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For many centuries, people have looked with wonder at the Northern Lights. These mysterious lights often brighten the night sky in countries near the North Pole. The Northern Lights are also called the aurora borealis. An aurora is a natural burst of light that can be seen with the unaided eye. An aurora over the South Pole is called the aurora australis, or Southern Lights.
Auroras appear as large areas of moving light. They are often green, red or purple in color. Some auroras can extend across the sky for thousands of kilometers.
Scientists have long known that auroras are caused by a storm of magnetic energy high above the Earth's surface. But scientists have been debating exactly what forces in nature cause these storms to create the colorful light shows.
Recently, researchers working for the American space agency said they found the answer by using five of the agency's satellites. The researchers say the sun's and Earth's electromagnetic fields normally move past one another in different directions. But when enough energy builds between the two fields, they separate and reconnect themselves in a new shape.
This reconnection releases a huge amount of electrical current in the Earth's magnetosphere. The researchers say the reconnection happens about one hundred twenty-nine thousand kilometers away from the planet. That is about one third of the distance to the moon.
The five satellites were launched last year as part of the American space agency's THEMIS project. THEMIS is a word the agency uses to represent Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions During Substorms.
The researchers were able to directly observe the magnetic substorms using both the satellites and twenty ground observatories. The observatories are in Canada and the American state of Alaska.
Every four days, the satellites lined up half way between the North and South Poles to record observations. Equipment on the ground helped to identify when and where a substorm was forming. Other devices measure the auroral light from particles moving along Earth's magnetic field. Their observations of six months ago confirmed that magnetic reconnection leads to substorms.
The researchers say there is still more to be discovered about substorms. The Northern Lights are exciting to watch. However, the forces responsible for them can damage satellites, guidance systems and radio communication. They are also a possible threat to air travelers and astronauts.
Scientists hope that more investigation will lead to better methods of predicting substorms, both to protect equipment and lives.
A college student recently found two ancient stone objects in the American state of South Carolina. He made the discovery during an archeological dig in an area known as the Topper Site.
The student, Matthew Carey, found the objects just a short distance from each other. They appear to have been buried together. University of South Carolina archeologist Albert Goodyear said the objects could be cutting tools. But he believes they look like the heads of spears or long knives. Mister Goodyear said they seem to be about eleven thousand years old.
Earlier archeological work at the Topper Site may have uncovered evidence of a settlement from as early as fifty thousand years ago
The Topper Site got its name from a local man. Years ago, David Topper told Mister Goodyear about a place he might find interesting near the Savannah River. A chemical company owns the land. The company lets the scientists work on the huge site each spring. The Topper Site covers an area measuring more than thirty thousand square meters.
Digging begins when the local wild-turkey-hunting season ends. Each May, Albert Goodyear leads volunteers for five weeks in uncovering the site's mysteries. The volunteers are scientists, teachers, students, and anyone else who likes to explore the past. They dig by hand. It is hard, painstaking work. But most scientists would say the site is well worth the hard work it requires.
Mister Goodyear first began working near the place that would become the Topper Site in the nineteen eighties. He led a team searching for objects belonging to the Clovis people. Most scientists at the time believed that these people were the first settlers in the Americas.
The name "Clovis" came from an area near Clovis, New Mexico. Evidence of the people was found there. Scientists had long believed that human beings first entered North America across a land bridge from what is now Russia and Alaska. They thought these first Americans arrived about eleven or twelve thousand years ago. But in the late twentieth century, some researchers began to question that theory.
Several discoveries became especially important in disputing the belief. Among the most important ones were findings at the Monte Verde Camp in Chile. Scientists began finding ancient artifacts there beginning in nineteen seventy-six. The artifacts included a piece of meat that had lasted many centuries. It might have been from an ancient animal similar to a modern elephant.
The findings at Monte Verde showed that humans were in South America about thirteen thousand years ago. Experts said that was about one thousand years before the Clovis people could have traveled there.
In nineteen ninety-eight, Mister Goodyear and his team wanted to find more artifacts of the Clovis people. He planned a dig near the Savannah River. But the river had flooded the area he wanted to examine. So he decided to start digging nearby.
