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What the Sun Is Really Doing to Our Planet · The Infographics Show Podcast

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I think for a moment about the Sun, this massive
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: powerhouse just hanging out in space. Yeah, looks pretty constant, right.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Right, But appearances can be deceiving. It's actually incredibly dynamical.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, It's constantly sending out this like stream of energy
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: and particles that stretches all the way to cross space
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to us here.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: On Earth exactly and on today's beyond in for graphics.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: That's what we're diving into. The solar wind, this continuous
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: flow of charged particles from the Sun's.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Corona, and its effects are pretty surprising, right, much bigger
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: than you might think.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Definitely. We'll look at its history, some dramatic events, but
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: also the ongoing science how it affects us even today.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Right, things like the auroras obviously, but also you know
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: space weather impacting our tech. It's all connected to this
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: solar wind.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Precisely. Understanding it is key, Okay, So let's get into it, right.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Where did this idea even come from this solar wind?
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It wasn't always known off yours, well, not at all.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: The story really kicks off back in eighteen fifty nine
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: there were two astronomers, Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson. They
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: were working independently, but they both saw the same thing,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: the sudden, incredibly bright flash on the Sun.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the first time anyone actually recorded seeing
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: a solar flare.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: A solar flare, yeah, but how does that connect to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: a wind? Seems like a leap.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Well, almost immediately after that flare, maybe a day or
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: so later, Earth got hit by this really powerful geomagnetic storm.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, define geomagnetic storm for us quickly.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Think of Earth having this protective magnetic bubble the magnetosphere.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: A geomagnetic storm is just a huge disturbance in that bubble.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: And Carrington, who was apparently a very sharp observer, he
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: suspected there was a link between the flash he saw
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: on the Sun and this big magnetic disturbance hitting Earth.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: That's pretty insightful for eighteen fifty nine, But the idea
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: of the continuous wind wasn't immediate, was.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: It, No, It took a while longer. Later on, George
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Fitzgerald suggested the Sun might be sort of regularly throwing
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: off matter that reaches Earth. But the real theoretical breakthrough
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: that came much later in the nineteen fifties with Eugene Parker.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Ah Eugene Parker. Like the Parker's Solar Probe.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Is named after the very same Parker developed this comprehensive theory.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: He explained how the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, which
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: is incredibly hot millions of degrees.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Way hotter than the surface, weirdly.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Enough exactly, and because it's so hot, he figured it
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: must be constantly expanding outwards, creating the supersonic flow.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Of plasma, being that super high gas right electrically.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Charged yep, electrons and ions stripped apart. Parker actually coined
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: the term solar wind, and he explained how it was
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: moving fast enough to escape the Sun's gravity.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: So he put the physics behind it. Was it accepted
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: straight away?
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Not really, No, Apparently his paper faced quite a bit
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: of skepticism. It was almost rejected for publication, which is
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: kind of amazing to think about now.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Wow, imagine if that work had just been buried. So
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: theory's one thing, How did we actually prove it.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Was real out there that needed the space age really
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: direct measurements. The early Soviet Luna missions like Luna I
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: and NASA's Mariner two back in the late fifties early sixties,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: they carried instruments out into space, and yep, they detected
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: this flow of particles coming from the Sun, just like
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Perker predicted.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Incredible confirmation from space itself. All right, so we know
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: it's real. Let's go back to that eighteen to fifty
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: nine storm you mentioned, the Carrington event. Why is that
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: such a landmark?
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: The Carrington event peaking September first and second, eighteen fifty nine,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: is well, it's pretty much the benchmark, the most intense
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: geomagnetic storm in recorded history. It happened during solar cycle ten,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: a pretty active time for the Sun.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And what caused it was it like that flare Carrington saw?
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: It was likely caused by something related a coronal mass
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: ejection or CME. Think of it like a huge unk
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: of the Sun's atmosphere, plasma and magnetic field just blasting
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: out into space a CME.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, a solar eruption based.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: A massive one, and this CME slammed into Earth's magnetosphere.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: How fast did it get here? You said, usually it
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: takes a few days.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: This one was incredibly quick. It covered one hundred and
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: fifty million kilometers in just seventeen point six hours.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: WHOA, that's fast. Why so speedy.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Well, the thinking is that there might have been a previous,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: maybe smaller CME.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: That went out first, uh, clearing the way.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Kind of like clearing the path, Yeah, sweeping aside some
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: of the slower solar wind that's normally there. So the
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: big one had less resistance, like an express lane.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: A solar superstorm express. So what did this actually do
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: on Earth? Back then, pre electrical grid?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Mostly even without our modern vulnerabilities, the effects were spectacular
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: and frankly a bit scary. The auroras, the northern and
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: southern lights were seen almost.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Everywhere, everywhere, like how far south.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Reports came from south central Mexico, Cuba.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Hawaii, why you're kidding, not.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Kidding, Queensland and Australia, southern Japan, China, New Zealand, even
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: down to Columbia near the equator, places that never see auroras.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: It's absolutely mind blowing. What did they look like?
