
Eerie Skyglow Called 'Steve' Isn't an Aurora, Is 'Completely Unknown' to Science - okket
https://www.livescience.com/63385-steve-not-aurora-mystery-phenomenon.html
======
jlj
Saw something like this in Alaska in the late 90's driving south towards
Glenallen on a youth hockey road trip. It was a localized spot of purple/blue
Aurora. Came out of nowhere, the shapes looked like a cauldron of boiling
water but in bright colors. Everyone in the van saw it.

Always figured it was an experiment from this remote HAARP research facility
that fires radio waves at the ionosphere.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program)

~~~
frikk
I have also experienced a strange Aurora phenomenon. My first year living up
north I was lucky enough to catch the northern lights. They were gray (not
green) but really fun. A kind of camo-patterened pulsing, flickering in and
out, with ripples that would move through it.

Eventually they moved from the northern horizon to entirely overhead, and even
into the southern horizon. The overall pattern continued: pulses of circles
fading in and out like blinking neon light, with waves crashing through and
across the entire thing, slowly. Still gray, never green.

Then I noticed that the waves would all "sink" into a single spot in the sky.
Directly overhead was a "dark spot" in the borealis, and it moved around
slightly and had this wicked looking "interference" pattern around it, like
what you'd expect to see with two magnets interfering.

Over and over the waves would ripple from the north and "sink" into this dark
spot. The hole itself seemed to pulse as the waves moved around and ultimately
into it. Kind of felt like it was a kind of magnetic pole. Not sure. The
aurora itself (patterns of blinking, pulsing, shimmering) continued into the
southern sky, but the dark hole was right overhead.

I haven't been able to really find anyone else who has experienced this. Just
wanted to share.

~~~
mskullcap
I have seen something similar. A spectacular display in the mid-90's in
February at Big Trout Lake Ontario; I watched it from the lake on the winter
road. The entire sky would react to waves of energy, and there was a dark hole
- as you described - in the middle of the sky. I have never seen such a
dramatic display of aurora, with such strange patterns (vs the typical whisps
of light) before or after.

------
athenot
I remember seeing one of those on a night flight from the US to Europe. The
pilot pointed it out on the PA and was puzzled as to what it was. It looked
like a thin line of clouds illuminated by a super bright moon… except there
was no moon that night and it was way higher than where clouds are supposed to
be. Color was a silvery white.

~~~
cpach
Perhaps it was noctilucent clouds? See e.g
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SpaceX_Noctilucent_Clou...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SpaceX_Noctilucent_Cloud.jpg)

~~~
athenot
Thanks for the link, I learned something!

But that doesn't fit because it was in winter and in the dead middle of the
night, somewhere between Canada and Iceland.

------
dcow
Apparently its not a mystery:
[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/mystery-of-
purple-...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/mystery-of-purple-
lights-in-sky-solved-with-help-from-citizen-scientists)

~~~
Dylan16807
That's addressed in the article.

 _Contrary to the findings from the Steve study published earlier this year,
the satellite did not detect any charged particles raining down toward Earth
's magnetic-field lines, indicating that whatever created Steve did not follow
the same rules as the solar particles that create the aurora._

------
exabrial
Did anyone get a spectrograph? Slim chance given the circumstances but that'd
be really near to look at the spectral lines!

~~~
gmueckl
I don't see an optical spectrum anywhere, the linked paper
([http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/3/eaaq0030](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/3/eaaq0030))
contains a host of other cool data that was collected. Fig. 3 in particular
has indications that this phenomenon happens at some kind of domain boundary,
given how many of the shown quantities change in this relatively narrow band.

~~~
mattdeboard
I’ll say what we’re all thinking: space tornado

------
codezero
Could this be cumulative exhaust from satellite transfers?

~~~
chippy
I wonder, the article says it's been visible for decades by photographers. We
could correlate the time the photos are taken with rocket launches.