Today, he remembers how much he regretted the flood. He told V.O.A. that did not want to move his explorations. But the area proved a big surprise. The archeologist described it as the best thing that ever happened to him.
The flood caused Mister Goodyear and his team to dig about a meter deeper than usual for Clovis artifacts. They found evidence of tools and extremely small stone particles or flakes. The objects appeared older than those made or used by the Clovis people. The objects were found during the last two weeks of the Goodyear team's yearly research project.
Digging at Topper in the following years added to the artifact collection. The scientists found artifacts that appear to have come from times before the Clovis people.
Four years ago, Mister Goodyear and his team found ancient plant material at the Topper Site. Shortly before the work was to end, they discovered black soil. The soil provided charcoal, a material combining wood and other substances. Charcoal can be tested for age by a process called radiocarbon dating.
Tom Stafford of the Stafford Research Laboratories in Colorado arrived to take pieces of the charcoal. Months later, the test results were announced. They showed that the charcoal could be up to fifty thousand years old.
If correct, it would mean that the first settlement in the Americas took place many years earlier than had been thought. It could also mean settlers lived in North America fifty thousand years ago.
Some experts do not accept that human beings made or used the most ancient objects found at the Topper Site. Some believe that the weather and the ages made these artifacts look like tools. And experts continue to disagree about when North America was settled.
Mister Goodyear and his team plan to continue digging. They hope to find more evidence of very early peoples in America. When next May comes, they will be again excavating at the Topper Site.
Have special plans this 09/09/09?
Everyone from brides and grooms to movie studio execs are celebrating the upcoming calendrical anomaly in their own way.
In Florida, at least one county clerk's office is offering a one-day wedding special for $99.99. The rarity of this Sept. 9 hasn't been lost on the creators of the iPod, who have moved their traditional Tuesday release day to Wednesday to take advantage of the special date. Focus Features is releasing their new film "9," an animated tale about the apocalypse, on the 9th.
Not only does the date look good in marketing promotions, but it also represents the last set of repeating, single-digit dates that we'll see for almost a century (until January 1, 2101), or a millennium (mark your calendars for January 1, 3001), depending on how you want to count it.
Though technically there's nothing special about the symmetrical date, some concerned with the history and meaning of numbers ascribe powerful significance to 09/09/09.
For cultures in which the number nine is lucky, Sept. 9 is anticipated - while others might see the date as an ominous warning.
Math magic
Modern numerologists - who operate outside the realm of real science - believe that mystical significance or vibrations can be assigned to each numeral one through nine, and different combinations of the digits produce tangible results in life depending on their application.
As the final numeral, the number nine holds special rank. It is associated with forgiveness, compassion and success on the positive side as well as arrogance and self-righteousness on the negative, according to numerologists.
Though usually discredited as bogus, numerologists do have a famous predecessor to look to. Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician and father of the famous theorem, is also credited with popularizing numerology in ancient times.
"Pythagoras most of all seems to have honored and advanced the study concerned with numbers, having taken it away from the use of merchants and likening all things to numbers," wrote Aristoxenus, an ancient Greek historian, in the 4th century B.C.
As part of his obsession with numbers both mathematically and divine, and like many mathematicians before and since, Pythagoras noted that nine in particular had many unique properties.
Any grade-schooler could tell you, for example, that the sum of the two-digits resulting from nine multiplied by any other single-digit number will equal nine. So 9x3=27, and 2+7=9.
Multiply nine by any two, three or four-digit number and the sums of those will also break down to nine. For example: 9x62 = 558; 5+5+8=18; 1+8=9.
Sept. 9 also happens to be the 252nd day of the year (2 + 5 +2)...
Loving 9
Both China and Japan have strong feelings about the number nine. Those feelings just happen to be on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The Chinese pulled out all the stops to celebrate their lucky number eight during last year's Summer Olympics, ringing the games in at 8 p.m. on 08/08/08. What many might not realize is that nine comes in second on their list of auspicious digits and is associated with long life, due to how similar its pronunciation is to the local word for long-lasting (eight sounds like wealth).
