Kristian Birkeland
Encyclopedia
Kristian Olaf Birkeland (13 December 1867 – 15 June 1917) was a Norwegian
scientist
. He is best remembered as the person who first elucidated the nature of the Aurora borealis. In order to fund his research on the aurorae, he invented the electromagnetic cannon
and the Birkeland-Eyde process
of fixing nitrogen
from the air. Birkeland was nominated for the Nobel Prize
seven times.
(Oslo
today) and wrote his first scientific paper at the age of 18.
Birkeland married Ida Charlotte Hammer in May 1905, they had no children and due to Birkeland's work, they finally divorced in 1911.
Suffering from severe paranoia
due to his use of Veronal
as a sleeping aid, he died under mysterious circumstances in his room in the Hotel Seiyoken in Tokyo
while visiting colleagues at the University of Tokyo
. A post-mortem revealed that Birkeland had taken 10g of veronal the night he died, instead of the 0.5g recommended. The time of death was estimated at 7am on 15 June 1917. Some authors have claimed that he committed suicide.
data. The results of the Norwegian Polar Expedition conducted from 1899 to 1900 contained the first determination of the global pattern of electric currents in the polar region from ground magnetic field measurements. The discovery of X-rays inspired Birkeland to develop vacuum chambers to study the influence of magnets on cathode rays. Birkeland noticed that an electron beam directed toward a magnetised 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. He developed a theory in which energetic electrons were ejected from sunspots on the solar surface, directed to the Earth
, and guided to the Earth's polar regions by the geomagnetic field where they produced the visible aurora.
The scale of Birkeland's research enterprises was such that funding became an overwhelming obstacle. Recognizing that technological invention could bring wealth, he developed an electromagnetic cannon
and, with some investors, formed a firearms company. The coil-gun worked, except the high muzzle velocities he predicted (600 m/s) were not produced. The most he could get from his largest machine was 100 m/s, corresponding to a disappointing projectile range of only 1 km. So he renamed the device an aerial torpedo
and arranged a demonstration with the express aim of selling the company. At the demonstration, one of the coils shorted and produced a sensational inductive arc complete with noise, flame, and smoke. This was the first failure of any of the launchers that Birkeland had built. It could easily have been repaired and another demonstration organized.
However, fate intervened in the form of an engineer named Sam Eyde
. At a dinner party only one week later, Eyde told Birkeland that there was an industrial need for the biggest flash of lightning that can be brought down to Earth in order to make artificial fertilizer. Birkeland's 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. The pair worked to develop the prototype furnace into a design that was economically viable for large-scale manufacture. The resulting company, Norsk Hydro
, hugely enriched Norway, and Birkeland then enjoyed adequate funding for research, his only real interest.
The fact that Birkeland joined with Eyde as a business partner appears to have been one of the reasons why Birkeland was unsuccessful in being awarded the Nobel Prize for his idea. Eyde wanted to be nominated along with Birkeland; however, the Nobel Prize is designed to recognise the original idea, not any commercial applications. This resulted in a possibly contentious nomination, and this combined with the fact that at that time relations between Sweden and Norway were delicate, meant that he wasn't nominated by the committee.
In 1913, Birkeland may have been the first to predict that plasma was ubiquitous in space. He wrote: "It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. We have assumed that each stellar system in evolutions throws off electric corpuscles into space. It does not seem unreasonable therefore to think that the greater part of the material masses in the universe is found, not in the solar systems or nebulae, but in 'empty' space."
In 1916, Birkeland was probably the first person to successfully predict that the solar wind
behaves as do all charged particles in an electric field: "From a physical point of view it is most probable that solar rays are neither exclusively negative nor positive rays, but of both kinds" In other words, the Solar Wind consists of both negative electrons and positive ions.
Birkeland suggested that polar electric currents
-- today referred to as auroral electrojets—were connected to a system of currents that flowed along geomagnetic field lines into and away from the polar region. He provided a diagram of field-aligned currents in his book, The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903. This diagram is reproduced on the back of the bank note in the lower right corner. This book contains chapters on magnetic storms on the Earth
and their relationship to the Sun
, the origin of the Sun itself, Halley's comet, and the rings of Saturn
. 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.
