During the strong (G3) geomagnetic storm of Sept. 12th, Jeffery Dixon looked up from the Agawa Bay in Ontario, Canada, and saw a red band stretching across the sky. It was a sign that Earth's ring current had sprung a leak:

"I'm not sure if it was aurora, STEVE or airglow," says Dixon.
Actually, none of the above. Dixon photographed an SAR arc. SAR arcs were discovered in 1956 at the beginning of the Space Age. At first, researchers didn’t know what they were and unwittingly gave them a misleading name: "Stable Auroral Red arcs." However, they are not auroras; the red glow comes from Earth's ring current system.
Yes, Earth has rings. Unlike Saturn's rings, which are vast disks of glittering ice, Earth's rings are made of electricity--a donut-shaped circuit carrying millions of amps around our planet.During strong geomagnetic storms, thermal energy from the rings can leak onto the atmosphere below, imprinting a red glow among the auroras.
On Sept. 12th, SAR arcs were seen from many locations including Pennsylvania, Germany, California and Colorado. Browse the gallery for more.
https://spaceweather.com/

A photographer couldn't believe his luck when he captured a rare celestial phenomenon creating a breathtaking vision against the night sky. Photographs taken in Australia depict the colourful violet stream shooting out against the deep blue of a night sky behind, while the raging storm lights up the clouds below.

The phenomenon, called ionospheric lightning, occurs at much higher altitudes than normal lightening or storm clouds. Photographer Jeff Miles captured the rare sight near the small town of Pilbara in Western Australia.

He said: 'This was a mind blowing experience to see with my eyes, never mind research the photos to find out just how rare they are.  'Gigantic jets have only been captured on camera a handful of times and this night I was lucky enough to see six jets.'

In the Lofoten Islands of Norway, Spaceweather.com reader Rob Stammes operates a magnetic observatory. Twenty-four hours a day, he measures the strength and direction of the local magnetic field as well as electrical currents running through the ground. During geomagnetic storms, his chart recordings go haywire. On Jan. 13th, something different happened. They rang like a bell:

"For about an hour, electrical currents in the ground beneath my observatory flowed back and forth with a sinusoidal period near 2 minutes," says Stammes. "This is rare."

These are natural ultra-low frequency oscillations known to researchers as "pulsations continuous" (Pc). The physics is familiar to anyone who has studied bells or resonant cavities. Earth's magnetic field carves out a cavity in the surrounding solar wind. Gusts of solar wind can make the cavity "ring" akin to a bell (references: #1, #2, #3). Human ears cannot hear this ringing; it is electromagnetic rather than acoustic. The physical effect is felt beneath our feet. As the cavity vibrates, magnetic fields swing back and forth, causing electrical currents to flow through the ground below.

The Pc waves Stammes detected are a variety known as Pc4, which oscillate in the frequency range 6.7–22 mHz. Such waves are good at energizing particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field and often cause local outbursts of bright auroras.                               www.spaceweather.com

Similar occurrences were also reported on 12 September and 23 October 2016:
http://www.ascensionnow.co.uk/quick-info/-earths-magnetic-field-rings-like-a-bell - 12 Sept. 2016
http://www.ascensionnow.co.uk/quick-info/sinusoidal-ground-currents-in-norway - 23 Oct. 2016

Not all space weather occurs high overhead. Sometimes it happens in the soil beneath our feet. Example: On Oct. 23rd in the Lofoten Islands of Norway, electrical currents began to flow through the ground, back and forth with a sinusoidal period of 74 seconds. Rob Stammes recorded the phenomenon at his geomagnetic observatory:

"Just after midnight UTC and around 02.36 local time, my ground current instruments picked up these very stable pulsations," says Stammes.

What's happening here? Ground currents are a sign of changing magnetic fields. Earth's magnetic field around the Lofoten Islands was swinging back and forth, inducing a sinusoidal amperage in the soil beneath Stamme's observatory.

