... Auroral Currents . 25H. Birkeland Currents . ... Aurora Origin . ... Any electric current, however, must flow in a closed circuit, and since it seemed to be caused (like that of the aurora) by processes taking place in distant space, Birkeland proposed that it came down from space at one end of the arc and returned to space at the other end. ... His idea was that as solar plasma flowed through magnetic fields, dynamo effects produced the very same currents which also created those magnetic fields. ...