The proof of Birkeland's field-aligned currents could come only from observations made above the ionosphere
with satellite
s. A magnetometer
onboard a U.S. Navy navigation satellite launched in 1963 observed magnetic disturbances on nearly every pass over the high-latitude regions of the Earth. The magnetic disturbances were originally interpreted as hydromagnetic waves, but it was soon realized that they were due to field-aligned or Birkeland currents.
The first complete map of the statistical location of Birkeland current
s in the Earth's polar region was developed in 1974 by A.J. Zmuda and J.C. Armstrong and refined in 1976 by T. Iijima and T.A. Potemra
As a scholar with wide interests, Birkeland joined the control commission of NSFPS (= Norwegian Society For Psychic Research). The 299 members of the society included, by 1922, people like prime minister
Gunnar Knudsen
, as well as a wide range of doctors, professors and shipowners. The society arranged circles experimenting with dancing tables and automatic writing
, but attracted more attention arranging controlled experiments with invited foreign mediums
. In 1912 it was the medium Etta Wriedt from Detroit, famous for her "spirit trumpet
", who was exposed as a fraud. Mrs Wriedt's "trumpet" should have been speaking with the "spirit voice" of, among others, Hypatia, but in Norway the "trumpet blows" were exposed as explosions produced by potassium
and water
. Professor Birkeland exclaimed on that occasion, "I'm supposedly against all witch burnings, but a teeny weeny one in honour of Mrs Wriedt would not have been in the way."
, simulating the Earth and Mars suspended in an evacuated box. Birkeland's face appears a second time in a watermark in the blank space above the drawing of the Terrella, and his rudimentary magnetosphere appears on the back but is only visible under ultraviolet light. The ring encircling the magnetic pole depicted on the back of the bank note is similar to the patterns predicted by Birkeland and shown more recently by satellites.
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
. He is best remembered as the person who first elucidated the nature of the Aurora borealis. In order to fund his research on the aurorae, he invented the electromagnetic cannon
Coilgun
A coilgun is a type of projectile accelerator that consists of one or more coils used as electromagnets in the configuration of a synchronous linear motor which accelerate a magnetic projectile to high velocity...
and the Birkeland-Eyde process
Birkeland-Eyde process
The Birkeland–Eyde process was developed by Norwegian industrialist and scientist Kristian Birkeland along with his business partner Sam Eyde in 1903, based on a method used by Henry Cavendish in 1784. This process was used to fix atmospheric nitrogen which was in turn used to produce nitric acid,...
of fixing nitrogen
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...
from the air. Birkeland was nominated for the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
seven times.
Life and death
Birkeland was born in ChristianiaOslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
(Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
today) and wrote his first scientific paper at the age of 18.
Birkeland married Ida Charlotte Hammer in May 1905, they had no children and due to Birkeland's work, they finally divorced in 1911.
Suffering from severe paranoia
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
due to his use of Veronal
Barbital
Barbital , also called barbitone, was the first commercially marketed barbiturate. It was used as a sleeping aid from 1903 until the mid-1950s. The chemical names for barbital are diethylmalonyl urea or diethylbarbituric acid...
as a sleeping aid, he died under mysterious circumstances in his room in the Hotel Seiyoken in Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
while visiting colleagues at the University of Tokyo
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university...
. A post-mortem revealed that Birkeland had taken 10g of veronal the night he died, instead of the 0.5g recommended. The time of death was estimated at 7am on 15 June 1917. Some authors have claimed that he committed suicide.
Research
He organized several expeditions to Norway's high-latitude regions where he established a network of observatories under the auroral regions to collect magnetic fieldMagnetic field
A magnetic field is a mathematical description of the magnetic influence of electric currents and magnetic materials. The magnetic field at any given point is specified by both a direction and a magnitude ; as such it is a vector field.Technically, a magnetic field is a pseudo vector;...
data. The results of the Norwegian Polar Expedition conducted from 1899 to 1900 contained the first determination of the global pattern of electric currents in the polar region from ground magnetic field measurements. The discovery of X-rays inspired Birkeland to develop vacuum chambers to study the influence of magnets on cathode rays. Birkeland noticed that an electron beam directed toward a magnetised terrella
Terrella
A terrella is a small magnetised model ball representing the Earth, that is thought to have been invented by the English physician William Gilbert while investigating magnetism, and further developed 300 years later by the Norwegian scientist and explorer Kristian Birkeland, while investigating...
