Coronal mass ejection. CME. I learned a new term from Bill Nye yesterday. Actually, I had heard of CMEs before but had never committed the phrase to memory.
There was a very powerful CME, or maybe a series of them, that began bombarding Earth on Friday, and people were sharing amazing pictures of the Aurora Borealis from places like Boston and Sturbridge, MA, and other spots around the world that usually don’t get the opportunity to see the wondrous display. I think we might have even been able to see it here in northeast PA but there was cloud cover, and we had gone to bed anyway.
Mr. Nye explained the phenomenon as geomagnetic in nature—highly charged particles are ejected from the Sun and scream through space at over a million mph. If the earth is in their path, there is a collision with our atmosphere at latitudes closer to the poles (and further south, if the discharge is potent enough), producing the display we know as the Northern Lights.
We are lucky that the assault is repelled, to one degree or another, by earth’s atmosphere, which possesses its own highly charged magnetic field, generated by the earth’s rotation and a molten iron and nickel core. I think that’s the way The Science Guy explained it…
In any event, another reason for folks to look up. And a reminder that it’s a gift to have people like Mr. Nye around who enjoy imparting knowledge and explaining, in a non-esoteric manner, what’s going on.
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