November 7, 2019 • 37 mins
Is space weather something that exists? Can it affect us here on earth. Find out the answer to this and many other questions with Daniel and Jorge.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
He doesn't it feel like every day there's something new
to worry about. What do you mean, like, what, well,
you know that we have forest fires in California's, We've
got super hurricanes, we got crazy political situations, we have
financial uncertainty. We have that whole question about whether Spider
Man is going to be part of the Marvel universe.
I mean that one's got me worried. I know these
(00:29):
things could rock our world. Well, unfortunately, I've got a
new thing for you to worry about. I feel like
every podcast is a new one, Daniel, that I should
that I need to worry about. But what do you
mean this time? Are you talking about aliens coming from
space to eat us? Or Oh no, that's something I
would look forward to. No, no, this is even by aliens,
the arrival of aliens. You know, I would gladly offer
(00:51):
up civilization. Our civilization is a meal for aliens if
they give us some secrets of the universe. Let's not
elect Daniel to office. He's not running. It turns out
that we need to worry about the weather, but not
just the weather here on Earth, the weather in space. Hey,
(01:23):
I'm back to this, Joge. I'm a cartoonists and the
creator of PhD Comics. Hi. I'm Daniel Watson. I'm a
particle physicist and I'm pleased to be the co host
of this podcast. And welcome to the podcast. Daniel and
Jorge explain the university production of I Heart Radio, in
which we talked about everything that's amazing and crazy and
wonderful and scary and reassuring about our bunkers universe and
(01:47):
trying to give you an understanding that really settles to
the bottom of your brain. So, yeah, I'm back. Thanks
for holding down to fourth Daniel, I was gone for
a couple of weeks there. Well, thank you very much
for coming back. I think listeners of the podcast are
leave to have you back. Well, they have more laughed
and less physics, more cartoonists per podcast. I mean, that's uh,
that's pretty good value right there. That's right. And you know, frankly,
(02:08):
I was getting tired of deflecting everybody's questions about where
you were another mystery of the universe. He had to
keep explaining. I know, I love answering emails and I
love answering questions, but some of these questions I didn't
know how to answer. People were asking me if I
had kidnapped you and traded you to Aliens for some
enormous pile of bananas, which did happen some one did
(02:29):
happen once, but not this time. That's right. No, people
were people were pretty curious. Yeah, I hope no idea
was really concerned. Um, basically I just had to go
take a nap, basically is what happened. Maybe people were
unaware that that cartoonists have a different life cycle. They hibernate,
so you know, they fill up all summer and then
sleep for six weeks in the winter. Yeah. Yeah, every
(02:50):
six years, we have to take it two months now,
that's right. And so folks, he's coming back to you
expert refreshed, extra funny, extra hilarious. And for those of
you who are worried that I had done something to
who that kidnapped him, I hope you hear the relief
in my voice at his return. Yeah. No, Actually what
happened was Daniel and I have several big projects going on,
and one of them just kind of needed a little
(03:12):
bit of extra attention, so I had to step away
from the mic a little bit. But it sounds like
you guys had a lot of fun while I was gone.
We had you had a lot of fun guests, and
Crystal Dilworth came in and covered for me. Yeah, Crystal
is our guest host. And we had some fun conversations
about the cosmic microwave background and other stuff, and my
friend Matt came by the podcast, and uh, then I
(03:33):
had a few on my own, and let me tell you,
it was challenging having a conversation with myself. But yeah,
I'm back and and I'm back for the foreseeable future,
at least until Daniel kid naps me again, until the
intergalactic banana space pirates come and offered to trade you
for secrets at the universe. So today we're gonna be
talking about it. Seems like you had another thing we
should be worried about coming from space to harm us
(03:57):
or effectives. That's right, most of the time, we can
live in this little bubble we call Earth and not
worry too much about what's going on out there in
the universe. I mean, we know, because we've listened to
the podcast that there are crazy things happening in the
center of galaxies and enormous violent things happening in the
center of stars. But We don't often think about that
because we can just ignore everything that happens above the
(04:19):
atmosphere and to sort of go about our everyday life.
It seems like that there are always other things happening
in the universe, right, Like we we don't just live
in a bubble. We live in a solar system with
stuff flying around and with other celestial things out there
making noise and throwing things. That's right, we do live
in a bubble. It's a magnetic bubble vires. A magnetic
field protects us from most of the stuff that's happening
(04:41):
out there, but it's not perfect and sometimes this incredible
force field actually does get penetrated by crazy things happening
out there in space, and we have to pay attention
and so to be On the podcast, we'll be talking
about what is as weather? Is it usually sunny? Does
(05:02):
it rain out in space? What exactly does that mean? Daniel, Yeah,
I think it's a fascinating topic. You know, what is
space weather? What does it mean? How does it affect us?
What precautions can we take? Can we predict it? You know?
Can you go on and app and figure out what's
going to be happening in space? In the next week
or two. Um, and I think it it helps just
connects you to the larger context. You know, weather events
(05:23):
here on Earth help you understand what's happening nearby, like, oh,
it's not raining here, but it is raining over there.
It gives you a sort of a sense of the
larger context and space weather sort of a generalization of that.
It gives us a sense for what's happening in the
Solar system, what's going on, like what is it like
to be on Venus today? Right? And you know, whether
our local station can come up with a pretty cool
(05:44):
sounding name for technology to predict it, like Doppler space
radar three thousand that's right. Pretty soon we're going to
have a arms race between local weather stations to have
fancier sounding technologies. Let's the quantum Doppler, um pulsar gamma
three thousand million, Toppler. Was that just all the tech
(06:09):
words you can think of. That's it. There was a
mind right there that was that. That's it. That's that's
all that's in my head at this moment. Well, let's
see Jorge can do better than the average person on
the street that you see Irvine. So I walked around,
and I wondered, do people even know that space weather
is a thing? What do they think it is? And
I asked people, let you see Irvine, is their weather
(06:30):
out in space? What does that even mean? So think
about it for a second. If someone approach you and
ask you if there is weather in space, what would
you answer? Here's what people had to say, is their
weather in space? I mean just because the question exists,
I'm assuming so I haven't heard anything about it. What
would that be? Like? What does that mean weather in space? Um?