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. He developed a theory in which energetic electrons were ejected from sunspots on the solar surface, directed to the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, and guided to the Earth's polar regions by the geomagnetic field where they produced the visible aurora.
The scale of Birkeland's research enterprises was such that funding became an overwhelming obstacle. Recognizing that technological invention could bring wealth, he developed an electromagnetic cannon
Coilgun
A coilgun is a type of projectile accelerator that consists of one or more coils used as electromagnets in the configuration of a synchronous linear motor which accelerate a magnetic projectile to high velocity...
and, with some investors, formed a firearms company. The coil-gun worked, except the high muzzle velocities he predicted (600 m/s) were not produced. The most he could get from his largest machine was 100 m/s, corresponding to a disappointing projectile range of only 1 km. So he renamed the device an aerial torpedo
Aerial torpedo
The aerial torpedo, airborne torpedo or air-dropped torpedo is a naval weapon, the torpedo, designed to be dropped into water from an aircraft after which it propels itself to the target. First used in World War I, air-dropped torpedoes were used extensively in World War II, and remain in limited...
and arranged a demonstration with the express aim of selling the company. At the demonstration, one of the coils shorted and produced a sensational inductive arc complete with noise, flame, and smoke. This was the first failure of any of the launchers that Birkeland had built. It could easily have been repaired and another demonstration organized.
However, fate intervened in the form of an engineer named Sam Eyde
Sam Eyde
Samuel Eyde was a Norwegian engineer and industrialist, the founder of Norsk Hydro and Elkem.-Biography:Sam Eyde was the son of a shipowner, and studied engineering in Berlin where he graduated in 1891. He started his career in Hamburg, working with the railways where he planned new lines, bridges...
. At a dinner party only one week later, Eyde told Birkeland that there was an industrial need for the biggest flash of lightning that can be brought down to Earth in order to make artificial fertilizer. Birkeland's 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. The pair worked to develop the prototype furnace into a design that was economically viable for large-scale manufacture. The resulting company, Norsk Hydro
Norsk Hydro
Norsk Hydro ASA is a Norwegian aluminium and renewable energy company, headquartered in Oslo. Hydro is the fourth largest integrated aluminium company worldwide. It has operations in some 40 countries around the world and is active on all continents. The Norwegian state holds a 43.8 percent...
, hugely enriched Norway, and Birkeland then enjoyed adequate funding for research, his only real interest.
The fact that Birkeland joined with Eyde as a business partner appears to have been one of the reasons why Birkeland was unsuccessful in being awarded the Nobel Prize for his idea. Eyde wanted to be nominated along with Birkeland; however, the Nobel Prize is designed to recognise the original idea, not any commercial applications. This resulted in a possibly contentious nomination, and this combined with the fact that at that time relations between Sweden and Norway were delicate, meant that he wasn't nominated by the committee.
In 1913, Birkeland may have been the first to predict that plasma was ubiquitous in space. He wrote: "It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. We have assumed that each stellar system in evolutions throws off electric corpuscles into space. It does not seem unreasonable therefore to think that the greater part of the material masses in the universe is found, not in the solar systems or nebulae, but in 'empty' space."
In 1916, Birkeland was probably the first person to successfully predict that the solar wind
Solar wind
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. It mostly consists of electrons and protons with energies usually between 1.5 and 10 keV. The stream of particles varies in temperature and speed over time...
behaves as do all charged particles in an electric field: "From a physical point of view it is most probable that solar rays are neither exclusively negative nor positive rays, but of both kinds" In other words, the Solar Wind consists of both negative electrons and positive ions.
Birkeland current
A Birkeland current is a set of currents which flow along geomagnetic field line connecting the Earth’s magnetosphere to the Earth's high latitude ionosphere. They are a specific class of magnetic field-aligned currents. Lately, the term Birkeland currents has been expanded by some authors to...
-- today referred to as auroral electrojets—were connected to a system of currents that flowed along geomagnetic field lines into and away from the polar region. He provided a diagram of field-aligned currents in his book, The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903. This diagram is reproduced on the back of the bank note in the lower right corner. This book contains chapters on magnetic storms on the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
and their relationship to the Sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
, the origin of the Sun itself, Halley's comet, and the rings of Saturn
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...
. 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.
