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Known as auroral beads, these lights often show up just before large auroral displays, which are caused by electrical storms in space called substorms. Until now, scientists weren’t sure if auroral beads are somehow connected to other auroral displays as a phenomenon in space that precedes substorms, or if they are caused by disturbances closer to Earth’s atmosphere.But powerful new computer models, combined with observations from NASA’s Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms – THEMIS – mission, have provided the first direct evidence of the events in space that lead to the appearance of these beads, and demonstrated the important role they play in our local space environment. || ", "release_date": "2020-08-14T10:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2020-08-14T09:18:15-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 383383, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a013600/a013687/13687_AuroralBeads_YouTube.00320_print.jpg", "filename": "13687_AuroralBeads_YouTube.00320_print.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Complete transcript available.Music credit: “Intrigues and Plots” and “Repetitive Motion” by Laurent Dury [SACEM] from Universal Production Music Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 12901, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12901/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "NASA Spacecraft Finds New Magnetic Process in Turbulent Space", "description": "Though close to home, the space immediately around Earth is full of hidden secrets and invisible processes. In a new discovery reported in the journal Nature, scientists working with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft — MMS — have uncovered a new type of magnetic event in our near-Earth environment by using an innovative technique to squeeze extra information out of the data.Magnetic reconnection is one of the most important processes in the space — filled with charged particles known as plasma — around Earth. This fundamental process dissipates magnetic energy and propels charged particles, both of which contribute to a dynamic space weather system that scientists want to better understand, and even someday predict, as we do terrestrial weather. Reconnection occurs when crossed magnetic field lines snap, explosively flinging away nearby particles at high speeds. The new discovery found reconnection where it has never been seen before — in turbulent plasma. || ", "release_date": "2018-05-09T13:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:46:49.900876-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 405569, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a012900/a012901/LARGE_MP4_12901_TurbulentPlasma_MagneticReconnection_large.00204_print.jpg", "filename": "LARGE_MP4_12901_TurbulentPlasma_MagneticReconnection_large.00204_print.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Conceptual animation - Explosive Magnetic Reconnection in Turbulent PlasmaIn a turbulent magnetic environment, magnetic field lines become scrambled. As the field lines cross, intense electric currents (shown here as bright regions) form and eventually trigger magnetic reconnection (indicated by a flash), which is an explosive event that releases magnetic energy accumulated in the current layers and ejects high-speed bi-directional jets of electrons. 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