The mystery of Jupiter's powerful lights has finally been solved.

Mysterious X-ray eruptions from Jupiter's aurora suggest that the giant planet's "northern lights" may display unexpected similarities with those of Earth, according to a new study.

Auroras, the reflection of radiation known as northern or southern lights on Earth, are observed above the poles of several planets through the solar system. These dancing lights are produced when energetic particles from the sun or other celestial bodies slam into a planet's magnetosphere - the area controlled by a world's magnetic field - and flow down its magnetic field lines to collide with molecules in its atmosphere.

Jupiter's magnetic field is extremely strong - approximately 20,000 times more powerful than Earth's - and consequently its magnetosphere is extremely large. If this foreign magnetosphere could be seen in the night sky, it would cover a region many times the size of our moon. As such, the auroras of Jupiter are far more powerful than those of Earth, liberating hundreds of gigawatts - enough to briefly feed all human civilization.

The auroras of Jupiter also emit unusual X-ray eruptions that originate from sulfide and oxygen ions electrically charged by the volcanic moon of Jupiter Io. The X-ray auroras of Jupiter each release about one gigawatt, about what a power plant on Earth could produce on several days. These X-ray auroras often palpitate like clocks, at regular rhythms of several tens of minutes long for tens of hours.

The specific mechanisms behind these eruptions have been a mystery for many years. "For more than 40 years, we have been puzzling over what may cause Jupiter's spectacular X-ray aurora," study co-lead author Zhonghua Yao, a planetary scientist at the Key Laboratory of Earth and Planetary Physics in Beijing, told Space.com.

To discover the sources of these eruptions, the researchers used NASA's Juno spacecraft, which orbits Jupiter, to survey the giant magnetosphere closely on 16 and 17 July 2017. At the same time, they had the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton telescope, which orbits the Earth and analyses Jupiter's X-rays from a distance.

The scientists discovered that radiological eruptions are apparently triggered by regular vibrations of Jupiter's magnetic field lines. These vibrations generate planetary-scale waves of plasma - clouds of electrically charged particles - that send heavy ions "surfing" along the magnetic field lines until they smash into the planet's atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of X-rays.

Similar plasma waves are used to generate auroras on Earth. As such, despite Jupiter being so much bigger than Earth in every way - such as greater mass and diameter, more energy, stronger magnetic fields, and faster rotation - "it seems like the processes responsible for Jupiter’s ion aurora and Earth’s ion aurora are the same," study co-lead author William Dunn, an astrophysicist at University College London, told Space.com. "It refers to a potential universal process for space environments."

We still don't know why the magnetic field lines of Jupiter vibrate regularly. The possibilities include interactions with the solar wind, or with high-velocity plasma flows into the magnetosphere of Jupiter, the researchers said.

The electrically charged particles the researchers spotted hurtling toward Jupiter's poles may not appear to have enough energy to generate X-ray aurora, "so they need to undergo some extra acceleration on the way," Yao said. "What are these extra speeding-up processes?"

The scientists suggested that enormous tensions that might exist above Jupiter's atmosphere could accelerate these electrically charged particles 'to the atmosphere with colossal energies,' said Mr. Dunn. "They probably play a key part."

In the future, Yao suggested studying other worlds to see if plasmatic waves could help train auroras there as well. A similar activity can occur around Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and probably exoplanets as well, with various types of particles charged "surf" the waves, he said.

The scientists elaborated on their discoveries in the journal Science Advances.