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Could a solar flare wipe out humanity? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

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Speaker 1: Hey or hey. As a parent in southern California, I
0:11
Speaker 1: assume you have a healthy stash of sunscreen. Oh yeah,
0:14
Speaker 1: we have about a hundred and ninety seven partially used
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Speaker 1: containers of it. They just seem to multiply. I know
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Speaker 1: the feeling. Well, what's the strongest sunscreen that you have,
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Speaker 1: the one you use on your kids when you're going
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Speaker 1: outside in a really bright day. Well, mostly, um, I
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Speaker 1: put hats on them. That's important, But in terms of
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Speaker 1: SPF I think it's like a hundred sixty something like that.
0:37
Speaker 1: Too bad. You don't know a particle physicist who can
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Speaker 1: hook you up with some stronger stuff. Oh boy, you
0:42
Speaker 1: have better sunscreen? Yeah, we just wrap everything in meters
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Speaker 1: of concrete. You wrap your children and concrete. I'll be
0:50
Speaker 1: a heavy day at the beach there. I wrapped my
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Speaker 1: particle physics experiment in much more protection than I wrapped
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Speaker 1: my children. At least it's a concrete solution. That's solid.
0:59
Speaker 1: Way to go. Hi, am or handmade cartoonists and the
1:16
Speaker 1: creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle
1:19
Speaker 1: physicist at you see Irne and I spend plenty of
1:22
Speaker 1: time at the beach. Oh, yeah, what do you do
1:24
Speaker 1: at the beach? Do you swim? Do you for all
1:26
Speaker 1: like with the dolphins? Do you build sand castles sculptures?
1:31
Speaker 1: I mostly just marvel the fact that I get to
1:32
Speaker 1: live in such a beautiful place, a place where other
1:35
Speaker 1: people travel to go on vacation. It's just ten minutes away.
1:38
Speaker 1: And I thought, you know, if I lived here, maybe
1:40
Speaker 1: I would just never go to the beach. But no,
1:42
Speaker 1: I actually go pretty often. I think the pictures you've
1:44
Speaker 1: posted about going to the beach, you just sit there
1:46
Speaker 1: reading physics papers. It's the best place to read physics papers.
1:52
Speaker 1: That he's not in the ocean. Everybody enjoys something different
1:55
Speaker 1: about the beach. Man, there's something in it for everybody,
1:58
Speaker 1: like grains of sand and anyway, have you been in
2:00
Speaker 1: the Pacific recently? It's cold, also full of oil right now,
2:04
Speaker 1: there's an oil spill going on right now, right where
2:07
Speaker 1: you live. That's true, that was recently an oil pipeline
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Speaker 1: berth in Huntington's Beach, a few miles up the coast
2:11
Speaker 1: from US. But pretty sad well. Anyways, Welcome to our
2:14
Speaker 1: podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of
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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio in which we put your brain on
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Speaker 1: the beach so that it can contemplate this incredible and
2:23
Speaker 1: crazy universe that we find ourselves in. We extend our
2:27
Speaker 1: minds from the shores of Earth to the edges of
2:29
Speaker 1: black holes, all the way down to the core of
2:32
Speaker 1: suns and the early history of the universe. We think
2:35
Speaker 1: about everything that has happened, everything that couldn't happen, everything
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Speaker 1: that might happen, and everything that will happen in the universe,
2:42
Speaker 1: and we try to wrap it all up in a
2:44
Speaker 1: forty five minute podcast full of silly dad jokes and
2:47
Speaker 1: explain it all to you. Yeah, because it is a
2:49
Speaker 1: pretty happening universe. It feels like there's always something going
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Speaker 1: on in this universe. It's never a boring universe. And
2:55
Speaker 1: so we like to talk about all those amazing things
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Speaker 1: out there at the for us to under at and
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Speaker 1: all at and makes us feel cosmically connected to everything,
3:05
Speaker 1: and also all the things that could potentially kill us.
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Speaker 1: That's right, because when you look out into space, it
3:10
Speaker 1: seems like sort of a calm place, right. It's cold,
3:13
Speaker 1: it almost seems frozen, like those stars that are up
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Speaker 1: there are probably the same stars that you're great, great
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Speaker 1: great great great great great great great great great great
3:22
Speaker 1: great great great grandparents looked at when they looked up
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Speaker 1: at the stars and their distant ancestors. And yet we
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Speaker 1: know that the universe is actually chaotic and dynamic and
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Speaker 1: sort of insane, and that crazy things can and do
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Speaker 1: and will happen in the universe, crazy things that might
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Speaker 1: even wipe out humanity. Yeah, and so it'd be nice
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Speaker 1: to sort of know about them a little bit ahead
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Speaker 1: of time, or at least understand as it's you know,
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Speaker 1: destroying humanity. At least we would know a little bit
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Speaker 1: about what's going on. I mean, that would be tragic
3:51
Speaker 1: not to know what happened in those last few moments.
3:54
Speaker 1: You'd like to understand the apocalypse as it happens. So
3:56
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, yeah, this is exactly what Daniel predicted.
4:00
Speaker 1: I don't want to pass on confused that that seems
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Speaker 1: like the worst state to do it in. Wow, that's
4:04
Speaker 1: a whole deep topic. Is it better to die ignorant
4:07
Speaker 1: or to understand what's happened to you? Boy? Yeah, you
4:09
Speaker 1: don't want to have that like face when in your
4:12
Speaker 1: coffin where you're like home. You want to have a
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Speaker 1: calm three you know Zen, look about you. Yeah, and
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Speaker 1: there's another possibility that understanding the universe and its threats
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Speaker 1: might actually let you prevent that from happening, might actually
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Speaker 1: save you and your children and let us prepare ourselves
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Speaker 1: against these coming cataclysms. But you mean physics can be useful.
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Speaker 1: I try, My heart is to be irrelevant, but sometimes,
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Speaker 1: despite my best intentions, I do do something useful. Maybe
4:38
Speaker 1: when should retitle the podcast into the you know Humanity
4:42
Speaker 1: Survival Podcast? Daniel and Jorge Save the World? Daniel and
4:46
Speaker 1: Jorge explain how to survive in the apocalypse. Somehow that
4:50
Speaker 1: would be an even more ambitious and less humble titled
4:53
Speaker 1: than the one we already have. Yes, somehow we managed
4:56
Speaker 1: to put up a high bar for that. But yeah,
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Speaker 1: we like to talk about all the amazing things in
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Speaker 1: the universe and all the things that may potentially kill us.
5:03
Speaker 1: And one of those things that may spell the demise
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Speaker 1: of the human race could be right here in our backyard.
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Speaker 1: We live in a nice neighborhood, the Solar System. It's
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Speaker 1: a nice place to raise kids and to have life
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Speaker 1: into evolve and all of that stuff. But there are
5:17
Speaker 1: also lots of dangers lurking. We did an episode about
5:20
Speaker 1: the probability of an asteroid or a comet coming to
5:23
Speaker 1: hit the Earth and wiping out humanity. But that's not
5:26
Speaker 1: the only source of danger. The very thing that gives
5:28
Speaker 1: us life, that powers everything on Earth might also one
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Speaker 1: day fry us dum dumb thune. So to be on
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Speaker 1: the podcast, we'll be talking about would humanity survive a
5:44
Speaker 1: massive solar flare? Now flair, I mean, I guess you
5:48
Speaker 1: mean like fire flare, not like having flair. The sun
5:53
Speaker 1: is pretty snazzy, right, Yeah, it's a cool Well, it's
5:56
Speaker 1: not cool. It's pretty hot, but it does have flair,
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Speaker 1: for sure, it does. I don't think if there's any
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Speaker 1: level of solar snazziness, however, which would be a danger
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Speaker 1: to humanity. We wouldn't all look up a day and
6:06
Speaker 1: be like, oh my gosh, that's just so impressive and
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Speaker 1: then keel over. I don't think that's possible. It's sense.
6:11
Speaker 1: The style is blinding, it's so bright. It's brilliant. It's fashion,
6:15
Speaker 1: it's brilliant. But yeah, so the sun could kill us.
