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Short Stuff: Space Hurricanes · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and there's the special but normal producer Dave here.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I just mean special, like in a way that like
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: sure by special in all the right ways. That's right,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: in a romping room sort of way. That's exactly right.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you something else that special, Chuck, Something
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: very special happened on August twenty, two thousand fourteen, over
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the magnetic north pole of this yere planet Earth. For
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the first time in the history of humanity, we documented
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: what's known as a space plasma hurricane in that neat.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: It's neat and uh, this is something that wasn't fully
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Um well it was documented here and there, but Nature
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Communications wrote about it in February of this year, so
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I think it got a lot more attention, um, seven
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: years after the fact, almost seven years. But yeah, this was,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: like you said about the north Pole, it happened over
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: a few hours. Um. The results of what happened up
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: there was there were some satellites that were disrupted. Um,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the geo magnetic field got a little kinky for a
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: little while. But back here on Earth, uh, well below
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the eyeonosphere, we we were just like, I don't know
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: what I was doing in August. I could probably go
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: back and look unmarkable, though I wasn't thinking about space hurricanes, no,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: because no one really noticed, because in August that's a
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: pretty terrible time typically to see the Auroras um or
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: at least the Aurora borealis, because the day the days
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: are so much longer than the nights, so you can't
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: really see these these fantastic light displays. But had you
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: been able to see the Aurora borealis that night, you
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: would have been knocked right out of your your hiking boots.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Basically because this was again, a space hurricane. It doesn't
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: happen every day, and we don't really understand fully how
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: they happen or why. But they're called space hurricanes because
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: from what we saw, from what this Nature Communications paper
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: from February said, um, it bears a striking resemblance to
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: a tropical hurricane or a cyclone or an Atlantic hurricane,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: where there's a mass of energy basically spinning around uh
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: calm center. There's a million differences between I say, earthbound
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: hurricane and a space hurricane, but the fact that they're
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: there you could even call both hurricanes is kind of startling,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And actually it seems to me, Chuck, kind of like
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: it's presenting like a new pioneer in scientific research. Now,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: like we're like, Okay, how does this happen? Where did
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: these come from? What is going on here? I agree,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: And I also have to admit I was distracted for
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: a minute because I was obsessed with trying to figure
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: out what I was doing on August? Did you ever
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: figure it out? No, because I didn't open up my
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: calendar and go back. But I did find out that
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it was a Wednesday, so I know we probably weren't
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: recording this, and it was a year after our TV
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: show aired, which aired over the course of what like
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: ten days. Yeah, you're probably in hiding still may have been, Yeah,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: but I think that's probably a good place. We can't
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: break yet, can we? Sure we can? It's a short
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: stuff ever, anything goes all right, let's take a break.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Then I'll get my head back in the game. Okay, Chuck,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: you took a salt tablet, you walked it off, and
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: now your head's back in the game. Right, My head's
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: back in the game. Where did you leave off? I
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: left off about how space hurricanes are basically presenting a
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: new pioneer frontier in in space research because we didn't
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: really know they existed. We suspected something like that existed,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: but we certainly had no idea that there were arms
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of plasma that that spun around at staggering speeds a
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: calm center. But but it's not wind we're talking about.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: These aren't clouds. This is a water vapor like this
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: is plasma. These are ions and electrons and and just
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: incredible energy and magnetism. Has nothing to do with the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: earthbound hurricane, and yet it bears a striking resemblance to it.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: It's very bizarre. Yeah, it is interesting, and that there
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: is uh, what you can think of as precipitation in
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: both and that we get the rain on Earth and
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: there's this electric precipitation, and it's super interesting that there
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: is an eye and that they spin and have arms,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: which you know, uh, obviously it's why they're called hurricanes.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I know. There was one meteorologists in here who in
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: the House Stuff Works article that said he thought they
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: might have been called space vortex is initially because it
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: was over the North Pole and resembled the polar vortex,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: but they went with the space hurricane, I guess because
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: it's a little sexier probably. Um. One of the other
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: ways that they're different is the sheers well from where
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: they occur obviously the Earth's atmosphere UM from I think
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: ground zero, or we should probably just say the ground
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: the surface, the from the ground to about five to
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: nine miles up is where you're gonna find an Earth hurricane, yeah,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: whereas the space hurricane is in the eyeonmosphere, like I
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: mentioned early on. And then the sheer size. Uh, this
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: one I think was about six hundred miles wide, right,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and which is huge it is that's gets a good size.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: It's about double the size of like a giant Atlantic hurricane.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And it's spun really fast miles per hour about d
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: and sixty kilometers per hour um, just whipping around. And
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: again there's a calm center where this activity is not happening,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: where this rotation is taking place, or is the center