(06:51):
I would guess just like shifts in like anti matter,
and how much is like concentrated in certain spaces which
could affect I don't know move men of comments lest
like anything. I just assume whether as in storms or
rain and wind thinks things at that level. No, I
don't think there is. No. That's a good question. I'm
(07:12):
not sure about space, but I know that there's weather
patterns on specific planets, But I don't know about the
overall atmosphere. I have no clue. I'd say yes because
it's so big there has to be some somewhere. Um,
I think so yes, Solar winds, Solar winds, like what
are solar winds, huge pulses of electromagnetic radiation from a
(07:34):
sun or star. Okay, so it's radiation of particles. Um. Yeah,
for the most part radiation. Does that affect us here
on Earth? Not really, because we have the magnetic field
of Earth shielding us from that. I feel like there
there is a chance that there's like, uh, like water
and stuff up there, So that means that there is weather.
(07:57):
I've heard of the idea of it, but I don't know, Purling,
I have heard of space whether I know you have
solar winds, large coronal ejecttions and bombarding the whole Solar
system all the time and hits the Earth, and the
magnetic field from the Earth deflects it to the poles
and this is this is when you see then all
the lights can also affect our communications on Earth are satellites.
(08:22):
So what do you think of these answers for him? Well,
it seems that it's these pretty common sense. A lot
of people assume that there would be weather in other planets,
but maybe people seem skeptical that there would be weather
in like actual space, in the space between planets. So
that's pretty reasonable, right, Yeah, that is pretty reasonable. Yeah,
like I've seen movies where there's storm there are storms
(08:42):
and Mars and and you know, I imagine you look
at a picture of Jupiter, there's swirling clouds. So you know,
the idea that there's weather out there is not weird
to me, but and to other people it seems. But
the idea that there might be weather like in the
vacuum of space, that's that's a little bit more hard
to understand. Yeah, And the topic of whether on other
(09:05):
planets is really fascinating, because of course we'd like to
understand are those planets livable, could we ever move there?
And can we watch the clouds on other planets and
use that to understand what's in the atmosphere? Is their
water there? That's a whole other fascinating topic that we're
gonna dig into in a future podcast. But you're right,
today we're talking about this sort of weather between planets,
(09:26):
and some people said, you know, well, there's no water
up there, so in space, so how could do the weather?
So I think you're right people. So today I'm hoping
we're gonna expand people's sense for what weather means. It's
not just rain and sun. I like the person who
said I have no clue, but I'm gonna say yes,
just because space is so big. I like that in
every because you've applied to anything, like do you think
(09:48):
there are purple elephants in space? Well it's pretty big,
so yeah, yeah? Why odd? Yeah, my brain says no,
but hey, space is big, so yes. And you know,
and that's a pretty safe asser, right, isn't it It
is because if space is infinite, then everything that can
exist will exist, and there probably are purple elephants out there.
There's probably a planet where rains purple elephants. Oh boy,
(10:09):
you need a bigger umbrella for that, right. Well, one
time on the podcast we were speculating about whether it
rains diamonds somewhere. We're laughing about that as an absurdity,
and then somebody wrote in and said, actually it rains
diamonds here in our solar system. What Yeah, I think
it's on Urinus. Well that's cool. I think you would
need like an umbrella it's inverted to catch all the diamonds.
(10:30):
I don't think diamonds are worth that much of it's
raining diamonds. I think on Urinas you've got to use
a different kind of engagement ring. Maybe water crystals, right,
like an ice cube. It's a whole different market there,
that's right. The Beers has not managed to corner that market, right,
So let's let's get into it, Daniel. So there's apparently
a thing called space weather is what I'm hearing from you,
and that that means the weather in space, and it
(10:52):
might actually affect us on a daily basis, might even
cause you to lose cell phone signal, which is like, wow, fatal.
Everybody is suddenly alert. What this is actually relevant to me?
I'm talking about? Yeah, if I'm right now, there might
be a you're totally gaslighting our listeners there, or whether
(11:14):
weather event that might cause this podcast to skip a
SKIPA No, it's true because space is not empty. We
talked about this a lot, and it's not empty on
several levels. Of course, any arbitrary piece of vacuum is
actually filled with fluctuating quantum fields, which is amazing. But
the space itself is even filled with particles and all
(11:34):
sorts of energy. Of course, it's very not dense. It's
very sparse compared to the atmosphere around our planet. But
there is stuff out there, and specifically it's dominated by
stuff that comes from the Sun. And so there's two
major things we think about when we think about space weather,
and that's the solar wind and the solar radiation. Because
I think you're telling me earlier that, um, you know,
(11:55):
for us, space is at least what we call space
around the Earth is pretty much dominated by the Sun.
Like you know, we're just a small spec compared to
the Sun, which is this giant explosion. And so pretty
much when you say space weather, you you really mean
sort of like sun weather. That's right, because the Sun
doesn't just pour out photons for us and for you
(12:16):
to get a nice hand. It's views out a huge
amount of stuff. It's views out particles like protons and
electrons are very high speed. And this is what we
call the solar wind. And you know, it's not a
great name for it because it's really like a solar
particle flux or something, but they call it the solar wind,
like a solar jet maybe, yeah, yeah, solar eruption or
(12:38):
solar farts or something. I'm not sure what solar farts. Yes,
that is a new scientific term. Well, it might be
appropriate because it comes from the digestion of those gases
in the sun. Right, So Hey, and maybe it's just
because I'm married to a biologist who studies, you know,
digestion and stuff that have this stuff on my brain,
I would have come with solar burbsum. Either way, the
(13:01):
Sun puts out a lot of particles, like actual mass, right,
not just radiation. There's lots of radiation as well, but
there's also solar particles. And these particles fly through the
Solar system and they call it the solar wind, and
it's important. It's a big factor in how you can
survive out there in space, and also sometimes it penetrates
down to the Earth. Now, is it sort of like
a clouds? Like does it form clouds out there? Like
(13:24):
my is it? Can you imagine like swirling you know,
clouds or or mists of these particles kind of swirling
around us? Or or is it pretty much like a
jet going through us? They're moving really fast, so they
just basically fly away from the Sun in straight lines.
