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Space Weather - What's That?! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and Jerry's not here.
0:17
Speaker 1: But we're going to make it through somehow, uh, in
0:21
Speaker 1: this edition of Stuff You Should Know. Um, I'm going
0:24
Speaker 1: to call this one Chuck the Icarus Edition, because we
0:28
Speaker 1: made it through the Sun Podcast just hanging on by
0:31
Speaker 1: our fingernails before and through just an astounding act of hubris.
0:37
Speaker 1: We're going to do another Sun related episode. Yeah. We
0:41
Speaker 1: talked about a lot of this stuff in the Sun one.
0:44
Speaker 1: Yeah we did, but I don't think we went anywhere
0:46
Speaker 1: near into this kind of detail. So I'm feeling okay
0:48
Speaker 1: about redoing this, doing something that that's like kind of
0:51
Speaker 1: a re redo a little bit. Okay, are you feeling okay?
0:56
Speaker 1: I'm feeling great. Oh good, I'm glad to hear that.
1:00
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would say I'm feeling great,
1:01
Speaker 1: but that's good that you are at least so. Um,
1:07
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Sun, believe it or not, and
1:10
Speaker 1: we're talking about a specific thing on the Sun called
1:12
Speaker 1: solar flares, which you may have heard of, but you
1:15
Speaker 1: may not know much about unless apparently you've already listened
1:18
Speaker 1: to our Sun episode. But um, we'll talk a little
1:21
Speaker 1: bit about solar flawers. But one of the things that
1:23
Speaker 1: that I think is extraordinarily interesting about solar flowers is
1:26
Speaker 1: they belong to a larger category called space weather. And
1:31
Speaker 1: I am just as jazz as can be about the
1:33
Speaker 1: idea of space weather, aren't you? Uh not as jazz
1:37
Speaker 1: as you, I don't think, but I do think this
1:40
Speaker 1: is this is pretty neat stuff, and I'm glad we're
1:42
Speaker 1: we're getting a chance to make it more clear than
1:45
Speaker 1: we did before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a good that's
1:50
Speaker 1: a good point. I'm sure we talked about this before,
1:52
Speaker 1: but it's probably extremely confusing. So yeah, we're going to
1:54
Speaker 1: clear all that up. So space weather, especially stuff that
1:58
Speaker 1: comes from the Sun, come mostly from the surface or
2:01
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of the Sun, which is extraordinarily active. It's
2:08
Speaker 1: extraordinarily hot, so hot, chuck. Um that the surface of
2:11
Speaker 1: the Sun is made of plasma, which a lot of
2:14
Speaker 1: people consider the fourth state of matter. It's like a gas,
2:18
Speaker 1: but it's a special kind of gas that um where
2:22
Speaker 1: the particles are as jazzed about being alive as I
2:24
Speaker 1: am about the idea of space weather. That's right. They're
2:27
Speaker 1: supercharged and when they are moving around, they create something
2:32
Speaker 1: called metic magnetic fields. Not the band, the thing, even
2:36
Speaker 1: though it is a great band name and a great band. Uh,
2:40
Speaker 1: and they are gonna you know, magnetic fields have their
2:45
Speaker 1: own effect on all these particles and what's going on
2:47
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah. So the the energetic electrons that have
2:51
Speaker 1: been stripped from the atoms, creating electrons and ions which
2:54
Speaker 1: have a charge, they create magnetic fields, and then the
2:57
Speaker 1: magnetic fields they create have an effect on them, um
3:00
Speaker 1: so that they tend to follow these magnetic field lines.
3:04
Speaker 1: But the the stuff is so energetic and so hot
3:07
Speaker 1: that the magnetic fields that develop aren't like this kind
3:10
Speaker 1: of orderly lines that keep their distance, you know, nice
3:14
Speaker 1: and tidy like you imagine like a magnetic field to exist.
3:17
Speaker 1: Like these things are like roiling, curling, twisting. It's just
3:23
Speaker 1: a big orgy of magnetism up there. That's the only
3:28
Speaker 1: way to put it. That's it. I had no choice
3:30
Speaker 1: but to say it like that. Yeah, and then, uh,
3:33
Speaker 1: you know, this stuff is going on. It's called solar activity,
3:36
Speaker 1: and it depends on when you're observing the Sun, it's
3:40
Speaker 1: going to be more or less active. There's a there's
3:43
Speaker 1: a cycle, it's called the solar cycle that happens about
3:46
Speaker 1: every eleven years when the magnetic north and south pole switch.
3:51
Speaker 1: And within that cycle, UM, there's something called a solar maximum,
3:55
Speaker 1: which is the period kind of where the biggest show
3:59
Speaker 1: is going on. Yeah, there's also a solar minimum, but
4:01
Speaker 1: the solar maximum is UM. We're in solar cycle twenty
4:05
Speaker 1: five apparently, and the solar maximum is coming up on
4:08
Speaker 1: in two thousand. That's very appropriately UM. And so as
4:12
Speaker 1: we're reaching the solar maximum, there's gonna be a lot
4:15
Speaker 1: more of what people call sun spots. By people, I
4:19
Speaker 1: mean astronomers, of course, um. And sun spots are these
4:23
Speaker 1: kind of darkish areas on the surface of the Sun.
4:28
Speaker 1: They can be little, tiny dots, they can be kind
4:29
Speaker 1: of big, but they look really really small and they
4:32
Speaker 1: look dark. UM. And the reason they look dark is
4:35
Speaker 1: because they're relatively cool compared to the rest of the
4:38
Speaker 1: surface that's around them. Um. But even still, they're super
4:43
Speaker 1: duper hot and they're still pretty bright comparatively speaking. Yeah,
4:46
Speaker 1: Like a sun spot is about degrees fahrenheit. Because we're
4:51
Speaker 1: talking about the sun so cool is a relative term here. Uh.
4:55
Speaker 1: And as far as bright goes, it's about that's about
4:57
Speaker 1: ten times as bright as a full moon. So if
5:00
Speaker 1: you go out at night in a full moon and
5:03
Speaker 1: it kind of feels like a little cool daylight, a
5:05
Speaker 1: sun spot is about ten times brighter than that. Right,
5:09
Speaker 1: So you shouldn't go looking at these things. No, No,
5:11
Speaker 1: that's a really good thing to say. Is like, we're
5:13
Speaker 1: talking about a lot of stuff that's gonna make you
5:15
Speaker 1: want to look at the sun. Don't do it. Just
5:17
Speaker 1: go online and look at pictures of this stuff on
5:20
Speaker 1: the sun or videos even we have videos thanks to
5:23
Speaker 1: the good people at NASA, but um, the sun spots,
5:26
Speaker 1: So it really just goes to show you how hot
5:28
Speaker 1: and bright the surface of the Sun is. That these
5:30
Speaker 1: things seem cool and dark by comparisons. And yeah, and
5:34
Speaker 1: they are really really big, So the width of them
5:37
Speaker 1: can get to be up to thirty thous miles across,
5:39
Speaker 1: which is about the width of Neptune, which is huge,
5:43
Speaker 1: about four times the width of Earth. Um, and still
5:47
Speaker 1: they look super dinky compared to the Sun. And the
5:50
Speaker 1: reason that these things are cooler, chuck, is because they're
5:54
Speaker 1: spots of magnetism that are so strong that they keep
5:58
Speaker 1: the heat inside the Sun from poking out right there.
