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If you were in the 'Northern hemisphere' last week, you would likely have seen lots of photos of the aurora borealis. There were lots of great photos. Eg:

from In pictures: Northern Lights dazzle around the world
However, this post is about the narrative of the Aurora.
Firstly - I want to give the younger reader a warning. This post is a bit lewd, even obscene - depending on your age it may not be age-appropriate content! But on the other hand, this is science... so who knows?
Its clear there's some sort of sex element to the whole 'space' idea. From the 1940s, there's the story of Jack Parson and L Ron Hubbard.
Then we have Elon's Space X (sounds like 'space sex') and Blue Origin, which many have commented looks phallic.

So - it seems plain to me that there is an underlying sex narrative around flying into space. When I first came across it, I was surprised, and found it odd! However, I'm far from the only one to have spotted this - a German feminist art group has even gone so far as to design a 'yonic spacecraft':

"The Vulva Spaceship was designed to counter the predominance of phallus-shaped space imagery"
from "Vulva Spaceship" aims to counter prevalence of phallic spacecraft
However, what was very surprising to me and caught me totally offguard, was reading the wikipedia page on the Aurora. I was expecting a scientific description... and while, it may be my reading.. maybe this is 'science'.. but the provided text seems highly suggestive! From this page: Aurora - Wikipedia.
This is the second paragraph:
'Perhaps its just me', I thought, but I could not rid myself of the sense that this read like a scientist with a schoolboy's affinity for the double entendre describing the sexual act.
Here are some other lines from the wiki.
The whole page is like this! If a woman with a sultry voice were to read the page out, the subtext would become evident to anyone. There are simply too many overt and inappropriate descriptive terms.
There's more too - one can find out about "collisional quenching", "Birkeland currents", "partial ring current" "magnetically trapped plasma", "dynamo mechanism", "coronal mass ejections", etc, etc.
I appreciate this is all in the name of science - but it seems to me there is clearly a sexual subtext here. I don't know what to make of it.. Has 'space' has always been described in these hardly nuanced terms and I'm just late to get the joke?
Finally, I looked up the name Aurora in mythology. She is known as Eos in Greek mythology
Eos is also close to the term 'eros' - maybe that's not accidental?
Anyway, I was surprised to find so many unexpected erotic references reading up about the Northern lights phenomenon. Maybe I'm scrutinising the writing too closely (and triggering my teenage self in the process!), or maybe these lights are something that readily take to being described in sensual terms.. or something else?

from In pictures: Northern Lights dazzle around the world
However, this post is about the narrative of the Aurora.
Firstly - I want to give the younger reader a warning. This post is a bit lewd, even obscene - depending on your age it may not be age-appropriate content! But on the other hand, this is science... so who knows?
Its clear there's some sort of sex element to the whole 'space' idea. From the 1940s, there's the story of Jack Parson and L Ron Hubbard.
Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation
from Jack Parsons - WikipediaIn 1945, Parsons separated from Helen, after having an affair with her sister Sara; when Sara left him for L. Ron Hubbard, Parsons conducted the Babalon Working, a series of rituals intended to invoke the Thelemic goddess Babalon on Earth. He and Hubbard continued the working with Marjorie Cameron, whom Parsons married in 1946. After Hubbard and Sara defrauded him of his life savings, Parsons resigned from the O.T.O., then held various jobs while acting as a consultant for Israel's rocket program.
The Occult History Behind NASA’s Jet Propulsion LaboratorySoon, Parsons and Hubbard were completely enveloped by Thelema. They embarked on Operation Babalon Working, a series of rituals and experiments intended to incarnate the Thelemite Goddess Babalon in the earthly realm. One of these rituals included Parsons masturbating onto magical tablets to Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto while Hubbard took notes and explored the astral plane. Another involved Parsons and Hubbard impregnating an anonymous woman somewhere on Earth through immaculate conception with a “magical child,” who would become Thelema’s messianic embodiment of Babalon.
Then we have Elon's Space X (sounds like 'space sex') and Blue Origin, which many have commented looks phallic.