These are natural ultra-low frequency oscillations known to researchers as "pulsations continuous" (Pc). The physics is familiar to anyone who has studied bells or resonant cavities. Earth's magnetic field extends out into space and carves out a cavity in the surrounding solar wind. Pressure fluctuations in the solar wind can excite wave modes in the cavity--usually in a noisy cacophany of many frequencies, but sometimes with almost-monochromatic purity. In such cases, Earth's magnetic field "rings like a bell" with slow tones that reach all the way down to the ground. That's what happened on Oct. 23rd. References: #1, #2, #3.
www.spaceweather.com

In the Lofoten Islands of Norway, Spaceweather.com reader Rob Stammes operates a magnetic observatory. 24 hours a day, he measures the strength and direction of the local magnetic field as well electrical currents running through the ground. During geomagnetic storms, his chart recordings go haywire. On Sept. 12th, something different happened. They rang like a bell:

"During the morning and especially around noon, sinusoidal pulsations appeared on my instruments," says Stammes. "The period was close to 115 seconds."

These are natural ultra-low frequency oscillations known to researchers as "pulsations continuous" (Pc). The physics is familiar to anyone who has studied bells or resonant cavities. Earth's magnetic field carves out a cavity in the surrounding solar wind. Pressure fluctuations in the solar wind can excite wave modes in this cavity much like Stammes observed. References: #1, #2, #3.

The Sept. 12th oscillations are Pc4 waves; in other words, their frequencies fall in the range 6.7–22 mHz. Pc4 waves, and their even lower frequency cousins Pc5 waves (1.7–6.7 mHz), can have an energizing influence on particles in Earth's inner magnetosphere because the waves resonate with the natural motion of particles around the geomagnetic field. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that bright auroras were observed on both Sept. 11th and 12th.

Ole Salomonsen photographed these from the window of an airplane just before sunrise in Norway:

"To get the shot was not easy," says Salomonsen. "I had to use a handheld camera in a moving plane! To create some darkness, I draped one of my jackets to over me and the window to prevent cabin-light reflections ruining the shot. The people sitting next to me probably must have had a good laugh :) Anyway I think it was worth it. Observing the auroras from air is definitely special."

Rob Stammes has been monitoring magnetic pulsations in Norway for years. "They seem to occur most often around the equinoxes," he says. That means we should stay tuned for more. It is aurora season, after all.
www.spaceweather.com

Researchers in Peru have a new way to capture electricity from plants and bacteria to help rainforest communities.

Researchers at the Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC) have developed a technique for capturing the electricity emitted from plants. Actually, to be fair, it's Geobacter— a genus of bacteria that live in the soil — that do the grunt work. Robby Berman at Slate explains the process:  "[N]utrients in plants encounter microorganisms called 'geobacters' in the dirt, and that process releases electrons that electrodes in the dirt can capture. A grid of these electrodes can transfer the electrons into a standard battery."

UTEC has partnered with global ad agency FCB to produce 10 prototypes and distribute them to houses in the rainforest village of Nuevo Saposoa. Each contains an electrode grid buried in dirt, in which a single plant grows. The grid connects to a battery, which powers a large LED lamp attached to an adjustable arm on the outside of the box. The UTEC video below shows the boxes in action (including a money shot of a lamp being triumphantly turned on):

For Nuevo Saposoa and other underserved communities, this is more than just a crackerjack bit of biological engineering. Electricity, and lighting in particular, are a very real need. Berman writes: "In the rainforest villages of Nuevo Saposoa and Pucallpa in Perù, there's an existing electrical grid, but since a flood last March damaged its cables, it hasn't been working. Forty-two percent of the communities in the rainforest don't have even that much. Sundown means lights out, a real problem for families with small children—and for students who need to study—unless they resort to unhealthy and dangerous kerosene lamps."

UTEC has a tradition of this sort of humanitarian innovation, Berman explains. "A while back, it found a way of growing plants on platforms using clean moisture pulled from the air in a region whose groundwater—and ground—has been ruined by pollution."

If the "plant lamps" (that's UTEC's name, not mine) are successful, their appeal isn't going to be limited to rainforest communities. Who wouldn't want a houseplant that cut back on their electric bill? Add a bit of green to your bank account and your bedroom.

Unlike any other life on Earth, these extraordinary bacteria use energy in its purest form - they eat and breathe electrons - and they are everywhere.  STICK an electrode in the ground, pump electrons down it, and they will come: living cells that eat electricity. We have known bacteria to survive on a variety of energy sources, but none as weird as this. Think of Frankenstein's monster, brought to life by galvanic energy, except these "electric bacteria" are very real and are popping up all over the place.

