Recently, Iowa was privileged to witness a rare display of the aurora borealis following a monumental geomagnetic storm the likes of which has not been seen in 20 years. And I slept right through it.
I have an excuse. It happened at night. You know, when it was dark. Normally, the northern lights come only to the northern frozen wastelands of our planet, Alaska, Sweden, the North Pole, Minnesota. But southerners like us in Iowa, never get to see those spectacular swirling colors in the sky. The Great Pyramid of Giza never comes to Iowa either. Neither does the Grand Canyon, or Mount Everest or Victoria Falls or the Taj Mahal. Sure, Iowa has cool stuff to see, too, like the Maquoketa Caves and Herbert Hoover’s birthplace in West Branch and the world’s largest Cheeto in Algona. But unlike the aurora borealis, we keep those things at home.
It wasn’t like I was totally uninterested in this once-in-a-lifetime celestial event. I did look out the window once in a roughly northerly direction, but I didn’t see any colored lights. Well, there was that cell tower by the Hy-Vee that blinks red. But I later learned that if you couldn’t see the northern lights from your location, you were supposed to take a photo or video with your phone camera which is more sensitive than the human eye.
So let me get this straight. If you wanted a glimpse of this rare natural phenomenon and you couldn’t actually see it with your own eyes, you have to look at it on your phone? Like you do everything else. These days people have dispensed with visiting friends and relatives in person because we dial them up and see them on our phone. Meetings at work are conducted on the phone. Doctor’s visits are replaced by “telemedicine”.
For $3,500 you can buy an Apple Vision Pro virtual, augmented reality headset that looks like fancy ski goggles that brings you movies in 3D and projects digital scenes into 3D space for you to interact with. You want to go courtside at an NBA game? You want to walk around the Great Pyramid of Giza? Now you can do so from the comfort of your La-Z-Boy. Why wait twenty years for the next solar storm when you can dial up the northern lights whenever it suits you?
They say the aurora borealis is impressive. But does it compare to seeing a Tyrannosaurus Rex eat people in “Jurassic Park” in technicolor and Dolby sound? Is it more impressive than the planet “Dune” with its giant sand worms thundering at you in wrap-around Imax screens?
Our sun sometimes squirts solar flares in our direction, from what feels like the safety of 94 million miles away, giving off the aurora borealis. But keep in mind, the sun is 865,000 miles in diameter, a raging cauldron of everlasting fire and Earth is just a moist blue marble 7,917 miles in diameter, a mere drop of rain hovering too close to the stove. I’m not saying it’s as entertaining as a Tik Tok video on your phone. But it ought to be enough to keep me awake at night.
Living in Iowa: But can the aurora borealis compare to your phone?
May 23, 2024