Also, there is no wikipedia page about this phenomena yet.

~~~
banaana
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_(atmospheric_phenomenon)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_\(atmospheric_phenomenon\))

------
DiabloD3
I don't get really why this is so surprising. The planet Venus has had
cometary plasma tails, as has Mars (and it is entirely possible that the age
old religious tales of Mars being some sort of warrior, and Venus being an
angry snake-headed goddess was just our ancestors witnessing a very rare
interplanetary electrical discharge via Birkeland currents), so this is
probably just a form of our own tail.

Aurora themselves are just the interaction of our magnetic field with that of
the Sun's, so it seems unlikely that large scale magnetic fields are not also
the cause of this one.

------
pmlnr
This reminded me of the beam of light in "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C.
Clarke - what turned out to be a weapon that fired giant mass heated to plasma
state at high velocity.

~~~
KineticLensman
also in Clarke's 'Earthlight' \- the fortified mine Project Thor uses ultra-
high pressure slugs of metal as a beam weapon

------
tuxxy
One of my favorite memories is driving far north of Jackson, WY with my
partner and her father. We pulled over off the road near a farm and started
stargazing when I noticed this colorful ribbon flowing in the sky. I thought
it was the Aurora, but when I googled around I realized it wasn't. I found
some talk of Steve and it was exactly what I saw.

It's definitely a weird thing to witness just out of nowhere.

------
pvaldes
I wonder if shiny metallic spatial garbage would orientate itself in a band
following the magnetic fields of the earth

------
bitL
Alright, so for decades Steve was called aurora as well, possibly for ages by
natives observing it; yet now scientists decided to slap another sticker on it
as the original scientific aurora explanation doesn't fit this class of what
was traditionally called aurora as well; and we ended up with 'Steve'...

~~~
anonytrary
"Quark" and all of its generations[0] have unusual names as well. If STEVE
actually is a new phenomenon, then eventually the name will stop sounding
weird. The acronymization of the name also helps.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark#Etymology)

~~~
nasredin
"name will stop sounding weird."

I think it will just confuse a lot of people.

I know people love hip generic names, but this is a bridge too far IMHO.

------
callesgg
So what is the definition of aurora that causes it to not also encompass
Steve.

~~~
lucasdwi
"Steve does not contain the telltale traces of charged particles blasting
through Earth's atmosphere that auroras do. Steve, therefore, is not an aurora
at all"

~~~
NelsonMinar
Amazing what you can learn when you read the article

~~~
jyriand
Why read if others have read it already and now all the answers?

------
jakeogh
Neat. Reminds me of the sprites and jets above big thunderstorms.

------
Fang_
Future generations will have people named after this thing.

------
w1zard0f0z
"the air inside Steve blazed about 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees
Celsius)" 3000 degrees?!:o Is that temperature a typo?

~~~
shangxiao
Yes, that's correct. At 300km, Steve would be situated within the thermosphere
[1]

> The highly diluted gas in this layer can reach 2,500 °C (4,530 °F) during
> the day. Even though the temperature is so high, one would not feel warm in
> the thermosphere, because it is so near vacuum that there is not enough
> contact with the few atoms of gas to transfer much heat.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosphere)

Edit: typo

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
If you were out there during the day you probably warm up a bit though right?
with very little in the way of air to draw heat away.

~~~
jacobush
Yes but from the sun, not from the heat in the air molecules. And if you were
not shielded from the near vacuum, you’d cool down from the evaporation of
sweat on your skin.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
This has got me interested now.

At the equator, on the surface of Earth, solar radiation is about 1kW per
square meter. According to this¹ wikipedia article 55-60% of solar energy is
lost on its way through the atmosphere.

So would ~2kW / square meter at thermosphere height be enough to make you feel
warm-hot despite the heat lost to evaporative cooling from sweating?

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-
based_solar_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power)

Edit: correct highest to height

~~~
mncharity
One might sweat a couple of liters/hr, and thus might manage 2 kW. But that's
not needed. Between bright hot Sun, too hot, and dark cold deep-space sky, too
cold, Earth spins, mixing too hot, and too cold, into not too bad. And so can
you - the "barbeque roll" thermal management strategy for satellites. And if
you're head-on to the Sun, or in shadow (holding an umbrella)... I don't
recall whether radiative loss is sufficient to shed basal metabolic rate
without sweating or not. If not, you might build yourself some elephant ears,
and sleep with them edge-on to the Sun (and Earth). But EVA suits use water
sublimation cooling - because people do EVA to strenuously exercise, even in
the bright sun.

