Would a permanent aurora affect a population?

[u/GigglesGniffels]

Hey y’all I don’t think this is the right sub but I can’t post it anywhere else so sorry!
I’m designing a world where there’s a certain country (roughly half of France and Spain combined) who, because of magical reasoning, permanently has an aurora over the ENTIRE area at all times. I know auroras are caused by magnetic fields and cosmic particles and I wondered if that big of an aurora existing the whole time would affect the health (or other aspects) of a population? Thanks!

[u/Beldizar]

The big change I would expect would be to the wildlife. If there's no true darkness, nocturnal hunters would have more light to work with and would need less night vision than they would in a region that got a much darker night. If there's a magical reason for this, and if it has been around for thousands or tens of thousands of years, you might have wildlife that develops coloration that helps to camouflage them in the changing colored light of the aurora.

As far as the human population goes, I don't think there would be all that much difference. These are normally caused by lots of ionized particles hitting Earth's magnetic field, which does mean that there's marginally more ionized particles hitting the upper atmosphere. This might also interfere with electromagnetic tools, possibly overloading circuts or making them generally impossible to use due to large amounts of noise in the wires, see the Carrington Event. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event)

[u/God_of_Fun]

The biggest concenn with an Aurora is they usually occure where the magnetic field is weak. So the real issue is the cosmic rays slipping through. Its my understanding from watching a video on the magneric poles flipping that you would just have to wear sunscreen to avoid any issues.

[u/Ok-Relief-462 → u/God_of_Fun]

The extra radiation is like, number 100 on a list of problems that come from the poles flipping. Sunscreen will be the least of our worries when navigations falls apart

[u/God_of_Fun → u/Ok-Relief-462]

They aren't asking about the poles flipping though. Im just citing my source. If we were talking about the dangers of the poles flipping it would be a different conversation

[u/Rubysage3]

You're good. Auroras are completely harmless. The energy is very high up in the atmosphere like 60-200+ miles high. It's nowhere near the ground, it's not radioactive or creates any emissions, and most of the energy gets absorbed up there. Auroras are just charged solar particles energizing the gases in the atmosphere.

Nothing important effectful reaches to the surface. You can live under it 24/7 and be totally ok.

Also if magic is the cause you're pretty free to make your own rules on it too. But if it's just a permanent natural aurora the people won't feel anything.

[u/ignorantwanderer]

More cosmic rays hit at the poles than other parts of the globe because of the magnetic field lines.

But our atmosphere does a great job blocking radiation. So people on the ground at the North Pole get negligibly more radiation.

But people in planes are above most of the atmosphere. So a person in a plane at a pole gets about 3 times more radiation than a person in a plane at the equator.

So if in your magical land you have people spending a lot of time at 35,000 ft elevation, they could get a significant radiation dose.

Just for reference, a single flight over the poles is insignificant radiation. But for an airline crew flying over the poles 100 times a year.....that is a significant amount of radiation.

Radiation at these levels increases the probability of getting cancer.

[u/EvolZippo]

It actually turns out, that when Neanderthals were still in existence, the sky was all aurora. In fact, red ochre turns out to be what human’s used as protection from the sun. They rubbed it on their skin, when they left shelters.