So if you want to visualize that, just imagine like
the Sun has a billion guns and each one is
shooting protons and electrons out in every direction. Wow, but
(13:47):
we have liked kind of a force field, right, like
we you're saying that our magnetic field kind of deflect
some of the some of these particles. That's right. We
have a multi layer force field. First of all, we
have our atmosphere that's sort of the closest thing, and
any particle that make the atmosphere is going to bang
into all the other particles, right, So that protects you
at some level, But even before it gets to the
atmosphere has to penetrate our magnetic field. And remember, charged particles,
(14:10):
protons and electrons have a charge, will bend when they
hit a magnetic field. So because we have a magnetic field,
most of this stuff bends around the Earth rather than
even hitting our atmosphere. So we are very grateful to
our magnetic field. If we didn't have one, like Mars
has very very small one, then this solar wind would
basically blow our atmosphere away, all right. So when you
(14:31):
say space weather, you mean solar flares and solar winds,
that's right. So the key thing is there's stuff out
there in space. The Sun is pumping out radiation and particles.
And the reason we call it weather is because it's
not fixed. It's not like it's the same every day.
It varies and so just like the weather, which is
the product of very complex systems interacting and hard to predict.
(14:52):
The stuff put out by the Sun is also variable
and hard to predict and has a big impact on us.
So that's what we call it space weather. It's not
just because I think it's unpredictable. It's also sort of
the result of weather in the Sun. Right, Like you
can almost think of these solar flares and these sort
of winds is coming from whatever is happening in the
surface of the Sun. That's sort of like um sun weather, right, yeah,
(15:16):
or sun moods. Right. We don't understand the sun. The
Sun is a huge mystery, like the most important thing
in our solar system. We don't understand how it works.
And it's it's a huge ball of plasma. And because
it's plasma, it's ionized particles, it's charged particles, and charged particles, Remember,
when they move, they generate magnetic fields. And so the
Sun has this enormous magnetic field that comes from this
(15:38):
boiling pot of plasma that has encapsulated by this gravitational trap,
and it generates this magnetic field. But that magnetic field
is also not static because it comes from this rye
constantly writhing, hot, boiling mass. So it's like churning all
the time, and sometimes it burbs. That's kind of what
a solar flair is. Yeah, imagine like a really thick
(15:58):
pot of tomato soup. Your Italian grandmother might make, you know,
it's slowly bubbling. An Italian grandmother. Everybody's Italian grandmother, you know,
or the stereotypical Italian grandmother in you know TV shows.
That's as close as I come to having an Italian grandmother. Anyway,
bubble and tomato soup eventually forms one of these bubbles
(16:19):
net pops and it sprays tomato soup everywhere. So you
can sort of imagine the Sun is the same way,
and it uh and sometimes it has this bright burst
of really hot, bright light, and sometimes it actually shoots
out like bits of the sun into space really like
the plasma inside, like the hydrogen and the whatever it's
made out of. Yeah, so the plasma is mostly protons
(16:41):
and electrons, and sometimes something happens called a coronal mass ejection,
and it vomits out like a billion kilograms of plasma
and it just spews it out into space at like
thousands of kilometers per second. Oh, well, you said a
solar vomit is also a scientific term, Like I feel
like the Sun has a lot of stomach problems here.
(17:02):
It's burping, it's vomiting, it's far. Some people like to
try to understand it in analogy to weather on Earth.
I think it's maybe a better analogy to call it,
you know, digestion, like the Sun is digesting all of
this hydrogen, and no, that doesn't always go smoothly. And
maybe the Sun should try a gluten free diet. I
hear that the Sun has Celiac disease. What you're saying,
(17:24):
maybe you should try hydrogen free diet because I think
that's the problem that might be trouble though you don't
have any energy, right, yeah, exactly. But this is not
something rare. This happens on the Sun very these coronal
mass ejections. They happen either once a week or like
up to four times a day, depending on the solar cycle.
The Sun has a cycle that lasts about it every
eleven years. It flips its magnetic field and it gets
(17:47):
really active and then it goes quieter again. And I
think a lot of people have probably seen these in photographs,
like if you see a photograph of the Sun, and
don't look at the sun directly, I'll be able to
see them. But if you see photographs with special lens
of the Sun, you will see like this big fiery ball.
But then you see like these loops that come off
of the Sun and then come back around that are
kind of like a kind of like a cow lake
(18:09):
on your hair, Yeah, or like a big bubble of
hot tomato sauce. Maybe I shouldn't do these podcasts just
before lunch. I think a lot of people will see
these right Like there, that's what the solar flare is.
It burps out stuff, but then it comes back around
and so it forms little loops. Yeah, And there's really
two different things. There's the solar flare. A solar flare
is just increased in brightness, like more photons, like a
(18:30):
bright flash of light. And a coronal mass ejection that's
when it actually spews out material. That's when it spews
out this plasm into space. You get those loops of stuff. Oh,
I see, all right, but they're both sort of the same.