Unlike any other living thing on Earth, electric bacteria use energy in its purest form - naked electricity in the shape of electrons harvested from rocks and metals. We already knew about two types, Shewanella and Geobacter. Now, biologists are showing that they can entice many more out of rocks and marine mud by tempting them with a bit of electrical juice. Experiments growing bacteria on battery electrodes demonstrate that these novel, mind-boggling forms of life are essentially eating and excreting electricity.

That should not come as a complete surprise, says Kenneth Nealson at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. We know that life, when you boil it right down, is a flow of electrons: "You eat sugars that have excess electrons, and you breathe in oxygen that willingly takes them." Our cells break down the sugars, and the electrons flow through them in a complex set of chemical reactions until they are passed on to electron-hungry oxygen.

In the process, cells make ATP, a molecule that acts as an energy storage unit for almost all living things. Moving electrons around is a key part of making ATP. "Life's very clever," says Nealson. "It figures out how to suck electrons out of everything we eat and keep them under control." In most living things, the body packages the electrons up into molecules that can safely carry them through the cells until they are dumped on to oxygen.  "That's the way we make all our energy and it's the same for every organism on this planet," says Nealson. "Electrons must flow in order for energy to be gained. This is why when someone suffocates another person they are dead within minutes. You have stopped the supply of oxygen, so the electrons can no longer flow.  The discovery of electric bacteria shows that some very basic forms of life can do away with sugary middlemen and handle the energy in its purest form - electrons, harvested from the surface of minerals. "It is truly foreign, you know," says Nealson. "In a sense, alien."

Suspicious0bservers
Published on 15 Sep 2014
www.Suspicious0bservers.org   :  www.ObservatoryProject.com  :  Aurora Video: https://vimeo.com/106051784

LINKS
Spaceweather: http://spaceweather.com
SDO: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/
Helioviewer: http://www.helioviewer.org/
SOHO: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-b...
Stereo: http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/i...
iSWA: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/iswa/iSWA.html
NASA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/IswaSy...
NOAA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/
GOES Xray: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sxi/goes15/i...
NOAA Sunspot Classifications: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/lates...
GONG: http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/
GONG Magnetic Maps: http://gong.nso.edu/data/magmap/ondem...

Becky Oskin : Live Science : 24 Jul 2014

The Earth sings every day, with an electric chorus. With the right tuning, radios can eavesdrop on this sizzling symphony of crackles, pops and whistles - the melody of millions of lightning bolts. A listener in New Zealand can even hear a volcano in Alaska erupt, a new study reports.

Lightning strikes unleash intense bursts of visible light and very-low-frequency (VLF) radio waves, among other kinds of energy. With a VLF receiver, anyone can listen to the constant chatter of Earth's lightning, estimated at 8 million strikes every day. (Not every lightning bolt becomes a whistler.)

A worldwide listening network is tuned to one particular lightning sound, called whistlers. These eerie electronic signals supposedly got their name from soldiers, who compared the sound to falling grenades. Modern ears might liken whistlers to a video game's "pew-pew-pew" soundtrack. [Listen to the Volcanic Whistling]

Whistlers are pulses of VLF radio energy that have traveled into space, leaping from one side of Earth to the other along the planet's magnetic field lines. Scientists monitor whistlers because the beautiful noise tells them about the planet's protective bubble of charged particles, called the plasmasphere. Whistlers on Venus and Jupiter suggest lightning also crackles on other planets.

Now, however, researchers have also linked a flurry of whistlers detected in Dunedin, New Zealand, to processes deep inside the Earth. For the first time, scientists have connected whistlers to volcanic lightning, according to a study published July 2 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"I think it's really cool," said Jacob Bortnik, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study. "We're establishing a new connection between deep Earth and space."

Read the full article - and listen to the earth 'singing' - at :
http://www.sott.net/article/282775-Cosmic-music-Whistling-volcanic-lightning-heard-halfway-around-the-world

NASA acknowledging Electric Universe?: New NASA model gives glimpse into the invisible world of electric asteroids
phys.org
Wed, 25 Jun 2014 17:23 CDT

© NASA  This is a concept image of an astronaut preparing to take samples from a captured asteroid. The sun is in the background; NASA wants to know more about electrical activity generated by the interaction of solar wind and radiation with asteroids.

