#EARTH'S #RING CURRENT IS LEAKING: Did you know that 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. On July 26th, heat from this ring current leaked into the upper atmosphere, creating a red arc over Slocan, British Columbia:
"I almost fell over when I checked my camera," says photographer Harlan Thomas. "There was one of the brightest SAR arcs that I have seen! It lasted around 45 minutes."
SARs 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.
The ring current springs a leak most often during geomagnetic storms. Indeed, a G1-class storm was underway at the time of Thomas's sighting. That, however, was just a minor storm.
