Auroras occur when electrons and protons from Earth’s magnetosphere, the region around Earth dominated by its magnetic field, move toward the ionosphere, a region of charged particles in the upper atmosphere. When these electrons and protons are excited, they emit light of different colors, most often green, red, and blue.
Behind the spectacle of shapes and colors of an aurora borealis hides a race of electrons charged with energy, which for a long time was a mystery to scientists.
In fact, streams of super energetic electrons circulating through space that can cause damage to satellites. Fortunately, scientists have techniques to predict these currents.
When the solar wind collides with the Earth’s magnetic field, it stretches like an elastic band, and accumulates all the energy inside. There comes a time when the magnetic field lines reconnect and suddenly release all this energy, propelling the electrons back to Earth. When these highly accelerated particles collide with the upper part of the atmosphere, the plasma called aurora is generated, causing the display of brightness and colors that can be observed at the poles at certain times of the year.
What puzzled the scientists was the large number of electrons generated in these events, since, according to the theory, it would be impossible to sustain an electric field in the magnetic field lines. However, an MIT simulation has already shown that it is precisely this field that is needed to accelerate electrons. In addition, according to the simulator data, the active region of the magnetosphere, which is the place where the release of electrons occurs, is about a thousand times larger than previously thought. This volume is sufficient to explain the enormous number of electrons with high acceleration that have been detected in space missions.
The MIT simulation was carried out with a supercomputer from the National Institute for Computational Science (Tennessee, USA), it lasted for eleven days during which the movement made by 180 billion virtual particles was followed during a magnetic reconnection event. Its authors explain that the phenomenon takes place in many regions of space and that these super-energetic electrons could even destroy a ship or a satellite, so it is necessary to be able to predict the place and time in which these phenomena will occur to avoid space catastrophes.
