Listen. Can You Hear...?

The Olympic games are history. Athletes from far and wide have competed for their countries while sports fans often erupted with loud and joyful appreciation for their winning efforts. For every winner, there had to be the loser and, after countless hours of training resulting in a losing effort, athletes and their sports fans were often stunned into silence. Somehow, the sound of silence can be loud.

The Russian hockey team out of  Olympic competition.

With the crisp,quiet winter nights, strange sounds can be heard. Recently, a night winter storm came through our Wisconsin area bringing not snow, but a thunderstorm. The first stroke of lightning was a surprise followed by the usual sound of thunder. One with a scientific mind might wonder “What really is thunder, and can we hear lightning?”

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When it’s very quiet before a storm, sometimes one can almost hear the lightning before the thunder is heard. Lightning is pure electricity, and  several thousand degrees hot. So hot that when it strikes sand, it instantly melts it into glass. When the air around the lightning gets hot rapidly, the expansion makes a concussion wave similar to the air rushing out of a fired gun. Lightning is a huge discharge of electricity, and this electricity shoots through the air, causing vibrations to be formed in two ways: This electrical force passes through the air causing air particles to vibrate. These vibrations are heard as sound.
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 If you want to listen to lightning,  tune your AM radio to a station or a frequency that isn't "occupied"  and you’ll hear the usual quiet static. When bad weather is approaching and you tune an AM radio to an unused area on the band, you will be able to hear extra bursts of “static” as the storm approaching, since the lightning strikes will make noise. The noisier it becomes, the closer the storm. So, "thunder" might be lightning particles bouncing around. After the storm, there is often silence. In addition to storm energy, the sun provides solar energy, or  radiation  Both play an important part in atmospheric electricity.

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 For several hundred years, people in Northern Norway have claimed that the Northern Lights make sound!

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 Now researchers in Tromsø will soon be listening. Unni Pia L Unni Pia Løvhaug, professor of space science

University of Tromsø

at the University of Tromsø has stated: "I am very fascinated by all the myths surrounding the Northern Lights, especially in the Sami culture. Several people from the older generations have claimed that they have heard the Northern Lights," 

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One of the words for Northern Lights in Sami is guovssahasat, which means " The light you can hear".  The Danish researcher Sophus Tromholt concluded that it would be impossible to hear the Northern Lights in Norway because because the air is too thin for soundwaves to spread at an altitude of 120 kilometers.However, Løvland has also come across research that shows how meteor showers and northern lights can create Very Low Frequency (FLV) radio waves in the atmosphere that can be translated to sound.
                            Our world is electromagnetically affected.

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The ionosphere is a region of the upper atmosphere. Scientists at the University of Tromsø conduct experiments  in Svalbard to study the electrically charged dust particles (dusty plasma) in the middle atmosphere. Studies of the solar wind and its interaction with the Earth's magnetosphere are also part of the space research program in Tromsø.

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 Concern is centered around the subject of climate change. One climate experts felt that: "In 30 years, more than two-thirds of the volume of Arctic summer ice has disappeared. Our children will be the first generation in modern history to experience an entirely new ocean opening up. The Arctic has now become a true strategic hot spot at the centre of global interest.”

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Ultraviolet (UV) light is electromagnetic radiation we are unable to view.  An over-abundance of ultraviolet rays reaching the surface is known to cause sunburn, long-term skin damage, and skin cancer.We need our clouds, our ozone layer and a clean atmosphere.

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When it all works together, correctly.

 Excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is causing drastic changes.In Scandinavia, Norway and the other Nordic countries have all made Arctic development a priority. "The Arctic is changing rapidly. It will be our most important foreign policy area. Climate change is putting Norway under pressure," said Norway's Prime Minister, Erna Solberg.

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But, on the bright side, things are looking up for the Arctic area halfway between Europe and China. Over the next 30 years, climate change is likely to open up a polar shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, cutting travel time to Asia by 40% and allowing Russia's vast oil and gas resources to be exported to China, Japan and south Asia much faster.The electromagnetic spectrum is important to understand as a number of environmental issues depend on it. Climatologists  are predicting conditions  which will negatively affect agricultural practices, human health and our livelihoods.

 At the present time, we are able to enjoy clear nightly star-filled skies, while lucky Northern viewers can view the famous Northern lights  in the night’s silence, and perhaps listen to its sound.