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Accounts describe them as unbelievably bright, so bright that gold
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: miners out in the Rocky Mountains actually woke up in
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: the middle of the night thinking it was dawn.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: And people in the northeastern US reported being able to
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: read newspapers just by the light of the aurora. One
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: paper called it a magnificent display, with light greater than
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: that of the Moon.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: At its full must have been beautiful but also unsettling.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: I imagine so. But it wasn't just pretty lights. It
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: affected the technology of the.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Day, which was mainly telegraphs exactly.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: The huge disturbance in Earth's magnetic field induced these powerful
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: electrical currents in the ground. Okay, and these currents found
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: their way into the long telegraph wires caused chaos across
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Europe and North America. Systems failed completely.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Did anything else happen? Like physically?
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Operators reported getting electric shocks from their equipment.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Sparks were seen literally flying from the telegraph pylons.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Parks flying. That sounds dangerous, It certainly was.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: But here's the really wild part. In some cases, the
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: induced currents were so strong and steady, yeah, that operators
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: found they could disconnect their batteries, their normal power supplies
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: and just keep sending messages using the current generated by
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: the aurora itself. No way, seriously dead serious. There's a
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: well documented case of operators in Boston and Portland communicating
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: for about two hours using only the auroral current That is.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: One of the coolest things I've ever heard. Nature providing
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the power. So okay, fast forward to today. If an
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: event like Carrington happened now, it would be bad.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Bad is an understatement. Catastrophic potentially are dependence on electricity, satellites,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: communication networks. It's total.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: What kind of damage are we talking?
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Estimates are hard to pin down exactly, but they into
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: the trillions of dollars for the US alone. We could
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: be looking at widespread blackouts lasting weeks, months, maybe even
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: longer in some areas.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Trillions. And it's not just the lights going at is it.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: It's the knock on effects.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, think about it. Satellites could be damaged or knocked out. GPS,
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: weather forecasting, communications, banking systems, transportation networks rely on electricity
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: and timing signals. Water and sewage systems need power.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Even things like agriculture. Modern farming relies heavily on industrially
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: produced fertilizers and pesticides, and their production needs power and
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: complex supply chains. A major disruption could impact global food security.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: That really puts it in perspective. It's a genuine risk
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: to well modern civilization as we know it.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: It is and some recent work looking back at the
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: original magnetic recordings from eighteen fifty nine from places like
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Q Gardens in London. They digitize those old readings and
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: they suggest the rate of change in the magnetic field
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: during the Carrington event was much much faster than even
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: the most extreme storms we've measured in the modern era.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: It was truly off the charts, so.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: It might have been even more powerful than we thought. Okay, okay,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: let's shift to our current understanding. What do we know
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: now about this solar wind? What's it made of? How
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: does it behave?
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Well, we've learned a huge amount. We know it's mostly
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: electrons and protons, hydrogen nuclei, plus some alpha particles which
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: are helium nuclei, and trace amounts of heavier ions like oxygen, carbon, iron.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: All streaming out from the Sun right.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: And crucially, it carries the Sun's magnetic field embedded within it.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: We call that the interplanetary magnetic field or IAMT.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: And how fast does it normally move near Earth?
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Say, typically somewhere between two hundred and fifty and seven
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty kilometers per second.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: It's still incredibly fast.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and the density is pretty low out here
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: maybe three to ten particles per cubic centimeter. It varies though, so.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: It's this constant outflow washing over Earth, and the CMEs
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: are like gusts or storms within that wind exactly.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: CMEs are the big disruptive events. When one of those
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: hits Earth's magnetosphere, that's when you get the major geomagnetic storms.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: How does that work? The CME hits the shield, then what.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: It compresses the magnetosphere on the day side, stretches it
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: out like a long tail. On the night side. It
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: injects a huge amount of energy and particles. This whole
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: interaction drastically changes the magnetic field lines, and that induces
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: those ground currents we talked about like during Carrington. It
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: also funnels energetic particles down to the atmosphere near the poles,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: creating those spectacular auroras and our magnetosphere.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: That's our main defense.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely crucial. It deflects the vast majority of the
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: solar wind particles. Without it, the solar wind would strip
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: away our atmosphere over time like it probably did on Bars.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: So we're lucky to have it. Are some particles trapped, yes.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Some get trapped in the Van Allen radiation belts, these
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: zones of high energy particles held in place by our
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: magnetic field.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, now you mentioned the Parker Solar Probe earlier that's
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: getting really close to the Sun, right. What's its main goal?
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Its mission is incredible named after Eugene Parker, fittingly, it's
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: designed to fly into the Sun's corona closer than any
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: spacecraft ever has to study the origins of the solar
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: wind directly.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Wow, has it like crossed any key boundaries? Yet?
