Episode Details

Art Bell and Richard C. Hoagland share a remarkable night of live observation as a massive solar storm produces aurora borealis visible across the United States, extending far south of its usual range. Hoagland, calling from 8,000 feet in the Manzano Mountains of New Mexico, describes brilliant blue-green curtains and deep red streamers stretching past the zenith and into the southern sky, bright enough to see color despite the limitations of nighttime vision.

Art watches from the high desert of Nevada, observing sections of red sky sweeping from east to west while Hoagland reports waves of color moving in the opposite direction. The display results from a coronal mass ejection launched by a sunspot complex 16 times the size of Earth, sitting at 19.5 degrees north solar latitude, a position Hoagland connects to his hyperdimensional physics model. Charged particles from the eruption spiral along Earth's magnetic field lines and cascade into the atmosphere, exciting nitrogen and oxygen to produce the colors.

Both men urge listeners to wake their families and go outside, calling this a once-in-a-lifetime event at the peak of the solar cycle. Hoagland suggests the display will continue through the night as particles continue streaming past Earth.