You may already be familiar with the scientific, hemispheric phenomenon known as the northern lights (aurora borealis). If you are not, I describe it as a night-time-sky-thing that is like a shimmery, slowly moving cloud of green or blue. It’s like a night rainbow made of darkness and radiant, translucent clouds of radioactive fallout. I believe a more scientific(-ish) explanation could be that the magnetic field surrounding our Earth, polarized between the northern Arctic and Antarctica, acts as an atmospheric shield protecting the planet from… stuff (“particles”?). Sometimes, some of that stuff hits the magnetic field/shield (like a mosquito in an electric bug zapper) and creates a sort of low-key, mellowed-out, slow-motion melty lava-lamp-in-the-night-sky effect. That’s the northern lights. I prefer to think of the aurora borealis as space magic. It comes from space and looks like a glowing ghost swaying in the sky. I’m mixing a lot of metaphors (or similies?), trying to describe it, which is consistent with the challenges of describing things that are magic, so let’s just call it magic. I traveled to Yellowknife, Canada, to see for myself this space magic. To increase the odds of seeing space magic, ancient texts (the internet) had recommended […]
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