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: where for the rotation. And we have a fairly good
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: handle on hurricanes. Are our explanation in our hurricanes episode.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Notwithstanding science generally understands how hurricanes here on Earth work
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: space hurricanes. Again, this is new. There was there was
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: one I read an article about a guy who said, yeah,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: we're pretty sure one of these happened like fifty years ago,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: but we didn't have anything like the instrumentation today, so
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: we couldn't document it. This is the first one we've
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: actually documented, so this is like brand new to us.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: But rather than wind and water, vapor and clouds, the
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: space hurricane is made of plasma. And plasma, as we've
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: talked about many times, chuck is the fourth state of
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: matter where it's like solid and then you make it
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: a little more energetic and it becomes liquid, a little
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: more energetic, becomes gas. Well, even more energetic than that
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: is plasma, where there's it's such high temperature, and of
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: course temperature is just another measure. Are you thinking about
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: where you were in August fourteen again, No, I'm thinking
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: about how plasma is the umami of states of matter. Okay,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: good enough, as long as you're thinking about plasma right now.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: But it's so energetic and it's so high temperature, which
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: is a measure of energy that like the electrons and
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the positively charged nuclei just get ripped apart and spread
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: apart so that they don't interact. So you just got
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: this um electrified magnetized incredibly hot energetic gas, and that
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: instead of clouds of water vapor what make up the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: arms of the space hurricane. Right, And as far as
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: the conditions of when this happened in if you remember
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: from our not the sun episode, but uh, what was
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it on solar winds? We do it on space weather?
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Is at it probably when we talked about the eleven
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: year cycle of the sun. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: we probably talked about it in both of them, but yes,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: space space weather. I think it was better in space weather.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Uh So at the time when this happened, still don't
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: know what I was doing that day, but on that Wednesday,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: the Sun was at its maximum of that eleven year
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: cycle that we talked about, uh, and was also at
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: a time of what the ACU weather people called low
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: solar and otherwise low geomagnetic activity. So the people that
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: they interviewed from ACU weather said that it did resemble
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: an Earth hurricane and that there was, uh there's usually
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: like quiet, like the calm before the storm, the quiet conditions,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and it was the same in space although now I
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: think we're having uh we're not sure if it was
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the maximum of the eleven year cycle set against low
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: geomagnetic activity, or if it was the minimum and this
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: is a misprint. Oh, I see, I see, so I see. Um.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: So what I understand is that that, yeah, can whatever
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: it was. The upshot is that space weather was calm,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: like whatever normal space whether we get from the Sun,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: it was generally calm, which is weird because you think
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: that it would be that solar wind from the Sun
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: that would cause this kind of thing. But they're like, no,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: we we actually have no idea where this thing came from.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: And the fact that it isn't related to the solar cycle,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: that eleven year cycle makes them think that it's probably
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: a little more common than we realized, and now that
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: we know what to look for, we're gonna start noticing them.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: So they think maybe it has to do with change
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: in the magnetic field lines, where one was like ripped
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: apart and then connected with the neighbor, releasing a tremendous
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: amount of magnetic energy. That's one of the explain nations
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I've seen. There's a few others too. Yeah, and you
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: know the um to borrow your phrase, The upshot is
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: is that it's really not going to matter much to
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: us on Earth. I guess if we had any kind
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: of um space exploration going on during one of these,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that probably wouldn't be great if you were up there,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: just a guess. But they kind of come back with
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: a line that you always hear when it's something that
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: could disrupt satellites is here on Earth, it might mess
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: with your GPS. I feel like that's always what you hear. Yeah,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: pretty much. Yeah, whenever there's satellite interference, it can be problematic.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I mean that was a big part of the um
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Space Weather episode two. But yeah, and why two k am?
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: I right, yeah, man, we need to do an episode
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: just on that. I can't wait to do that. Really, Yeah,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: we're going to Okay, the nineties are back, are they?
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: From what I understand? You know, a new seventies sort
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: of disco tech bar is opening in Atlanta this weekend.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: So oh sweet. When things are feeling really good, I
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: think you and me and Emily and you should all
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: go get our studio fifty four on. I would love that.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go get some replacement goldfish from my platform
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: shoes great because those other ones have been dead for years.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: They're getting a little gamy. I have to you got
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: anything else about space hurricanes, nothing else. Look out for him.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: It's the new thing. Yeah, just this is going to
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: get a follow up when we understand them a little more,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: because they are amazing. So until then, this was your
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: introduction to space hurricanes. I hope you enjoyed it, Chuck,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed it. They hope you enjoyed it. And
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: in space stuff, short stuff is out. Stuff you Should
• 11:39
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• 11:41
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