6:02
Speaker 1: That's how strong the magnetic energy is in these areas. Yeah,
6:06
Speaker 1: and that's right. And because they're magnets, they form in
6:09
Speaker 1: little pairs like little buddies, and they appear on the
6:13
Speaker 1: surface of the Sun. And what we're actually looking at
6:15
Speaker 1: if you can like go to uh NASA or whatever,
6:18
Speaker 1: like you said, and see a picture of a sun spot,
6:20
Speaker 1: what you're looking at is sort of like the two
6:22
Speaker 1: ends of um. If you think about these magnetic lines there,
6:27
Speaker 1: these magnetism it's like a filament like a rope. Just
6:30
Speaker 1: picture them twisted up basically running beneath the sun surface.
6:34
Speaker 1: And there are some really really cool pictures and stuff.
6:37
Speaker 1: And then one end of this sun spot is positive,
6:40
Speaker 1: the other end is negative, and it's they sort of
6:43
Speaker 1: act like rings of a tree a little bit. As
6:47
Speaker 1: far as astronomers can like observe these things. The first
6:51
Speaker 1: sun spots of each cycle are in the midd latitudes
6:54
Speaker 1: and then they start moving around during the cycle, so
6:57
Speaker 1: they can kind of see where you are in the
7:00
Speaker 1: solar cycle by where and how many of these sun
7:02
Speaker 1: spots there are. Yeah, so the more the closer to
7:06
Speaker 1: the solar maximum you are, the more sun spots they're
7:08
Speaker 1: going to be, and the closer they're going to be
7:10
Speaker 1: to the equator. So they tell a lot about where
7:13
Speaker 1: where the Sun is in its solar cycle. Um. But
7:16
Speaker 1: the thing is when these magnetic field lines twists and
7:20
Speaker 1: and curve and turn, um, they actually can interact with
7:25
Speaker 1: other magnetic field lines. And when that happens, when they cross,
7:30
Speaker 1: kind of like the proton streams crossing in Ghostbusters. When
7:34
Speaker 1: that happens, UM, something called the solar flare, uh happens.
7:39
Speaker 1: It's a it's an event on the Sun, and it
7:41
Speaker 1: is such a huge, magnificently energetic event that it actually
7:47
Speaker 1: can affect Earth things on Earth because it's just so
7:51
Speaker 1: massive in such a huge release and sudden release of energy.
7:55
Speaker 1: I had a Ghostbusters ref penciled end later on if
7:58
Speaker 1: you believe that. Oh, I can't wait to it's been
8:00
Speaker 1: a long time, when we both have to we have
8:03
Speaker 1: one each. Um, Yeah, it has. And it's been a
8:07
Speaker 1: while since we listed dates by the years before since
8:11
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters came in. Mind has a data attached to it,
8:13
Speaker 1: and you'll just have to wait. I can't wait. What
8:15
Speaker 1: a great episode this is shaping out to be. So
8:18
Speaker 1: these explosions, the magnetic fields are driving these explosions. And
8:23
Speaker 1: if you you know, if you're lay people like us,
8:26
Speaker 1: it's you can either look at this is something that's
8:29
Speaker 1: kind of simple to look at on its surface, or
8:32
Speaker 1: if you really want to get into it, it's pretty
8:34
Speaker 1: complex and not easily understood. But the simple answer is,
8:38
Speaker 1: because we're talking about magnetic fields, is that these adjacent
8:42
Speaker 1: fields are pointing in opposite directions and they basically wipe
8:46
Speaker 1: each other out and that releases all this magnetic energy
8:50
Speaker 1: and all that heat, uh, kind of everywhere that surrounds it.
8:54
Speaker 1: It just goes spew spew, spew energy heat shooting at
8:58
Speaker 1: you from the sun. Right, So people have figured this out.
9:02
Speaker 1: Finally that has to do with, like um, the lines
9:06
Speaker 1: of magnetism interacting with one another and annihilating one another.
9:09
Speaker 1: But there's a big mystery attached to this, or there
9:12
Speaker 1: there was for many many years, and that is that. Okay,
9:15
Speaker 1: so we understand magnetic annihilation. But to this point, we
9:19
Speaker 1: thought it took about ten thousand years for two opposite
9:24
Speaker 1: magnetic fields to annihilate one another. Well, we're talking about here,
9:28
Speaker 1: these solar flares. They they annihilate one another and release
9:32
Speaker 1: all this energy in a matter of minutes, maybe an
9:35
Speaker 1: hour sometimes, So that doesn't quite job. And I think
9:39
Speaker 1: back in the fifties some scientists started proposing a type
9:43
Speaker 1: of magnetic energy released called magnetic reconnection. And that is
9:47
Speaker 1: where magnetic field lines are so um twisty, turney writhey
9:52
Speaker 1: and energetic that they can actually rip a field line
9:56
Speaker 1: or like a magnetic field line can rip a part
10:00
Speaker 1: and then reconnect with some neighbors. When that happens, it's
10:04
Speaker 1: called magnetic reconnection. And they think that that is the
10:08
Speaker 1: kind of energetic release that would account for a solar flare. Yeah,
10:12
Speaker 1: and this, you know, this can cause all kinds of problems,
10:15
Speaker 1: um for things in space and for people on Earth
10:18
Speaker 1: even which we'll get to that stuff in more detail
10:21
Speaker 1: a little bit later. But the point is these things
10:24
Speaker 1: are super hot. Uh. They burst out to the Sun's corona, which,
10:29
Speaker 1: if you remember from our Sun Up episode, that's the
10:31
Speaker 1: outermost atmosphere of the Sun. Rarefied gas is all over
10:36
Speaker 1: the place out there, and it has I mean, this
10:40
Speaker 1: is super super hot stuff. Like normally the temperature and
10:43
Speaker 1: the corona is about you know, a few million degrees kelvin,
10:47
Speaker 1: but inside that flare, we're talking ten to twenty million
10:50
Speaker 1: degrees kelvin. And we always like to uh think of
10:55
Speaker 1: things in terms of either big max or hydrogen bombs,
10:59
Speaker 1: and in this case, it's got to be hydrogen bombs.
11:01
Speaker 1: The amount of energy released during a solar flare is
11:04
Speaker 1: about um it's millions of one hundred ton hydrogen bombs
11:09
Speaker 1: all at once. Yeah, all at once. That's a really
11:12
Speaker 1: that's a really important point too, you know, And I
11:15
Speaker 1: feel like a real schmo for not having calculated that
11:18
Speaker 1: in big bags calories. I know you could do calories, yeah,
11:24
Speaker 1: but what's the calorie of a solar flare. I don't know.
11:27
Speaker 1: I didn't look and I feel like a jackass for
11:30
Speaker 1: not having looked. Well, they go down easy, I know
11:33
Speaker 1: that they do. So they're big, huge releases of energy,
11:37
Speaker 1: and they're they're releases of radiation. They release um radiation
11:42
Speaker 1: across the electromagnetic spectrum and that includes the visible light spectrum.
11:49
Speaker 1: So these things just turned into these enormously bright flares,
11:53
Speaker 1: which is where the name comes from. And we've figured
11:56
Speaker 1: out how to classify, and there's a classifying system for
11:59
Speaker 1: solar flares. It's a lot like the Richter scale UM,
12:02
Speaker 1: and that there's class A, B, C, M, and X.
