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Eerie Skyglow Called 'Steve' Isn't an Aurora, Is 'Completely Unknown' to Science
- acobster 8y agoWhat's not to understand? Eh Steve's mouth exploded the universe, and the little blond guy did a tiny, tiny dance!
- webkike 8y agoI'm sorry you're getting down voted because I really appreciate this commented.
- megamindbrian2 8y agoThat's negative energy fifth dimensional aliens are sucking out of humans.
- exabrial 8y agoDid anyone get a spectrograph? Slim chance given the circumstances but that'd be really near to look at the spectral lines!
- gmueckl 8y agoI don't see an optical spectrum anywhere, the linked paper (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/3/eaaq0030 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/3/eaaq0030) contains a host of other cool data that was collected. Fig. 3 in particular has indications that this phenomenon happens at some kind of domain boundary, given how many of the shown quantities change in this relatively narrow band.
- mattdeboard 8y agoI’ll say what we’re all thinking: space tornado
- w1zard0f0z 8y ago"the air inside Steve blazed about 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius)" 3000 degrees?!:o Is that temperature a typo?
- shangxiao 8y agoYes, that's correct. At 300km, Steve would be situated within the thermosphere [1] > The highly diluted gas in this layer can reach 2,500 °C (4,530 °F) during the day. Even though the temperature is so high, one would not feel warm in the thermosphere, because it is so near vacuum that there is not enough contact with the few atoms of gas to transfer much heat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosphere Edit: typo
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoIf you were out there during the day you probably warm up a bit though right? with very little in the way of air to draw heat away.
- jacobush 8y agoYes but from the sun, not from the heat in the air molecules. And if you were not shielded from the near vacuum, you’d cool down from the evaporation of sweat on your skin.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoThis has got me interested now. At the equator, on the surface of Earth, solar radiation is about 1kW per square meter. According to this¹ wikipedia article 55-60% of solar energy is lost on its way through the atmosphere. So would ~2kW / square meter at thermosphere height be enough to make you feel warm-hot despite the heat lost to evaporative cooling from sweating? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power Edit: correct highest to height
- jakeogh 8y agoNeat. Reminds me of the sprites and jets above big thunderstorms.
- pietroglyph 8y ago> "To photographers and stargazers in northern climes, Steve has been a familiar night phenomenon for decades. But the mysterious ribbons of light only entered the scientific literature for the first time earlier this year" It's so exciting to realize how little we really know. Think about how many fantastic unexplained things there must be in the universe if we haven't even finished understanding the ones right under our noses. There's so much complexity that we can easily create things that are too complicated for one person, or even many, to fully understand.
- fsloth 8y ago"Think about how many fantastic unexplained things there must be in the universe if we haven't even finished understanding the ones right under our noses." Well said. I think because so much is already in our books we forget how much miraculous things actually surround us and we forget to look at them and seek them. Some biologist anecdotally said that the best place to hunt new species unknown to science is your own back yard.
- AstralStorm 8y agoSo many fantastic things you won't get to research or even see because you're working half your life for someone or something.
- throwaway76543 8y agoOn the other hand, without all this working for others we wouldn't have a system which lets us spend that other half of our lives seeing the things we do get to see. It's a net win overall.
- cortic 8y agoThat's just speculation, what system are you imagining in place of 'wage labour'? chattel? I imagine UBI and an explosion in the sciences; When anyone with interest can afford to follow that interest.
- codezero 8y agoCould this be cumulative exhaust from satellite transfers?
- chippy 8y agoI wonder, the article says it's been visible for decades by photographers. We could correlate the time the photos are taken with rocket launches. Also, there is no wikipedia page about this phenomena yet.
- banaana 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_(atmospheric_phenomenon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_(atmospheric_phenomenon)
- codezero 8y agoRather than being an individual launch, I'm wondering if the exhaust from transfers (from LEO to other orbits) leave gases in their own orbit, and if a particular transfer is happening a lot, the gasses would accumulate in their own distinct orbit. Context: I worked on a satellite that observed interesting phenomenon that appeared in low-visible-light around the Earth, and one of the things we picked up as noise was the gas from a spy satellite doing a transfer near the Earth-Sun line of sight.
- clort 8y agoI'm a bit surprised that no attempt was mentioned to determine which direction its coming from? A beam, 16 miles wide.. of course its trite, but could be exhaust from starships decelerating into the solar system, or residue from a solar flare perhaps?
- creddit 8y agoIt's probably exhaust from starships.