The proof of Birkeland's field-aligned currents could come only from observations made above the ionosphere
Ionosphere
The ionosphere is a part of the upper atmosphere, comprising portions of the mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere, distinguished because it is ionized by solar radiation. It plays an important part in atmospheric electricity and forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere...
with satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
s. A magnetometer
Magnetometer
A magnetometer is a measuring instrument used to measure the strength or direction of a magnetic field either produced in the laboratory or existing in nature...
onboard a U.S. Navy navigation satellite launched in 1963 observed magnetic disturbances on nearly every pass over the high-latitude regions of the Earth. The magnetic disturbances were originally interpreted as hydromagnetic waves, but it was soon realized that they were due to field-aligned or Birkeland currents.
The first complete map of the statistical location of Birkeland current
Birkeland current
A Birkeland current is a set of currents which flow along geomagnetic field line connecting the Earth’s magnetosphere to the Earth's high latitude ionosphere. They are a specific class of magnetic field-aligned currents. Lately, the term Birkeland currents has been expanded by some authors to...
s in the Earth's polar region was developed in 1974 by A.J. Zmuda and J.C. Armstrong and refined in 1976 by T. Iijima and T.A. Potemra
As a scholar with wide interests, Birkeland joined the control commission of NSFPS (= Norwegian Society For Psychic Research). The 299 members of the society included, by 1922, people like prime minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
Gunnar Knudsen
Gunnar Knudsen
Gunnar Knudsen , born Aanon Gunerius Knudsen, was a Norwegian politician from the Liberal Party who had two spells as Prime Minister of Norway from 1908 to 1910 and from 1913 to 1920...
, as well as a wide range of doctors, professors and shipowners. The society arranged circles experimenting with dancing tables and automatic writing
Automatic writing
Automatic writing or psychography is writing which the writer states to be produced from a subconscious and/or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the content.-History:...
, but attracted more attention arranging controlled experiments with invited foreign mediums
Mediumship
Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...
. In 1912 it was the medium Etta Wriedt from Detroit, famous for her "spirit trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
", who was exposed as a fraud. Mrs Wriedt's "trumpet" should have been speaking with the "spirit voice" of, among others, Hypatia, but in Norway the "trumpet blows" were exposed as explosions produced by potassium
Potassium
Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K and atomic number 19. Elemental potassium is a soft silvery-white alkali metal that oxidizes rapidly in air and is very reactive with water, generating sufficient heat to ignite the hydrogen emitted in the reaction.Potassium and sodium are...
and water
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
. Professor Birkeland exclaimed on that occasion, "I'm supposedly against all witch burnings, but a teeny weeny one in honour of Mrs Wriedt would not have been in the way."
Legacy
An example of one of his experiments is depicted on the left front of the Norwegian 200 kroner note it shows a magnetized terrellaTerrella
A terrella is a small magnetised model ball representing the Earth, that is thought to have been invented by the English physician William Gilbert while investigating magnetism, and further developed 300 years later by the Norwegian scientist and explorer Kristian Birkeland, while investigating...
, simulating the Earth and Mars suspended in an evacuated box. Birkeland's face appears a second time in a watermark in the blank space above the drawing of the Terrella, and his rudimentary magnetosphere appears on the back but is only visible under ultraviolet light. The ring encircling the magnetic pole depicted on the back of the bank note is similar to the patterns predicted by Birkeland and shown more recently by satellites.
Quotes
- It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. — Kristian Birkeland
- A very few lonely pioneers make their way to high places never before visited . . . they create the living conditions of mankind and the majority are living on their work. — Kristian Birkeland
External links
- On Possible Electric Phenomena in Solar Systems and Nebulae, Extract from The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903
Books
- Full text of The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903 (158 MB)
- Kristian Birkeland, The First Space Scientist (2005) [ISBN 1-4020-3293-5] by Egeland, Alv, Burke, William J.
- Jago, L., The Northern Lights, (London:2002, Penguin Books) [ISBN 0-14-029015-X]/[ISBN 9780140290158].
Articles
- http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&sim_query=YES&aut_xct=NO&aut_logic=OR&obj_logic=OR&author=&object=&start_mon=&start_year=&end_mon=&end_year=&ttl_logic=OR&title=birkeland&txt_logic=OR&text=&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&obj_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1More articles from the NASA Astrophysics Data System]
- "Professor Kr. Birkeland: His Life and Work", A. Egeland, E. Leer, in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science Vol 14 No. 6 December 1986