They're both the same burp. Well, we don't really understand
is the amazing thing. I mean, the sun is the
most important thing in our cosmic neighborhood. But it's something
(18:51):
we still do not understand. Is, as I was saying before,
there's these magnetic fields, and people think that sometimes these
magnetic fields get twisted and it's like tension in them
and then they can like slide back into place and
release that tension, and that might be what causes the
solar flares. It might be what causes these coronal massive ejections,
but we don't actually know. And we've noticed that sometimes
(19:13):
you get these coronal mass ejections more often when you
have solar flares, but not all the time. So it's
a big mystery. It's a current topic of research. Okay,
So they're not necessarily tied together. You know, sometimes the
Sun can just might just spew out extra energy for
no reason at all, and sometimes you might get these
crazy giant loops. Yeah, and sometimes you can get these
solar flares without coronal mass ejections. And these flares they're huge,
(19:37):
like these sun spots, these spots on the Sun that
are brighter or darker, they're like, you know, three hundred
times the size of the Earth. These are enormous features.
Um It's it's hard to wrap your mind around how
big the Sun is, and so of course when it fluctuates,
it can really affect life here on Earth. All right,
So the Sun sometimes has these burbs or vomits or farts,
and that can cause flares or sun's pots or coronal
(20:02):
mass ejections, which sort of sound like a heart attack,
but I don't recommend them. But basically, yeah, basically it
throws out stuff into space, and that's what we call
space weather, and that space weather can affect us here
on Earth in pretty dramatic ways. Absolutely, it's a big
factor in our life and it can it can even
kill you. So let's get into how space weather affects us.
(20:24):
But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
talking about space weather and how it impacts us. So, Daniel,
(20:45):
how does space weather effectives? Does it mean that you
have to bring out a take out an umbrella? Would
you be protection every once in a while? What does
that mean? Well, it depends a little bit on how
you live your life. But one of my favorite stories
about space weather is sort of how the phrase was poined.
It was like a hundred and fifty years ago, eighteen
fifty nine. It was an enormous coronal massage action, like
(21:06):
the biggest one ever in recorded history, and it sent
so much energy in terms of particles reigning down here
on Earth that they created sparks from the telegraph network
and so people who were using the telegraph network at
the time God zapped and there were sparks flying everywhere
and actually started a bunch of forest fires. So did
they notice this coronal massage action, Like did they see
(21:29):
a giant loop in the sun. Yeah, they were studying
the Sun and they saw this at the same time
they observed all this stuff happening here on Earth. And
that was the first time they realized, to hold on
a second, maybe something that happens on the Sun, it
can actually affect us down here. And until then they thought, oh,
we can study the Sun. It's interesting. Obviously puts out
light for us to get for us to enjoy and
(21:49):
to feed our plants and everything. But they hadn't really
connected observable stuff on the Sun with phenomena here on
Earth until then. That's when they knew, like, hey, the
sun verbs watch out. That's everybody duck unto the table.
If you hear the Sun's stomach will start to rumble
plug your nose of those suburbs, and that's the most
direct connection. Like the Sun is shooting out protons and electrons,
(22:09):
and sometimes those protons can get pushed out really fast
by one of these coronal mass injections and then accelerated
by the Sun's magnetic field, and then they can be
strong enough to get through our magnetic field and come
down here to Earth. Wow. And so what was happening
at that time, Like the particles came in and somehow
they how did they make sparks in the telegraph network,
(22:30):
Like did they somehow supercharged the cables or something? What
was going on? Well, there's two things that can happen there.
One is you're just at an enormous amount of energy
dumped into the atmosphere and that ionizes atoms. Is you
have free electrons just running around. And the other thing
is that it can create strong magnetic fields for the
same reason, and that can create electric pulses. And so
(22:51):
you have if you have wires out there and lots
of high, highly energized electrons, you're basically creating lightning. And
then you know you're connected to these wires and so
you're looking to get zapped. So it just sort of
like it showers, is with energy, which creates which is
kind of apps everything up, and that energy has to
go somewhere absolutely, and so back then the thing we
were most sensitive to was a telegraph network, but these
(23:13):
days we have an enormous communications network that's very sensitive
to this kind of pulses. You can affect the magnetic
field here on Earth, you can affect anything that essentially
bounces signals around the atmosphere, and anything that has electronics
can get zapped. So like my cell phone when it
has circuits in it, but if it gets showered by particles,
(23:33):
those all the electrons going through those circuits can somehow
sort of what gets you know, frozen or you could
get fried because your your cell phone is not built
to handle high pulses of electricity. It's not it's assuming
that the battery in the cell phone is not going
to try to kill the cell phone. And so if
some if some strong magnetic field comes and whips up
(23:56):
basically a mini electric storm in your cell phone, then yeah,
you can fry your cell phone. And it's not just
enhanced electromagnetic fields, it's actual particles. To remember that we
talked about how radiation can damage things. It's like a
billion tiny bullets. Each one can damage your DNA, but
they can also damage electronics which have become super miniaturized.
(24:18):
Most electronic systems are sensitive to radiation, but very few
are actually protected against it. Of course, it's not as
strong near the surface as it is near the top
of the atmosphere because our atmosphere helps diffuse it a
little bit. But we have, for example, satellite technology that's
up there in space, and if there's bad solar weather,
it can destroy a huge amount of satellite technology. I
(24:39):
think a billion dollars worth of damage is done every
year by solar storms. Billion dollars, a billion dollars. So
there's big money in predicting solar weather. Like, if you
know a solar storm is coming, you can shut down
your satellite or you know, close it up in some
way to protect it or move it out of the way.
Even um, there's a huge amount of money in predicting
(25:00):
solar weather. Wow, So you can spend a lot of
many putting up satellites up there, but they might get fried.
They will get fried. Yeah, And of course it's not
just satellites that will get fried. If you have people
up there, and a solar storm comes, that means a
huge dose of radiation. We can be talking about ten
or a hundred times as much radiation as an astronaut
will usually get. And you know, out there in space,
(25:22):
you're already accumulating more radiation than you do do here
on Earth because you're not protected by the atmosphere and
the magnetic field, and so it can be a fatal
pulse and it goes through like the walls of the
space station too. Yeah, it takes a lot of energy
to protect yourself from this radiation because it has a
lot of energy. The only way to stop it is
to have enough material between you and it that it
(25:43):
can absorb that energy. So they have special places, for
example on the International Space Station that have heavy shielding.