- Toenex 8y ago"I just don't get it Mork, why don't the earthlings reply? Our messages couldn't be clearer."
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago“We’ve been zipping by for years!” “Forget it! They just don’t want to be friends!”
- cm75 8y agoIn the article, there is a link to a timelapse video on vimeo [0]. The "Steve" phenomenon seems to extend on an east-west axis, assuming that the "normal" aurora borealis in the video is to the north. Two days before (May 06, 2016) there was a geostationary satellite launch by SpaceX from Cape Canaveral (JCSAT-14 / JCSAT-2B, positioned now on 154°East) [1]. Could it be possible that "Steve" is just residual exhaust gas from the recent satellite launch which may behave similar to an actual aurora phenomenon when ionized? [0] https://vimeo.com/166121341 https://vimeo.com/166121341 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_spaceflight#May https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_spaceflight#May
- pmlnr 8y agoThis reminded me of the beam of light in "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke - what turned out to be a weapon that fired giant mass heated to plasma state at high velocity.
- KineticLensman 8y agoalso in Clarke's 'Earthlight' - the fortified mine Project Thor uses ultra-high pressure slugs of metal as a beam weapon
- bitL 8y agoAlright, so for decades Steve was called aurora as well, possibly for ages by natives observing it; yet now scientists decided to slap another sticker on it as the original scientific aurora explanation doesn't fit this class of what was traditionally called aurora as well; and we ended up with 'Steve'...
- anonytrary 8y ago"Quark" and all of its generations[0] have unusual names as well. If STEVE actually is a new phenomenon, then eventually the name will stop sounding weird. The acronymization of the name also helps. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark#Etymology
- nasredin 8y ago"name will stop sounding weird." I think it will just confuse a lot of people. I know people love hip generic names, but this is a bridge too far IMHO.
- aedron 8y agoPretty sure the name is from the movie Over the Hedge [1]. [1] https://youtu.be/amwaFNZYUUY https://youtu.be/amwaFNZYUUY
- dwd 8y agoYes, enjoy the joke, then give it a real name when you know what it is. Steve? was Notch's name for the default Minecraft player skin. There may be earlier references as well.
- svachalek 8y agoIt's reminiscent of the second moon they named "George" in Dhalgren.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoAnd Carl the Fog
- tomaskafka 8y ago> At about 200 miles (300 km) above Earth, the air inside Steve blazed about 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) hotter than the air on each side, and moved about 500 times faster. This band of hot, surging gas was about 16 miles (25 km) wide. My bet is that it's a trace of a weapon. Propulsion trail? High energy laser hotspot?
- nnq 8y ago> has been a familiar night phenomenon for decades does't really fit with your theory...
- antonvs 8y agoIt's obviously part of the ongoing was against the Moon Nazis.
- strainer 8y agoI saw something very like this is a few years ago in the North of Scotland and after some moments of wonder I did assume it was a contrail from a missile launch - not at all a familiar event but there where some air bases in the region, and this shimmering plume extending through the frosty night sky into space begged an explanation.
- pvaldes 8y agoI wonder if shiny metallic spatial garbage would orientate itself in a band following the magnetic fields of the earth
- DiabloD3 8y agoI don't get really why this is so surprising. The planet Venus has had cometary plasma tails, as has Mars (and it is entirely possible that the age old religious tales of Mars being some sort of warrior, and Venus being an angry snake-headed goddess was just our ancestors witnessing a very rare interplanetary electrical discharge via Birkeland currents), so this is probably just a form of our own tail. Aurora themselves are just the interaction of our magnetic field with that of the Sun's, so it seems unlikely that large scale magnetic fields are not also the cause of this one.
- callesgg 8y agoSo what is the definition of aurora that causes it to not also encompass Steve.
- lucasdwi 8y ago"Steve does not contain the telltale traces of charged particles blasting through Earth's atmosphere that auroras do. Steve, therefore, is not an aurora at all"
- NelsonMinar 8y agoAmazing what you can learn when you read the article
- jyriand 8y agoWhy read if others have read it already and now all the answers?
- rbanffy 8y ago“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” ― Carl Sagan
- vlunkr 8y agoCounterpoint: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - HP Lovecraft
- rbanffy 8y agoWe'll need to debug ourselves. If what's left can still be called human is anyone's guess.
- athenot 8y agoI remember seeing one of those on a night flight from the US to Europe. The pilot pointed it out on the PA and was puzzled as to what it was. It looked like a thin line of clouds illuminated by a super bright moon… except there was no moon that night and it was way higher than where clouds are supposed to be. Color was a silvery white.
