(Maybe you'll be treated to a lightning show as well!)
(http://pixabay.com/en/aurora-borealis-northern-lights-91420/)
How does something so beautiful
occur? Plasma! You may be aware that the solar wind
causes the aurora, but that's a very general
explanation of things. What happens is that plasma from the sun
(We'll get to that, but feel free to click ahead and
spoil everything), collides with gases in the upper
atmosphere, exciting the atoms enough to give off
excess energy as light.
The sun gives off a solar wind, which is just free electrons and positive ions (since that's what the sun is made of), that flies towards Earth at tremendous speeds. The Earth's magnetic field does a pretty good job of deflecting the solar wind, but the solar wind has a tendency to get "caught" in the weak points of the magnetic field near the geographic poles. The particles that make up the solar wind travel down towards our atmosphere, colliding with the gases that compose it along the way. Since the particles are moving, they have kinetic energy, and when they collide with our atmosphere, they impart some of that energy to every single atom and molecule they have collided with. Now the gases in our atmosphere have too much energy, and shed some of it in the form of light. That light is the aurora!
We are now very knowledgeable about thing that are caused by plasma, or cause a plasma to be formed. Let us now continue on to actually plasma!
The sun gives off a solar wind, which is just free electrons and positive ions (since that's what the sun is made of), that flies towards Earth at tremendous speeds. The Earth's magnetic field does a pretty good job of deflecting the solar wind, but the solar wind has a tendency to get "caught" in the weak points of the magnetic field near the geographic poles. The particles that make up the solar wind travel down towards our atmosphere, colliding with the gases that compose it along the way. Since the particles are moving, they have kinetic energy, and when they collide with our atmosphere, they impart some of that energy to every single atom and molecule they have collided with. Now the gases in our atmosphere have too much energy, and shed some of it in the form of light. That light is the aurora!
We are now very knowledgeable about thing that are caused by plasma, or cause a plasma to be formed. Let us now continue on to actually plasma!