Northern Lights

There’s always a scene in an 'Invisible Man' drama where the invisible character is splashed with something—water, paint, rainfall—and his limbs and position become suddenly apparent to us. Before we weren’t sure, but this adhering stuff shows us the truth. And that’s precisely what’s so striking about the northern lights. A bucketful of light thrown by the sun that makes visible the invisible shape of the earth’s own magnetosphere. And what is the shape? Blankets. Blankets, folded and enveloping. That’s the true but invisible nature of our magnetosphere. Is there a cosier notion?