An Ambitious Journey to Illuminate the Sky with Man-Made Aurora Borealis

Karl Remström made his way down the mountain, feeling frozen and drained. It had taken him four hours to summit, followed by hours spent thawing out and fixing his gear. The trek home took another four challenging hours through the snow, a routine he repeated nearly every day for almost a month. But he was determined, undeterred by the frigid temperatures.

Upon returning to the small shelter he fashioned from branches at the mountain’s base, Remström checked his instruments and waited. Immediately, the galvanometer’s needle moved. He noted his findings and stepped outside to witness a massive beam of light reaching from the mountaintop into the sky.

It was December 29, 1882, and Remström was in northern Lapland, attempting to validate his theory regarding the origins of the aurora borealis. Few believed him then, but his findings would soon change that. He was convinced he had generated an artificial replica of the Northern Lights.

Lemström, a Finnish physicist, had become captivated by the aurora at the age of 30. While a postdoctoral researcher in Sweden in 1868, he participated in a scientific expedition to Svalbard, Norway—deep within the Arctic Circle. Although from southern Finland and having witnessed the aurora before, this marked his first experience with such a display at this latitude, and he was completely enthralled.

During that period, the cause of the aurora remained a mystery, spurring heated scientific discourse. Many of Remström’s contemporaries sought ways to create miniature simulations, with some achieving success. For instance, Swiss physicist Auguste de la Rive showcased in 1860 that a jet of violet light could be produced within a vacuum-sealed glass tube. He asserted it faithfully duplicated the phenomena of the Northern Lights, regardless of the primary color actually being green.

Two primary theories circulated about the nature of the Northern Lights. Some believed they stemmed from meteorite dust drawn by the Earth’s magnetic field, burning up in the atmosphere. Others theorized they were some form of electromagnetic occurrence, though the specifics remained hazy.

Lemström sided with Team Electromagnetics, positing that aurora borealis formed when electrical currents in the atmosphere flowed into cooler mountain peaks. Many researchers dismissed him as misguided or eccentric. Fiona Amery, a science historian at Cambridge University, stumbled upon Lemström’s nearly forgotten paper while researching auroral science of the 19th century.

Lemström was fueled to prove his detractors wrong. Instead of relying on small-scale simulations, he aimed to manifest a full-scale aurora in its natural environment: the frigid Lapland mountains.

By 1871, he held a lecturer position at what is now the University of Helsinki. He convinced the Finnish Scientific Association to back him in an expedition to Finnish Lapland’s Inari region, where he set up his device on Luosmavaara mountain on November 22 of the same year. His apparatus comprised a two-square-meter copper wire spiral secured over a two-meter high steel column, with metal rods pointing skyward connected to it. A copper wire route extended four kilometers down the mountain, linking to a galvanometer for current measurement and a metal plate for grounding. This intricate mechanism was designed to transmit and amplify electrical currents Lemström firmly believed were descending from the atmosphere, thus creating the aurora borealis.

According to Amery, Remström likened the aurora borealis to lightning, suggesting that his device functioned similarly to a lightning rod. “He described lightning as sudden, while the aurora was gradual and spread out. He believed he could capture the aurora much like he could attract lightning.”

That evening, following his strenuous climb, Remström spotted a beam of light above the summit, and upon analyzing its spectrum, he discerned it matched the distinct yellow-green wavelength characteristic of the aurora borealis. He was certain he had evoked the Northern Lights. Unfortunately, no one acknowledged his findings due to the absence of photographic proof or independent witnesses. “He was regarded as quite obscure,” Amélie states.

This would have remained the case were it not for a fortunate turn of events. In 1879, the newly formed International Polar Commission announced plans for an International Polar Year—a year-long scientific initiative in the Arctic. “Suddenly, he could secure funding for aurora research,” Amélie says, “and he found himself in the right place at the right time.”

Arctic Mission

Recognizing the opportunity, Remström attended a planning conference in St. Petersburg, campaigning for the establishment of a meteorological observatory in Lapland. The committee approved, and Lemström opted for a site near the small Finnish town of Sodankyla. The Finnish Meteorological Observatory was founded in September 1882, with Lemström appointed as its first director.

He immediately sought a location to resume his aurora experiments, eventually settling on Olantunturi mountain, roughly 20 kilometers from the observatory. In early December, with a mere three hours of daylight and average temperatures around -30°C (-22°F), he and three helpers trekked to the summit and assembled a larger version of his previous device, spanning approximately 900 square meters.

The conditions were severe. Lemström later noted that it took four hours to reach the observatory from the summit, after which he needed to thaw out and frequently fix the wires, which crumbled under the weight of frost. He could work only a few minutes before his hands became numb, and this apparatus, too, operated briefly before freezing up again.

However, the effort proved worthwhile. Once the device was operational on December 5, Remström and his assistants witnessed a “yellow-white light surrounding the mountaintop; contrarily, no such brightness was found in the vicinity.” Spectroscopic analysis indicated the light matched the natural aurora’s properties.

Over the following weeks, similar occurrences transpired nearly every night. The most breathtaking display occurred on December 29, when a beam of light ascended 134 meters skyward. Lacking photographs, Remström resorted to creating drawings. His watercolor depicted a radiant beam surging to the mountain’s peak. He also erected two smaller aurora conductors on another mountain, Pieterintonturi, claiming to have observed comparable phenomena there.

Lemström was finally ready to share his triumph with the world. He sent a telegram to the Finnish Academy of Sciences, which gained widespread attention. The journal Nature published three detailed accounts in its May and June 1883 issue, where Remström proclaimed that “experiments… unmistakably demonstrate that the aurora is an electrical phenomenon.”

If he anticipated universal acclaim, he was gravely mistaken. Although his endeavors captured media attention, few colleagues concurred with his claims of having instigated the aurora borealis. “Some speculated he might have generated other intriguing electrical phenomena, such as St. Elmo’s fire or zodiacal lights,” Amery notes. “Others suggested it resembled an odd type of lightning more akin to ball lightning, and there were those who believed he may have fabricated it altogether.”

In early 1884, Danish aurora expert Sophus Tromholt attempted to replicate Remström’s experiment on Mount Esja in Iceland, but his device registered “no signs of life whatsoever.” A subsequent replication effort in the French Pyrenees in 1885 also faltered, except for civil engineer Célestin-Xavier Vossena, who narrowly escaped electrocution.

Unfazed, Lemström boldly asserted to have recreated the aurora again in late 1884, this time employing sturdier wires and adding a mechanism to inject electricity into the circuit, believing it would boost its energy. Nature published another report detailing these findings, yet Lemström’s zeal for working in extreme conditions began to wane, leading him to pursue new ventures (his next project involved using electricity to enhance crop growth). He passed away in 1904, still resolute in his conviction that he had generated the aurora borealis.

However, he did not. His hypothesis was flawed. Auroras arise from charged particles entering Earth’s atmosphere from space, rather than emanating from the ground. Still, Amery suggests he might have created something significant. “I suspect it could have been St. Elmo’s Fire, a form of luminous discharge,” she notes. “That’s my prevailing theory.” However, she also observes, “Perhaps there was a hint of wishful thinking.” The reality remains elusive, and we may never know—unless someone is inspired to construct a vast array of copper wire atop a frigid mountain during the Arctic winter.