made of mostly?
Hydrogen I believe.
Yeah. So,
so if the sun spits out some of that
stuff,
right,
it would be what what is a hydrogen
atom? What's it made of?
Just hydrogen, uh, neutrons, electrons,
you know. So,
in the case of hydrogen, it's the
simplest atom. It's just a proton and an
electron.
Okay,
that's it. So, when we're talking about
stuff coming from the sun, just talking
about streams of protons and electrons.
Okay,
there's stuff coming from the sun. Yes.
And then what does it do? uh lights up
because
they just that's I'm [laughter]
They're just there.
Yeah, they just happen.
I've had a little bit of luck and I've
been trying to shoot them. So, I'll put
up some of that footage uh so you can
check it out. And you can think about uh
these particles that must be streaming
in from the sun, colliding with our
upper atmosphere and [music] then uh
exciting it. And so it releases that
light when it deexites. [music]
Why does it come to Alaska and not say
Hawaii or [music] the Caribbean? It's
the northern lights.
It is in Well,
why are you guys so special?
I'm not sure honestly.
Like it's been seen down in like Mexico
and stuff. It's like the reds have been
seen down in Mexico. Um I've actually
seen it in Mexico by my where my
grandmother lives. I think it just has
to do with the nor northern hemisphere
and how much like little less sun we get
so you can see it more. I'm sure it
happens in the southern hemisphere. You
just have a lot of light down there.
Like their sky is brighter at night.
Well, oh god,
I'm just asking.
I don't know. I don't know.
It has to do with magnetic fields and
the closer you get to the magnetic
fields, the more the lights you're able
to see. And
then yeah, you're right about the
magnetosphere. It deflects them around
towards the poles and they hit the
atmosphere and they excite the
atmosphere. And when it deexites, it's
okay. Okay, giving off that light. So,
I'm here in Fairbanks with T. Neil Davis
and thank you for speaking to me today.
You're
welcome.
All right, so we were out looking for
the aurora. I guess one major question
that a lot of people would have is what
[music] is it? The aurora is is the
result of charged particles coming down
uh the magnetic long magnetic field
[music] lines which is essentially
vertical here. And the uh those
high-speed particles then [music] strike
the gases in the upper atmosphere and uh
impart energy to those gases, [music]
excite the atoms and molecules. Fairly
shortly thereafter, the
uh the atoms and molecules deexatite by
giving off quantum light and that's what
we see.
What about the weather? Uh you know,
last night it seemed like it was a bit
overcast or [music] there was some there
was some cloud up there. Does that also
hinder
Oh, yes. It
wasn't a thick cloud layer, but there
just seemed to be a bit of a haze. We
had the moon out.
Oh, well then you're really in trouble.
Yeah. with the moon out and uh and uh a
little haze then uh it's pretty tough to
see the road.
So, do you have any advice for us? How
do we deal with conditions like that? I
mean, [laughter]
go to a bar and have a drink, I guess.
But I just want to give you an idea
because I have a different colored image
behind me just to kind of give you a
sense of scale. The sun right here, that
would be the size of the Earth. You
could put 20 Earths or so inside just
that circle where the explosion
occurred.