Historically, ancient Chinese emperors associated themselves closely with the number nine, which appeared prominently in architecture and royal dress, often in the form of nine fearsome dragons. The imperial dynasties were so convinced of the power of the number nine that the palace complex at Beijing's Forbidden City is rumored to have been built with 9,999 rooms.
Japanese emperors would have never worn a robe with nine dragons, however.
In Japanese, the word for nine is a homophone for the word for suffering, so the number is considered highly unlucky - second only to four, which sounds like death.
Many Japanese will go so far as to avoid room numbers including nine at hotels or hospitals, if the building planners haven't already eliminated them altogether.
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Susan Larson still remembers her mother's reaction. Susan was about ten years old, growing up in the Midwest, when she discovered Nancy Drew. She enjoyed the mysteries. But there was something else that she especially enjoyed.
SUSAN LARSON: "I wanted to do so much more than girls could do back then. So it was exciting for me to read about this girl, Nancy Drew, who was eighteen and drove a sports car and helped her Dad solve crime. And I read more than I went outside and played and made my mom mad."
Susan Larson grew up and became a librarian. She works in the Fairfax County Public Library, the largest system in Virginia. She still talks warmly about the Nancy Drew series which has been around for almost eighty years.
Publisher Simon and Schuster says it has sold two hundred million copies of Nancy Drew books in twenty-five languages around the world. Mothers have given copies to their daughters, who saved them for their own daughters.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton read Nancy Drew. So did all three of the women ever to serve on the United States Supreme Court. They are the retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the current Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the newest justice, Sonia Sotomayor.
Another reader who was influenced by the original Nancy Drew series is Janet Evanovich. She writes best sellers about a female bounty hunter named Stephanie Plum. Bounty hunters act as unofficial law enforcement agents.
Recognize a pattern here?
Jennifer Fisher is a lawyer and Nancy Drew collector in Arizona who organizes Nancy Drew conventions.
JENNIFER FISHER: "There's a lot of fans I come across who have gone on to have careers in law enforcement or become attorneys like myself. And I think that Nancy's great sense of, you know, fighting for justice and helping others was a great inspiration."
Who is Nancy Drew? She is a teenager whose mother died when she was very young. She lives with her father and their housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, in the town of River Heights. Nancy is pretty and popular. She has a boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, and two best girlfriends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne.
Nancy is always investigating mysterious wrongdoing, and often faces danger. She is trapped in trunks, closets, and locked rooms. But in the end she always succeeds.
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| Nancy Drew as pictured on the cover of the first book in the series, "The Secret of the Old Clock." | Susan Larson reads a scene from Nancy Drew's first adventure, "The Secret of the Old Clock":
SUSAN LARSON: "Nancy struggled to get away. She twisted and squirmed, kicked and clawed. But she was helpless in the viselike grip of the powerful man.
"'Let me go!' Nancy cried, struggling harder. 'Let me go!'"
"Sid, ignoring her pleas, half dragged her across the room. Opening the closet door, he flung her inside."
"Nancy heard a key turn."
"'Now you can spy all you want!' Sid sneered. 'But to make sure nobody'll let you out, I'll just take this key along.'"
"When Nancy could no longer hear the tramp of his heavy boots she was sure Sid had left the house. For a moment a feeling of great relief engulfed her."
"But the next instant Nancy's heart gave a leap. As she heard the muffled roar of the van starting up in the distance, a horrifying realization gripped her."
"'They've left me here to -- to starve!'"
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VOICE TWO:
All of the Nancy Drew books were written by Carolyn Keene -- or so readers are supposed to believe. In reality there was no Carolyn Keene.
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| Edward Stratemeyer | Children's writer Edward Stratemeyer came up with the idea of Nancy Drew in nineteen twenty-nine. He wanted to create a series for girls who were about ten to twelve years old.
But Stratemeyer did not write the books either. He had a system. He would describe characters and plots, then have ghostwriters expand those ideas into a book.
These uncredited writers had to sign agreements never to admit their work. In return, they earned one hundred twenty-five dollars, later raised to two hundred fifty dollars, for each book.
The Stratemeyer Syndicate also invented authors for other popular children's series. These included Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins and the Hardy Boys.