They can't shield the entire thing, or the whole thing
would be too heavy to be up in space, but
they have like a safe room basically, and if they
can tell the astronauts fast enough that this dose is coming,
they all scrambled to the safe room to protect themselves,
kind of like a tornado. What do you call it,
(26:04):
tornado basement or tornado safe zone? That's right, but I
don't think the space station has a basement. Yeah, it's
it's they it does. It's just upstairs. Right, it's the
ad exact. It's the metaphorical tornado basement on the space station.
I love that. I like that. The idea of a
space Tornadoes is that a thing? Can we make it
(26:26):
a thing? I think we should write that. Yeah, absolutely,
don't tell everybody. That's the project you were talking about
when you said you have to go away for six weeks. Right,
that's right. I was working on Space Tornadoes. Yeah, that's
that's for next movie, Space Twister, that's right, and then
the sequel, Space Tornado with sharks. Right, yes, space Sharknado
(26:47):
or Galacto maybe Galactic Sharknado. Just to open up. Yeah,
but the aliens are sharks somehow, and they travel here
in a wormhole that's kind of like a tornado. Hey,
you know what, This started as a joke, but I
think it's actually a pretty good idea. Hey, we have
a new project, guys. But you know, space weather isn't
all bad. If you get these particles coming into the atmosphere,
(27:07):
they don't all just penetrate the atmosphere. Some of them
still blue spiral around the magnetic field and end up
in the north pole, and then you get extra solar
and you get extra northern lights. This Aurora borealis, These
glow in the atmosphere of green and blue and crazy
dancing lights. Those are very spectacular in a solar storm.
So space weather can be pretty. I mean, it might
(27:27):
be killing some astronauts out there, but hey, you might
get a better picture, that's right. You know, on this
podcast we try to look at the bright side of
the universe. Even fatal doses of radiation can look pretty
in some context. But you know, just like you shouldn't
be shooting hurricanes, please also don't shoot the northern lights.
So it sounds like it affects electronics out there in
space and astronauts in space. And maybe you were saying
even people in airplanes might get an extra those of radiation.
(27:50):
But is it something that I have to worry about
in an everyday basis, Like should I check the space
weather before I go to the beach? Um, it doesn't
matter a lot for airplanes. You're right, and we should
talk about that because people aren't probably aware that every
time you fly in an airplane you do get an
extra dose of radiation just because you're higher up in
the atmosphere, and if you happen to be in the
atmosphere when there's one of these solar storms, it can
(28:11):
be a serious health issue. And in addition, it can
knock out the communications of your airplane. And this happens
sometimes if planes rely on navigation technology, which can be
useless in a solar storm because it relies on things
like bouncing signals off the atmosphere, and when a solar
storm comes, it basically makes ripples in the atmosphere, and
so these signals don't bounce cleanly. They scatter instead of reflecting,
(28:34):
and so there's been times when planes have had to
fly without these signals. Sometimes these adages are minutes. Sometimes
these things are days long, and so you're plane could
be out there flying without the necessary navigational technology thanks
to the sun's burp. But the pilots still, you know,
he's okay, he's here, she's okay, they're they're still still
staring the plane, right, Oh yeah, they just close their
(28:55):
eyes and hope, you know, okay, good. You know, planes
all have many ways to nad a gate and lots
of backup systems. But when you lose one, then you're
more reliant on the others. Um But yes, in addition,
it can affect you down here on Earth, can it? Though?
Like will I get extra sunburn or you know, feel
a little extra plasma E if I go to the
beach that day. How plasma E do you feel on
(29:17):
a normal day? Depends on the day I get just enough.
That's called four Hey, weather folks, Yeah, it's it's not
a big thing for you to worry about in terms
of radiation. These things don't hit the Earth broadly, so
you're very unlikely to be right in the middle of one.
But it can cause like blackouts, like in there was
(29:38):
a really powerful geomagnetic storm that's set out a huge
power blackout in Canada. It left six million people without
electricity for hours. But wait, white white only Canada. Wouldn't
it blanket the whole earth? No, these things are not
necessarily earth sized. It's like a jet of particles and
just happen to hit Canada. Oh, they're like specific or
(30:01):
like little laser beams. Now, you're making it sound like
the Sun hit Canada on purpose, Like the Sun is
anti can I'm just saying, you know, I have a
pro Canada. I love Canada, so I'm very sensitive to
any you know, defamation of Canadian character. Yeah. No, well
we were just accusing the Sun of of not liking Canadians. Yeah.
(30:21):
I hope it's you know, it's learned from then, and
it's it's moved on. Um. Yeah, And you can actually
track this stuff, like you don't have to just be
ignorant and hope that the space weather is going to
be good. Maybe you are elon Musk and you're launching
a satellite tomorrow and you want to know if the
solar flare is coming. There are actually a lot of
public resources people probably aren't aware about. All Right, well,
let's get into how you might predict space weather or
(30:44):
even if that's possible. But first let's take a quick break.
All Right. We talked about space weather and how that's
(31:04):
really mostly sun weather, right, and how it involves solar
flares and solar bourbs and vomits, and and that's because
we are close to the Sun, right, The Sun is
the biggest thing nearby. If we were in the asteroid
Bells or something somewhere near Jupiter, then your Jupiter has
its own weather. Also, it pumps out a lot of radiation,
so there'd be weather from Jupiter also, Yeah, a jovial weather.
