What creates the northern lights? I know it's something to do with the poles and their magnetic field. On my world I need northern lights that:
- Don't fade
- Can be seen all around the world
- Can be seen during the day
How can this be done?
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1$\begingroup$ Did you know that if you Googled "What creates the northern lights" you would get a ton of information on it? Including exactly how they're made? I see no research effort here whatsoever. It's also a horrible question - "Is this possible" is a yes/no question which offers very little information for future readers other than a "yes/no", and perhaps a little bit of information on how to make this happen for this specific case. $\endgroup$– AifyCommented Jul 21, 2015 at 19:14
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1$\begingroup$ Related (maybe a duplicate?): worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/29/28 $\endgroup$– Monica CellioCommented Jul 22, 2015 at 3:57
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2 Answers
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The Northern Lights, are the Auroras that occur in the Northern hemisphere of Earth. If your planet has them visible everywhere they would probably not be so colloquially named as "northern lights", and would be simply called auroras.
The basic cause of the auroras is interaction with solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere. On Earth the auroras are visible at lower latitudes (closer to the equator from both sides) during geomagnetic storms.
An artist's depiction makes such a storm look like the Sun dropping a hadouken the Earth:
The details would be difficult to work out, but it may be possible that the star in your system is particularly violent or the magnetic field of the planet is not very stable. This might allow auroras to be seen over most of the planet at night and during the day near the poles. Increasing the visibility to full-on auroras during the day would be more than a little alarming as a sign of rather epic amounts of solar radiation bombarding the planet.
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$\begingroup$ Aurora are caused by the solar wind striking the atmosphere. A planet with no (or very weak) magnetosphere would have aurora all over the planet quite frequently. $\endgroup$– Jim2BCommented Jul 21, 2015 at 19:23
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$\begingroup$ @Jim2B But, without significantly more solar wind the aurora wouldn't be visible from the surface. We can look at a local example, Venus, which has an atmosphere but no magnetic field. $\endgroup$– SamuelCommented Jul 21, 2015 at 19:29
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$\begingroup$ Its unfortunate that we probably wouldn't be able to live though the harsh conditions those two posibilities would cause for the planet. It would be beutiful though and should be less devasting to life on the planet if it only happened sometimes. I wonder if a massive aurora would happen during a magnetic reversal? I hope one happens during our lifetime, it would be an interesting event. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 0:04
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You would need a ridiculously powerful star which is spewing out electromagnetic radiation all the time. In 1859, we got 'northern hemisphere [aurorae] even as far south as the Caribbean' due to the direct impact of a coronal mass ejection onto the magnetosphere, triggering the largest geomagnetic storm on record.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
However, if you want modern technology with that, you can't, since such a geomagnetic storm today would also fry everyone's computers and really, anything which uses electricity.
Scientifically, the response given by Samuel is entirely correct on a science basis — and honestly, the numbers of charged particles hitting the magnetosphere of the planet you're speaking of would be quite bad for life if it lasted forever.