Space may appear empty - a soundless vacuum, but it's not an absolute void. It flows with electric activity that is not visible to our eyes. NASA is developing plans to send humans to an asteroid, and wants to know more about the electrical environment explorers will encounter there.

A solar wind blown from the surface of the sun at about a million miles per hour flows around all solar system objects, forming swirling eddies and vortices in its wake. Magnetic fields carried by the solar wind warp, twist, and snap as they slam into the magnetic fields around other objects in our solar system, blasting particles to millions of miles per hour and sending electric currents surging in magnetic storms that, around Earth, can damage sensitive technology like satellites and power grids.

On airless objects like moons and asteroids, sunlight ejects negatively charged electrons from matter, giving sunlit areas a strong positive electric charge. The solar wind is an electrically conducting gas called plasma where matter has been torn apart into electrons, which are relatively light, and positively charged ions, which are thousands of times more massive. While areas in sunlight can charge positive, areas in shadow get a strong negative charge when electrons in the solar wind rush in ahead of heavier ions to fill voids created as the solar wind flows by.   The surface of Earth is shielded from the direct effects of this activity by our planet's magnetic field, but airless objects without strong repelling magnetic fields, like small asteroids, have no protection from electrical activity in space.

NASA-sponsored researchers funded by the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) (formerly the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI)) have developed a new computer model that can predict and visualize the interaction between the solar wind, solar radiation, and the surface of asteroids in unprecedented detail.

Read more at : http://www.sott.net/article/280953-NASA-acknowledging-Electric-Universe-New-NASA-model-gives-glimpse-into-the-invisible-world-of-electric-asteroids

On Saturday, March 29th, the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR2017 erupted, producing a brief but intense X1-class solar flare. A flash of extreme UV radiation sent waves of ionization rippling through Earth's upper atmosphere and disturbed the normal propagation of terrestrial radio transmissions. Radio engineer Stan Nelson of Roswell, NM, was monitoring WWV at 20 MHz when the signal wobbled then disappeared entirely for several minutes:

"The Doppler shift of the WWV signal (the 'wobble' just before the blackout) was nearly 12 Hz, the most I have ever seen," says Nelson.

The flare not only blacked out radio signals, but also produced some radio signals of its own. The explosion above sunspot AR2017 sent shock waves racing through the sun's atmosphere at speeds as high as 4800 km/s (11 million mph). Radio emissions stimulated by those shocks crossed the 93 million mile divide to Earth, causing shortwave radio receivers to roar with static. Here is a plot of the outburst detected by Nelson using a 20.1 MHz RadioJove receiver. Elsewhere, strong bursts were recorded at frequencies as high as 2800 MHz. It was a very broad band event.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a beautiful movie of the flare:

The flash you just saw was extreme UV radiation, the type of radiation that ionizes the upper layers of our atmosphere. In this case, the ionizing action of the flare led to a rare magnetic crochet, measuring 17 nT at the magnetometer in Boulder, Colorado.

A magnetic crochet is a ripple in Earth's magnetic field caused by electrical currents flowing in air 60 km to 100 km above our heads. Unlike geomagnetic disturbances that arrive with CMEs days after a flare, a magnetic crochet occurs while the flare is in progress. They tend to occur during fast impulsive flares like this one.   The magnetic field of sunspot AR2017 is decaying now, but it still poses a threat for eruptions.                  www.spaceweather.com

Suspicious0bservers·1,074 videos

Published on 9 Feb 2014 by 'Suspicious Observer' - Ben Davidson
Website: http://www.suspicious0bservers.org
Blog: http://www.suspicious0bserverscollect...
Major Warnings/Alerts: https://twitter.com/TheRealS0s

Today's Featured Links:
Antarctic to Chile: http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/conte...
STARWATER Article: http://wavechronicle.com/wave/?p=1151
Billy's Latest (electromagnetic creation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYtxM...
Earth WindMap: http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/...

REPEAT LINKS: