Superfast secret of northern lights revealed
Science • April 2009 • Views: 341
DIFFERENT CULTURES have attributed their spectacular light show to fire-breathing dragons, dancing gods and ghostly clans at war.
New research, however, has found that the northern lights, or aurora borealis, are powered by giant electrical tornadoes spinning at more than a million miles an hour and stretching thousands of miles into space.
Scientists used a set of five satellites designed to measure the Earth’s magnetic field to generate the first images of the whirling vortices.
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