(31:29):
Juvial weather not always so jovial. Yeah, not a sunny
but still pretty job. Yeah, if you're, for example, living
on the surface of Io, then you have to worry
about the radiation from from your Jovian planet exactly. Ah wow,
because the weather in Jupiter might be turning out and
burp ing and farting. Yeah, we know that Jupiter is
(31:51):
not static, and we can see from here that there
are storms on its surface and inside this crazy stuff happening,
and so the amount of radiation that Jupiter is emitting
is also varying. Down over here on Earth, we're mostly
affected by the solar weather. So you're right. Space weather
on Earth is mostly about the Sun because that's the
biggest source of weather nearby, and so it might cause
(32:11):
blackouts or fryer electronics or satellites, and so the question
is can we predict space weather? Can we like, um,
you know, give the satellites and the astronauts and little
heads up. We're doing everything we can. You know, we
love to understand the Sun for lots of reasons. One
is just practical, like we need to know if our
satellites are going to get blown out or protect our astronauts.
(32:32):
And the other is it's the most important astrophysical thing nearby,
and it's a huge mystery. If we understood better how
the Sun worked, we could understand how other stars work
and how long they're gonna last, and how they were formed,
and there are pretty big important feature of this incredible
universe we find ourselves in. So it's a fun mystery,
but we just don't understand it because we've only been
(32:53):
studying it for you know, a hundred and fifty years
or so, and it's a literally a huge topic. I mean,
but couldn't we just look at the Sun and tell
if something's coming our way, because you know, I imagine
we could maybe see the flares before all of the
you know, protons and electrons hit us, when we have
some kind of warning. Yeah, well, there's two different kinds
(33:13):
of things you can do. First of all, that's a
great idea. Nobody's ever thought of that before. Actually look
at the sound to try to pregent. After this call,
I'm going to get on the phone with NASA and
let them know your idea and a new project for
us now there's two things we're trying to do. One
is sort of ground up understand the sun for as
a theoretical object. Do we know what's going on inside?
And so can we use that to predict what's going
(33:35):
to happen on the outside. And then you know, if
we can get that model to work, we can connect
it with recent events and and that's the best way
to do it because it can give you a deeper
inside and help you understand things in the short term
and the long term. And then there's the more practical one.
There's the sort of as you suggested, we said, well,
we've noticed a connection that there's happens to be a
(33:55):
coronal mass ejection a few days after a sun spot
or the times after sunspots, and so you look for
these patterns and try to use them to predict what's
going to happen. It's sort of like whether on Earth
used to be like, oh the sky is green, does
I mean it's gonna be a tornado? We're just looking
for these patterns. Who try to see what gives you
a clue as to as to what's going to happen
in the next few days. I think the sun turn green.
(34:17):
That would be that would be a side something's going on.
What would you do if the sun turned green? Or
pack your bags and going to the basement. I would
make my Tornado space movie as quickly as possible before. Well,
you've been building your strategic banana reserve for a reason,
and so I guess you'd have to happen into that.
And this is an active area of research. In fact,
(34:40):
it was just a couple of weeks ago that we
launched a whole new satellite just to study our atmosphere
and the impact of solar weather. It's called Icon and
it studies the iono sphere around the Earth. This this
area of ionized particles that surrounds um in the lower atmosphere. Okay,
so there are ways that we can sort of predict
these things, and they're people looking into it. But it's
(35:01):
still pretty it's a hot topic, hot and um, but
it sounds like it's still sort of we're still sort
of at the mercy of the weather. Absolutely. You know,
it's hard enough to understand the weather here on Earth,
and we're right in the middle of it. We can
observe it in so many ways. We can take any
measurement we want. We just go outside now, trying to
imagine understanding the weather on something nine three million miles away,
(35:24):
You can hardly take measurements. It's much bigger, it's much
more complicated, it's totally different from anything you experience. That's
a much more difficult problem to solve scientifically, and it's
just as complicated because the solar atmosphere in the solar
surface is in motion. It's churning, as you said, So
this is not something that's easy to do, and so
it's an exciting topic. So those you interested in helping
(35:45):
to protect a billion dollar industry every year, or protect
astronauts lives, or just deeply interested in like how the
sun works and can we understand it, there's gonna be
a long future of research. You could be the person
who invents the quantum Doppler solar three million, which summons
the shark tornado and ends all life on Earth. Right,
(36:06):
tuning a tune in at ten o'clock for Daniel and
Jorge destroy the universe? All right, Well, the next time
you go out there and think about the weather, maybe
also leave a little room in your brain for thinking
about the space weather as well, and whether that might
affect you when you go out and whether it's going
(36:27):
to be hot or not. Thanks for tuning in, See
you next time. Before you still have a question after
listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
(36:49):
one Word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel
and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
Heart Ready for more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
He doesn't it feel like every day there's something new
to worry about. What do you mean, like, what, well,
you know that we have forest fires in California's, We've
got super hurricanes, we got crazy political situations, we have
financial uncertainty. We have that whole question about whether Spider
Man is going to be part of the Marvel universe.
