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	Kristian Birkeland
		Kristian Birkeland (1867-1917) was born in Oslo and wrote his first scientific paper at the age of 18.
		Birkeland noticed that an electron beam directed toward the terrella was guided toward the magnetic poles and produced rings of light around the poles and concluded that the aurora could be produced in a similar way.
		Birkeland's vision of field-aligned currents became the source of a controversy that continued for a quarter of a century, because their existence could not be confirmed from ground-based measurements alone.
	www.ebroadcast.com.au /lookup/encyclopedia/kr/Kristian_Birkeland.html (753 words)

	Birkeland, Kristian Olaf Bernhard (1867-1917)
		Though supported both by his own observations and experiments in the laboratory, Birkeland’s theories were not widely accepted until confirmed by satellite evidence in the 1960s.
		Eccentric, enthusiastic, and absorbed in his work, Birkeland kept notes on scraps of paper that he filed under seat cushions, wore a fez and slippers in his lab, and was hurled through the air by bolts of electricity when his experiments went awry.
		In 1913, Birkeland traveled to Egypt to study the zodiacal light and found himself stranded there after the outbreak of war in Europe.
	www.daviddarling.info /encyclopedia/B/Birkeland.html (367 words)

	The Northern Lights
		That Birkeland’s story is a genuine discovery, however, is underlined (for this reader at least) by the constant sense of astonishment that a scientist and inventor of such obvious eminence and importance has escaped attention until now.
		Birkeland’s two-volume report on this second expedition, which he published over the following ten years, refined and reinforced his theory, the greater wealth of data from different locations allowing him to reconstruct the aurora’s appearance and behaviour in three dimensions within the overall picture of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
		Birkeland is said to have sent a telegram on the date on which, later, he is said to have been found dead first thing in the morning.
	www.ric.edu /rpotter/northlights.html (832 words)

	Birkeland on Norwegian 200 kroner bank note
		Birkeland's terrella experiment, which consisted of a small, magnetized sphere representing the Earth suspended in an evacuated box, is shown on the left.
		Birkeland (1867-1917) was born in Oslo and wrote his first scientific paper at the age of 18.
		Birkeland's climactic reply was I have it!There were no more attempts to sell the firearms company, and he worked with Eyde only long enough to build a plasma arc device for the nitrogen fixation process.
	www.fys.uio.no /plasma/english/texts/birkeland/index.html (994 words)

	Trapped Radiation -- History
		Birkeland aimed beams of electrons (called "cathode rays" in those days) at a magnet inside a vacuum chamber, and noted that they seemed to be channeled towards its near magnetic pole.
		Later Birkeland built bigger vacuum chambers and replaced the magnet with a magnetized sphere or "terrella" representing the Earth, noting that the electrons were channeled towards both its poles.
		Birkeland constructed several terrella experiments, including (in 1913) a large one in a big chamber, shown next to his picture on the current Norwegian 200-kroner bill.
	www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov /Education/whtrap1.html (922 words)

	Three remarkable men - Hydro
		Kristian Birkeland, Sam Eyde and Marcus Wallenberg are regarded as Hydros founders.
		Kristian Birkeland started his research career as a pure mathematician, before turning to theoretical and experimental physics.
		In Norway, Birkeland is a person everyone, in principle, has a relationship to – his face is on the NOK 200 note, which the Norwegian National Bank has issued since 1994.
	www.hydro.com /en/about/history/1900_1917/1905_3.html (1475 words)

	Kristian Birkeland
		Birkelands avhandlinger var pionérarbeider innenfor både fysikk og astrofysikk.
		Birkeland forandret fra omkring 1910 sitt terrella- eksperiment slik at kulen i sentrum nå ble en sol i universitetet som strålte ut elektrisk ladede partikler.
		Birkeland samlet om seg en gruppe unge, aktive fysikere og matematikere som han inspirerte og stimulerte.
	www.museumsnett.no /ntm/no/forskning/birkeland/birkeland.htm (3395 words)

