Paul Gibson, age 12, of Salt Lake, Utah, for his question:

Do they know what causes auroras?

Scientists, as you know, refuse to say they know something until they can prove it. As a rule, they are satisfied when a known set of circumstances can be depended upon to repeat the same results. Given a certain set of circumstances, the auroras can be predicted to occur on schedule    time after time. Hence, we are just about certain of what causes them. The prediction begins, of all places, in a special obser¬vatory that checks events on the face of the sun.

Aurora prophets wait for the solar flares that usually accompany a rash of sunspots. These enormous gaseous eruptions shoot streams of high speed ions far out into space. When one is bbserved on the face of the sun, its charged particles are expected to strike our upper atmosphere in a day or so. There they created electrical activity with the gas molecules in the thin air 60 to 600 miles above the earth. Aurora displays then shimmer out from the polar regions and ion disturbances aloft disrupt our communication systems.