Aurora Energy

At https://phys.org/print461478434.html … the study of auroras has revealed a new way of understanding the physics of explosive energy released in space according to new research published in Nature Communications (although precisely what that might be is not forthcoming in the press release). The researchers come from Reading University and University College London. Somewhere in the huge volume of space into which Earth's magnetosphere stretches is a clue to that energy – and the authors set about finding it. The energy released come from an instability which they said was hard to pinpoint. However, they did succeed, via a substorm over Alaska where charged particles surf into the Earth's atmosphgere on electromagnetic waves, releasing large amounts of energy and lighting up the aurora., They used saved data to track the auroral course towards the North Pole – but presumably it is now up to solar physicists to have a crack in understanding what exactly occurred.