| 美国宇航局探索极光能源-1 The so-called northern and southern lights glow and shimmer colorfully in what 19th century Scottish poet W.E. Aytoun described as streamers shooting all night long across the trembling sky. 如 19 世纪苏格兰诗人 W.E. 埃顿 诗中所描述的，五彩斑斓、丝带般闪耀的极光整夜穿梭在抖擞天空中。 Despite their visual appeal, these brilliant light shows are actually storms - geomagnetic storms. 尽管他们在视觉上极具吸引力 , 其实这些闪耀的极光是地磁暴现象。 Scientists call them substorms , a part of larger storms of energy propelled from the sun at supersonic speeds toward Earth and elsewhere in the solar system. 科学家称之为亚暴，大部分能源来自于太阳以超音速的速度向地球或太阳系中其他地方运转时所产生的助推力。 This energy involves tons of charged particles, hurled our way in the so-called solar wind. 这种能量聚集着大量的负粒子，在所谓的太阳风中为我们开出一条道路。 Earth's magnetic field repels most of this onslaught, but some occasionally leaks through as a result of a sudden, explosive release of these particles from the solar wind. 地球的磁场抵挡住了大部分的冲击，但由于这些来自太阳风的粒子突然爆炸性的释放，偶尔还是会有一些“漏网之鱼”。 The outcome is the light shows over the poles and sometimes the undesirable disruption of electrical power systems and telecommunications on Earth and spacecraft in orbit. 结果是阳光越过两极照射，有时还会造成电力系统以及地球与绕轨道运行的太空船无线电通讯中断。 Solar physicist Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California at Berkeley says the precise point in Earth's magnetic field where this explosive particle release occurs and the sequence of events leading to it have puzzled scientists for three decades. 位于伯克利的加利福尼亚大学的太阳物理学家瓦斯利·安格罗保罗指出，三十年来，科学家们一直在为爆炸性粒子释放的地点 — 地球磁场的精确位置以及导致其发生的一系列活动的顺序而头疼不已。 Vassilis Angelopoulos : Knowing the trigger location identifies the correct physics at play. The problem has been that the substorms start at a single point in space, somewhere near Earth, and, within minutes, it progresses past the moon's orbit, so a single satellite alone cannot identify the substorm time and point of origin. 安格罗保罗：“我们已知道 触发器确定了运行时正确的物理性能。问题在于，磁暴开始于空间中的某一个点，距地球很近 ，并且在短短几分钟内就能够运行过月球的轨道，因此，单一的人造卫星是不可能独自确定出磁暴发生的时间与起源地的。” |
