Troy Carter in Nature World News: Scientists Recreate Aurora Borealis in Lab to Understand How Northern Lights Are Formed

Now, for the first time, researchers have demonstrated and made confirmation of the mechanism whereby the particle acceleration takes place – by replicating the process in a laboratory. Just as experts had thought, powerful electromagnetic waves referred to as Alfvén waves accelerate electrons along the magnetic field lines. Physicist Troy Carter of UCLA said this challenging experiment needed a measurement of the very little population of electrons propelling down the LAPD chamber at almost the same speed as the Alfvén waves, numbering not more than one in a thousand of the electrons in the plasma.