5 Misunderstood Facts About The Northern Lights - Do The Northern Lights Make A Sound?

search the internet and it's not hard to find an abundance of myths and various cultural beliefs about the northern lights ancient cultures all around the world had different ways of explaining the aurora but what about current popular beliefs does modern society also have myths and even misconceptions about the northern lights in this installment of the northern lights explained we're going to break down the top five misconceptions about the northern lights and we're going to get the facts straight stick around to the end for a bonus fact number one it has to be cold to see the northern lights it's a commonly held belief that in order to see the northern lights it has to be cold or at least that the best aurora displays happen when it is extremely cold but this is simply not true the likely reason for this belief is that to see the northern lights in all their glory we do need clear skies and we need darkness alaska doesn't get dark in the warm summer months clear dark skies in the arctic and subarctic climates generally mean colder temperatures therefore most people who see the northern lights see them on clear and yes cold nights but they can be seen during the warmer spring and fall seasons as well which brings us to misconception number two the northern lights can only be seen in the dead of winter this is also a fallacy and in fact it's somewhat misleading because you actually double your odds of seeing the northern lights near the equinox in the fall or in the spring if you want to learn more about that check out our video in the description down below we covered that entire topic about when the best time to see the northern lights is in last week's video this idea probably comes from the very limited seasons that we have in alaska and other northern latitude regions where seeing the northern lights is opportune once the midnight sun gives way and it starts to get dark in alaska fall is a very short season and it seems to turn to winter almost overnight and what much of the world considers springtime is still very much winter in alaska by most folks definitions number three the northern lights can only be seen for a few years out of each decade this is yet another example of a misconception that has some basis in truth it's not true that the aurora can only be seen a few years each decade but it is true that the aurora activity goes through cycles and as a result we see sensationalized media headlines saying things like last chance to see the northern lights before they dim for a decade fortunately this simply is not true but let's explore where this myth comes from our sun goes through solar cycles the peaks of these cycles happen on average every 11 years this happens because the sun flips its magnetic poles approximately every 11 years when the poles are stable most of the energy that leaves the sun is directed out the poles and much less of it reaches us here at earth this is what we refer to as solar minimum but when the poles are in the middle of their transition the magnetics of the sun protrude out near the equator of the sun causing a dramatic increase in the solar activity that sparks the auroras but solar minimum doesn't mean no aurora it just means that your odds of catching one of the most brilliant displays are fewer and farther between in fact in fairbanks most clear dark nights we still see some aurora if you want to get a better sense of this visit our aurora webcam i'll put the link down below and check out the daily cam images which give a nice historical record of what we've seen most nights during the aurora season this dates all the way back to the 2013-2014 season luckily we're now emerging from solar minimum which concluded in december of 2019 and even back around that time we still had some wonderful displays as we ramp back up to the peak of solar max which is predicted to be july of 2025 the aurora activity is already picking up and it's only going to get progressively better with each season until the peak at that point it'll slowly start to ramp back down again until the next uptick number four you cannot see the northern lights during a full moon this is mostly false but there is a little bit of truth to it if the aurora is mild extremely mild and the moon is full it is almost impossible to see it however if there's any kind of aurora activity at all it's not really a problem in fact during an exceptional display the moon is no match for lady aurora and the truth is as photographers we prefer some moonlight because in our images it helps to light the landscape so that we can feature it in the photos as opposed to simply juxtaposing the aurora against silhouetted trees number five the aurora makes a sound this one isn't so clear-cut and dry because the science is still out on this and in fact i'm not even going to be able to give you a definitive answer on this one but let's explore it there have been a significant number of people over the years who've described witnessing the sound of the northern lights and with so many similar descriptions of the sound scientists have tried to explore this for decades but they've mostly failed to record any sort of audible signal of the aurora the laws of physics suggest it should be nearly impossible to begin with the aurora at its closest to earth is about 80 kilometers above the surface of the earth sound travels at a speed of about 342 meters per second that means it takes approximately 2.92 seconds for sound to travel one kilometer consequently for the sound from the aurora to travel the 80 kilometers that it takes to reach earth it would take 234 seconds or nearly four minutes and just as an example market is standing 171 meters away from the camera about half the distance sound travels in one second as she bangs the pot notice the delay between what you see and what you hear it's about a half a [Music] second [Music] at around 300 000 kilometers per second the speed of light is much faster this means that the light from the aurora reaches us nearly instantaneously but the sound if there is a sound would take about four minutes to reach us another issue is that while light could travel through a vacuum nearly unobstructed sound does need a conductor or air molecules things like that to travel and in space where the aurora occurs it's a near vacuum meaning there is nothing for it to bounce