So - it seems plain to me that there is an underlying sex narrative around flying into space. When I first came across it, I was surprised, and found it odd! However, I'm far from the only one to have spotted this - a German feminist art group has even gone so far as to design a 'yonic spacecraft':

"The Vulva Spaceship was designed to counter the predominance of phallus-shaped space imagery"
from "Vulva Spaceship" aims to counter prevalence of phallic spacecraft
However, what was very surprising to me and caught me totally offguard, was reading the wikipedia page on the Aurora. I was expecting a scientific description... and while, it may be my reading.. maybe this is 'science'.. but the provided text seems highly suggestive! From this page: Aurora - Wikipedia.
This is the second paragraph:
Erm.. "Coronal holes and coronal mass ejections"? "Charged particles in the magnetospheric plasma"?Auroras are the result of disturbances in the Earth's magnetosphere caused by the solar wind. Major disturbances result from enhancements in the speed of the solar wind from coronal holes and coronal mass ejections. These disturbances alter the trajectories of charged particles in the magnetospheric plasma. These particles, mainly electrons and protons, precipitate into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/exosphere). The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emit light of varying colour and complexity. The form of the aurora, occurring within bands around both polar regions, is also dependent on the amount of acceleration imparted to the precipitating particles.
'Perhaps its just me', I thought, but I could not rid myself of the sense that this read like a scientist with a schoolboy's affinity for the double entendre describing the sexual act.
Here are some other lines from the wiki.
"geomagnetic storm", expanding "auroral ovals", "magnetic midnight"?A geomagnetic storm causes the auroral ovals (north and south) to expand, bringing the aurora to lower latitudes. The instantaneous distribution of auroras ("auroral oval")[8] is slightly different, being centered about 3–5° nightward of the magnetic pole, so that auroral arcs reach furthest toward the equator when the magnetic pole in question is in between the observer and the Sun. The aurora can be seen best at this time, which is called magnetic midnight.
Ok... what am I reading here?!? "gyrates", "pulsating", "two polar cusps"...An electron spirals (gyrates) about a field line at an angle that is determined by its velocity vectors, parallel and perpendicular, respectively, to the local geomagnetic field vector B. This angle is known as the "pitch angle" of the particle. The distance, or radius, of the electron from the field line at any time is known as its Larmor radius. The pitch angle increases as the electron travels to a region of greater field strength nearer to the atmosphere. Thus, it is possible for some particles to return, or mirror, if the angle becomes 90° before entering the atmosphere to collide with the denser molecules there. Other particles that do not mirror enter the atmosphere and contribute to the auroral display over a range of altitudes. Other types of auroras have been observed from space; for example, "poleward arcs" stretching sunward across the polar cap, the related "theta aurora",[18] and "dayside arcs" near noon. These are relatively infrequent and poorly understood. Other interesting effects occur such as pulsating aurora, "black aurora" and their rarer companion "anti-black aurora" and subvisual red arcs. In addition to all these, a weak glow (often deep red) observed around the two polar cusps, the field lines separating the ones that close through Earth from those that are swept into the tail and close remotely.
It really is a science report prepared by someone with a erotica on the mind, right? This report could have been published in Viz, fnarr fnarr!Brekke (1994) also described some auroras as "curtains".[23] The similarity to curtains is often enhanced by folds within the arcs. Arcs can fragment or break up into separate, at times rapidly changing, often rayed features that may fill the whole sky. These are also known as discrete auroras, which are at times bright enough to read a newspaper by at night.
"peak emission"? Oo-er!The phenomenon of pulsating auroras is an example of intensity variations over short timescales, typically with periods of 2–20 seconds. This type of aurora is generally accompanied by decreasing peak emission heights of about 8 km for blue and green emissions and above average solar wind speeds (c. 500 km/s).