6:18
Speaker 1: I mean, it's solely responsible for life on Earth for sure.
6:21
Speaker 1: I mean, without the Sun, we wouldn't be here right, Like,
6:24
Speaker 1: we we need the sun for life, for heat, for energy,
6:28
Speaker 1: for food, for everything. Yeah, it's an incredible source of
6:31
Speaker 1: energy for us, but it's also a crazy turbulent monster.
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Speaker 1: It's an ocean of bubbling plasma, and it's incredible. You know,
6:40
Speaker 1: you can feel the heat of this fire across almost
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Speaker 1: a hundred million miles, Like you ever been to a
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Speaker 1: camp fire, and then your kids like put too much
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Speaker 1: wood on it, and it grows momentarily like so big.
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Speaker 1: You gotta backup, and even just like taking a foot
6:54
Speaker 1: or two step backwards, suddenly it feels much much cooler.
6:57
Speaker 1: That's because the intensity drops very quickly. It with distance.
7:00
Speaker 1: It's like the radius squared. So now, imagine a fire
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Speaker 1: so strong, so hot, so intense that you have to
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Speaker 1: take a hundred million miles worth of steps backwards, and
7:10
Speaker 1: yet you can still feel its heat across that distance
7:13
Speaker 1: of space. That's an incredible fire that's burning up there
7:16
Speaker 1: in the sky. Yeah, and even that far it powers
7:19
Speaker 1: everything on Earth, basically all the plants and animals. We're
7:22
Speaker 1: all here moving around because of the sun that far away,
7:26
Speaker 1: and yet we're so sensitive to it. Operating at exactly
7:29
Speaker 1: a certain level, like if it cranked up ten percent
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Speaker 1: in its brightness, it would throw everything off on Earth.
7:35
Speaker 1: If it went down a few percent, we would all
7:37
Speaker 1: be very, very chilly. So we rely on the Sun
7:39
Speaker 1: being where it is and not changing its performance basically. Ever,
7:43
Speaker 1: I guess because you know, life evolved here on Earth
7:46
Speaker 1: kind of in sync with the sun, right, Like if
7:49
Speaker 1: the Sun had been at another level, then life would
7:52
Speaker 1: have evolved totally differently and we would be maybe have
7:55
Speaker 1: thicker skin or live underground, maybe more. Life would have
7:58
Speaker 1: evolved to match what ever circumstances were here. But you know,
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Speaker 1: if it was really variable, if the sun got like
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Speaker 1: fifty percent hotter every other year and colder, that would
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Speaker 1: be a real challenge. And it might be that life
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Speaker 1: could evolve to live in some weird circumstances, but it
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Speaker 1: might not be right. Some circumstances you just can't survive,
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Speaker 1: Like if the Sun is constantly bathing you with sterilizing radiation,
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Speaker 1: it might be that life just never kicks off. Or
8:22
Speaker 1: the market fluctuations where the sunscreen industry would be all
8:26
Speaker 1: over the place, Those poor investors, Oh my god, Mr
8:30
Speaker 1: Coppert Zone would be out on the street. Yeah, what
8:33
Speaker 1: would he do? Without his third and fourth vacation homes.
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Speaker 1: I mean, seriously, is that even really life? That seems inhumane.
8:39
Speaker 1: But yeah, this was actually a question from a listener
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Speaker 1: from the Netherlands. Colin had a question about how back
8:44
Speaker 1: in a sunboard get that's right. This is a question
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Speaker 1: that came I think on Twitter from Colin who was wondering, like,
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Speaker 1: could something happen on the Sun or in the Sun
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Speaker 1: which emits so much crazy radiation that it could actually
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Speaker 1: wipe out humanity? Right, because I guess the Sun is
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Speaker 1: kind of hotel right, and and not exactly predictable. I mean,
9:02
Speaker 1: it's a giant, swirling ball of nuclear fusion explosions. Yeah,
9:07
Speaker 1: it's exactly not predictable. You know, we do not understand
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Speaker 1: the Sun. There are basic things about the Sun, like
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Speaker 1: the fact that has an eleven year cycle where it
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Speaker 1: gets hotter and colder and brighter and dimmer in the
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Speaker 1: magnetic field flips that we just don't understand the very
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Speaker 1: basics of. But it's not like it's easy. You know,
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Speaker 1: it's a huge ocean of plasma, and plasma is extraordinarily
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Speaker 1: complex to model because it's very strong, very powerful interactions.
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Speaker 1: So to really understand what's happening. You have to like
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Speaker 1: really understand how everything is pushing on everything else and
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Speaker 1: simultaneously a hundred trillion particles all moving together. It's a
9:40
Speaker 1: very complicated thing to understand. Yeah, and hopefully it's something
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Speaker 1: we can understand in the future. Otherwise we might be toast.
9:47
Speaker 1: Literally we wouldn't be toast. We would be the thing
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Speaker 1: that they spread on toast. We would be the soft
9:53
Speaker 1: buttery spread now. I guess you'd call it humor mite
9:56
Speaker 1: or something. All right, Well, as usual, we were wondering
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Speaker 1: how many people out there had the same question is calling,
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Speaker 1: or had thought about whether the sun could or could
10:03
Speaker 1: not flow up and kill us all. So Daniel went
10:06
Speaker 1: out there into the wild to the internet to ask
10:08
Speaker 1: people could a massive solar flare wipe out humanity? And
10:12
Speaker 1: thank you to everybody who participated. If you would like
10:15
Speaker 1: to get deep, dark, pessimistic questions from a random physicists
10:19
Speaker 1: online in your inbox, then please write to us two
10:23
Speaker 1: questions at Daniel and at Jorge dot com. I'll send
10:26
Speaker 1: you the questions right back. You can record them at
10:28
Speaker 1: home on your phone or computer however you like, and
10:30
Speaker 1: send them right back to us. It's easy it's free,
10:33
Speaker 1: you get to be on the podcast, So think about
10:35
Speaker 1: it for a second. Here's what people had to say.
10:38
Speaker 1: I think a massive solar flare could definitely wipe out humanity.
10:42
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be directly. I think it
10:44
Speaker 1: would be like, for example, it would maybe ignites fire
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Speaker 1: in our forests, making it hard for us to breathe,
10:54
Speaker 1: and then it would happen that we would go extinct
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Speaker 1: because of that. It would definitely break our technology and
11:02
Speaker 1: satellites in space, but that wouldn't theoretically wipe us out.
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Speaker 1: But I think the aftermath of it, depending on how
11:10
Speaker 1: massive it is, it could definitely make us fight for
11:14
Speaker 1: our lives somehow. I'd say, yes, a massive solar flare
11:18
Speaker 1: is able to wipe out humanity. We have the Manaty
11:21
Speaker 1: shield to protect us right now, but if that changes
11:24
Speaker 1: over the weekends, or if the flare is like really
11:28
Speaker 1: really huge whopper over flare, then yeah, I guess it
11:34
Speaker 1: should be powerful enough to wipe out the humors. The
11:37
Speaker 1: Sun is massive so compared to the Earth, so yeah,
11:42
Speaker 1: I guess it should be possible. It depends on your
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Speaker 1: definition of massive. If a solar flare was massive in
11:50
Speaker 1: the true physics sense of the term. Then that mass
11:54
Speaker 1: would have enough force and by proxy enough energy that
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Speaker 1: when it reaches Earth, it could at least damage Earth
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Speaker 1: in some way. Um, and I suppose a massive enough
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Speaker 1: solar flare could wipe out all living things on Earth.
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Speaker 1: All right. Doesn't look good for humanity here. Popular opinion
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Speaker 1: doesn't seem to think too highly of the Sun's safety.
12:21
Speaker 1: I think people are just looking up and realizing, oh
12:23
Speaker 1: my gosh, think about how close we are to this crazy,
12:26
Speaker 1: intense monster that you know, we're trusting it to behave itself. Yeah,
12:31
Speaker 1: and um, what if you get caught out without a
12:33
Speaker 1: paracel or a hat right exactly? Or you know, we
12:36
Speaker 1: do have some protection, but really, how strong is that?
