icon

... the black and white photo of the northern lights (aurora borealis) has become my adopted tag/profile ifsphere icon web signature ...



... a photo my father took while working in Fort Churchill, Manitoba Canada ... he had till then devoted his life to plasma physics and upper atmospheric reseach spending nights on the lookout tower photographing the sky ... place of imagination ... the icon spells if ... the solid tower and wave lights visualize the splendour of the night sky ... hints at the mystery of l(if)e ...


As the solar wind interacts with the edge of the earth's magnetic field, some of the particles are trapped by it and they follow the lines of magnetic force down into the ionosphere, the section of the earth's atmosphere that extends from about 60 to 600 kilometres above the earth's surface. When the particles collide with the gases in the ionosphere they start to glow, producing the spectacle that we know as the auroras ... (auraora borealis)

... what i love is though much thought goes into such things it is often an intuitive act and then only much later comes the articulation of the process ...

:: Note :: ... it was Dave Winer's Mini-podcast: Why is Mao Tse-tung my Twitter icon? that encouraged me to recover my explanation from a lost post  ... many thanks to Wayback Machine ...

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