![]() If correct, this unusual process has implications for how physicists understand energy flow between Earth's magnetosphere, which surrounds and protects Earth from the solar wind, and the ionosphere at the edge of space. She calculated that in a region of the upper atmosphere farther south than that in which auroras form, electric fields parallel to Earth's magnetic field could produce the color spectrum of the picket fence. 14 in an invited talk at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. ![]() Gasque described the physics behind the picket fence in a paper published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and will discuss the results on Dec. Because all these transient luminous phenomena are triggered by solar storms and coronal mass ejections from the sun, the approaching solar maximum is an ideal time to study rare events like Steve and the picket fence. Vibrant auroras and glowing phenomena such as Steve and the picket fence are becoming more common as the sun enters the active period of its 11-year cycle, and November was a good month for Steve observations in the northern latitudes. She has teamed up with researchers at the campus's Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) to propose that NASA launch a rocket into the heart of the aurora to find out if she's correct. But scientists were left scratching their heads about how these glowing emissions were produced.Ĭlaire Gasque, a University of California, Berkeley, graduate student in physics, has now proposed a physical explanation for these phenomena that is totally different from the processes responsible for the well-known auroras. ![]() First recognized in 2018 as distinct from the common auroras, Steve - a tongue-in-cheek reference to the benign name given a scary hedge in a 2006 children's movie - and its associated picket fence were nevertheless thought to be caused by the same physical processes. ![]()
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