A quiescent solar wind flowing past Earth's magnetosphere steadily interacts with it and can both inject solar wind particles directly onto the geomagnetic field lines that are 'open', as opposed to being 'closed' in the opposite hemisphere, and provide diffusion through the bow shock. It can also cause particles already trapped in the radiation belts to precipitate into the atmosphere. Once particles are lost to the atmosphere from the radiation belts, under quiet conditions, new ones replace them only slowly, and the loss-cone becomes depleted.
Ok..The leakage of electrons does not leave the tail positively charged, because each leaked electron lost to the atmosphere is replaced by a low energy electron drawn upward from the ionosphere. Such replacement of "hot" electrons by "cold" ones is in complete accord with the second law of thermodynamics. The complete process, which also generates an electric ring current around Earth, is uncertain.
"Magnetic reconnection", "plasmoids", "unloading process"!?! I'm sure I'm not imagining things now!As a result, the solar wind moves magnetic flux (tubes of magnetic field lines, 'locked' together with their resident plasma) from the day side of Earth to the magnetotail, widening the obstacle it presents to the solar wind flow and constricting the tail on the night-side. Ultimately some tail plasma can separate ("magnetic reconnection"); some blobs ("plasmoids") are squeezed downstream and are carried away with the solar wind; others are squeezed toward Earth where their motion feeds strong outbursts of auroras, mainly around midnight ("unloading process").
Acceleration of auroral charged particles invariably accompanies a magnetospheric disturbance that causes an aurora. This mechanism, which is believed to predominantly arise from strong electric fields along the magnetic field or wave-particle interactions, raises the velocity of a particle in the direction of the guiding magnetic field. The pitch angle is thereby decreased and increases the chance of it being precipitated into the atmosphere. Both electromagnetic and electrostatic waves, produced at the time of greater geomagnetic disturbances, make a significant contribution to the energizing processes that sustain an aurora. Particle acceleration provides a complex intermediate process for transferring energy from the solar wind indirectly into the atmosphere.
The whole page is like this! If a woman with a sultry voice were to read the page out, the subtext would become evident to anyone. There are simply too many overt and inappropriate descriptive terms.
There's more too - one can find out about "collisional quenching", "Birkeland currents", "partial ring current" "magnetically trapped plasma", "dynamo mechanism", "coronal mass ejections", etc, etc.
I appreciate this is all in the name of science - but it seems to me there is clearly a sexual subtext here. I don't know what to make of it.. Has 'space' has always been described in these hardly nuanced terms and I'm just late to get the joke?
Finally, I looked up the name Aurora in mythology. She is known as Eos in Greek mythology
Aurora (mythology) - WikipediaAurōra appears most often in sexual poetry with one of her mortal lovers. A myth taken from the Greek by Roman poets tells that one of her lovers was the prince of Troy, Tithonus. Tithonus was a mortal, and would therefore age and die. Wanting to be with her lover for all eternity, Aurōra asked Jupiter to grant immortality to Tithonus. Jupiter granted her wish, but she failed to ask for eternal youth to accompany his immortality, and he continued to age, eventually becoming forever old. Aurōra turned him into a cicada.
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Eos (/ˈiːɒs/; Ionic and Homeric GreekἨώςĒṓs, AtticἝωςHéōs, "dawn", pronounced [ɛːɔ̌ːs] or [héɔːs]; AeolicΑὔωςAúōs, DoricἈώςĀṓs)[3] is the goddess and personification of the dawn, who rose each morning from her home at the edge of the river Oceanus to deliver light and disperse the night. In Greek tradition and poetry, she is characterized as a goddess with a great sexual appetite, who took numerous lovers for her own satisfaction and bore them several children.
Eos - WikipediaEos also shares some characteristics with the love goddess Aphrodite connoting perhaps a semi-shared origin or influence of Eos/*Haéusōs on Aphrodite, who otherwise has a Near Eastern origin;[23] both goddesses were known for their erotic beauty and aggressive sexuality, both had relationships with mortal lovers, and both were associated with the colors red, white, and gold.
Eos is also close to the term 'eros' - maybe that's not accidental?
Anyway, I was surprised to find so many unexpected erotic references reading up about the Northern lights phenomenon. Maybe I'm scrutinising the writing too closely (and triggering my teenage self in the process!), or maybe these lights are something that readily take to being described in sensual terms.. or something else?
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