	What became of Professor Birkeland? - Hydro
		At Hydros shareholders meeting in 1905, Kristian Birkeland was appointed as technical consultant for life with an annual salary of NOK 5,000 - the same amount he earned as professor at the university.
		Birkeland believed there was a connection between the northern lights and activities on the sun’s surface.
		His conclusion, that the earth’s magnetic field affects both the path and the spread of electrically charged particles from the sun, and is therefore significant in the development of zodiacal light, attracted attention.
	www.hydro.com /en/about/history/1900_1917/1910.html (734 words)

	Laboratory Astrophysics
		Birkeland went to great lengths to diagnose and record the results of these investigations, whether they be in the lab or in the arctic, where he made three expeditions to view astrophysical phenomena first hand.
		Much of Birkeland's work was rediscovered in the 1980s with renewed interest about the role of large scale magnetic fields and currents in explaining astrophysical, galactic, and cosmological scale phenomena, including the origin and structure or galaxies and thenature of interstellar space.
		Kristian Birkeland in the Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903, Christiana, Norway, Aschehoug, 1908.
	plasmascience.net /tpu/lab_astro.html (1246 words)

	Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland Biography \| World of Invention
		Birkeland's scientific career might have turned out differently had he not grown up in a country of mighty rivers.
		As a student, Birkeland concentrated on mathematical physics, studying primarily in Paris and Geneva.
		Later, Birkeland moved to Egypt, to improve his health and also to pursue his interest in astronomy.
	www.bookrags.com /biography/kristian-olaf-bernhard-birkeland-woi (616 words)

	Polar Cap -- History
		Birkeland believed that auroral electrons came from the Sun, and the electron gun, aimed at the terrella, represented that source.
		A few of Birkeland's experiments indeed produced a ring of light with a dark center, but in general he only got a polar patch of light, covering the magnetic poles of the terrella.
		Birkeland's younger friend, the mathematician Carl Stoermer, analyzed the motion of the electrons mathematically and even computed many of their orbits, a tough task in the pre-computer days around 1907-10.
	www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov /Education/whpcap.html (309 words)

	Explosive winter days in 1903 - Yara
		Professor Kristian Birkeland was an enthusiastic man, and perhaps most enthusiastic about his studies of the northern lights.
		Birkeland thought he had found a solution to this, and in 1901 he applied for a patent on a technique to avoid arcing due to short-circuiting of the electrical charge.
		Birkeland asked Eyde what he was currently working on, and Eyde described his efforts on extracting nitrogen, as well as the hydroelectric power rights he had secured.
	www.yara.com /en/about/history/1900_1905/1903.html (646 words)

	The Northern Lights- LucyJago.com
		Birkeland preferred the Latin term /umine borea/i, "the northern light", as in me far north me auroras were usually white or yellowish green and bore no resemblance to dawn.
		Birkeland's ashes were remmed to Norway and on 22 September 1919 were buried in Christ- iania, at the expense of the university but not of the state.
		Birkeland's wider cosmogonic theory, in which he claimed that electromagnetic forces played a role as important as gravity in near and more distant regions of space, is certainly correct, although it took decades for his assertion to be generally accepted by astrophysicists.
	www.lucyjago.com /welcome/extracts2.php?ID=13 (5131 words)

