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Aurora Borealis question?

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I can't seem to find any ancient text about the existence of the Aurora Borealis. Comets and other astronomical events are well documented going back thousands of years. So my question is this.

How old is the Aurora Borealis phenomenon? And if its relatively young then why is it happening now. I understand NASA has explained how it happens but I'm looking for why now.

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  1. The folks who wrote ancient texts did not live far enough north to see the aurora.  Most great old texts are from the Middle East, northern Africa, the Mediterranean, China, and India.  These places were too far south to see the Aurora.  Therefore, the probably did not write much, if any, about it.  The same is true for the Aurora Australias (southern lights) because not much was written by ancient peoples in the southern hemisphere.

    The ones that did live far enought north (or south) must not have had a sophisticated written language that produced texts that could have survived to our time.  I don't recall lots of old texts from the Norse people or the Mongols, although they had lots of nice mythology and stories to tell.  Most of their learning must have been handed down by legend - like telling tales around the campfire.

    Since the Aurora is an interaction of solar radiation, the upper atmosphere, and the earth's magnetic field it has been going on for as long as those three things have existed.

    The sun is at least 4.5 billion years old.

    Our atmosphere is about 2 to 3 billion years old.

    Sea floor magnetic stripes only go back some 150 to 200 million years and there are very old rocks with magnetic minerals aligned to former magnetic poles.

    So the minimum age of the Aurora is at least a billion or so years.


  2. I don't think that it is relatively young but rather unnoted for long amounts of time.  In order to view the lights you must be higher near the north pole, so only many Inuits and nomads would have viewed the lights.  They were busy hunting in order to survive and did not have time to play and write stories.

  3. Probably older than life on this planet.

    They would have developed as the earth itself developed and probably existed before there were any land masses on the earth.  Our strong iron core causes the magnetic field and that was there when the planet was still cooling.

    The Aurora Borealis developed because of the interaction between the solar wind and the earth's strong magnetic field.  The electrical storms that cause the "northern lights" occur at the poles because there the lines of magnetic force dive into the earth.

    The Eskimos probably have a long history of the Northern Lights.  No other civilization would be living that far north to be able to see them.  Of course the Scots and Norse live in the north and have a history of them as well

    According to Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Bore...

    "In Bulfinch's Mythology from 1855 by Thomas Bulfinch there is the claim that in Norse mythology:

    The Valkyrior are warlike virgins, mounted upon horses and armed with helmets and spears. /.../ When they ride forth on their errand, their armour sheds a strange flickering light, which flashes up over the northern skies, making what men call the "aurora borealis", or "Northern Lights".

    While a striking notion, there is nothing in the Old Norse literature supporting this assertion. Although auroral activity is common over Scandinavia and Iceland today, it is possible that the Magnetic North Pole was considerably further away from this region during the centuries before the documentation of Norse mythology, thus explaining the lack of references.

    The first Old Norse account of norðurljós is found in the Norwegian chronicle Konungs Skuggsjá from AD 1230. The chronicler has heard about this phenomenon from compatriots returning from Greenland, and he gives three possible explanations: that the ocean was surrounded by vast fires, that the sun flares could reach around the world to its night side, or that glaciers could store energy so that they eventually became fluorescent.

    An old Scandinavian name for northern lights translates as "herring flash". It was believed that northern lights were the reflections cast by large swarms of herring onto the sky.

    Another Scandinavian source refers to "the fires that surround the North and South edges of the world". This has been suggested as evidence that the Norse ventured as far as Antarctica, although this is insufficient to form a conclusion.

    The Finnish name for northern lights is revontulet, fox fires. According to legend, foxes made of fire lived in Lapland, and revontulet were the sparks they whisked up into the atmosphere with their tails.

    In Estonian they are called virmalised, spirit beings of higher realms. In some legends they are given negative characters, in some positive ones.

    The Sami people believed that one should be particularly careful and quiet when observed by the northern lights (called guovssahasat in Northern Sami). Mocking the northern lights or singing about them was believed to be particularly dangerous and could cause the lights to descend on the mocker and kill him/her.

    The Algonquin believed the lights to be their ancestors dancing around a ceremonial fire.

    In Latvian folklore northern lights, especially if red and observed in winter, are believed to be fighting souls of dead warriors, an omen foretelling disaster (especially war or famine).

    In Russian folklore aurora borealis was associated with the fire dragon ("Ognenniy Zmey"), who came to women and seduced them in the absence of their husbands.

    In Scotland, the northern lights were known as "the mirrie dancers" or na fir-chlis. There are many old sayings about them, including the Scottish Gaelic proverb "When the mirrie dancers play, they are like to slay." The playfulness of the mirrie dancers was supposed to end occasionally in quite a serious fight, and next morning when children saw patches of red lichen on the stones, they say among themselves that "the mirrie dancers bled each other last night". The appearance of these lights in the sky was considered a sign of the approach of unsettled weather."

    If you want more historical references of the action of the Aura Boreas I suggest you check out the hyperlinks in the Wikipedia entry.

  4. The Northern Lights have happened for thousands of years also. They are usually only visible above a certain latitude. (approximately the US/Canada border). We once saw them here in Missouri. Most old biblical texts are from a different (and lower) latitude. You might check Nordic writings for references.

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