Science education content, down to kindergarten, mentions Sun heating Earth.
But pervasively fails to mention deep-space sky cooling Earth. So a lot of
explanatory leverage is left on the table - "Why are nights cold? Especially
with clear sky? Especially in the desert? Why are mountains snow-capped? Why
is winter colder?" etc. I wish I knew of a forum/community in which to discuss
and create such improved content, but I've been failing to find one. :(

~~~
jacobush
But how much can you irradiate to the black space?

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
But is it really Steve?

~~~
stephengillie
Maybe it's Herobrine.

------
rbanffy
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

― Carl Sagan

~~~
vlunkr
Counterpoint:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human
mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in
the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should
voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto
harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge
will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position
therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the
deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

\- HP Lovecraft

~~~
rbanffy
We'll need to debug ourselves. If what's left can still be called human is
anyone's guess.

------
pietroglyph
> "To photographers and stargazers in northern climes, Steve has been a
> familiar night phenomenon for decades. But the mysterious ribbons of light
> only entered the scientific literature for the first time earlier this year"

It's so exciting to realize how little we really _know_. Think about how many
fantastic unexplained things there must be in the universe if we haven't even
finished understanding the ones right under our noses. There's so much
complexity that we can easily create things that are too complicated for one
person, or even many, to fully understand.

~~~
sametmax
Even things we do understand and that we have documented are underused.

Let's take a few examples.

I had Malaria 10 years ago. Well, did you know Atovaquone-Proguanil (e.g:
Malarone) can not only prevent Malaria, but also __cure__ it, killing the
plasmodium in the liver?

Still, most people, including a lot of doctors, think you can't cure Malaria
and you have to live with it for life.

The first documented death related to asbestos was in 1906, yet it was only
banned a century later
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos)).

WHO declared in 2015 that processed meat was now classified as carcinogenic to
humans. The information is publically available on their website
([http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-
meat/en/](http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/)), but who knows
about it ?

So not only our understanding of the universe is very limited, but also, our
ability to propagate ([https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/) :)) and
use said understanding is even more limited.

~~~
ljcn
> The first documented death related to asbestos was in 1906, yet it was only
> banned a century later

Incredibly it's still not generally banned in the USA; only a small list of
products are banned by the EPA federally.[0] It was increasingly banned in
Europe from the mid 1980s, and totally banned throughout the EU in 2005.[1]

[0] [https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-
asbestos](https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos) [1]
[https://cordis.europa.eu/news/rcn/13445_en.html](https://cordis.europa.eu/news/rcn/13445_en.html)

> but who knows about it ?

That was big news in Europe, e.g.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34615621](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34615621)

~~~
ekianjo
>Incredibly it's still not generally banned in the USA; only a small list of
products are banned by the EPA federally.[0] It was increasingly banned in
Europe from the mid 1980s, and totally banned throughout the EU in 2005.[1]

Like everything else, everything is deadly at large doses. Even water. Alcohol
clearly causes stomach cancer too at large doses, yet alcohol is not banned,
right? If we were to ban everything that leads to a certain point of toxicity,
we would not be able to live with anything around us. Toxicity is factored by
exposure, which is why "carcinogenic risk" is not a binary variable.

[https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
prevention/risk/s...](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
prevention/risk/substances/asbestos/asbestos-fact-sheet#q3)

> Everyone is exposed to asbestos at some time during their life. Low levels
> of asbestos are present in the air, water, and soil. However, most people do
> not become ill from their exposure. People who become ill from asbestos are
> usually those who are exposed to it on a regular basis, most often in a job
> where they work directly with the material or through substantial
> environmental contact.

The ones who are at the most risk in regard to asbestos are workers in
construction or demolition. And in most countries how they should work with
asbestos is now clearly regulated (safety gear and procedures).