- octosphere 8y agohttps://imgur.com/a/v0OUtyh https://imgur.com/a/v0OUtyh
- cpach 8y agoPerhaps it was noctilucent clouds? See e.g https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SpaceX_Noctilucent_Cloud.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SpaceX_Noctilucent_Clou...
- athenot 8y agoThanks for the link, I learned something! But that doesn't fit because it was in winter and in the dead middle of the night, somewhere between Canada and Iceland.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jlj 8y agoSaw something like this in Alaska in the late 90's driving south towards Glenallen on a youth hockey road trip. It was a localized spot of purple/blue Aurora. Came out of nowhere, the shapes looked like a cauldron of boiling water but in bright colors. Everyone in the van saw it. Always figured it was an experiment from this remote HAARP research facility that fires radio waves at the ionosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_...
- themodelplumber 8y agoThanks for sharing your comment. Whenever I read this kind of thing I'm reminded of the 1561 celestial event over Nuremburg[0] and I hope we can a) see more of these kinds of events and b) really start digging into their nature. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over_Nuremberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over...
- frikk 8y agoOK what's the deal with that? Or this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1566_celestial_phenomenon_over_Basel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1566_celestial_phenomenon_over...
- andai 8y ago> At the dawn of August 7, we saw large black spheres coming and going with great speed and precipitation before the sun and chattered as if they led a fight. Many of them were fiery red and, soon crumbled and then extinguished.
- frikk 8y agoI have also experienced a strange Aurora phenomenon. My first year living up north I was lucky enough to catch the northern lights. They were gray (not green) but really fun. A kind of camo-patterened pulsing, flickering in and out, with ripples that would move through it. Eventually they moved from the northern horizon to entirely overhead, and even into the southern horizon. The overall pattern continued: pulses of circles fading in and out like blinking neon light, with waves crashing through and across the entire thing, slowly. Still gray, never green. Then I noticed that the waves would all "sink" into a single spot in the sky. Directly overhead was a "dark spot" in the borealis, and it moved around slightly and had this wicked looking "interference" pattern around it, like what you'd expect to see with two magnets interfering. Over and over the waves would ripple from the north and "sink" into this dark spot. The hole itself seemed to pulse as the waves moved around and ultimately into it. Kind of felt like it was a kind of magnetic pole. Not sure. The aurora itself (patterns of blinking, pulsing, shimmering) continued into the southern sky, but the dark hole was right overhead. I haven't been able to really find anyone else who has experienced this. Just wanted to share.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y agoBut is it really Steve?
- stephengillie 8y agoMaybe it's Herobrine.
- dcow 8y agoApparently its not a mystery: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/mystery-of-purple-lights-in-sky-solved-with-help-from-citizen-scientists https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/mystery-of-purple-...
- Dylan16807 8y agoThat's addressed in the article. Contrary to the findings from the Steve study published earlier this year, the satellite did not detect any charged particles raining down toward Earth's magnetic-field lines, indicating that whatever created Steve did not follow the same rules as the solar particles that create the aurora.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoThis is an essential read for folks who are wondering what it is. That said, my favorite crackpot theory that I read was that it was aliens burning down the ozone layer in preparation for an invasion. The most interesting speculative idea was that it was tied to the impending pole shift (as the poles weaken it extends the aurora south).
- kosievdmerwe 8y agoThe article says we've "solved" it, but later on it says: > Steve is an important discovery because of its location in the sub auroral zone, an area of lower latitude than where most auroras appear that is not well researched. For one, with this discovery, scientists now know there are unknown chemical processes taking place in the sub auroral zone that can lead to this light emission. > Second, Steve consistently appears in the presence of auroras, which usually occur at a higher latitude area called the auroral zone. That means there is something happening in near-Earth space that leads to both an aurora and Steve. Steve might be the only visual clue that exists to show a chemical or physical connection between the higher latitude auroral zone and lower latitude sub auroral zone, said MacDonald. Essentially, we still don't know what exactly is happening.
- Fang_ 8y agoFuture generations will have people named after this thing.
- tuxxy 8y agoOne of my favorite memories is driving far north of Jackson, WY with my partner and her father. We pulled over off the road near a farm and started stargazing when I noticed this colorful ribbon flowing in the sky. I thought it was the Aurora, but when I googled around I realized it wasn't. I found some talk of Steve and it was exactly what I saw. It's definitely a weird thing to witness just out of nowhere.