The first Nancy Drew books were published in April of nineteen thirty. That was ten years after American women gained a constitutional right to vote. And it was six months after the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression.
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Mildred Wirt Benson
| The first ghostwriter was Mildred Wirt Benson. Her identity became widely known years later as a result of a legal fight between Stratemeyer Syndicate and its former publisher. She was a journalism graduate of the University of Iowa. She was twenty-four when she wrote "The Secret of the Old Clock" and other early Nancy Drew books.
Mildred Benson disagreed with Edward Stratemeyer's traditional ideas about women. She thought girls could, and should, do the same things as boys. So she made Nancy Drew independent -- or "spunky" as she is often described.
There was not much that Stratemeyer could do about it. He died in May of nineteen thirty, just two weeks after the first three books were published.
His two daughters took over the company. But that did not mean all the women involved with Nancy Drew agreed on how she should act. Reports from the time say the Stratemeyer daughters felt she should be more ladylike.
Mildred Benson wrote twenty-three of the first thirty "Nancy Drew Mystery Stories," the name given the original series. The series expanded over the years to one hundred seventy-five books.
But collector Jennifer Fisher says more than five hundred Nancy Drew books have been published. These include more recent ones such as "Nancy Drew on Campus" in which Nancy is a college student. Another series aimed for younger readers with an eight-year-old Nancy in "The Nancy Drew Notebooks."
The modern world of Nancy Drew also includes a series of graphic novels. And there is the continuing series "Nancy Drew: Girl Detective."
Simon and Schuster publicist Anna McKean says the girl detective stays true to her roots but is "ultra-modern." She drives an environmentally friendly hybrid and checks her e-mail on a BlackBerry. Storylines have explored things such as bullying, cyberspace and reality TV.
In nineteen fifty-nine, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams began rewriting the original series of books that her father created. She got her chance to change Nancy's personality. She made her quieter and more polite.
She also changed the name of Nancy's friend from George Fayne to Georgia and made "George" her nickname. In the original series the girl was named after her grandfather.
But the rewrites also removed some parts from the early books that might have seemed racially offensive to later generations.
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| Deanna Raybourn | Deanna Raybourn is an American mystery writer. Her Lady Julia Grey series is set in England in the late eighteen hundreds. Still, she says her books reflect the Nancy Drew stories that she read as a child:
DEANNA RAYBOURN: "Things that I read as a kid keep cropping up in my own work whether I realize it or not. Nancy has a lot of similarities to my Lady Julia. They're affluent, they are motherless, they have doting fathers. Their besetting sin is curiosity and they get themselves into trouble because they snoop in places where they shouldn't."
VOICE TWO:
Another successful mystery writer who read Nancy Drew is Nevada Barr. She writes the best selling series about park ranger Anna Pigeon. Nevada Barr remembers reading Nancy Drew books the summer she was eleven years old.
NEVADA BARR: "My vision is of an incredibly beautiful girl who seemed quite old to me when I was eleven. But you always remember that she had this incredible freedom that most children don't have and she was so smart."
"They didn't do a lot with really smart girls in literature when I was young. And I think that was one of the things that made Nancy Drew special -- this was in the fifties or early sixties -- was that this girl survived by her wits and that was a new thing."
Over the years, Nancy Drew has appeared in movies and television shows, but without very much success. Nancy Drew expert Jennifer Fisher says the reason is no mystery. The stories on the screen had little in common with the books.
Yet Nancy Drew does not capture everyone's imagination. Susan Larson was a children's librarian in the late nineteen nineties and early two thousands. She remembers that young girls often considered the original books too old fashioned. There was not enough action.
In fact, she says one of her great disappointments was that her own daughters did not like the books nearly as much as she did as a girl.
Elizabeth Rhodes also works at the Fairfax County Public Library. In graduate school she wrote a paper on Nancy Drew. She says the original books -- written during the Depression -- served as an escape from difficult economic times.
The books told young girls that they can be more than just someone's wife or daughter. As Elizabeth Rhodes says, that was a revolutionary message for its time. Nancy Drew may not represent classic literature. But after all these years, the message is still worth reading. |
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