off of or to travel through so at best it would be significantly slowed down and more likely it wouldn't reach us at all the thing is eyewitnesses who have heard it describe hearing the aurora in real time as they're seeing the aurora dancing and therefore while it's been hard to dismiss it's also been incredibly challenging to prove or to record the sound scientifically and so often times it's brushed off as cabin fever or something else however more recently in 2012 finnish acoustics researcher unto lane reported capturing the sounds of the aurora at about 70 meters up using an array of three microphones him and his team report that they were not only able to record the sounds but pinpoint the altitude at which the sound was coming from in arctic climates at around that altitude on clear calm nights when the conditions are just right there is a strong inversion layer his theory is that during an active aurora the charges that are normally kept apart by the inversion layer could bump into each other with an associated noisy discharge this would be similar to static electricity you build up and then the sparks when you touch a metal doorknob for example so it's quite possible and even likely that those are the sounds that people are associating with the aurora but in all my research on this topic i couldn't find any other studies that backed this research up we'll no doubt have more science on this topic and i'm sure there can be some studies that either confirm this or come up with new theories so we'll have to keep an eye on that now on a personal level it should be noted that in my 13 years out under the aurora most clear dark winter nights i have never heard the aurora that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen and it doesn't mean that you won't hear it but the likelihood of everything coming together perfectly when you visit for three to five nights to see the aurora is very slim i've gone ahead and included a few links to the sources that i found on this topic when i was researching it so if you want to get a little bit more nerdy about that you'll find those in the description below okay bonus fact the northern lights and southern lights are the same lights i've been getting a little bit of flack in the comments section from some of our southern hemisphere viewers saying that i don't talk about the aurora australis or southern lights near enough and so i wanted to clarify that most of the time in a general sense when i'm speaking about the northern lights or the aurora i'm speaking about both the southern lights and the northern lights or the aurora borealis and aurora australis it's just that when i specify the northern lights that's because that's the region that i live in and that's what i'm most comfortable and most familiar with and that's what most folks who find my videos are looking for is northern lights but i want to give our southern hemisphere folks a little bit of love in this one so let's talk about how they're similar or actually the same so despite calling them by different names they're occurring simultaneously and they're connected this is because the electrons that fuel the northern lights are traveling the magnetic field lines of earth from pole to pole at nearly the speed of light so the same energy causing the northern lights is also simultaneously producing the southern lights as such scientists long believed that they were mirror images of one another so in the late 60s they flew a mission on nasa high altitude aircraft to opposing magnetic field positions and took a picture of each of them at the exact same moment and they came up with a near mirror image of the two this is what we referred to as conjugate aurora they later duplicated this experiment with specialized video cameras and got the same results now it should be noted on an exceptional solar storm night this falls apart a little bit they are not exact mirror images and that's because the energy coming in from the sun is blasting that magnetic field and distorting it so much that it shifts so much from pole to pole in the time those electrons travel they don't mirror each other the magnetic field lines do become distorted enough that they're actually not the same but most of the time they're nearly copies of each other if you'd like to learn more about the northern lights we're doing an entire series on this called the northern lights explained and you'll find it in the playlist on our channel and if you haven't already please hit that subscribe button while you're there on our channel you'll also find a plethora of northern lights footage in real time and in time lapse so that you can enjoy the northern lights from wherever you happen to be and if you've ever dreamed about witnessing the magic of the northern lights with your own eyes then hop on up to fairbanks and join us for a tour we take folks out to the best locations to see the northern lights if there's challenging weather we do our best to get out of that and then we lead them through a photography workshop where we set them up step by step for how to get their camera best set up for taking pictures of the northern lights we take photos of folks in front of the northern lights and we go around and make sure that everybody's getting good photos so if that's something you've always dreamed of come on up and see us and on that topic next week i'm going to be switching things up a bit and we're going to be talking about tips to help you guys get better photos so make sure you come back to check that out thanks for watching guys i hope you've enjoyed this video and this series so far if you found yourself being entertained or just learning something please give it a thumbs up that really helps us and we do greatly appreciate it thanks so much for watching guys we'll see you in the next video

Channel: The Aurora Chasers

Views: 64,234

Keywords: Sperating myth from facts about the Aurora, Sperating myth from facts about the Northern Lights, Facts about the Northern Lights, Facts about the Aurora, Misconceptions about the Northern Lights, 5 Facts about the Northern Lights, Myths about the Aurora Borealis, Myths about the Northern Lights, The Aurora Chasers, Northern Lights, 5 Misunderstood Facts About The Northern Lights, Do The Northern Lights Make a Sound, aurora borealis sound, northern lights noise, northern lights

Id: cYvyFVeeiEQ

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020