	Borzoi Reader \| Authors \| Lucy Jago
		It was incredible to stand on top of that peak and think that Birkeland had spent a winter (often braving atrocious weather conditions) with this breath-taking view stretching north to the Arctic Sea and south to the mountain plateau that is the winter home of the Sabme (Lapp) reindeer herders.
		I could quite see why, previous to Birkeland's scientific explanation for the phenomenon, people assumed the aurora were the Valkyries riding out of Valhalla to point out which soldiers would die in battle, or that they were portents of war and disaster or messengers from the spirit world.
		LJ: Birkeland was convinced that the aurora were created by charged particles streaming from the sun, drawn towards the poles of the earth by the magnetic field surrounding the planet and creating the lights as they collided with atoms in the earth's atmosphere, about 100 kilometers above the surface of the planet.
	www.randomhouse.com /knopf/authors/jago/qna.html (1518 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: The Northern Lights: Books: Lucy Jago (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		Ultimately, this is also a tale of doomed love in Birkeland's often enforced absence from the side of his wife Ida. Jago's success is in her ability to combine all of these elements together into a part historical narrative, part romance, part adventure tale that reads almost like fiction.
		Birkeland was a classic eccentric scientist, driven above all else to get to the bottom of his great obsession, to the detriment of his career and personal life.
		The story of Kristian Birkeland, outstanding Norweigian physicist and his myriad adventures in climes from the arctic to the equator as he sought to unravel the mystery of the aurora borealis.
	www.amazon.co.uk /Northern-Lights-Lucy-Jago/dp/014029015X (1742 words)

	Electric Currents from Space--History
		As noted earlier Kristian Birkeland, reporting in 1903 on his expeditions to the auroral zone, proposed that magnetic disturbances accompanying the aurora were caused by large electric currents flowing down the length of auroral formations.
		Some scientists disagreed with Birkeland and claimed the electrojets did not connect to space but instead their entire circuit lay inside the ionosphere, like that of other ionospheric currents known at the time, believed to be caused by atmospheric tides.
		That same year Naoshi Fukushima in Japan pointed out that such "Birkeland currents" connected to the ionosphere would be almost "invisible" from the ground, producing there only a very weak magnetic disturbance, because magnetic fields contributed by various parts of their circuit tended to cancel out.
	www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov /Education/whcurren.html (517 words)

	Books \| Kristian Birkeland saw the lights
		To generate funds for his expensive research, Birkeland became co-founder of a commercial venture to produce artificial fertiliser (Norsk Hydro is today Norway's largest company) and his technique for nitrogen fixation brought him into contention for a Nobel Prize.
		Among Birkeland's many other inventions were an electromagnetic cannon, an improved design for hearing aids and a new method of manufacturing margarine.
		Birkeland may or may not have been a 'prophetic genius', but his life's work led nowhere; indeed, that was his tragedy.
	books.guardian.co.uk /print/0,3858,4185651-99945,00.html (798 words)

	The Northern Lights- LucyJago.com
		The Northern Lights is a well researched biographical tale of the Norwegian physicist and genius Kristian Birkeland, whose life was spent exclusively in pursuit of the scien- tific goal of understanding solar-terrestrial relationships.
		Birkeland essentially believed that the Northern Lights were caused by electrically charged particles from the Sun interacting with the Earth's magnetic field; Although supported by his own observations and by his laboratory simulatIons of the aurora, Birkeland's theories failed to gain widespread acceptance until the were confirmed by evidence from satellites in the late 1960s.
		There was no doubt that Birkeland thought him:self worthy of the highest accolades for his work in unravelling the com- plexities of solar-terrestrial relations and electromagnetic coupling through the solar wind.
	www.lucyjago.com /welcome/extracts2.php?ID=6 (858 words)

	The surface of the Sun: The sun has a rigid iron surface located under the photosphere that is revealed by ...
		Birkeland studied the Northern Lights and became interested in the electrical interaction between the sun and the earth.
		Kristian Birkeland in the early 1900's and later verified by Dr. Charles Bruce and Dr. Oliver Manuel.
		Kristian Birkeland produced results in his experiments with an electromagnetic cathode sphere in his lab in the early 1900's that mirror observations from the Yohkoh satellite.
	www.thesurfaceofthesun.com /index.html (2311 words)

	Galactic Mystery - Matter - On the Dark Side by Michael Strauss
		Heralding a new age in the cosmos, Norwegian Kristian Birkeland predicted that the universe likely consisted of an exotic component that would later be called dark matter.
		Birkeland's ideas about the Expedition were published in the fateful year of 1913 which would see the rise of the socialist Federal Reserve System and the Income Tax in the United States of America, two key components of the communist manifesto.
		In this fashion, Birkeland predicted that because of the 'evolutions' present within the cosmos most of the matter in the universe must be found in 'empty' space rather than that which is observable in stellar objects.
	www.relativitycollapse.com /darkmatter.html (1148 words)