I mean that one's got me worried. I know these
(00:29):
things could rock our world. Well, unfortunately, I've got a
new thing for you to worry about. I feel like
every podcast is a new one, Daniel, that I should
that I need to worry about. But what do you
mean this time? Are you talking about aliens coming from
space to eat us? Or Oh no, that's something I
would look forward to. No, no, this is even by aliens,
the arrival of aliens. You know, I would gladly offer
(00:51):
up civilization. Our civilization is a meal for aliens if
they give us some secrets of the universe. Let's not
elect Daniel to office. He's not running. It turns out
that we need to worry about the weather, but not
just the weather here on Earth, the weather in space. Hey,
(01:23):
I'm back to this, Joge. I'm a cartoonists and the
creator of PhD Comics. Hi. I'm Daniel Watson. I'm a
particle physicist and I'm pleased to be the co host
of this podcast. And welcome to the podcast. Daniel and
Jorge explain the university production of I Heart Radio, in
which we talked about everything that's amazing and crazy and
wonderful and scary and reassuring about our bunkers universe and
(01:47):
trying to give you an understanding that really settles to
the bottom of your brain. So, yeah, I'm back. Thanks
for holding down to fourth Daniel, I was gone for
a couple of weeks there. Well, thank you very much
for coming back. I think listeners of the podcast are
leave to have you back. Well, they have more laughed
and less physics, more cartoonists per podcast. I mean, that's uh,
that's pretty good value right there. That's right. And you know, frankly,
(02:08):
I was getting tired of deflecting everybody's questions about where
you were another mystery of the universe. He had to
keep explaining. I know, I love answering emails and I
love answering questions, but some of these questions I didn't
know how to answer. People were asking me if I
had kidnapped you and traded you to Aliens for some
enormous pile of bananas, which did happen some one did
(02:29):
happen once, but not this time. That's right. No, people
were people were pretty curious. Yeah, I hope no idea
was really concerned. Um, basically I just had to go
take a nap, basically is what happened. Maybe people were
unaware that that cartoonists have a different life cycle. They hibernate,
so you know, they fill up all summer and then
sleep for six weeks in the winter. Yeah. Yeah, every
(02:50):
six years, we have to take it two months now,
that's right. And so folks, he's coming back to you
expert refreshed, extra funny, extra hilarious. And for those of
you who are worried that I had done something to
who that kidnapped him, I hope you hear the relief
in my voice at his return. Yeah. No, Actually what
happened was Daniel and I have several big projects going on,
and one of them just kind of needed a little
(03:12):
bit of extra attention, so I had to step away
from the mic a little bit. But it sounds like
you guys had a lot of fun while I was gone.
We had you had a lot of fun guests, and
Crystal Dilworth came in and covered for me. Yeah, Crystal
is our guest host. And we had some fun conversations
about the cosmic microwave background and other stuff, and my
friend Matt came by the podcast, and uh, then I
(03:33):
had a few on my own, and let me tell you,
it was challenging having a conversation with myself. But yeah,
I'm back and and I'm back for the foreseeable future,
at least until Daniel kid naps me again, until the
intergalactic banana space pirates come and offered to trade you
for secrets at the universe. So today we're gonna be
talking about it. Seems like you had another thing we
should be worried about coming from space to harm us
(03:57):
or effectives. That's right, most of the time, we can
live in this little bubble we call Earth and not
worry too much about what's going on out there in
the universe. I mean, we know, because we've listened to
the podcast that there are crazy things happening in the
center of galaxies and enormous violent things happening in the
center of stars. But We don't often think about that
because we can just ignore everything that happens above the
(04:19):
atmosphere and to sort of go about our everyday life.
It seems like that there are always other things happening
in the universe, right, Like we we don't just live
in a bubble. We live in a solar system with
stuff flying around and with other celestial things out there
making noise and throwing things. That's right, we do live
in a bubble. It's a magnetic bubble vires. A magnetic
field protects us from most of the stuff that's happening
(04:41):
out there, but it's not perfect and sometimes this incredible
force field actually does get penetrated by crazy things happening
out there in space, and we have to pay attention
and so to be On the podcast, we'll be talking
about what is as weather? Is it usually sunny? Does
(05:02):
it rain out in space? What exactly does that mean? Daniel, Yeah,
I think it's a fascinating topic. You know, what is
space weather? What does it mean? How does it affect us?
What precautions can we take? Can we predict it? You know?
Can you go on and app and figure out what's
going to be happening in space? In the next week
or two. Um, and I think it it helps just
connects you to the larger context. You know, weather events
(05:23):
here on Earth help you understand what's happening nearby, like, oh,
it's not raining here, but it is raining over there.
It gives you a sort of a sense of the
larger context and space weather sort of a generalization of that.
It gives us a sense for what's happening in the
Solar system, what's going on, like what is it like
to be on Venus today? Right? And you know, whether
our local station can come up with a pretty cool
(05:44):
sounding name for technology to predict it, like Doppler space
radar three thousand that's right. Pretty soon we're going to
have a arms race between local weather stations to have
fancier sounding technologies. Let's the quantum Doppler, um pulsar gamma
three thousand million, Toppler. Was that just all the tech
(06:09):
words you can think of. That's it. There was a
mind right there that was that. That's it. That's that's
all that's in my head at this moment. Well, let's
see Jorge can do better than the average person on
the street that you see Irvine. So I walked around,
and I wondered, do people even know that space weather
is a thing? What do they think it is? And
I asked people, let you see Irvine, is their weather
(06:30):
out in space? What does that even mean? So think
about it for a second. If someone approach you and
ask you if there is weather in space, what would
you answer? Here's what people had to say, is their
weather in space? I mean just because the question exists,
I'm assuming so I haven't heard anything about it. What
would that be? Like? What does that mean weather in space? Um?
(06:51):
I would guess just like shifts in like anti matter,
and how much is like concentrated in certain spaces which
could affect I don't know move men of comments lest
like anything. I just assume whether as in storms or
rain and wind thinks things at that level. No, I
don't think there is. No. That's a good question. I'm
(07:12):
not sure about space, but I know that there's weather
patterns on specific planets, But I don't know about the
overall atmosphere. I have no clue. I'd say yes because
it's so big there has to be some somewhere. Um,
I think so yes, Solar winds, Solar winds, like what
are solar winds, huge pulses of electromagnetic radiation from a
(07:34):
sun or star. Okay, so it's radiation of particles. Um. Yeah,
for the most part radiation. Does that affect us here
on Earth? Not really, because we have the magnetic field
of Earth shielding us from that. I feel like there
there is a chance that there's like, uh, like water
and stuff up there, So that means that there is weather.
(07:57):
I've heard of the idea of it, but I don't know, Purling,
I have heard of space whether I know you have
solar winds, large coronal ejecttions and bombarding the whole Solar
system all the time and hits the Earth, and the
magnetic field from the Earth deflects it to the poles
and this is this is when you see then all
the lights can also affect our communications on Earth are satellites.
