There’s an atmospheric phenomenon that resembles the Northern Lights, and it’s called STEVE. That’s because citizen scientists used that name among themselves when discussing these glowing ribbons of color in the sky. They settled on that name because of a moment in the animated film Over the Hedge where the characters confront something intimidating and decide to refer to it as Steve to make it less frightening. Professional scientists liked the idea, and even created a backronym for it: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Steve in the Sky With Emissions”
There’s an atmospheric phenomenon that looks sort of like the aurora or the northern lights.
They’re these purple and green ribbons of light in the sky, and they’re not as well known as the auroras, and they probably have a different origin. And in fact, this phenomenon wasn’t officially investigated and recognized until 2016. But in any case, it has a very friendly name. It’s called Steve.
Steve. I love it. Because we think nothing of using like the names of Greek gods or, you know, Roman gods to name things, and they seem different and strange and foreign. But our names will seem strange and foreign someday soon.
Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned that because there’s a cool origin story to this name Steve, because the citizen scientists who were chasing this phenomenon didn’t have a name for it. And they were like, oh, well, let’s just call it Steve. I mean, kind of like you said, you know, something friendly. But the story goes that they were inspired by the animated movie called Over the Hedge.
And in this movie, there are these talking animals that come upon a hedge that seems huge and scary and intimidating. And one of the characters says that she’d be a lot less scared of it if she knew what the hedge was called. And so all the animals say, hey, let’s name it Steve. So they start calling it Steve.
So these astronomy enthusiasts started referring to these purple and green lights as Steve, and then career scientists picked it up.
And, of course, they had to give it a backronym.
So Steve is actually an acronym for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.
But just Steve.
Steve to its friends.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, look, there’s Steve.
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