12:39
Speaker 1: And couldn't survive when the Sun doesn't behave itself. So
12:42
Speaker 1: usually the Sun is just sitting there kind of exploding
12:45
Speaker 1: or burning or churning or you know, diffusing and glowing.
12:49
Speaker 1: But sometimes it has something that's called a solar flare.
12:52
Speaker 1: So let's get into that, Daniel, What exactly is a
12:55
Speaker 1: solar flare? Yeah, solar flare is essentially an intense period
12:59
Speaker 1: of really ation from the Sun. Now, the Sun of
13:01
Speaker 1: course always pumping out radiation this fusion going on in
13:04
Speaker 1: the Sun which heats up this plasma to incredible temperatures,
13:08
Speaker 1: and then the Sun glows at its surface, which means
13:10
Speaker 1: it's shooting off lots of photons, but also it's shooting
13:13
Speaker 1: off protons and electrons and all sorts of stuff. That's
13:16
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff we call the solar wind. So
13:19
Speaker 1: the reason it's dangerous to be out in space, for example,
13:22
Speaker 1: even on a calm day of solar weather, is because
13:25
Speaker 1: the solar wind is a huge amount of radiation, and
13:28
Speaker 1: so if you're out there for too long, you just
13:29
Speaker 1: have these streams of particles passing through your body, potentially
13:32
Speaker 1: messing up your DNA and giving you cancer. So, like
13:35
Speaker 1: on a calm day, the Sun is already pumping out
13:38
Speaker 1: a lot of radiation, and we're normally protected from that
13:41
Speaker 1: radiation because we have a magnetic field and we have
13:43
Speaker 1: an atmosphere, so that's like a shield and a blanket
13:47
Speaker 1: that protects us from the solar radiation. So usually we
13:50
Speaker 1: are getting bombarded by radiation from the Sun, but it's okay,
13:53
Speaker 1: or like, at least life has sort of gotten used
13:56
Speaker 1: to it as we know it here on Earth. That's right.
13:58
Speaker 1: Some of it makes it through the magnetic field and
14:00
Speaker 1: Earth and comes down and is radiation, which you know happens,
14:04
Speaker 1: and that's part of why life mutates at the rate
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Speaker 1: that it does, because occasionally a crazy particle from the
14:09
Speaker 1: Sun will make it all the way down and hit
14:11
Speaker 1: your ancestor d NA and make you a little stronger,
14:14
Speaker 1: or make your hair a little darker, or make your
14:16
Speaker 1: eye change a little color, or make it immu a
14:18
Speaker 1: little smarter or something, and so that contributes to natural
14:22
Speaker 1: selection and that's good. And that's not just from the Sun.
14:24
Speaker 1: We also get cosmic rays from other stars and from
14:27
Speaker 1: other parts of the galaxy and maybe even extra galactic
14:30
Speaker 1: we don't know, but so there's all sorts of radiation
14:32
Speaker 1: coming down from space and that's just sort of like
14:34
Speaker 1: the background the basics, right, But we're interested in is
14:37
Speaker 1: when the Sun isn't just sort of like cooking along
14:39
Speaker 1: on a quiet day, when it acts out, when it
14:42
Speaker 1: does something a little different. So one thing it can
14:44
Speaker 1: do is something called a solar flare, which is just
14:47
Speaker 1: like an intense localized burst of radiation. And you know,
14:51
Speaker 1: this can last for minutes, it can last for hours,
14:54
Speaker 1: but it can shoot out a lot of radiation towards
14:57
Speaker 1: the Earth. I see. It's not just like uv raised
14:59
Speaker 1: that are injurs. It's it's actually shooting all kinds of
15:02
Speaker 1: stuff out and showering us with it, exactly. And there's
15:04
Speaker 1: two categories of this kind of thing. There's a solar flare.
15:07
Speaker 1: Then there's also something else called a coronal mass ejection.
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Speaker 1: A solar flare is mostly radiation, you get extra protons
15:14
Speaker 1: and photons and gamma rays. But sometimes what happens on
15:17
Speaker 1: the Sun is that it's sort of like you get
15:19
Speaker 1: like a bubble burst, like a burp or something sort
15:21
Speaker 1: of like imagine watching like really good, really thick tomato
15:26
Speaker 1: sauce bubble. Right. The surface of it is usually just
15:28
Speaker 1: like sitting there bubbling quietly, but occasionally you get like
15:31
Speaker 1: a bubble forms and a splat and a sprays like
15:34
Speaker 1: your kitchen with a little droplets of tomato sauce. Right.
15:37
Speaker 1: The same sort of thing happens on the surface of
15:39
Speaker 1: the Sun. Sometimes the magnetic fields get a little twisted
15:42
Speaker 1: and caught up, and there's a little bit of a
15:44
Speaker 1: burp or a bubble bursting. It can actually eject real
15:47
Speaker 1: plasma out into space like basically a scoop of the
15:51
Speaker 1: Sun itself, the plasma of the Sun. It's sent out
15:54
Speaker 1: into space, and this is called a coronal mass ejection.
15:58
Speaker 1: So you have the solar flare and then you have
15:59
Speaker 1: the coronal mass ejection. We don't really understand if they're related,
16:03
Speaker 1: if they're parts of the same thing. But the coronal
16:05
Speaker 1: mass ejection is much more dangerous. It seems a little
16:08
Speaker 1: rude of the Sun to be burping in our direction
16:11
Speaker 1: without covering its mouth. Maybe we need to invent like
16:13
Speaker 1: massive solar antacids. Yeah, or send it to etiquette school,
16:16
Speaker 1: you know, solar etiquette school. I see, you think you
16:19
Speaker 1: should be burping in the direction of another planet. You
16:21
Speaker 1: should be at least covering its mouth. I don't know.
16:23
Speaker 1: Or so you think like a cosmic napkin is a
16:25
Speaker 1: solution to this problem. Yeah, there you go. We can
16:28
Speaker 1: build that, right, you build anything. I'll call my favorite
16:31
Speaker 1: engineer and ask him about it. Giant concrete napkin in space.
16:35
Speaker 1: But yeah, so it seems like you're saying there are
16:37
Speaker 1: two things. One is a solar flare, which is just
16:39
Speaker 1: like we notice a huge spike in the radiation from
16:43
Speaker 1: the Sun. And then there's something else, which is like
16:45
Speaker 1: an actual process we're aware of, which is like when
16:48
Speaker 1: the sun burps or where there's like a bubble in
16:51
Speaker 1: the sun. Those are two different things. Those are two
16:53
Speaker 1: different things that we observe. They might be parts of
16:56
Speaker 1: the same process, we just don't really understand. Like usually
17:00
Speaker 1: a coronal mass ejection also has solar flares associated with it,
17:03
Speaker 1: but solar flares don't always lead to coronal mass ejections,
17:07
Speaker 1: and sometimes the connection between them is hard to understand.
17:10
Speaker 1: You know, this is just like we are observing, we
17:12
Speaker 1: are writing stuff down in our notebooks. We do not
17:14
Speaker 1: have a great theory for what's going on inside the
17:17
Speaker 1: sun that can predict these things at all. We're just
17:20
Speaker 1: like really in the very early days of trying to
17:22
Speaker 1: develop models for the inside of the sun, and so
17:26
Speaker 1: we don't understand these They might be part of a
17:28
Speaker 1: larger phenomenon, they might not interesting. So sometimes they are
17:31
Speaker 1: unexplained spikes in radiation from the sun, is what you're saying,
17:35
Speaker 1: Like we don't know where they're coming from. Yes, all
17:37
Speaker 1: the time, Like every single one is unpredicted. Like we
17:40
Speaker 1: see them, we're like, oh, well, look what's happening. It's
17:42
Speaker 1: not like somebody can tell you next week there's a
17:44
Speaker 1: good chance of a coronal mass ejection. It just happens,
17:47
Speaker 1: and we observe it, and we write it down and
17:49
Speaker 1: we hope that the scientists can eventually figure out what
17:52
Speaker 1: causes it and maybe even one day predict them. Now,
17:55
Speaker 1: are these related to you know, when you see pictures
17:57
Speaker 1: of the Sun, you see like these like loops of
18:00
Speaker 1: plasma or arcs of plasma that kind of you know,
18:03
Speaker 1: go up and and then back down into the Sun.
18:05
Speaker 1: Are those the coronal mass ejections? Coronal mass ejections are
18:09
Speaker 1: like those that are these big loops that form and
18:12
Speaker 1: then burst. But the dangerous thing is when they burst
18:14
Speaker 1: and they send the blob of plasma out into space.
18:17
Speaker 1: A lot of those loops just collapse and go back
18:18
Speaker 1: into the Sun. What's really dangerous is when the magnetic
18:22
Speaker 1: fields get twisted in such a way that they snap
18:24
Speaker 1: and they send that plasma out instead of a collapsing
18:27
Speaker 1: back in. And it doesn't always have to be dangerous
18:30
Speaker 1: for us, Like it can send a coronal mass ejection
18:32
Speaker 1: out towards Jupiter and just miss us. Right, It's not
18:35
Speaker 1: often that one of these will actually wash over the
18:38
Speaker 1: Earth because we are a tiny target far away, but
18:41
Speaker 1: sometimes it will It's like an actual piece of the
18:43
Speaker 1: Sun that it shoots out. Yeah, exactly, just like that
18:46
Speaker 1: bubble on your tomato sauce is made of actual hot,
18:49
Speaker 1: scalding tomato sauce, right, the same way, this coronal mass
18:52
Speaker 1: ejection is like a scoop of the Sun that's been
18:55
Speaker 1: sent out into space. All right, well, let's get into
18:57
Speaker 1: what might be causing these coronal mass ejections or solar
19:01
Speaker 1: flares and what the dangers are. But first let's take
19:04
Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, we're talking about solar flares,
19:19
Speaker 1: which are intense outbursts of radiation from the Sun, and
19:23
Speaker 1: these can be pretty powerful, right Daniel. They're like, you know,
19:26
Speaker 1: megaton level bursts of energy. It's an enormous amount of energy.
19:31
Speaker 1: Some of these have the equivalent of like ten billion
19:34
Speaker 1: megaton bombs, ten billion like Hiroshima bombs. Yes, it's an
19:39
Speaker 1: incredible amount of energy. Look, billions of tons of material
19:43
Speaker 1: from the Sun gets shot out into space and you know,
19:45
Speaker 1: the Sun doesn't even notice, right, It's like a tiny, tiny,
19:48
Speaker 1: tiniest fraction of the Sun has no impact on the
19:51
Speaker 1: mass of the Sun. But you know it's significant compared
19:54
Speaker 1: to the Earth. Yeah, it's it's like maybe about the
19:57
Speaker 1: mass of the Earth kind of or more. You know,
19:59
Speaker 1: the Earth is much more ma than these, but it
20:01
Speaker 1: carries enough energy to do some serious damage, something we
20:04
Speaker 1: could really detect here on Earth. Well, you're saying earlier
20:07
Speaker 1: there are solar flares and then there are coronal mass ejects,
20:10
Speaker 1: But we don't know if they're the same thing. Do
20:12
Speaker 1: we know what's causing either of them. We don't know
20:14
Speaker 1: what's causing either of them. We know something about the
20:17
Speaker 1: category of idea that might underlie both of them. That
20:20
Speaker 1: just has to do with understanding the dynamics of a
20:23
Speaker 1: very very complex system, which is the Sun. You know,
20:26
Speaker 1: it's basically like an ocean of plasma. But plasma is
20:30
Speaker 1: not like just the hot gas, right. You can think
20:33
Speaker 1: about how complicated a hot gas is. It's got particles
20:35
Speaker 1: whizzing around in every direction, sometimes bouncing off each other,
20:39
Speaker 1: but gas is usually neutral. In a plasma, it's so
20:42
Speaker 1: hot that the electrons have left their little atoms and
20:45
Speaker 1: they're flying around on their own. And now the atoms
20:48
Speaker 1: also have electric charge, So everything in there doesn't just
20:51
Speaker 1: have a lot of energy, it also has charges, positives
20:54
Speaker 1: and negatives, and so there's a lot of interactions. Now
20:58
Speaker 1: you want to understand what's going to happen. You want
20:59
Speaker 1: to think about like a particle moving through that it's
21:02
Speaker 1: getting tugged on and pulled on by everything else in
21:04
Speaker 1: that plasma. It's a real mess. We have difficulty understanding
21:08
Speaker 1: like how a plasma works inside our fusion reactors where
21:11
Speaker 1: it's just like a single little loop of plasma. Now
21:14
Speaker 1: imagine modeling like an entire sun and it's got oceans
21:17
Speaker 1: and convections and currents inside of it that we don't understand. Yeah,
21:21
Speaker 1: I imagine like if we have a current of you know,
21:23
Speaker 1: positively charged ions or electrons, and that's going to generate
21:27
Speaker 1: a magnetic field, and then that's going to affect the
21:29
Speaker 1: flow over there, and so it gets really complicatedly fast.
21:33
Speaker 1: And that's exactly the right way to think about it.
21:34
Speaker 1: In terms of flows. It's not just like a bubbling
21:37
Speaker 1: tomato sauce right where everything is just sort of sitting
21:39
Speaker 1: and bouncing around. It has flows in it, and we
21:42
Speaker 1: know that because those flows are charged particles, which means
21:46
Speaker 1: there are currents, which means it generates magnetic fields, and
21:49
Speaker 1: the sun has a very very powerful magnetic field. So
21:52
Speaker 1: that means that there are these currents of plasma, these
21:55
Speaker 1: incredibly vast currents of plasma, right like tubes of plasma
21:59
Speaker 1: bigger than Jupiter, right Like, the width of Jupiter is
22:03
Speaker 1: small compared to the width of these currents of plasma
22:06
Speaker 1: flowing through the Sun. But they're not just calmly flowing
22:09
Speaker 1: in a circle the same way year after year. They
22:11
Speaker 1: change and they swap. These are very powerful magnetic fields
22:14
Speaker 1: that sometimes get tangled up and sometimes snap and things
22:17
Speaker 1: change directions suddenly. So that's why it's not very calm
22:21
Speaker 1: and why it's very chaotic and hard to predict what's
22:23
Speaker 1: going to happen. It's kind of like a weather almost, right,
22:26
Speaker 1: Like it's so unpredictable. Anything could happen, like a small
22:29
Speaker 1: solar butterfly could and uh, you know, causing a huge
22:33
Speaker 1: solar flare on the other side of the sun. Yeah.
22:36
Speaker 1: Or imagine taking you know, a bowl of hot spaghetti
22:38
Speaker 1: noodles right and jiggling them and then trying to understand
22:41
Speaker 1: like where each of them are going to end up.
22:43
Speaker 1: It's really complicated how these things interact and tangle up
22:46
Speaker 1: with each other and don't, and so to understand like
22:48
Speaker 1: when this is going to happen. We think that maybe
22:51
Speaker 1: it's connected to when these magnetic field lines get so
22:54
Speaker 1: twisted that they have to like suddenly snap in one
22:56
Speaker 1: direction to get reorented to like settle down. But we
22:59
Speaker 1: don't really know. Our models are not sophisticated enough to
23:02
Speaker 1: predict when this might happen. It's just sort of like
23:05
Speaker 1: the general idea we have about what might be costing it.
23:08
Speaker 1: It's all spaghetti. Yeah, you seem to be really jones
23:11
Speaker 1: in for some spaghetti and tomato sauce here, Daniel, is
23:14
Speaker 1: it lunch fie? No. I was making a pizza last
23:17
Speaker 1: week and we were at a tomato sauce and you know,
23:20
Speaker 1: I hear that everybody always says jarred tomato sauces garbage
23:23
Speaker 1: compared to tomato sauce you make at home. But I
23:25
Speaker 1: never really believed that until we were out of tomato sauce.
23:28
Speaker 1: But we did have cans of tomatoes, and I was like,
23:30
Speaker 1: all right, I'll make some tomato sauce. And then I
23:32
Speaker 1: was like, wow, this is what everybody's talking about. So
23:35
Speaker 1: now I'm hooked. And I got like bubbling pots of
23:37
Speaker 1: tomato sauce in my house all the time. So yes,
23:39
Speaker 1: I got tomato sauce on the brain. I will admit.
23:41
Speaker 1: Do you have to wear sunglasses when you look at
23:43
Speaker 1: it just in case something bubbles up. I have a
23:46
Speaker 1: very powerful magnetic field so that tomato plasma doesn't enter
23:49
Speaker 1: my atmosphere as chaotic as tomato sauces. And the sun
23:52
Speaker 1: is also a pretty chaotic. It's got magnetic fields and
23:56
Speaker 1: flows and so it's pretty unpredictable. But it's sort of
23:58
Speaker 1: going in a cycle. Right, you're telling me that the
24:00
Speaker 1: Sun kind of has a cycle to it. It has
24:03
Speaker 1: an eleven year cycle and it's very regular, right, And
24:07
Speaker 1: every eleven years, the magnetic field of the Sun flips, right,
24:10
Speaker 1: it goes like north becomes south, the south becomes north,
24:14
Speaker 1: and this is crazy. Yeah, you know, the magnetic field
24:17
Speaker 1: of the Earth also flips. We covered it in a podcast.
24:19
Speaker 1: It's not something we understand very well. And it happens
24:22
Speaker 1: much more irregularly, like sometimes every fifty years, sometimes every
24:26
Speaker 1: million years, and it hasn't happened in a long long time.
24:29
Speaker 1: But on the Sun it happens every eleven years like clockwork.
24:33
Speaker 1: And this eleven year cycle is also connected to like
24:35
Speaker 1: the intensity of the Sun and the frequency of these
24:37
Speaker 1: solar flares and these coronal mass ejections. So there's some
24:41
Speaker 1: like very powerful eleven year cycle going on inside the
24:44
Speaker 1: Sun that determines how everything operates. Interesting, it's like a
24:48
Speaker 1: clock that's weird, and we don't know the source of it,
24:50
Speaker 1: and so on Earth, we sort of know that the
24:52
Speaker 1: magnetic field of the of our planet is due to
24:54
Speaker 1: the iron and the molten cork kind of rotating and flowing.
24:59
Speaker 1: But what happening in the Sun. The Sun doesn't have
25:01
Speaker 1: like iron in the middle, does it. I mean, has
25:04
Speaker 1: some iron, I imagine, but not that much. But it
25:07
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be iron. All you need are currents,
25:10
Speaker 1: right to get a magnetic field. What you need are
25:12
Speaker 1: currents in motion. Charged particles moving create magnetic fields. And
25:17
Speaker 1: so even just protons, right, the Sun is mostly protons
25:21
Speaker 1: and electrons. You can think of it as hydrogen, but
25:23
Speaker 1: it's plasma. So those protons and electrons and the hydrogen
25:27
Speaker 1: atom have broken apart, so it's mostly just a huge
25:30
Speaker 1: swarm of protons and electrons, and those things in motion
25:33
Speaker 1: are a current, and those currents and loops will generate
25:36
Speaker 1: magnetic fields in the same way that ionized metal inside
25:40
Speaker 1: the Earth is swarming around creating magnetic fields. Plasma of
25:45
Speaker 1: protons and electrons inside the Sun is doing the same thing,
25:48
Speaker 1: but much more powerfully. But I guess you're it's weird
25:51
Speaker 1: because you're saying it's totally chaotic and unpredictable, But we
25:54
Speaker 1: know it's also doing it in an eleven year cycle,
25:57
Speaker 1: so there must be some predictability about it. There's definitely
26:00
Speaker 1: some predictability, and we should be able to figure it
26:02
Speaker 1: out eventually. We just haven't, Like we can't predict it.
26:05
Speaker 1: But you know, like everything in the universe, at one level,
26:08
Speaker 1: it's a chaotic, buzzing insanity that can't possibly describe in
26:12
Speaker 1: simple terms, but there's always a way to tell, like
26:15
Speaker 1: an approximate mathematical story about it and to say, like
26:18
Speaker 1: here the most important bits, or here we can boil
26:20
Speaker 1: it down to this and that we can describe. And
26:23
Speaker 1: so you know, while there are bits of it that
26:25
Speaker 1: we can't predict that are always going to be chaotic,
26:27
Speaker 1: there are also elements of it that we think we
26:29
Speaker 1: will be able to predict, because, as you say, there
26:32
Speaker 1: are regular patterns there that we hope to be able
26:34
Speaker 1: to like connect to our mathematical ideas, and that's in
26:37
Speaker 1: the end, what physics is is taking this crazy chaotic
26:41
Speaker 1: universe and trying to boil it down summarize it using
26:44
Speaker 1: approximate mathematical stories. Right, that's pretty cool you were saying that.
26:48
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes the Sun just has these flares where
26:51
Speaker 1: there's increased radiation, and sometimes it's not due to these
26:55
Speaker 1: bubbles in the sun. So do we have any ideas
26:58
Speaker 1: about what might be causing these outbursts of i radiation?
27:01
Speaker 1: Is it just the whole Sun suddenly burns brighter for
27:04
Speaker 1: some reason? Yea, So the solar flares, they are also
27:06
Speaker 1: still localized, right, Like, it's not like the entire Sun
27:10
Speaker 1: gets brighter. There's like spots on the Sun which generate
27:13
Speaker 1: intense births of radiation. But again that's not something we understand,
27:17
Speaker 1: and sometimes these are connected to coronal mass injections, but
27:20
Speaker 1: sometimes they're not. So solar flare is not like the
27:22
Speaker 1: entire Sun getting brighter all of a sudden. It's like
27:25
Speaker 1: spots of the Sun getting brighter, and solar astronomers, people
27:29
Speaker 1: who look at the sun you can see these things.
27:30
Speaker 1: I mean, don't look at the sun unless you have
27:32
Speaker 1: special technology for we're dimming it. But if you watch
27:35
Speaker 1: the sun you can see these dots form sometimes, and
27:38
Speaker 1: those are solar flares of intense patterns of localized radiation
27:41
Speaker 1: from the Sun. Yeah, I think we're used to in
27:43
Speaker 1: our heads of thinking of the sun. It's just like,
27:45
Speaker 1: you know, bright this that's one color and it's homogeneous
27:49
Speaker 1: and it's burning. But it's actually like if you look
27:51
Speaker 1: at pictures of the sun, it's pretty the texture like
27:54
Speaker 1: has a ton of texture to it, and you can
27:56
Speaker 1: see all kinds of swirling patterns on it. If you
27:59
Speaker 1: look at the red photograph of it. Yeah, it's really
28:01
Speaker 1: kind of beautiful. Actually, it's incredible. It's just like a
28:03
Speaker 1: big ocean, you know, not a tomato sauce, but of plasma,
28:06
Speaker 1: and it's quite gorgeous to watch. Actually. All right, well,
28:08
Speaker 1: let's getting into the danger of the solar flares. You know,
28:13
Speaker 1: we joke around that you need extra sun block, but
28:16
Speaker 1: if it's big enough to you, that probably won't help you. Yeah,
28:18
Speaker 1: that's right. These things can be really significant. Now, the
28:21
Speaker 1: solar flares probably won't do like any damage to Earth
28:25
Speaker 1: because the magnetic field we have in the atmosphere are
28:28
Speaker 1: likely to protect us. But these coronal mass ejections, they
28:32
Speaker 1: represent a significant danger because if they're magnetic field is
28:36
Speaker 1: oriented in the right way, you can sort of slip
28:38
Speaker 1: between the lines of our magnetic field and it can
28:42
Speaker 1: really wash over the Earth and dump a lot of energy.
28:45
Speaker 1: And this is not hypothetical, like this has happened in
28:48
Speaker 1: the past, in recent recorded history. Yeah, actually in like
28:51
Speaker 1: the last couple of centuries, right, Yeah, one of these
28:54
Speaker 1: things hit earth in eighteen fifty nine. This enormous mass
28:58
Speaker 1: of energy hit the Earth. And it's a guy named
29:01
Speaker 1: Carrington who was actually watching the sun just before this happened,
29:04
Speaker 1: and he was like noting these sun spots, and he
29:07
Speaker 1: noticed a bunch of big sun spots, more than he'd
29:09
Speaker 1: ever seen before. And then a couple of days later,
29:12
Speaker 1: telegraph networks across the Earth started to go crazy, like
29:16
Speaker 1: sparks were flying from people's telegraphs and people who were
29:19
Speaker 1: touching wires got shocked. And there was so much energy
29:23
Speaker 1: in these things that had created like an artificial dawn.
29:26
Speaker 1: People like got up and thought, oh, the sun is
29:29
Speaker 1: coming up, even though it's like two in the morning,
29:30
Speaker 1: and they got up and started to make breakfast and stuff.
29:33
Speaker 1: It was like a major event. People had like a
29:35
Speaker 1: religious epiphanies. It's like enough for people to think it
29:38
Speaker 1: was the actual sun, right, like it lit up the sky, yeah,
29:41
Speaker 1: or they thought it was the end of days, you know,
29:44
Speaker 1: because it was a pretty weird thing. Like imagine not
29:47
Speaker 1: understanding anything about astronomy and seeing an eclipse, right, it
29:50
Speaker 1: feels like, WHOA, something weird and mystical is happening, right,
29:54
Speaker 1: something in the sky, something that affects the entire Solar
29:57
Speaker 1: system or the universe. It seems to you this is
29:59
Speaker 1: an event at that scale right the middle of the night.
30:01
Speaker 1: The sky is glowing and everything that's electric is like
30:05
Speaker 1: giving off sparks and shocking people. Like it was a
30:08
Speaker 1: crazy event. And you're saying Carrington kind of saw it coming,
30:11
Speaker 1: like he he looked at the telescope, and so the
30:14
Speaker 1: visuals of these the solar flares or coronal mass ejections,
30:18
Speaker 1: came before the actual coronal mass ejections. That's right, because
30:22
Speaker 1: the coronal mass doesn't travel as fast as the solar flare.
30:25
Speaker 1: The solar flare is like light and protons traveling near
30:28
Speaker 1: the speed of light, whereas the coronal mass ejection it's
30:31
Speaker 1: like this bubble of the sun. It takes like a
30:34
Speaker 1: half a day at two days sometimes to get here
30:36
Speaker 1: from the sun. So he got a little bit of warning.
30:39
Speaker 1: So he saw these like bright flares happening and then
30:42
Speaker 1: boom a couple of days later, enormous event where everybody's
30:45
Speaker 1: getting shocked if they're touching something electric. I wonder they
30:48
Speaker 1: also saw a spike in like you know, sunburns and
30:52
Speaker 1: skin cancer. You know that in the months following that event.
30:55
Speaker 1: I'm sure there were. Yeah, I don't think they kept
30:58
Speaker 1: records like that, but I'm sure there were. Because it
30:59
Speaker 1: was a huge radiation event. You know, everything around you
31:02
Speaker 1: that can conduct electricity got pushed by all the crazy
31:06
Speaker 1: intense radiation particles coming in and hitting those wires and
31:10
Speaker 1: pushing the electrons in them, creating you know, this physical
31:13
Speaker 1: event where like the energy from the sun is turned
31:15
Speaker 1: directly into electricity. It's an amazing amount of energy required
31:18
Speaker 1: to do that. And so that also happened inside your body.
31:22
Speaker 1: What if it created a whole generation of superheroes too,
31:25
Speaker 1: In that's right, they can make butter like nobody before them. Well,
31:30
Speaker 1: and it happened not just eight fifty nine, but also
31:33
Speaker 1: a few times in the next couple of years. Right, Yeah,
31:35
Speaker 1: we had big events also in eighteen seventy two and
31:38
Speaker 1: ninety one, not quite as big as the original Carrington event,
31:43
Speaker 1: but it got people curious. They're like, wait a second,
31:45
Speaker 1: how often is this going to happen? So then people
31:48
Speaker 1: started digging into the historical records and looking at like
31:51
Speaker 1: rings of trees, really really old trees to see if
31:55
Speaker 1: you can see evidence. And they found like these cedar
31:58
Speaker 1: trees in Japan that are super old that show evidence
32:01
Speaker 1: that in seven hundred and seventy five, that's like hundred
32:05
Speaker 1: years ago, there must have been this massive event because
32:09
Speaker 1: it left all this extra carbon fourteen on these trees.
32:13
Speaker 1: These cosmic rays hit nitrogen and broke nitrogen down into
32:17
Speaker 1: the special form of carbon. And they think, based on
32:20
Speaker 1: the amount of carbon fourteen in these rings, that this
32:23
Speaker 1: must have been an event ten or twenty times more
32:26
Speaker 1: powerful than this Carrington event. We're talking about a hundred
32:29
Speaker 1: and fifty years ago. Wow, it created carbon like its
32:33
Speaker 1: split atoms here on Earth. Yeah. Absolutely, this is really
32:37
Speaker 1: crazy intense radiation. That would be bad news if it
32:39
Speaker 1: happened today. That would be very bad news if it
32:42
Speaker 1: happened today. Absolutely, it was bad news back then, but
32:45
Speaker 1: our civilization didn't have electricity and wasn't dependent on an
32:48
Speaker 1: incredible infrastructure which was delicate and could be knocked out
32:52
Speaker 1: by such an event. So you know, people got a
32:54
Speaker 1: little sick, or maybe they've got skin cancer or whatever,
32:57
Speaker 1: but their civilization mostly survived. And looking and further back
33:00
Speaker 1: in time and see evidence from ice cores of similar
33:04
Speaker 1: events because again it changes the chemistry of the stuff
33:06
Speaker 1: on Earth, and we think that there was an event
33:09
Speaker 1: like in six six b C. And then further back
33:12
Speaker 1: in BC there we can also see evidence for these events.
33:15
Speaker 1: So this is not not a periodic thing. It doesn't
33:17
Speaker 1: happen on a regular cycle, but it's something that happens
33:19
Speaker 1: not too infrequently in the history of our sun. Wow,
33:22
Speaker 1: it like it literally scars to Earth kind of right,
33:25
Speaker 1: it leaves a memory of it, just like a supervolcano, right,
33:28
Speaker 1: will leave a layer of ash in the volcanic and
33:31
Speaker 1: geological record. This frying from the sun will leave like
33:35
Speaker 1: a scar on the Earth which you can see thousands
33:38
Speaker 1: of years later, like a little charring kind of All right, well,
33:41
Speaker 1: let's get into what the consequences of something like that
33:44
Speaker 1: happening today would be how bad would it be and
33:46
Speaker 1: what we could do about it? But first, let's take
33:49
Speaker 1: another quick break, all right, Daniel, exactly how much sunscreen
34:05
Speaker 1: would I need to survive one of these solar flares?
34:08
Speaker 1: Are we talking tubs? Are we talking pools of it?
34:12
Speaker 1: What can I do? Well? You should definitely not be
34:15
Speaker 1: outside and it happens. You should be inside, and you
34:17
Speaker 1: know these things are powerful, but it's not like the
34:20
Speaker 1: death star shooting away at the Earth that's gonna exploded. Right, good, good,
34:27
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. Let's just try to put people
34:29
Speaker 1: at ease here. You know, some people are on their commute,
34:32
Speaker 1: some people are listening to this trying to fall asleep.
34:34
Speaker 1: We don't want to give anybody a nightmare. It's an
34:36
Speaker 1: incredible amount of energy and radiation, but mostly what's sensitive
34:40
Speaker 1: to it are things that can conduct electricity because those
34:43
Speaker 1: things absorb this energy very effectively. I mean, like the
34:46
Speaker 1: worst it could happen will happen is, you know, the
34:48
Speaker 1: night sky might get brighter, or you know, people might
34:51
Speaker 1: get a little bit of more of a suntime. But
34:54
Speaker 1: we wouldn't. It wouldn't like blow us out blower atmosphere away,
34:57
Speaker 1: wouldn't like toasts have of the earth. Uh, it's not
35:00
Speaker 1: like that scene in Terminator where she's watching the nuclear
35:03
Speaker 1: bomb go off in her face melts or something. That's
35:05
Speaker 1: not what's going to happen. Which which version of Terminator?
35:10
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I watched the PG version. No, it's much
35:13
Speaker 1: more indirect. Like if you are the owner of an
35:15
Speaker 1: expensive communications satellite up in space, then probably it's gonna
35:19
Speaker 1: get fried and you're out a few billion dollars. If
35:22
Speaker 1: you are up on your roof adjusting your telephone intended
35:25
Speaker 1: when it happens, then you might get fried by the
35:28
Speaker 1: shocks from something metallic. So it's mostly they're just gonna
35:31
Speaker 1: knock out a lot of our electrical infrastructure. Why only
35:35
Speaker 1: things that are metallic, you know, Like why don't trees
35:37
Speaker 1: get burned? Yeah, the energy can get deposited in trees also,
35:41
Speaker 1: But you know, metals are just great ways to absorb
35:43
Speaker 1: this energy because they have all these electrons floating around
35:46
Speaker 1: in these conduction bands that can absorb this energy and
35:49
Speaker 1: start to flow. Right, these are charged particles coming in,
35:52
Speaker 1: so they're gonna like to interact with other charged particles.
35:55
Speaker 1: So like if you have a satellite out in space,
35:57
Speaker 1: it's gonna get all these charged particles, which is gonna
36:00
Speaker 1: like accumulate and cost sparks and cause your circuit to
36:04
Speaker 1: just like pop and burn out. Essentially, every wire that's
36:06
Speaker 1: going to exist everywhere is suddenly going to have much
36:09
Speaker 1: more current in it than it was ever designed to have.
36:12
Speaker 1: So if you have delicate chips or capacitors or whatever,
36:15
Speaker 1: everything is suddenly going to be super high voltage. And
36:18
Speaker 1: that's not good for your electronics, right, yeah, and not
36:20
Speaker 1: good for our society, which is like so dependent right
36:23
Speaker 1: now on phones and power grids and GPS, and that
36:28
Speaker 1: would be bad news. Right, Like planes couldn't land, maybe
36:31
Speaker 1: people would get lost on their way to the vacations.
36:33
Speaker 1: That's right. Your teslas suddenly would have no idea how
36:35
Speaker 1: to auto drive. You have to like wake up and
36:37
Speaker 1: actually steer for yourself. Yeah, But essentially, anything that's electrical
36:42
Speaker 1: is going to have high current passing through it, and
36:43
Speaker 1: so anything that's on is really in danger. But if
36:47
Speaker 1: you power things off and disconnect things, then you might
36:50
Speaker 1: be safe. Oh really, well, if it's off, it won't
36:53
Speaker 1: burn out, that's right. If you like disconnect things from
36:56
Speaker 1: these power sources, right, then you won't get a surge. Like,
36:59
Speaker 1: for example, if you disconnect your house from the electrical grid,
37:02
Speaker 1: then you're not going to get a big surge of
37:04
Speaker 1: energy because that energy comes from all that current being
37:07
Speaker 1: accumulated on those miles and miles of wire and then
37:09
Speaker 1: being delivered to your house. But if you disconnected, then
37:12
Speaker 1: it's just going to go to a spark on the air.
37:14
Speaker 1: I thought you meant like, the radiation will come to
37:16
Speaker 1: my house from the sky rained down and then it
37:19
Speaker 1: will fry my circuits. But you're saying only the things
37:22
Speaker 1: that are connected to a larger grid. Things that are
37:24
Speaker 1: connected to a larger grid will have more intense surges.
37:28
Speaker 1: But you know, everything will have something of a surge. Absolutely,
37:31
Speaker 1: So every piece of fiber, every wire out there is
37:34
Speaker 1: going to get a little bit of current. But you know,
37:36
Speaker 1: if you disconnect things, then the wires in your microelectronics
37:39
Speaker 1: won't have a chance to accumulate as much current. I
37:41
Speaker 1: guess I'm worried about my phone, Daniel, I'm really concerned
37:45
Speaker 1: here about my phone. Is my phone gonna be all right? Yes?
37:47
Speaker 1: So if you protect your phone, you still should be
37:49
Speaker 1: able to check Twitter. And so that's the key really
37:53
Speaker 1: is knowing that this is going to happen. Can allow
37:55
Speaker 1: us to do what we can to protect our most
37:58
Speaker 1: delicate electronics. So the key is prediction. If you can
38:02
Speaker 1: tell this is going to happen a couple of days
38:03
Speaker 1: in advance, or a week in advance, or a year
38:06
Speaker 1: in advance, then you can get ready for it, right.
38:09
Speaker 1: You can slather some sunscreen on your phone or your
38:12
Speaker 1: you know, digital archives to protect it exactly. And that's
38:15
Speaker 1: the problem is that we don't really yet have the
38:18
Speaker 1: ability to do that. These things happen unpredictably. We don't
38:21
Speaker 1: know when the next one is gonna be, is gonna
38:22
Speaker 1: be tomorrow, is it happening right now, is it going
38:25
Speaker 1: to be in a hundred years. We just don't know
38:26
Speaker 1: because we don't understand the sun well enough yet. But
38:29
Speaker 1: you know, in Carrington's event, Carrington looked at the sun,
38:33
Speaker 1: saw something, then saw the consequence of that later. Couldn't
38:37
Speaker 1: we do that now? I mean, we have telescopes, they
38:38
Speaker 1: could look at the sun and couldn't we say, oh,
38:40
Speaker 1: look it's bubbling up. Maybe we should hide all of
38:43
Speaker 1: our phones. Yeah, but what Carrington saw is a solar
38:45
Speaker 1: flare essentially, which doesn't always lead to a coronal mass ejection.
38:49
Speaker 1: And so while it's often connected, right, and in this
38:52
Speaker 1: case it clearly was. You can't like, you know, turn
38:55
Speaker 1: off society every time you see a big solar flare coming,
38:58
Speaker 1: because you're gonna get a lot of also alarms. It
39:00
Speaker 1: might be good for society though, if everyone turned up
39:03
Speaker 1: their phones more often, just to be safe and sane
39:07
Speaker 1: at the same time. That's right, So side wide, camp out,
39:09
Speaker 1: everybody go camping, turn off all the lights, enjoy the
39:12
Speaker 1: stars while we let this radiation wash over us. But
39:14
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, isn't there other warning signs? You know,
39:16
Speaker 1: if it's shooting this much plasma at us, putting it
39:19
Speaker 1: also you know, have shot light towards us as well,
39:23
Speaker 1: Like wouldn't there be some sort of sign that precedes
39:26
Speaker 1: the actual like plasma coming to us. Yeah, And so
39:29
Speaker 1: if we're lucky, then there's like a solar flare at
39:31
Speaker 1: the same time pointing at us. But we don't always
39:34
Speaker 1: know that the solar flare is going to mean a
39:36
Speaker 1: coronal mass ejection. And so we can tell we can
39:39
Speaker 1: watch the sun. We can like point our telescopes at
39:41
Speaker 1: it and look at it. We can see the kernel
39:42
Speaker 1: mass ejection happen before the plasma gets to Earth, so
39:46
Speaker 1: we can have like a day or two warning, but
39:48
Speaker 1: it'd be nice to have more than that, right, It'd
39:50
Speaker 1: be nice to know when these things are gonna happen,
39:52
Speaker 1: so we can really like batten down the hatches, right, Yeah, Well,
39:56
Speaker 1: what else are we doing about it? Are we sending
39:58
Speaker 1: any probes out there to is maybe like catch these
40:01
Speaker 1: things earlier or study the Sun more closely. We're trying
40:05
Speaker 1: to build a model of the Sun from the inside out.
40:08
Speaker 1: We want to understand all the layers of the Sun,
40:10
Speaker 1: you know, magnetically and all the plasma layers, and to
40:13
Speaker 1: do that we are sending probes to get more information.
