Did a viral social media video really show "incredibly rare white auroras" over Norway? No, that's not true: According to specialized detection tools the video was generated using artificial intelligence. It featured stars moving in the sky like dots in some kind of jelly instead of in straight lines, another clue the video was not a real recording.
The video appeared in a post on X (archived here) where it was published on July 3, 2025 with a caption that read:
Incredibly rare 'White Auroras' spotted over Norway last night...
This was the post in question:
Incredibly rare 'White Auroras' spotted over Norway last night... pic.twitter.com/QJMvVrd3eY
-- Shining Science (@ShiningScience) July 3, 2025
According to NASA (archived here), auroras can appear in a variety of colors, even white sometimes:
An aurora can appear in a variety of colors, from an eerie green to blue and purple to pink and red. When particles from space bombard gases in the atmosphere, they can give the atoms and molecules of the gases extra energy that's released as tiny specks of light.
The color of an aurora depends on the type of gas that is hit and where that gas is located in the atmosphere.
Oxygen excited to different energy levels can produce green and red. Green occurs roughly between 60 to 120 miles (100-200 km) altitude, and red occurs above 120 miles (200 km).
Excited nitrogen gas from about 60 to 120 miles (100-200 km) glows blue. Depending on the type and energy of the particle it is interacting with, nitrogen can give off both pink and blue light. If it is below about 60 miles (100 km), it gives the lower edge of the aurora a reddish-purple to pink glow.
Sometimes, the light emitted by these gases can appear to mix, making the auroras seem purple, pink, or even white.
But Lead Stories ran the first fifteen seconds of the video through the AI generated content detection tool of hivemoderation.com, which concluded it was 99.9% likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.
(Image source: Screenshot of Hive results)
The video also showed a moving field of stars above the phenomenon, with some stars moving in different directions or disappearing entirely, an impossibility which also points towards the artificial origin of the video. You can verify for yourself in this cropped and clipped version of the video below:
