Plasma Bullets Spark Northern Lights / Aurora borealis Mystery solved

Hello ATS,

Scientists have exposed some of the mystery behind the northern lights. On Thursday, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or Aurora Borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky.


This quite a discovery. There has always been much speculation about the origins of the Nothren Lights.
Here is the answer.

July 24, 2008: Duck! Plasma bullets are zinging past Earth.
That's the conclusion of researchers studying data from NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft. The gigantic bullets, they say, are launched by explosions 1/3rd of the way to the Moon and when they hit Earth—wow. The impacts spark colorful outbursts of Northern Lights called "substorms."

A substorm of Northern Lights photographed from the window of an airplane over Hudson Bay, Canada, on Feb 27, 2008. Credit: Jeff Hapeman.

The discovery came on what began as a quiet day, Feb 26, 2008. Arctic skies were dark and Earth's magnetic field was still. High above the planet, the five THEMIS satellites had just arranged themselves in a line down the middle of Earth’s magnetotail—a million kilometer long tail of magnetism pulled into space by the action of the solar wind.

That's when the explosion occurred.

A little more than midway up the THEMIS line, magnetic fields erupted, "releasing about 1015 Joules of energy," says Angelopoulos. "For comparison, that's about as much energy as a magnitude 5 earthquake."

HIGH DETAILED artist's concept of the THEMIS satellites lined up inside Earth's magnetotail with an explosion between the 4th and 5th satellites


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PPL


[edit on 7/28/2008 by PPLwakeUP]

Ever heard of a project called Shiva Star? heres a quote

Shiva Star was also used to develop an experimental weapon for the SDI effort between 1989 and 1995. The idea appears to have been to create "compact toroids" of high-density plasma that would be ejected from the device using a massive magnetic pulse.[2] The plasma projectiles would be shot at a speed expected to be 3000 km/s in 1995 and 10,000 km/s (3% of the speed of light) by 2000. A shot has the energy of 5 pounds of TNT exploding; although it caused little or no physical damage, the energy would shower the interior of the target with high-energy x-rays that would potentially destroy the electronics inside. The tests cost a few million dollars a year.[3] The project was scrapped at some time after 1995 because of problems keeping the plasma projectiles stable for the distances required by orbital weaponry.

Scrapped, Or went deep black. Nick Cook came to the same conclusion. Maybe these arte further tests, if they are unstable and dissipate somewhat at distance, that could account for the light shows.
Dont know if I really believe that or not though cos our EM shield and atmoshphere filters out radiation a lot more potent than anything we can create artificially, without any lights. plus why would it only be visible at the upper northern hemisphere?
Auroras are produced by the collision of charged particles from Earth's magnetosphere, mostly electrons but also protons and heavier particles, with atoms and molecules of Earth's upper atmosphere