As a name, Hessdalen may be more familiar to UFO watchers than scientists. The valley in Norway is prone to "strange, hovering, flashing balls of lights" best attributed, as some believe, to alien origins. Now scientists say they're on the verge of an explanation: The valley is a giant natural battery.
The Hessdalen phenomenon has been around for at least a century, but it reached a peak in the 1980s when the lights suddenly started appearing 1o or 20 times a week. UFO enthusiasts took this as a sign that the valley was a portal to other worlds. Google Hessdalen today, and you'll still find plenty of UFO conspiracy sites. But that strange bursts of light in the 1980s attracted physicists, too, interest piqued by the idea of some unexplained natural phenomenon. In the decades since, they have determined the glow likely comes from air turned into plasma.
The unique geology of the valley could be responsible for this plasma. The valley is formed by rocks on one side rich in copper and the other rich in iron and zinc - not unlike the cathode and anode of a battery. Sulfuric acid, leached from the abandoned sulfur mine at the bottom of the valley, could then turn the river into the weak acid of an electrolyte. But where does the charge to energize plasma come from?
It may be extraterrestrial after all. The Hessdalen phenomenon seems especially common after a display of Northern Lights, reports Williams, when solar wind ionizes the earth's atmosphere.
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