12:07
Speaker 1: That's not really like the Richter scale. What's like the
12:10
Speaker 1: Richter scale is that each of those classes UH is
12:13
Speaker 1: ten times more powerful than the previous class. Yeah, so
12:18
Speaker 1: like an X is the highest, that is ten times
12:22
Speaker 1: ten times in M, a hundred times of C. And
12:25
Speaker 1: then once you get to X, uh. You know, if
12:28
Speaker 1: they didn't go Y and Z, they just said, let's
12:30
Speaker 1: stick with X and then let's cool. Sure, and it
12:33
Speaker 1: sounds totally cool, and then let's start attaching numbers to
12:36
Speaker 1: them so you can have you know, X, one, three,
12:39
Speaker 1: four and so on. Yeah, and so you know, each
12:42
Speaker 1: each of those letter grades has a one through nine scale,
12:46
Speaker 1: but X is so huge the excess scale goes beyond nine.
12:50
Speaker 1: And I think the biggest, the biggest one that they've
12:54
Speaker 1: ever caught so far, UM that's ever been recorded. UH
12:59
Speaker 1: burned out the set answers that were recording it, and
13:01
Speaker 1: the censors UM were overloaded at X eight And they
13:06
Speaker 1: did some calculations after the fact and they figured out
13:08
Speaker 1: that they may have been an X forty five flare.
13:11
Speaker 1: Back on November four, two thousand three. Yeah, this was
13:14
Speaker 1: a big deal. This was it was something called the
13:17
Speaker 1: Halloween Storms of two thousand three, which is kind of
13:21
Speaker 1: a fun way. Uh, you know, it happened because it
13:24
Speaker 1: was in October and near Halloween. So while the astronomers
13:27
Speaker 1: got excited. And this one was a little bit weird
13:30
Speaker 1: because although it was near the solar maximum, it was
13:35
Speaker 1: two to three years after the peak, and it was
13:39
Speaker 1: they said, NASA said it's generally a quiet period, so
13:42
Speaker 1: they got really really excited. There were seventeen major flares
13:46
Speaker 1: in that uh Halloween storm, and it was that's something
13:51
Speaker 1: that is really going to get the white coats pretty
13:54
Speaker 1: charged up. It totally is I mean an X forty
13:58
Speaker 1: five that's just funding And I did a little bit
14:01
Speaker 1: of of derivative calculation. Technically it would be a double
14:07
Speaker 1: A five A five, you know. I saw weird different
14:11
Speaker 1: numbers too, though. I saw that the center cut out
14:13
Speaker 1: at fifteen and the estimate was X. Huh. It's really hard.
14:19
Speaker 1: It's NASSY even had conflicting information. I think we should
14:22
Speaker 1: point this out that you just set us up for
14:24
Speaker 1: a c o A that I wanted to include. So
14:28
Speaker 1: there's two things. Um, there's a lot of disagreement on
14:32
Speaker 1: exactly what a solar flare is and the difference between
14:36
Speaker 1: that and coronal mass ejections, which we'll talk about in
14:38
Speaker 1: a little bit. And it's not necessarily a disagreement in astronomy, um.
14:43
Speaker 1: It's a disagreement among people who report on stuff like
14:47
Speaker 1: astronomy and don't fully understand what they're talking about. So
14:50
Speaker 1: we ran into that quite a bit. So if we
14:52
Speaker 1: get something mixed up, please forgive us. And then secondly,
14:56
Speaker 1: when we're talking about some of these incredible um events
15:00
Speaker 1: in physics terms, people who are in the field of
15:04
Speaker 1: physics understand what they're talking about to one another, but
15:07
Speaker 1: they have a great reputation of not figuring out how
15:11
Speaker 1: to explain it to the rest of us, and so
15:13
Speaker 1: they'll put it in different terms. And so when you're
15:16
Speaker 1: researching this stuff, you're like, are you is this describing
15:19
Speaker 1: a different thing than this over here or is it
15:22
Speaker 1: just two different people describing the same thing two different
15:24
Speaker 1: ways because they're not describing it in the true physics
15:28
Speaker 1: way because I wouldn't understand. So we ran into that
15:31
Speaker 1: a lot too, did you. Yeah, And it's frustrating to
15:34
Speaker 1: literally see two different things both from NASA dot gov
15:38
Speaker 1: on two different pages. But you know, who are we
15:42
Speaker 1: too to call out NASA? I think we just did.
15:46
Speaker 1: We'll call out Space Force, sure. But the point is this,
15:53
Speaker 1: all of that really underscores the fact that our understanding
15:56
Speaker 1: of the dynamics on the Sun are still really early
16:01
Speaker 1: and premature, um, and we're still figuring a lot of
16:03
Speaker 1: stuff out, including classifying the differences between solar flares and
16:07
Speaker 1: coronal mass ejections. Yeah, and the light show and the
16:12
Speaker 1: you know, the fund that the astronomers had in the
16:15
Speaker 1: Halloween storms of two thousand three was immense, no matter
16:18
Speaker 1: whether it was x X forty partied either way, they
16:24
Speaker 1: did they surely did check. They had a little bit
16:26
Speaker 1: of peach snops and went to tasted some half a
16:30
Speaker 1: shot of brandy and then went to bed. That's right.
16:33
Speaker 1: Prove us wrong, nerds, prove us wrong. I say, we
16:37
Speaker 1: take a break and then come back and talk about
16:39
Speaker 1: those coronal mass ejections that I teased. Okay, we'll be
16:43
Speaker 1: right back, everybody, m all right. So I was saying
17:12
Speaker 1: that it's difficult sometimes to discern the difference between a
17:15
Speaker 1: solar flare, which is a huge burst of radiation across
17:18
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic spectrum um all at once, which, by the way,
17:23
Speaker 1: it takes just a matter of minutes eight minutes to
17:25
Speaker 1: be exact to reach Earth because we're talking about carriers
17:29
Speaker 1: of the electromagnetic force, which can travel at the speed
17:32
Speaker 1: of light. So it's where I guess, eight minutes, but
17:36
Speaker 1: at the speed of light from the Sun, right. Um.
17:41
Speaker 1: Coronal mass ejections are something different. Even though they seem
17:45
Speaker 1: to be associated with solar flares in a lot of cases,
17:49
Speaker 1: they also seem to be able to kind of stand
17:51
Speaker 1: on their own too. Either way, they're impressive in their
17:54
Speaker 1: own right for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think if
17:57
Speaker 1: you were talking in terms of um visual excitement, like
18:04
Speaker 1: a solar mass I'm sorry, a coronal mass ejection is
18:07
Speaker 1: like a full on Grateful Dead concert, whereas a solar
18:11
Speaker 1: flair is like when John Mayer played with members of
18:14
Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead. Oh that's mean I was gonna say
18:18
Speaker 1: it was. It's just an Instagram video lesson of John
18:21
Speaker 1: Mayor teaching you some Grateful Dead lick because you know well,
18:26
Speaker 1: but sol solar flares are more magnificent than that. Um,
18:29
Speaker 1: so man, that's mean. Sorry, Sorry, John Mayor. If you're listening.