40:16
Speaker 1: There's something called the Parker Solar Probe launched in two
40:19
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen that's gonna come within ten solar radii of
40:23
Speaker 1: the center of the Sun and travel at like point
40:25
Speaker 1: oh six percent of the speed of light. It takes
40:28
Speaker 1: these crazy dives or like zooms in towards the Sun
40:31
Speaker 1: and then goes back around the back side of it,
40:33
Speaker 1: gathering as much data as you can while it goes
40:35
Speaker 1: really really fast, and then zooming back out again and
40:37
Speaker 1: going around Venus for another loop. It's gonna do a
40:40
Speaker 1: bunch of these loops, and it's gonna take a bunch
40:42
Speaker 1: of data about what's going on close to the Sun
40:44
Speaker 1: and take pictures and measure magnetic fields. And that data
40:47
Speaker 1: is absolutely critical for us to build our models of
40:50
Speaker 1: what's going on inside the Sun, because if all you
40:53
Speaker 1: know is what's happening really really far away, it's hard
40:55
Speaker 1: to tell what's going on inside. So the more you
40:58
Speaker 1: can get close up pictures, the more we can say, oh,
41:00
Speaker 1: this model doesn't work, that model doesn't work, and we
41:02
Speaker 1: can refine on models to get better predictions of what's
41:04
Speaker 1: going on. I'm just saying it's like we have models
41:07
Speaker 1: of the weather here on Earth that are pretty good.
41:09
Speaker 1: Maybe we can build like a weather model of the Sun, yes, exactly,
41:13
Speaker 1: a solar weather model, space weather model, And a lot
41:16
Speaker 1: of the models we have here on Earth are good
41:17
Speaker 1: because we have taken data inside clouds. Is that what
41:21
Speaker 1: really is going on inside of cloud? What is the
41:23
Speaker 1: temperature and pressure and the wind speed inside a cloud,
41:26
Speaker 1: for example, And that's helps us understand what's going on
41:28
Speaker 1: in the same way, we'd love to know what's going
41:30
Speaker 1: on inside the Sun, but of course we can't actually
41:33
Speaker 1: send anything into the Sun and get messages out. It's
41:36
Speaker 1: sort of like an event horizon almost, but we can
41:38
Speaker 1: send stuff close to the Sun. And so the e
41:41
Speaker 1: s A also has a project called the Solar Orbiter
41:43
Speaker 1: launched in February that's going to go over there close
41:46
Speaker 1: to the Sun. And we have a really cool solar
41:48
Speaker 1: telescope that the NSF built that's looking at the Sun
41:52
Speaker 1: and trying to get like really really fine grain images
41:55
Speaker 1: of the surface of the Sun to image these like
41:57
Speaker 1: bubbles and loops and you know, this turbulent flow on
42:00
Speaker 1: the surface of the Sun. It could be your job
42:02
Speaker 1: to look at the Sun. Basically, you could go back
42:06
Speaker 1: to your parents and be like, see's totally not to
42:08
Speaker 1: look at the Sun. But I guess what I did
42:09
Speaker 1: for a living. I saved the world by staring at
42:12
Speaker 1: the Sun. That's pretty cool. And I was thinking, like,
42:16
Speaker 1: that would be cool to be the first like solar
42:18
Speaker 1: weather person. You know, it sounds like an easy job
42:21
Speaker 1: to just go up up to the map and be
42:23
Speaker 1: like today it's gonna be sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny, and
42:27
Speaker 1: more sunny and crazy Sunday tomorrow. And you know we're
42:31
Speaker 1: talking about like serious radiation events and trillions of dollars
42:34
Speaker 1: in damage to satellites and infrastructure, you know. But the
42:37
Speaker 1: question really Colin had was is this going to wipe
42:40
Speaker 1: out humanity? And I think my answer to that one
42:43
Speaker 1: would definitely be no. Like, even if we destroyed all
42:46
Speaker 1: of our technological infrastructure, people will survive. I mean a
42:49
Speaker 1: lot of people wouldn't, but some people would survive. Civilization
42:54
Speaker 1: would collapse, but you know, out of the ruins, somebody
42:56
Speaker 1: would still be alive, hunting two supermarkets, eating cat food
43:00
Speaker 1: or whatever. It's not like it's going to actually literally
43:02
Speaker 1: kill everybody. Look at the bright side, that's the bright side.
43:07
Speaker 1: Well that's the dark side of the bright side of
43:09
Speaker 1: the sun, I guess. But I mean, you say it
43:11
Speaker 1: won't kill humanity, but that's gonna sort of as far
43:14
Speaker 1: as we know right just because we haven't seen a
43:16
Speaker 1: solar flare or coronal mass ejection big enough. But is
43:20
Speaker 1: it possible that in the future you could have like
43:22
Speaker 1: a giant sunburp that does maybe wipe out half of
43:25
Speaker 1: the Earth. It's definitely possible, And we actually see that
43:28
Speaker 1: kind of stuff happening in other stars, like our neighboring
43:31
Speaker 1: star Proximus Centauri. In two thousand nineteen, it's suddenly got
43:35
Speaker 1: a lot brighter than normal, like fourteen thousand times brighter
43:39
Speaker 1: than usual. So it was like really intensely bright. Like
43:43
Speaker 1: if you are on earthlike planet around Proximus Centauri at
43:46
Speaker 1: that time, then any water molecule would have gotten like
43:49
Speaker 1: split by the radiation. It's really like the whole star
43:53
Speaker 1: got brighter, not just like a little burp on it. Yes,
43:55
Speaker 1: the whole star up brighter. And you know that's a
43:57
Speaker 1: different kind of star than ours. It's a red dwarf star,
44:00
Speaker 1: which are known to be more volatile and have these
44:02
Speaker 1: like big up swings and down swings in radiation. So
44:06
Speaker 1: it's possible though that the same kind of thing could
44:08
Speaker 1: happen to the Sun. We don't see evidence of that
44:10
Speaker 1: in the historical record dating back tens and thousands of years,
44:14
Speaker 1: but it is possible. We don't understand the Sun very well,
44:17
Speaker 1: and the time scales we're talking about are very long,
44:19
Speaker 1: and so it's certainly as possible the Sun could surprise us. Yeah,
44:22
Speaker 1: it's still a relatively young son, right, Like it's not
44:25
Speaker 1: in its senior year, it's in its middle age. About
44:28
Speaker 1: it's like five billion years old and we expect it's
44:31
Speaker 1: gonna last to be about ten billion, so you know
44:33
Speaker 1: it's halfway there. It's thinking about buying a sports car. Yeah,
44:37
Speaker 1: it could still have some spunk to it, or unpredictability
44:42
Speaker 1: or some midlife crisis exactly. All right, Well, again another
44:45
Speaker 1: reminder of how precarious we sit in this little rock
44:49
Speaker 1: in the middle of space. Stuff can come at us
44:52
Speaker 1: out of the blue or out of the sun. It's
44:54
Speaker 1: amazing that we've been comfortable and cozy long enough to
44:57
Speaker 1: develop as much of an understanding about the universe that
45:00
Speaker 1: we have one that shows us exactly how precarious and
45:03
Speaker 1: crazy our situation is. And hopefully we can sit here
45:06
Speaker 1: staring out into the universe understanding more and more about
45:09
Speaker 1: how it might kill us. And also, I think a
45:11
Speaker 1: pretty good reminder also of how important science is and
45:14
Speaker 1: how important it is to understand these things, because you know,
45:18
Speaker 1: if we can have some warning about something that's coming
45:20
Speaker 1: our way, it would be good to know, right, so
45:22
Speaker 1: we can protect things and shield ourselves and turn off
45:26
Speaker 1: our phones just in time. That's right. More than just
45:28
Speaker 1: understanding why we are dying, it might actually prevent it
45:31
Speaker 1: so that we can rest easy and keep checking Twitter.
45:34
Speaker 1: That's right at the beach, reading papers and getting a
45:37
Speaker 1: nice tent. All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that.
45:40
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
45:50
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
45:53
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcast from
45:57
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
46:01
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.