~~~
wowDude

      everything is deadly at large doses
    
      ...
    
      if we were to ban everything that leads to 
      a certain point of toxicity, we would not 
      be able to live with anything around us
    

No, that's not how this works.

The salient point here, is that we know about specific things which are
predominantly non-essential, _and atrociously bad for everyone_.

Lead. Asbestos. Cigarette smoke. DDT. Plutonium. This list is not exhaustive.

Believe it or not, humanity is well acquainted with some natural, persistent,
toxic villains, that no one needs to share a room with. No one's life is
actually better with any of these things.

Yeah, coffee has low concentrations of acrylamide in it. Then, use that to
argue that there's the same sort of calculated risk in the stimulant side-
effects sought by those who self administer a cigarette's dose of smoke.

People try to form the same sort of argument, when contrasting natural
substances and materials, versus synthetic counterparts. Gee, _everything 's_
natural! Yes, and the sun will swallow the better part of the solar system
during its red giant phase. Except, that's not the point.

Muddying the waters, by digging up grey zone edge cases doesn't make asbestos
a desirable choice for consumer goods, or even professional products. It
doesn't make cigarettes good for anyone. It doesn't make lead a practical
additive for gasoline. It doesn't mean we should render random birds extinct
as by-catch, so we can barbecue all summer. It doesn't mean plutonium, in any
amount, should be handled beyond the watchful eyes of armed guards by pretty
much anyone.

~~~
kurthr
Relative Risk

The problem with DDT was that while it didn't cause significant problems for
people (at the concentrations used), it caused huge problems for birds
(thinned shells). At the same time it wiped out the mosquito carrying malaria
along the gulf coast. The ecologic side effects were terrible, but in many
cases human risk may well have been reduced.

Some asbestos is extremely dangerous, some is not (it depends on their
chemical composition and microstructure)... using the same name for all of
them is not helpful to safety, nor is declaring all of them dangerous.

There is Plutonium in the Pacific ocean. Should we guard the ocean, ban
swimming in the ocean, ban fish caught in the ocean? Why, when sun exposure is
much more likely to kill you with carcinoma than ocean plutonium?

I definitely am still going to go outside during the day even though the
dangeous sun is irradiating me. I'm going to eat toast with dangerous
acrylamide.

...And I'm not taking off the dangerous lead weights ballencing my tire rims
on the drive to work, because I want to live.

~~~
nate_meurer
> _And I 'm not taking off the dangerous lead weights ballencing my tire rims
> on the drive to work_

Yes you will, because they are being banned in a growing number of states and
countries. Lead weights are already illegal in the EU and in several of the
most populous states in the U.S.

> _because I want to live._

That's silly. Unbalanced wheels are annoying, but they aren't dangerous unless
the shimmy is extreme, like when you have a lot of mud stuck in your wheels,
in which case wheel weights won't help anyway.

------
tomaskafka
> At about 200 miles (300 km) above Earth, the air inside Steve blazed about
> 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) hotter than the air on each
> side, and moved about 500 times faster. This band of hot, surging gas was
> about 16 miles (25 km) wide.

My bet is that it's a trace of a weapon. Propulsion trail? High energy laser
hotspot?

~~~
nnq
> has been a familiar night phenomenon for decades

does't really fit with your theory...

~~~
antonvs
It's obviously part of the ongoing was against the Moon Nazis.

------
clort
I'm a bit surprised that no attempt was mentioned to determine which direction
its coming from?

A beam, 16 miles wide.. of course its trite, but could be exhaust from
starships decelerating into the solar system, or residue from a solar flare
perhaps?

~~~
creddit
It's probably exhaust from starships.

~~~
Toenex
"I just don't get it Mork, why don't the earthlings reply? Our messages
couldn't be clearer."

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
“We’ve been zipping by for years!” “Forget it! They just don’t want to be
friends!”

