The Northern Lights: a Magical Experience

2720 34th Street Northwest,Washington DC 20008

20 April, 2022

Description

The Northern Lights: a Magical Experience Presented by solar physicist Pål Brekke of the Norwegian Space Agency What is more beautiful on a cold winter’s night than the northern lights or aurora borealis dancing across the sky? This stunning phenomenon is deeply embedded in the mythology of many cultures, and in the past, the causes of the northern lights were ascribed to everything from dancing spirits to God’s anger. But no one suspected a connection with the Sun until a little more than a hundred years ago, when an eccentric Norwegian scientist, Kristian Birkeland, realized that the Sun bombards the Earth with particles. This multimedia presentation will take the audience through the history of this phenomenon from ancient times to modern space-based science.Pål Brekke is a lecturer, author and internationally recognized expert on the northern lights. He has a PhD in solar physics and worked at NASA for six years as the Deputy Project Scientist for the SOHO satellite. Today he works at the Norwegian Space Agency as Lead Space Science. He also teaches about the northern lights at UNIS, Svalbard. He has written several popular science books that have been translated into eight different languages.