24-04-09 Giant space tornadoes drive the northern lights

THEMIS observations revealed vortical structures responsible for hundreds of thousands of amperes of electrical current flowing into Earth's ionosphere and producing spectacular auroral swirls.Earthbound tornadoes are puny compared to "space tornadoes," which span a volume as large as Earth and produce electrical currents exceeding 100,000 amperes,according to new observations by a suite of five NASA space probes.The probe cluster,called Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS),recorded the extent and power of these electrical funnels as the probes passed through them during their orbit of Earth.Ground measurements showed that the space tornadoes channel the electrical current into the ionosphere to spark bright and colorful aurorae on Earth.The findings were presented during a press conference April 23 at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna,Austria.Space tornadoes are rotating plasmas of hot,ionized gas flowing at speeds of more than 1 million mph (1.6 million km/h),far faster than the 200 mph (300 km/h) winds of terrestrial tornadoes,according to Andreas Keiling,a research space physicist at the University of California,Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory