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Northern Lights have inspired humans for thousands of years.
Summary
A recent major solar radiation storm produced vivid northern lights across North America and Northern Europe, and the aurora borealis has appeared in ancient records and inspired myths, art, poetry, music and architecture for millennia.
Content
A recent large solar radiation storm produced vivid displays of the northern lights across North America and Northern Europe. The phenomenon has intrigued people for millenniums and appears in prehistoric paintings, ancient texts and many cultural traditions. Scientists from Galileo to Edmond Halley investigated the lights, and modern research links them to charged solar particles striking the upper atmosphere. Artists and architects have also drawn on the aurora's imagery in paintings, poems, songs and buildings.
Known details:
- The recent event produced red, green and orange streaks visible across North America and Northern Europe during a strong solar radiation storm.
- Scholars have identified auroral depictions in prehistoric cave art and in ancient writings, including a Chinese record from about 2600 B.C. and passages in the Bible.
- Indigenous and regional beliefs include Inuit views of the lights as spirit torches and some Siberian traditions linking them to childbirth.
- Greek and Roman writers such as Plutarch and Seneca described the aurora's movement and color variations.
- Galileo coined the term aurora borealis in the early 17th century, and Edmond Halley linked the lights to Earth's magnetic field; scientists now explain them as solar charged particles guided by the planet's magnetic field that collide with gases in the upper atmosphere.
- The aurora has inspired works such as Frederic Edwin Church's 1865 painting "Aurora Borealis," Herman Melville's poem of the same year, modern songs, and the Northern Lights Cathedral in Norway completed in 2013.
Summary:
The aurora borealis has shaped myths, scientific inquiry and creative work from ancient times through the present, appearing in texts, art, music and architecture. Undetermined at this time.
