From Daniel Robert Douglas

Earth performs this trick using beams of electrons. High above our planet’s poles, electrons shoot upward into space. They are accelerated and "beamed” by electric fields in Earth’s magnetosphere. Sounding rockets and satellites discovered the beams decades ago. It turns out, they can power the diffuse auroras.

Earth can Make it's Own Auroras

From the article:

Earth performs this trick using electron beams. High above our planet’s poles, they shoot upward into space, accelerated by electric fields in Earth’s magnetosphere. Sounding rockets and satellites discovered the beams decades ago. It turns out, they can power the diffuse auroras.

Electron beams travel in great arcs through the space near Earth. As they go, they excite ripples in the magnetosphere called Electron Cyclotron Harmonic (ECH) waves.

ECH waves, in turn, knock other electrons out of their orbits, forcing them to fall back down onto the atmosphere. This rain of secondary electrons powers the diffuse auroras.

"This is exciting,” says UCLA professor Vassilis Angelopoulos, a co-author of the papers and lead of the THEMIS-ARTEMIS mission. "We have found a totally new way that particle energy can be transferred from the Earth’s own atmosphere out to the magnetosphere and back again, creating a giant feedback loop in space.”

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