	Sphæra issue no. 7: article 6
		From 1900 Birkeland performed all his experiments using an electromagnetic terrella as one of the electrodes in a gas-discharge apparatus, to create an artificial Aurora around the poles of the terrella, replicating the effects of the solar wind on the magnetic Earth.
		Birkeland's largest experiment was carried out in 1913 in a large vacuum chamber of 1,000 litres capacity with terrellas of 24 and 36 cm in diameter.
		Many of the records of Birkeland's vacuum and other laboratory methods have disappeared and he left few technical details of how the chamber should be operated.
	www.mhs.ox.ac.uk /sphaera/issue7/articl6.htm (1476 words)

	WAG: January 2002 Short Takes
		For Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland, they were an obsession, and he devoted his professional life to a frustrating effort to prove and win support for his theory of their cause, still pursuing his quest when he died, of a probably accidental overdose, before his fiftieth birthday.
		Improbably, the research-obsessed Birkeland married, almost immediately virtually abandoning his wife for his work, and within only a few years was divorced by her.
		Birkeland was deeply admired and supported by a small but loyal coterie of friends, patrons, and associates, but seemed to inspire jealousy, resentment, and antipathy in many more.
	www.thewag.net /books/short_takes/0102shtk.htm (2775 words)

	Amazon.fr : The Northern Lights: Livres en anglais: Lucy Jago (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		Birkeland led expeditions to the freezing wastes of northern Norway to prove that the phenomenon Aristotle had called "jumping goats" and Galileo had termed boreale aurora, was caused by a flow of electric particles from the sun.
		Her description of the winter Birkeland and his young protégés spent huddled by the stove makes one gasp at the old, reckless days of science.
		Birkeland's story is a fascinating one, evoking the manic, punishing era of polar exploration as it overlapped with early-20th-century atomic physics, set against a background of Norway's struggle for independence and the outbreak of World War I."
	www.amazon.fr /Northern-Lights-Lucy-Jago/dp/0375708820 (1346 words)

	Untitled Document
		As a youth, Birkeland learned that the Earth was a magnet and that auroras are usually seen near the poles, where the lines of magnetic force are concentrated.
		From his work in the Arctic and with a lab now equipped with sophisticated equipment, Birkeland was able to pinpoint the source of the magnetic disruptions that produced the polar fireworks.
		Today, Birkeland's theories that the northern lights are caused by charged particles coming from the sun that interact with the Earth's atmosphere is considered essentially correct.
	scibooks.org /northernlights.html (785 words)

	Catastrophism: Man, Myth and Mayhem in Ancient History and the Sciences
		Plasma Cosmology Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland (1867-1917) was the founder of experimental astrophysics.
		Birkeland studied under Poincare and Hertz and was a professor at Oslo University at the age of 31.
		Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland (1867-1917) was the founder of experimental astrophysics.
	www.catastrophism.com /intro/search.cgi?zoom_query=birkeland (1109 words)

	Amazon.fr : The Northern Lights: The True Story of the Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Aurora Borealis: Livres en ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		Crackling with Arctic adventure, this biography of the brilliant Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland (1873-1917) is set in the early 20th century and cast against the driving spirits of the Edwardian Age.
		Against the backdrop of these arduous conditions, Birkeland also dealt with marriage and divorce, political tumult and war, and the nefarious actions of his business partner, who took credit for Birkeland's invention of an electromagnetic furnace and later undermined his chance for a Nobel prize nomination.
		Birkeland's once overlooked theories are now being reassessed as prophetic and considered an essential element in understanding electromagnetism, comets, and the sun.
	www.amazon.fr /Northern-Lights-Unlocked-Secrets-Borealis/dp/0375420274 (705 words)

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