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: It has. It's actually crossed what's called the alphanen surface
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: that's seen as the boundary where the solar wind transitions
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: from being sort of bound to the Sun's rotation to
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: flowing freely outwards at supersonic speeds.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: So it's actually in the solar wind's birthplace essentially. What's
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: it finding?
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Some really fascinating stuff. One big discovery is these things
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: called magnetic switchbacks.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Switchbacks like on a mountain road kind of.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: There are these sudden, sharp reversals in the direction of
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: the magnetic field carried by the solar wind. They only
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: last for seconds or minutes.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Weird. What causes them?
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: The probe's data suggests they might originate low down in
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: the corona, possibly linked to these magnetic funnel like structures
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: on the Sun's surface at the edges of giant con cells.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, and why is that important?
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Well, these switchbacks seem to release a lot of energy.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: It might be connected to one of the biggest solar mysteries.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Why the corona is millions of degrees hot while the
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: surface is only thousands. These might be part of the
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: heating mechanism.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Ah, so maybe solving the coronal heating problem, that'd be huge.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: It could be a major piece of the puzzle. Yeah,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: it's changing how we think energy moves out from the Sun.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: What else has Parker shown us?
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: It's revealed that the edge of the corona isn't smooth,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: it's kind of wrinkly, shaped by these big structures called
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: coronal streamers. That affects how the solar wind actually starts flying.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Makes sense, a more complex starting point.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Right, And it's detected way more high energy particles accelerated
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: near the Sun than we expected, and they seem to
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: follow really complicated paths because the magnetic fields are constantly shifting.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Which is important for predicting space weather. I guess knowing
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: about those energetic particles definitely.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Understanding where they come from and how they travel helps
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: us build better for kit models, maybe give astronauts or
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: satellite operators more warning before dangerous burst arrives.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: So the Sun's even more active and complex up close
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: than we thought.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. Yeah, and Parkerston other cool stuff too. Uses
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Venus for gravity assists to get closer to the Sun
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: right and during those flybys it found Venus has this
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: unexpectedly long plasma tail trailing behind it like a comet almost.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: It even got the first visible light images of Venus's
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: surface through.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: The clouds Venus with a tail that's wild and commets too.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. From its unique viewpoint, it's had great close up
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: looks at comets passing by, helping us understand what they're
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: made of and how the solar wind interacts with them.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Even helped trace the origin of the Geminid meteor shower.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Wow. So this one probe is rewriting a lot of
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: textbooks from eighteen fifty nine flares to literally touching the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Sun's atmosphere. But are there still big unanswered questions about
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the solar wind?
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, Science always has more questions. For instance, there
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: was this really strange event back in nineteen ninety nine,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: where the solar wind density near Earth dropped to almost
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: nothing for a couple of days. Wind just stopped, pretty
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: much disappeared, and it had weird effects like the auroras
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: appearing directly over the North Pole instead of in the
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: usual ring shape. We still don't fully understand what causes
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: those extreme lolls. Huh. It is odd, and there's still
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: debate about the exact mechanisms that accelerate the solar wind.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: We know the corona is hot, but thermal pressure alone
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: probably isn't enough to get it going that fast. Magnetic
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: forces waves in the plasma. They must play a crucial role,
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: but the details are still being worked out.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: So even this constant wind hold secrets.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: It really does, and its influence goes way beyond just Earth.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: You know. It shapes comet tails like we said, it
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: makes distant radio sources seem to twinkle, interplanetary scintillation. It's
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: likely stripped atmospheres from planets like Mars and Venus over
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: billions of years because they don't have strong global magnetic
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: fields like Earth does. Is vital and on the grandest scale,
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: this wind inflates a giant bubble in the interstellar gas
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: around our Solar system. That bubble is called the heliosphere.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: The solar wind basically finds the boundaries of our son's
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: influence in the galaxy.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Wow, so this invisible stream is literally shaping our entire
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: cosmic neighborhood.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. From that dramatic
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Carrington event lighting up telegraph wire.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that story is amazing.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: So the continuous subtle ways it interacts with every planet
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: and defines our Solar system's edge. It's fundamental.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: It really is. Thinking about those operators in eighteen fifty
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: nine using the Aurora, just incredible resourcefulness. And now we
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: have Parker named after the guy who theorized it, sending
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: back data from inside the.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Storm exactly and understanding it isn't just you know, academic
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: curiosity anymore. With our reliance on technology, understanding space weather
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: driven by the solar wind and CMEs is vital for
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: keeping things running, for protecting our infrastructure.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: It really drives home how can connected Earth is to
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the Sun, doesn't it? Which makes you wonder, as we
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: wrap up this beyond infographics deep dive, what other subtle
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: ways might the Sun be influencing us? Influencing Earth that
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: we're only just starting to figure out.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: That's the big question, isn't it. There's likely still so
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: much more to discover.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Definitely something to think about. Well, if you found this
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: dive into the solar wind as fascinating as we did,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: maybe consider giving beyond infographics of five star rating. It
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: really helps others find the show and do check the description.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: There's a link to our website with more discussions like this.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks everyone,