Forty Years from the Stone Age
Naive.
Rebellious.
Mystical.
Syun-Ichi Akasofu keeps a list of these and 17 other words in his office. They were written by reviewers, who rejected his scientific papers at one time or another during the four decades he's been with the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This week, after 13 years as captain at the helm of the institute, Akasofu carried his list of adjectives next door. On July 1, 1999, he became director of the International Arctic Research Center. To the new job, he brings energy, tenacity, and the experience of a man who helped push the study of the aurora borealis from its infancy to adulthood. Along the way, he became one of the world's leading authorities on the aurora and raised millions to establish the International Arctic Research Center, an institute of scientists from around the globe who team up to study the circumpolar north.
His road was bumpy, but rewarding. When Akasofu, age 28, flew to Fairbanks from his home in Japan in 1958, little was known about the distribution and cause of the northern lights. "As far as the aurora was concerned, we started out in the Stone Age," he said. Along with his mentor Sydney Chapman, the young Akasofu dug in by writing his Ph.D. thesis on the Van Allen Belt, donut-shaped zones of charged particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field. Having no computers in Alaska capable of helping him calculate the electrical current of the Van Allen Belt, Akasofu traveled from Alaska to Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
During his study, he came up with the notion that the strength of the solar wind, a stream of charged particles from the sun, was not directly tied to the waxing and waning of the Van Allen belt and the activity of the aurora. Reviewers described his hypothesis, which contradicted the beliefs of almost every other space physics researcher, as "rebellious." Years later, satellite images proved his idea was right.
Soon after completing his thesis, Akasofu examined the auroral zone theory, an idea in vogue since 1860 that to him didn't make sense. Believers of the theory said that the aurora occurred in a circular zone over the poles all the time, like a perfect halo. After spending hours scanning films from 100 all-sky cameras that were set up around the world, Akasofu saw that the aurora didn't develop in a perfect ring, but a deformed oval. Again, he needed to ignore some written abuse directed at his idea, but in 1972 a satellite photographed the warped auroral oval.
His joy in questioning the standards of the day led to his greatest discovery in aurora research--intense activity within a nightly display of aurora he called a substorm. At the time, researchers believed the aurora changed over the course of an evening because its intensity was linked to the rotation of Earth. While he was watching the films from the 100 all-sky cameras, Akasofu noticed that in some places the aurora peaked with activity as much as three times in a night. The prevailing assumption was that the aurora peaked only once each night. To gather further evidence that the aurora could get to high activity levels three, sometimes four times in one night, he convinced NASA and the Air Force to fly him several times from Boston to Alaska. The plane flew at roughly the same speed Earth is rotating, but in the opposite direction. By remaining at solar midnight as he flew, he saw the aurora go from quiet to active and vice versa several times. The films he made on board and satellite images confirmed his idea, which had earlier been rejected by the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Akasofu keeps his list of discouraging words to remind him what science is. In his 40 years of research, he's seen many theories come and go. The longest-lasting ones, such as the substorm theory he developed in 1964, are the hardest ones for scientists to contradict. But the contradictions always arrive, and science evolves with new ideas. He advises researchers not to sweep confusing results under the rug. "When you find something that doesn't fit, don't throw it away," he said. "You may be wrong, but if you're convinced you're right, pursue it. You might be the one who establishes the next theory or paradigm."
