We now know that the earth's magnetic field is strongly deformed by its interaction with this wind, and is stretched out like a comet's tail on the earth's dark, night side to 10 times the moon's distance or more, then explosively collapses back every few hours, creating the dancing displays of light at the two poles. Nevertheless, Birkeland is today acknowledged as the first scientist to have proposed an essentially correct hypothesis to explain the Aurora Borealis.
Birkeland's was, in many ways, Norway's golden age. The country was still effectively a vassal-state of Sweden, and would remain so until 1921. But several figures were becoming famous on the world stage -- Ibsen in drama, Grieg in music, Munch in painting, and Nansen in polar exploration (though the North Pole had still never been visited). Kristian Birkeland wanted to join them in the field of geophysics.
For several reasons, Birkeland's life was not an unqualified success story. He became convinced that he needed to make money, if only to finance further expeditions of Arctic research.
First, he gave his attention to the manufacture of a prototype for an electromagnetic cannon capable of propelling shells 220km. In the run-up to World War I, the English, the Germans and the French were all intensely interested in this possibility, but to this day no armed force has ever adopted it.
Second, he expended immense energy on an idea for producing fertilizer from the nitrogen in the air. By means of an electrical process, this nitrogen could be, and was, extracted, but never quite in sufficient qualtities for the process to be commercially viable. But Norway, with its innumerable waterfalls, was in the forefront of the development of hydro-electric power, and, until his death, Birkeland was encouraged and financed by what was then, and remains, Norway's biggest company, Norsk Hydro.
Despite his setbacks, Birkeland pioneered major advances. He successfully constructed a vacuum-filled chamber in which he re-created in miniature, with their electromagnetic causes, phenomena such as the rings of Saturn and the Northern Lights themselves. He also spent much time in Egypt researching another celestial phenomenon, that of Zodiacal Light. This is a faint, tilted cone of light that appears in the west an hour after sunset and in the east an hour before sunrise. It's best observed in totally dark conditions where the air is dry and clear. Egypt fitted the bill perfectly.
Indeed, the reason why Birkeland died in distant Tokyo was in part because he was traveling back to Norway from Egypt via Japan, as an interesting way home in the hazardous European conditions prevailing during the latter days of World War I.
This is a fabulous book. It's hard to know which are the more impressive -- the natural wonders such as herds of reindeer swimming in the sea, their antlers appearing like a floating forest, or the human story, with Kristian Birkeland standing robed among the pyramids like a high priest of ancient times.
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