Fulfilling a childhood dream!

Physics in action! Here's an explanation for why the Northern Lights happen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy)):

*****

Auroras result from emissions of photons in the Earth's upper atmosphere (thermosphere), above 80 km (50 miles), from ionized nitrogen atoms regaining an electron, and oxygen and nitrogen atoms returning from an excited state to ground state. They are ionized or excited by the collision of solar wind particles being funneled down and accelerated along the Earth's magnetic field lines; excitation energy is lost by the emission of a photon of light, or by collision with another atom or molecule:

oxygen emissions: Green or brownish-red, depending on the amount of energy absorbed.
nitrogen emissions: Blue or red. Blue if the atom regains an electron after it has been ionized. Red if returning to ground state from an excited state.

*****

A site that I checked for forecasts http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast.

I didn't get to see blue, that's rare, but I was able to see red. Green was all around. It's too bad that red happened too quickly for me to capture digitally, so it's going to have to remain in my memory.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Comments

Goodbyes

It's hard saying goodbye. A good friend of mine is leaving Duke to return to Paris. He was fed up with the physics program here, and after securing a position in France, decided to return home. It's unfortunate that the department here could not do more to help, as he was genuinely bright; unfortunately he was suffering from depression, probably induced by the stresses of the PhD program as well as the dull boring city of Durham. In general how does one say goodbye? You don't really, especially if you're good friends. You just end up saying hello less often. At least that's my take. Unfortunately, more on goodbyes, it's goodbye to Duke's NCAA hopes for this year. We were outplayed by LSU. Sure the refs were really not entirely fair (from our point of view of course), but they closed our top scorer down. It was a fun run, and I enjoyed watching them play, especially since I thought they played such great team basketball, but it's over. Such a somber posti...

FAO Schwarz!

Found this on Funny Times: What New Toys Did You Get? (compiled by Phil Proctor) Capitalism: He who dies with the most toys, wins. Hari Krishna: He who plays with the most toys, wins. Judaism: He who buys toys at the lowest price, wins. Catholicism: He who denis himself the most toys, wins. Anglican: They were our toys first. Greek Orthodox: No, they were ours first. Branch Davidians: He who dies playing with the biggest toys, wins. Atheism: There is no toy maker. Polytheism: There are many toy makers. Evolutionism: The toys made themselves. Church of Christ, Scientist: We are the toys. Communism: Everyone gets the same number of toys, and you go straight to the opposite of heaven if we catch you selling yours. B'Hai: All toys are just fine with us. Amish: Toys with batteries are surely a sin. Buddhism: Wanting toys causes suffering. They either break, or you outgrow them. Taoism: The doll is as important as the dump truck. Mormonism: Every boy may have as many toys as he wants. Vo...

Youthful Reminisces

These past four days have been a trip down memory lane. I'm going to try to organize some of the memories for blogging, though not all in this post. My parents, M and I took a road trip to Hualien, partly as a family get-away, and also to introduce our Taiwanese hometown to a group of my brother's ( Albert Wu see here and here ) students from France. Albert and his wife are jointly teaching a course in history in Paris, and over the last few weeks they have been taking their students on an abroad research-coursework-fun tour of Taiwan. If you know my father, he tends to try to get involved in some way with any of his sons' projects, and from our perspectives, it's great to get his help and/or just advice (from time to time). My brother and his wife planned a historical, social justice introduction to Taiwan (I wrote about a visit to Dadaocheng ). Important components to understand the complex identities and mindsets of Taiwanese today involves understanding the Ea...

Le Blogger

Search This Blog