Americans Treated to Historic 'Light Show' in the Heavenlies, God's Handiwork on Display
It was a celestial show in the heavens that many Americans thought they would never witness firsthand.
Millions across the country were treated to a green and purple glow in the sky this past weekend as far south as Texas in the U.S., as well as Chile, northern China, England, and northern Europe.
It was all thanks to a severe geomagnetic storm on the surface of the sun that produced a rare and powerful sequence of solar flares over several days.
The Northern lights fill the sky at the Bogus Basin ski resort on Saturday, May 11, 2024 in Boise, Idaho. (Kyle Green (AP Photo/Kyle Green)
Robert Steenburgh, a space scientist at NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center said, "The flares haven't been particularly strong, but the fact that we had a sequence, a rapid-fire of all these CME's, coronal mass ejections, aimed at Earth and arriving at Earth is what drove the geomagnetic field to such an agitated state."
Ian Cohen at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory added, "Basically what happens is part of the sun actually lifts off the surface. So, this plasma, the charged particles, the magnetic field that makes up the sun part of it actually lifts off the sun and streams away into space."
The light show also caused some minor problems with the power grid, high-frequency communications, and some GPS systems, causing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to issue a rare geomagnetic storm warning.
Elon Musk said Saturday his Starlink satellite internet service was "under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far."
An extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003 took out power in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.
Steenburgh said that's because the power grid, GPS, and some communications systems are "not built to use this current, so it becomes a problem."
But this time around, the solar event was about enjoying the wonder of God's handiwork, the northern lights, seen by many for the first time.
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