Multi-colored overflows with constantly changing and moving shades in a dark sky, glare and just a very beautiful view - all this refers to the northern lights. How to explain the nature of this phenomenon to a child?
An interesting fact: the ancient people took the northern lights as news from the afterlife, a harbinger of an impending war or illness, as well as the anger that the gods bring down on people.
However, today we know that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural about the northern lights. However, the northern lights are mesmerizing anyway, aren't they?
The first who was able to discover the secret of the northern lights was Mikhail Lomonosov. After numerous experiments, it was he who suggested that the nature of the northern lights depends on the electricity that is in the atmosphere. Lomonosov's followers after a while fully confirmed his theory.
The sun is a giant ball in which the main substances are hydrogen and helium. The cloud that surrounds the Sun sometimes throws out particles of these atoms, thereby scattering the atoms in all directions, including the one that leads to the Earth. These pieces float at a tremendous speed - up to 960 meters per second. Such currents are called the solar wind.
And the Earth is a kind of magnet that attracts particles of the solar wind. And they, approaching the Earth, begin to be reflected, but some of them still sink into the Earth's magnetic field. It is the collision of these particles with air molecules in the uppermost layers of the atmosphere that is called the aurora borealis.
