Magnetic Uproar
It was one of the greatest auroras borealis to hit the northeast U.S. in a quarter of a century. It dazzled gapers one night last week from New Mexico to Maine, south to Atlanta. In places in the latitude of New York the display covered the entire sky from horizon to horizon. Astronomers, noting an unusual sunspot outbreak two days before, were prepared. But radio men were not.
The sunspots poured streams of subatomic electrical particles earthward. Striking the upper levels of the earth's atmosphere, they excited oxygen and nitrogen atoms into...