18:33
Speaker 1: I'm not sorry, Josh. Sorry. He uh he's a nice guy,
18:36
Speaker 1: he apparently, uh has I've seen some stuff like of
18:41
Speaker 1: him teaching like people how to play Grateful Dead guitar
18:45
Speaker 1: stuff and it's really really hard what he's doing. So
18:49
Speaker 1: my hats off, right, So with man, I feel weird.
18:55
Speaker 1: It just apologized to John Mayer on the stuff you
18:59
Speaker 1: should know ast about solar flares. You didn't see that coming. No,
19:03
Speaker 1: it wasn't in my notes. So with coronal mass ejections
19:08
Speaker 1: at least these these are not necessarily just bursts of
19:12
Speaker 1: um of radiation like a solar flare is these they
19:16
Speaker 1: do have some radiation attached, but they're big thing is
19:19
Speaker 1: um particles, highly charged, super energetic particles that it shoots
19:25
Speaker 1: like buckshot towards the Earth at incredible speeds. I mean,
19:30
Speaker 1: they get they get accelerated very close to the speed
19:33
Speaker 1: of light, not the speed of light, and there's a
19:34
Speaker 1: big difference between the speed of light and close to
19:37
Speaker 1: the speed of light. So it takes about three or
19:39
Speaker 1: four days usually for stuff um that's shot out by
19:42
Speaker 1: a coronal mass ejection to reach Earth. But when these
19:45
Speaker 1: things go off on the Sun, there like you said,
19:49
Speaker 1: they're they're rather impressive. Yeah, like if you were looking
19:52
Speaker 1: at this stuff and uh with a telescope and high
19:57
Speaker 1: powered telescope that is I don't I don't think you
19:59
Speaker 1: could well could you see any of this stuff anything
20:02
Speaker 1: you have at home? You know, I've got a pretty
20:04
Speaker 1: good telescope, but it's for nighttime viewing only. So with
20:07
Speaker 1: the UM, I think you can see coronal mass ejections.
20:10
Speaker 1: I think solar flares. You're you're best with a radio
20:13
Speaker 1: telescope or X ray telescope, but the X ray telescope
20:16
Speaker 1: would have to be outside of Earth's magnetosphere. Do you
20:19
Speaker 1: have a telescope, yeah, telescope. It's not a radio telescope.
20:24
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, I just we've never talked, we've never
20:26
Speaker 1: scoped it up in conversation, and I would be surprised
20:29
Speaker 1: if you didn't, but I'm glad to know you do.
20:31
Speaker 1: We do have one. Yea so flares, Like if you
20:34
Speaker 1: were looking through an X ray or a radio telescope
20:37
Speaker 1: at a solar flare, it'll look cool, It'll look like
20:39
Speaker 1: a flash of light. But those coronal mass ejections are
20:43
Speaker 1: really impressive, big eruptions. Uh, the height can be many
20:47
Speaker 1: times the size of the Earth, shooting out into space,
20:50
Speaker 1: like you said, and they're they're kind of like a
20:52
Speaker 1: belch from the Sun that actually releases part of the Sun.
20:56
Speaker 1: It's like a bubble of plasma that's just an enormous
21:00
Speaker 1: um often billions and billions of tons uh in mass,
21:05
Speaker 1: just coming right at the Earth, full of these incredibly
21:08
Speaker 1: charged particles UM. And they're so big, so massive, and
21:13
Speaker 1: the plasma that they're made of is so energetic that
21:15
Speaker 1: they actually have their own magnetic fields like the sawn
21:18
Speaker 1: or the Earth UM. So when they finally do come
21:21
Speaker 1: in contact with the planet, our planet UM, weird things
21:26
Speaker 1: start to happen because it's own magnetic field and all
21:29
Speaker 1: of the charged particles within the plasma contact our own
21:33
Speaker 1: magnetosphere and then also our atmosphere UM, which is almost
21:37
Speaker 1: designed to UM to deter the worst effects of those
21:42
Speaker 1: things coming at us from the Sun. Yeah, so our magnetosphere,
21:46
Speaker 1: that's our little first layer of protection. That would be
21:49
Speaker 1: like UM, although I was about to say like Wakonda's
21:53
Speaker 1: protective shield, that may be more like the ionosphere. But
21:57
Speaker 1: the magnetosphere is that first protect and and it's going
22:00
Speaker 1: to kind of brush away as many of those charge particles,
22:04
Speaker 1: these protons that are shooting out as possible, and because
22:07
Speaker 1: of solar wind though, uh, it's it's it's got a
22:10
Speaker 1: shape to it. The magnetosphere has like a sort of
22:13
Speaker 1: a compressed side that faces the Sun. It's got a
22:16
Speaker 1: little dip near the poles of the Earth where some
22:19
Speaker 1: really magnificent stuff is going to take place, as we'll
22:21
Speaker 1: see in a minute. And then it's got this tail
22:23
Speaker 1: end that flows out from the back, and the Earth's
22:26
Speaker 1: magnetic field is going to block these particles from most
22:29
Speaker 1: of the surface. The Sun's the solar wind is going
22:31
Speaker 1: to push them along toward that tail and then that
22:34
Speaker 1: dip at the poles is where you're gonna see these
22:37
Speaker 1: really brilliant auroras. Yes, but the magnetism, the magnetic energy
22:44
Speaker 1: from the coronal mass ejection can be so energetic that
22:48
Speaker 1: it can actually push on the sun side, the day
22:53
Speaker 1: side of the Earth's magnetosphere it's closest to the Sun,
22:56
Speaker 1: push on it so much that it actually contorts the
22:59
Speaker 1: Night's the tail end that trails off into space and
23:03
Speaker 1: presses it together so that when it comes together the
23:06
Speaker 1: Earth's own magnetosphere um becomes energetic and quivery and then
23:11
Speaker 1: when it goes back to its normal energy state, it
23:14
Speaker 1: releases a bunch of energy in the form of light.
23:17
Speaker 1: And when that happens, the auroras that tend to congregated
23:21
Speaker 1: the polls can actually show up all over the planet basically,
23:25
Speaker 1: even very close to the equator. Yeah, which is crazy.
23:28
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about some of the bigger ones and
23:30
Speaker 1: some of the surprising places they showed up. But um,
23:33
Speaker 1: so that's a magnetosphere. I mentioned the ionosphere. That's sort
23:37
Speaker 1: of um, I guess the secondary protection that is another
23:41
Speaker 1: high layer of the Earth's atmosphere, and that's going to
23:44
Speaker 1: stop all the radiation because it's giving out a tremendous
23:47
Speaker 1: amount of radiation. And if the ionosphere wasn't doing his
23:50
Speaker 1: job and it wasn't there, we would be in big,
23:53
Speaker 1: big trouble. Oh yeah, we we'd be toast. I mean, like,
23:57
Speaker 1: these are incredibly energetic, fast traveling particles close to the
24:02
Speaker 1: speed of light um and they would just shoot right
24:05
Speaker 1: through the tissue in our our bodies, uh and do
24:08
Speaker 1: all sorts of damage because they would probably knock all
24:11
Speaker 1: sorts of electrons off of our atoms that make up
24:14
Speaker 1: our cells and our tissue and um, we would either
24:17
Speaker 1: develop cancer of the long term or just drop dead
24:20
Speaker 1: from a big enough dose of the stuff. So thank
24:22
Speaker 1: goodness for the ionosphere. I mean, it saves us like
24:27
Speaker 1: John Mayor saved the grateful dead. Just in case he's
24:32
Speaker 1: still listening. There's like a percentage of our audience it's like, yeah, man, preach,
24:37
Speaker 1: and there's a percentage that was like, oh my god,
24:39
Speaker 1: I have to turn this off. And then I'd say
24:42
Speaker 1: the vast majority are like American exactly, the guy that
24:47
Speaker 1: dated Jen Aniston probably. Um. So you've got the magnanosphere,
24:54
Speaker 1: you got the ionosphere, and for the most part, these
24:57
Speaker 1: things are capable of absorbing the worst of the on
25:00
Speaker 1: belches and flare ups and everything, um, under normal circumstances.
25:06
Speaker 1: But even even when it is protecting life on Earth
25:10
Speaker 1: like us animals and the plants and the plankton and
25:14
Speaker 1: you know, um, the whales, that kind of stuff life
25:17
Speaker 1: here on Earth. Um, there are things that we humans
25:21
Speaker 1: have developed that can be affected by these this space weather,
25:26
Speaker 1: by these geomagnetic storms. Yeah, I guess should we talk
25:30
Speaker 1: about the the Carrington event one of the most exciting events.
25:35
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty exciting. Yes, it's pretty good. So, uh,
25:38
Speaker 1: this is eighteen fifty nine. Um, like this kind of
25:41
Speaker 1: thing now is pretty magnificent, But I imagine eighteen fifty
25:44
Speaker 1: nine astronomers were just really really knocked out by something
25:48
Speaker 1: like this. They said, zeus is beer exactly. Uh. This
25:53
Speaker 1: is sort of late summer August September and a big
25:56
Speaker 1: solar storm they later called the Carrington event became him
26:00
Speaker 1: the strongest one on record. And this is named for
26:04
Speaker 1: a man named Richard Carrington. He was an astronomer, one
26:08
Speaker 1: of England's best at the time, and he was in
26:11
Speaker 1: his observatory and he was hanging out and it was
26:14
Speaker 1: a sunny day and he was working with his telescope
26:17
Speaker 1: and he's projecting this image of the sun on a
26:20
Speaker 1: screen and drawing. He there were cameras at the time,
26:24
Speaker 1: but I guess the most I don't know, accurate or
26:28
Speaker 1: efficient way to capture what he saw was to draw
26:31
Speaker 1: this stuff that he's observing, and that's what he was
26:33
Speaker 1: doing on September one. Yeah, and while he was drawing
26:38
Speaker 1: the stuff, um, he saw that some of these sun
26:41
Speaker 1: spots that he was he was um mapping, I guess,
26:45
Speaker 1: started to grow really really bright and he got really
26:49
Speaker 1: excited because he'd been doing this for a while and
26:51
Speaker 1: this wasn't something he'd seen before. So he jumped up
26:53
Speaker 1: and he ran to get a friend who was going
26:55
Speaker 1: to witness this mistake. Yeah, he said. He was gone
26:58
Speaker 1: for a minute tops. When he came back, he found
27:01
Speaker 1: that these brilliant flashes of light had already started to
27:03
Speaker 1: like weakend. Can you imagine. He was a little bummed
27:07
Speaker 1: about this, but he and he and his buddy still
27:09
Speaker 1: watched these flares like go, you know, get lower and
27:12
Speaker 1: lower and then turn into pinpoints and then vanish. Um.
27:16
Speaker 1: So what he saw he was the first person to
27:19
Speaker 1: record a solar flare. No one had ever seen anything
27:22
Speaker 1: like it before. And that was at eleven three am.
27:27
Speaker 1: It was, it was done, It finished, um and then nothing.
27:32
Speaker 1: That was it until the wee hours of the morning,
27:35
Speaker 1: later that night, the morning of the next day, later
27:39
Speaker 1: that night, which I always just find endlessly confusing. What
27:42
Speaker 1: that it took that long? No that it's the next
27:45
Speaker 1: that night is the next morning. For some reason, it
27:48
Speaker 1: just breaks my brain every time. I realized how sad
27:52
Speaker 1: that is to admit. Yeah, so in the wee hours,
27:55
Speaker 1: the skies put on a light show all over the
27:59
Speaker 1: earth redan purple auroras, very brilliant, very exciting newspapers. You
28:04
Speaker 1: could like read the newspaper at night. They saw this
28:07
Speaker 1: stuff in the Hawaii El Salvador and the Bahamas. They
28:12
Speaker 1: saw the auroras in the boat that nuts. That is nuts. Uh.
28:17
Speaker 1: There were towns neighboring towns that thought the that like
28:20
Speaker 1: Shelbyville was on fire, Springfield thought Shelby Bill was on fire,
28:23
Speaker 1: and vice versa. There were birds chirping, they thought because
28:26
Speaker 1: they thought it was dawn. Uh. There was a brick
28:29
Speaker 1: mason crew in South Carolina that got up in you know,
28:33
Speaker 1: they were like two beers in going to work when
28:36
Speaker 1: they realized that, hey, it's the middle of the night.
28:39
Speaker 1: And they looked at each other and said, man, this
28:41
Speaker 1: is a hundred and twenty five years before Ghostbusters. Oh nice,
28:46
Speaker 1: very nice. Check. Yeah, well it seemed canned in because
28:50
Speaker 1: I prem, yeah, well i'll tell you what, how about this.
28:53
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a huge hearty surprise laugh. And
28:56
Speaker 1: I hinted out the conversation before all right ready, And
28:59
Speaker 1: they all looked at each other, two beers in, and
29:01
Speaker 1: said Ghostbusters won't even come out for another hundred twenty
29:04
Speaker 1: five years. What. Oh my god, I did not see
29:08
Speaker 1: that coming. Dude, how long has it been since we
29:11
Speaker 1: talked about I don't know. That's perfect and we'll just
29:13
Speaker 1: fix that all on editing. That's great, thanks, Chuck. I
29:17
Speaker 1: need a I need a couple of beers myself after them.
29:21
Speaker 1: So one of the other things, um, that really went
29:23
Speaker 1: hey wire was the telegraph system, right, because this is
29:26
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, and the telegraphs were at the they
29:29
Speaker 1: were the leading edge, not bleeding edge. He's taught me
29:33
Speaker 1: that that's totally wrong, the leading edge of technology of
29:36
Speaker 1: telecommunications at the time, UM. And these telegraph lines depended
29:41
Speaker 1: on currents being sent over wires, UM. And so those
29:46
Speaker 1: wires were overloaded by this geomagnetic storm so much so
29:50
Speaker 1: that sparks were shooting off of the telegraphs. UM. Operators
29:55
Speaker 1: were getting shocked and burned. The telegraph paper was catching
29:59
Speaker 1: on fire when was nearby. It was very much like
30:03
Speaker 1: a movie. All this is happening all over the world
30:05
Speaker 1: at the same time. It's just crazy. It's like very
30:08
Speaker 1: very early morning of the next day after the Carrington event, right.
30:13
Speaker 1: So one of the things that got me was, um,
30:16
Speaker 1: they they unplugged the batteries to these things, the telegraphs,
30:22
Speaker 1: and they found that the wires were still so energetic
30:26
Speaker 1: with electricity from the geomagnetic storm that they could still
30:30
Speaker 1: send telegraphs even though they had no power of their own.
30:34
Speaker 1: They were they were able to send telegrams over the
30:37
Speaker 1: telegraph line even within it's disconnected from the batteries. That's
30:40
Speaker 1: the fact of the show to me. Oh that's amazing.
30:44
Speaker 1: Let me that. I mean, they must have thought it
30:45
Speaker 1: was haunted or something. I think, think like, sure, the
30:51
Speaker 1: plug is unplugged and it's still working. They're like Zeus's
30:54
Speaker 1: beard is crazy. There's another thing to um. Some telegraph
30:59
Speaker 1: operator couldn't send telegraphs even though the lines were active
31:02
Speaker 1: because the magnetism in these currents was so strong that
31:08
Speaker 1: the armature, the thing that they tap up and down,
31:11
Speaker 1: was like fused to the plate beneath it. It was
31:14
Speaker 1: just the magnets. The magnetism was so strong and it
31:17
Speaker 1: wouldn't move. Thought it was possessed. The probably left the
31:22
Speaker 1: room screaming. They did, says is Beard. Oh we got
31:28
Speaker 1: the third one in there. Yeah. Should we take another break? Yeah?
31:33
Speaker 1: Oh almost so. So one other thing. Let's just wrap
31:35
Speaker 1: the Carrington Event up real quick, Okay, so ten am.
31:40
Speaker 1: The effects of this whole crazy event are are done.
31:43
Speaker 1: And you know, it gets talked about. This is a
31:45
Speaker 1: worldwide event, but it's kind of like treated as a
31:49
Speaker 1: scientific anomaly, right people. People understand what happened and what
31:53
Speaker 1: caused it and why it happened. Over the years as
31:56
Speaker 1: we learned more and more about solar flares and coronal
31:58
Speaker 1: mass ejections, but it didn't become a parent that this
32:02
Speaker 1: Carrington event was actually a harbinger of like real, much
32:07
Speaker 1: bigger problems that could happen to us alive on Earth
32:10
Speaker 1: today until the seventies, and um, maybe we'll take a break, chuck,
32:16
Speaker 1: and come back and talk about how that could be
32:18
Speaker 1: problematic right after this great m hm. Alright, So the
32:47
Speaker 1: world changed a lot between the Carrington event in the
32:51
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds and in the nineteen seventies when scientists
32:56
Speaker 1: had a much bigger handle on what this kind of
32:58
Speaker 1: thing meant. And in the nineteen seventies we were the
33:03
Speaker 1: whole world was very dependent on electric power. You might
33:06
Speaker 1: be surprised to learn, right, and they knew like, hey,
33:10
Speaker 1: if we had another Carrington event today, it could be
33:14
Speaker 1: a big deal because and we'll get to this later,
33:16
Speaker 1: but like, we got a lot of metal on this earth,
33:19
Speaker 1: and we use the earth to ground everything basically with
33:23
Speaker 1: ground wires, and that creates a unique problem potentially if
33:28
Speaker 1: we had another event like this. Yeah, the fact that
33:32
Speaker 1: we chose to use the earth as a ground um
33:36
Speaker 1: to where are grounding wires go from. Our electrical components
33:40
Speaker 1: tie into a metal rod that's driven into the earth,
33:43
Speaker 1: so that whenever excess electricity is generated by the electronics
33:47
Speaker 1: that we use, it gets distributed through the grounding wire
33:50
Speaker 1: to the earth where it dissipates. That makes all of
33:54
Speaker 1: our electronics vulnerable to a geomagnetic storm, because in a
33:58
Speaker 1: geomagnetic storm, the ground itself can become magnetized. And even
34:03
Speaker 1: more than that, chuck, We've buried a lot of metal infrastructure,
34:07
Speaker 1: from like pipes to um cables to all sorts of
34:11
Speaker 1: metal stuff is snaking through the ground right now, and
34:15
Speaker 1: when the ground becomes magnetized into geomagnetic storm it can
34:19
Speaker 1: create it can carry really powerful currents through all the
34:22
Speaker 1: infrastructure up through the grounds, through the grounding wires, and
34:25
Speaker 1: into our electronic components, uh including things like power transformers
34:30
Speaker 1: and overload them to the point where they fail catastrophically. Yeah.
34:34
Speaker 1: And this, uh, this sort of happened in August two
34:40
Speaker 1: there was a big, big solar flare that knocked out
34:44
Speaker 1: our long distance phone communication across Illinois. So that was
34:48
Speaker 1: just sort of an early example of like, hey, this
34:51
Speaker 1: can actually have a real effect here on Earth. UM.
34:55
Speaker 1: And that was that was a big one. It took
34:56
Speaker 1: I think about fifteen hours to hit Earth, whereas it
34:59
Speaker 1: usually to two to three days. UM. It also set
35:02
Speaker 1: off these um we had. It was during Vietnam obviously,
35:05
Speaker 1: and we had magnetic sea mines in harbors around Vietnam.
35:09
Speaker 1: It exploded those. Yeah, So I don't know if they
35:12
Speaker 1: were supposed to be like secretly there and if that
35:15
Speaker 1: was kind of like oh, whoops, sorry about that, or
35:19
Speaker 1: if they knew that they were there and and they
35:21
Speaker 1: just went off. But either way, UM, that was a
35:24
Speaker 1: pretty scary scene. It was, and apparently it was a
35:28
Speaker 1: mystery for a long time until somebody finally figured out
35:31
Speaker 1: why those sea mines all went off. They connected it
35:34
Speaker 1: to the UM, to that coronal mass ejection, I believe. Yeah,
35:38
Speaker 1: but you can imagine like all the damage uh that
35:41
Speaker 1: could occur, Like even if you're just talking about the
35:44
Speaker 1: electrical grid. If it really blew out, it wouldn't be
35:47
Speaker 1: just like a blackout, like it would destroy parts of
35:51
Speaker 1: our electrical grid such that it would take It's not like, hey,
35:54
Speaker 1: let me go out and fix this over a few
35:56
Speaker 1: hours during a snowstorm. It's it might take weeks or
36:00
Speaker 1: months or even up to a year if we had
36:03
Speaker 1: a big enough, uh like blast to the grid. Yeah,
36:07
Speaker 1: because I mean it is by necessity. Our electrical grid
36:11
Speaker 1: is interconnected. So if one part of it gets overloaded,
36:14
Speaker 1: that can overload other parts that are connected. And if
36:17
Speaker 1: you have a whole city without power, for let's say
36:21
Speaker 1: Los Angeles went went out of power for a month,
36:24
Speaker 1: what would happen? What would be the what would be
36:26
Speaker 1: the outcome of that? You couldn't do anything? And when
36:29
Speaker 1: you start thinking like that, you start thinking about, oh
36:32
Speaker 1: my god, like, think about all the stuff we do
36:34
Speaker 1: that requires electricity. Everything we do requires electricity in some
36:38
Speaker 1: form or fashion. And so to be without electricity in
36:41
Speaker 1: a major city or multiple major cities for even a
36:45
Speaker 1: couple of weeks is just unthinkable. But that's that's the
36:49
Speaker 1: level of vulnerability whereat because of the way that our
36:52
Speaker 1: electrical components are set up because they're grounded. Yeah, and
36:57
Speaker 1: and not just like a chain reaction and apocalyptic kind
37:01
Speaker 1: of activity, but um, just monetary loss, like the economic
37:05
Speaker 1: and financial damage for the city of Los Angeles to
37:09
Speaker 1: be without power for a month would be astounding. Um.
37:14
Speaker 1: So you know, there's stuff they could do. They could uh,
37:17
Speaker 1: they could fit some very critical transformers with resistors and capacitors,
37:22
Speaker 1: but these things are like hundreds of thousand dollars per transformers,
37:26
Speaker 1: So that's just too much money. So they're not doing that. No,
37:31
Speaker 1: they're not. And I wonder if there's going to be
37:33
Speaker 1: like some close call that makes everybody Okay, we need
37:36
Speaker 1: to invest this in our infrastructure, or you know, are
37:39
Speaker 1: we going to figure out some other means of you know,
37:43
Speaker 1: a backup system. I'm not sure that happens to like Topeka.
37:48
Speaker 1: And then everyone says, hey, if this happened in Topeka
37:53
Speaker 1: and they lost you know, several hundred dollars, and that's
37:58
Speaker 1: really mean how it's gonna say? Did you think do
38:00
Speaker 1: you think Topeka would do it? Do you think that
38:03
Speaker 1: would convince anybody? I don't know. I'm so sorry Topeka,
38:06
Speaker 1: but you get my point. If it happens somewhere sort
38:09
Speaker 1: of in a smaller area than the big cities. Might say, Hey,
38:13
Speaker 1: that means it could happen to us, the people who
38:15
Speaker 1: really matter, right, the coastal elites would stroke their beards
38:21
Speaker 1: and struck their tongues. Yeah so, um so yeah, there's
38:25
Speaker 1: there doesn't seem to be a lot of initiative right
38:27
Speaker 1: now to figure this out, and we're just kind of
38:31
Speaker 1: sitting ducks in a weird way. It's nothing. I don't
38:33
Speaker 1: think it's anything to lose sleepover. But it's really surprising.
38:36
Speaker 1: Like the more I dug into this, the more I
38:38
Speaker 1: was like, huh, this could kind of be a thing someday.
38:42
Speaker 1: And it's not just you know, the electrical grid uh
38:47
Speaker 1: here on Earth alone is what is all that would
38:50
Speaker 1: be affected by that? There um, things we rely on
38:53
Speaker 1: out in space, like satellites a bad enough to you,
38:57
Speaker 1: a magnetic storm could affect satellites and a out of weights,
39:00
Speaker 1: so our GPS systems would be messed up. Or if you,
39:04
Speaker 1: um so, if you use GPS for really important stuff
39:08
Speaker 1: like say landing an airplane, you could be in big trouble.
39:12
Speaker 1: Um and if you're also on planes, the high frequency
39:16
Speaker 1: radio communications they used to stay in contact with the ground,
39:19
Speaker 1: especially when they're out over the ocean or something like that. UM,
39:22
Speaker 1: that can be disrupted by a solar flare or a
39:26
Speaker 1: chronal mass ejection too. Yeah, or what about a satellite
39:29
Speaker 1: maybe that is I mean, there are thousands of satellites
39:32
Speaker 1: up there, but and you know, if a radio satellite
39:34
Speaker 1: went out, it would be bad, but people could live.
39:37
Speaker 1: But what if it affected a satellite that's UM in
39:40
Speaker 1: charge of aiding in national defense. Things could get a
39:44
Speaker 1: little bit scary if those satellites were down or you know, spacecraft,
39:49
Speaker 1: their spacecraft up there and they use satellites to help
39:52
Speaker 1: orient themselves and and keep themselves safe. Uh, there's an
39:58
Speaker 1: I S S. Although the ice supposedly is UH is
40:02
Speaker 1: protected right yeah, oh yeah. The the big threat to
40:06
Speaker 1: UM astronauts from coronal mass ejections and solar flares is
40:10
Speaker 1: when they're out on spacewalks, when they're doing like labor,
40:14
Speaker 1: say outside the I S S or something like that. UM.
40:17
Speaker 1: Just like here on Earth, if we didn't have the
40:19
Speaker 1: ionosphere of the magnetosphere, UM, we would be in big trouble.
40:23
Speaker 1: Astronauts can be in big trouble. The I S s
40:26
Speaker 1: orbits within the Earth's magnetosphere, but it's beyond the ionop
40:30
Speaker 1: so they are a little more exposed. On the I
40:32
Speaker 1: S S. It's shielded, so they're not nearly as exposed.
40:35
Speaker 1: But out on a spacewalk they if it were a
40:37
Speaker 1: really bad chronal mass ejection, they could be in a
40:40
Speaker 1: lot of trouble. Um like Sandra her face in that
40:43
Speaker 1: movie exactly. Uh, what is your last name? I can't remember,
40:47
Speaker 1: sandraw Burning, Sandra Bullo, Sandra, Sandy Duncan, Sandra Bullock. Yeah,
40:55
Speaker 1: Sandra Bernhard in that movie Space Space trit Space Craziness.
41:01
Speaker 1: Did you like that movie Gravity? Uh? Yeah, I thought
41:05
Speaker 1: it was pretty good if I've only seen it once. Um,
41:08
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if I would have cast
41:11
Speaker 1: her necessarily, but it's fine. Or George Cleaning, I don't
41:15
Speaker 1: think I would have cast either of him. I mean
41:17
Speaker 1: I had some issues. I mean it was a magnificent
41:18
Speaker 1: looking movie, but I think in the end I had
41:22
Speaker 1: some issues with the story in the script being like
41:25
Speaker 1: not good enough for how great of a movie it
41:27
Speaker 1: was trumped up to be. Did Um was that the
41:32
Speaker 1: by the guy who did The Revenant? I think so? Yeah,
41:36
Speaker 1: So you and I went and saw The Revenant in
41:38
Speaker 1: Hawaii Wants when we were on vacation, because what else
41:41
Speaker 1: is there to do in Hawaii on vacation but go
41:43
Speaker 1: see movies. And um, we saw The Revenant and this
41:47
Speaker 1: person next to us was there by by himself, and
41:51
Speaker 1: he was so upset um by Tom Hardy's character and
41:55
Speaker 1: just how evil he was that this guy was like
41:58
Speaker 1: telling him he was the dead of all. He had
42:00
Speaker 1: his hand up at the screen and was praying against
42:03
Speaker 1: Tom Hardy. He was really affected by Tom Hardy's character,
42:06
Speaker 1: which made the movie like even more thrilling because we
42:08
Speaker 1: would look at the movie and then we watch this
42:10
Speaker 1: person reacting to the movie too, So it was something
42:14
Speaker 1: something to see. Yeah, I saw that once as well,
42:17
Speaker 1: and I saw it on tour with you. Either it
42:20
Speaker 1: was either Phoenix or San Diego. I don't would have
42:22
Speaker 1: to look at the dates, but I just remember there
42:24
Speaker 1: being palm trees. I think it was San Diego. Maybe
42:26
Speaker 1: when we did a show at that spooky abandoned church, man,
42:31
Speaker 1: I'm convinced still to this day that that's the church
42:33
Speaker 1: from the Prince of Darkness that John Carton. That was
42:36
Speaker 1: a weird show because that was the one I know.
42:38
Speaker 1: You remember that guy sat on the front row and
42:41
Speaker 1: shot the whole thing with a video camera and he
42:44
Speaker 1: looked like he was mad too, like he was documenting
42:46
Speaker 1: evidence or something to use against us. We both were like,
42:49
Speaker 1: I think we were so caught off guard. We didn't
42:51
Speaker 1: know what to say. Do we call this guy and say, sir,
42:54
Speaker 1: can you please put away your camera? So we just
42:56
Speaker 1: soldiered on. Yeah, we were pinned down by the unrelenting
43:01
Speaker 1: glare of the lens. And then he went back to
43:03
Speaker 1: his apartment and showed it on TV to his roommate,
43:07
Speaker 1: who was the Tom Hardy guy, right, and that guy
43:10
Speaker 1: was like, these guys are the devil. I'm praying against them.
43:14
Speaker 1: Oh man uh alright, so yes, back to the show. Yeah,
43:20
Speaker 1: where are we? Oh, here's the deal. We're talking about
43:23
Speaker 1: astronauts and satellite operations and GPS. This isn't stuff that
43:27
Speaker 1: we have just um said, well, this probably could happen
43:31
Speaker 1: a lot of it is, but um, this actually has happened. Um.
43:35
Speaker 1: We'd mentioned the thing in Illinois with the phone systems
43:38
Speaker 1: and then in um the two thousand three that c
43:41
Speaker 1: m E that did disrupt satellites and that did disrupt
43:45
Speaker 1: high frequency radio communications that aviation relies on, and that
43:49
Speaker 1: did blackout a city in Sweden. Mm hmm, mammo. Everyone
43:55
Speaker 1: says no, not mammo, yeah, mamo everybody. So this the
44:00
Speaker 1: kind of thing can happen. It does happen, it's just
44:02
Speaker 1: never happened on such a massive scale. UM. They figured
44:05
Speaker 1: out from looking at Arctic ice cores, apparently highly energetic
44:10
Speaker 1: particles leave um remnants, not revenants, remnants in nitrates frozen
44:17
Speaker 1: in the ice and at the polls and UM. By
44:20
Speaker 1: examining these cores, they can see how bad or how
44:23
Speaker 1: often or how many solar flares of hit Earth in
44:25
Speaker 1: the past. And they figured out that the Carrington event
44:27
Speaker 1: is like a five hundred years solar flare, and it
44:30
Speaker 1: happened about a hundred and seventy years ago. Hopefully we're
44:33
Speaker 1: in the clear. The key is we're still figuring out
44:36
Speaker 1: the dynamics of the Sun and solar activity, so we're
44:39
Speaker 1: not exactly certain that maybe we're not due for a
44:41
Speaker 1: thousand years solar flare. UM. We're just starting to figure
44:45
Speaker 1: this out, but we are figuring it out. That's step one.
44:49
Speaker 1: And we also actually have space weather forecasters here on
44:53
Speaker 1: Earth at Noah and at the National Weather Service, there
44:56
Speaker 1: are people whose job it is subtract solar activity and
45:00
Speaker 1: predict things like coronal mass ejections and solar flares so
45:03
Speaker 1: that people can, like like utility companies, can maybe take
45:08
Speaker 1: um steps to mitigate the worst effects. Eventually. I think
45:12
Speaker 1: right now we've got like eight to ten minute heads up,
45:14
Speaker 1: so that's not enough. But as we get to understand
45:16
Speaker 1: it a little more, we'll have more warning time. And
45:19
Speaker 1: you know, astronauts can plan their spacewalks when they're out
45:22
Speaker 1: doing stuff like building future space colonies. This is all
45:25
Speaker 1: going to come into play for that too. Yeah, So
45:28
Speaker 1: hopefully they can get that up to at least over
45:31
Speaker 1: an hour. That would help. Sure. So again, it's nothing
45:34
Speaker 1: to lose sleepover. That's not the point of this episode.
45:36
Speaker 1: It's more just kind of like ge whiz, this is
45:39
Speaker 1: this is amazing by Zeus Beard. I've never heard of
45:41
Speaker 1: anything like the old fourth reference. Yeahs, surprising fourth one
45:46
Speaker 1: did not see that coming. Did you got anything else?
45:50
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? All right, everybody chucks that he's
45:53
Speaker 1: got nothing else. So that's it for this episode, which
45:55
Speaker 1: means it's time for listener mao. Well, let me see here.
46:01
Speaker 1: I've actually got quite a few today, which is uh
46:04
Speaker 1: an abundance. We've been getting more than usual, I haven't. Yeah,
46:07
Speaker 1: we've been getting good ones. All right, I'll choose this one.
46:10
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it Rush Girl. Hey guys, I've been
46:14
Speaker 1: a long time listener, but you have never But I've
46:16
Speaker 1: never had a reason to write until your recent Fort
46:18
Speaker 1: Knox episode. In it you refer to the joke you
46:21
Speaker 1: had made about women not liking the Three Stooges. By
46:24
Speaker 1: the way, I got a little grief for that and
46:26
Speaker 1: also support for that. Weirdly, Chuck made the comment that
46:29
Speaker 1: it wasn't like he had something had said something true,
46:33
Speaker 1: but they're like there being no women Rush fans. I
46:37
Speaker 1: immediately laugh because my future and mother in law is
46:39
Speaker 1: the biggest Rush fan. I love this lady. She and
46:43
Speaker 1: my fiance have a bond over this band. In contrast,
46:46
Speaker 1: I thought the band was made up just for the
46:49
Speaker 1: movie I Love You Man. Wow. Yeah, Megan did not
46:55
Speaker 1: know Rush was a real band. She thought that was
46:57
Speaker 1: a fake band in a movie. Megan, you have a
47:00
Speaker 1: whole world ready to open up to you. Yes, you do.
47:03
Speaker 1: I guess that they fit the trope According to my fiance,
47:07
Speaker 1: they call female rush fans getty corns, which sounds made up,
47:12
Speaker 1: but he swears it's true getty corns. I don't get that,
47:16
Speaker 1: but like a unicorn maybe, oh yeah, exactly, or or
47:20
Speaker 1: it could be candy corn. No, no, I'm sure it's
47:23
Speaker 1: like the Getty Getty Lee unicorn mash up. I like that.
47:27
Speaker 1: I didn't get that until just now, so thank you.
47:30
Speaker 1: At any rate, I can recognize the joke, and I'm
47:33
Speaker 1: not coming after you for that. I just found it
47:34
Speaker 1: funny that all the stereotypical male bands you could have picked,
47:37
Speaker 1: you chose my mother in law's favorite. Thanks for all
47:40
Speaker 1: you do. Your podcast has gone a long way toward
47:42
Speaker 1: helping me distress after a day of teaching during COVID.
47:46
Speaker 1: And that is from Megan Power and Megan, thank you,
47:50
Speaker 1: and big ups to your mother in law for being
47:52
Speaker 1: a getty corn. Yeah, not to be confused with candy corn. Well,
47:58
Speaker 1: if you want to be like Megan and let us
47:59
Speaker 1: know how we just totally blew your mind somehow or other.
48:03
Speaker 1: We love hearing that stuff. You can put it in
48:05
Speaker 1: an email and wrap it up spanking on the bottom
48:08
Speaker 1: and send it off to stuff podcasts at iHeart radio
48:11
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
48:16
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
48:19
Speaker 1: the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
48:22
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. H