(08:22):
So what do you think of these answers for him? Well,
it seems that it's these pretty common sense. A lot
of people assume that there would be weather in other planets,
but maybe people seem skeptical that there would be weather
in like actual space, in the space between planets. So
that's pretty reasonable, right, Yeah, that is pretty reasonable. Yeah,
like I've seen movies where there's storm there are storms
(08:42):
and Mars and and you know, I imagine you look
at a picture of Jupiter, there's swirling clouds. So you know,
the idea that there's weather out there is not weird
to me, but and to other people it seems. But
the idea that there might be weather like in the
vacuum of space, that's that's a little bit more hard
to understand. Yeah, And the topic of whether on other
(09:05):
planets is really fascinating, because of course we'd like to
understand are those planets livable, could we ever move there?
And can we watch the clouds on other planets and
use that to understand what's in the atmosphere? Is their
water there? That's a whole other fascinating topic that we're
gonna dig into in a future podcast. But you're right,
today we're talking about this sort of weather between planets,
(09:26):
and some people said, you know, well, there's no water
up there, so in space, so how could do the weather?
So I think you're right people. So today I'm hoping
we're gonna expand people's sense for what weather means. It's
not just rain and sun. I like the person who
said I have no clue, but I'm gonna say yes,
just because space is so big. I like that in
every because you've applied to anything, like do you think
(09:48):
there are purple elephants in space? Well it's pretty big,
so yeah, yeah? Why odd? Yeah, my brain says no,
but hey, space is big, so yes. And you know,
and that's a pretty safe asser, right, isn't it It
is because if space is infinite, then everything that can
exist will exist, and there probably are purple elephants out there.
There's probably a planet where rains purple elephants. Oh boy,
(10:09):
you need a bigger umbrella for that, right. Well, one
time on the podcast we were speculating about whether it
rains diamonds somewhere. We're laughing about that as an absurdity,
and then somebody wrote in and said, actually it rains
diamonds here in our solar system. What Yeah, I think
it's on Urinus. Well that's cool. I think you would
need like an umbrella it's inverted to catch all the diamonds.
(10:30):
I don't think diamonds are worth that much of it's
raining diamonds. I think on Urinas you've got to use
a different kind of engagement ring. Maybe water crystals, right,
like an ice cube. It's a whole different market there,
that's right. The Beers has not managed to corner that market, right,
So let's let's get into it, Daniel. So there's apparently
a thing called space weather is what I'm hearing from you,
and that that means the weather in space, and it
(10:52):
might actually affect us on a daily basis, might even
cause you to lose cell phone signal, which is like, wow, fatal.
Everybody is suddenly alert. What this is actually relevant to me?
I'm talking about? Yeah, if I'm right now, there might
be a you're totally gaslighting our listeners there, or whether
(11:14):
weather event that might cause this podcast to skip a
SKIPA No, it's true because space is not empty. We
talked about this a lot, and it's not empty on
several levels. Of course, any arbitrary piece of vacuum is
actually filled with fluctuating quantum fields, which is amazing. But
the space itself is even filled with particles and all
(11:34):
sorts of energy. Of course, it's very not dense. It's
very sparse compared to the atmosphere around our planet. But
there is stuff out there, and specifically it's dominated by
stuff that comes from the Sun. And so there's two
major things we think about when we think about space weather,
and that's the solar wind and the solar radiation. Because
I think you're telling me earlier that, um, you know,
(11:55):
for us, space is at least what we call space
around the Earth is pretty much dominated by the Sun.
Like you know, we're just a small spec compared to
the Sun, which is this giant explosion. And so pretty
much when you say space weather, you you really mean
sort of like sun weather. That's right, because the Sun
doesn't just pour out photons for us and for you
(12:16):
to get a nice hand. It's views out a huge
amount of stuff. It's views out particles like protons and
electrons are very high speed. And this is what we
call the solar wind. And you know, it's not a
great name for it because it's really like a solar
particle flux or something, but they call it the solar wind,
like a solar jet maybe, yeah, yeah, solar eruption or
(12:38):
solar farts or something. I'm not sure what solar farts. Yes,
that is a new scientific term. Well, it might be
appropriate because it comes from the digestion of those gases
in the sun. Right, So Hey, and maybe it's just
because I'm married to a biologist who studies, you know,
digestion and stuff that have this stuff on my brain,
I would have come with solar burbsum. Either way, the
(13:01):
Sun puts out a lot of particles, like actual mass, right,
not just radiation. There's lots of radiation as well, but
there's also solar particles. And these particles fly through the
Solar system and they call it the solar wind, and
it's important. It's a big factor in how you can
survive out there in space, and also sometimes it penetrates
down to the Earth. Now, is it sort of like
a clouds? Like does it form clouds out there? Like
(13:24):
my is it? Can you imagine like swirling you know,
clouds or or mists of these particles kind of swirling
around us? Or or is it pretty much like a
jet going through us? They're moving really fast, so they
just basically fly away from the Sun in straight lines.
So if you want to visualize that, just imagine like
the Sun has a billion guns and each one is
shooting protons and electrons out in every direction. Wow, but
(13:47):
we have liked kind of a force field, right, like
we you're saying that our magnetic field kind of deflect
some of the some of these particles. That's right. We
have a multi layer force field. First of all, we
have our atmosphere that's sort of the closest thing, and
any particle that make the atmosphere is going to bang
into all the other particles, right, So that protects you
at some level, But even before it gets to the
atmosphere has to penetrate our magnetic field. And remember, charged particles,
(14:10):
protons and electrons have a charge, will bend when they
hit a magnetic field. So because we have a magnetic field,
most of this stuff bends around the Earth rather than
even hitting our atmosphere. So we are very grateful to
our magnetic field. If we didn't have one, like Mars
has very very small one, then this solar wind would
basically blow our atmosphere away, all right. So when you
(14:31):
say space weather, you mean solar flares and solar winds,
that's right. So the key thing is there's stuff out
there in space. The Sun is pumping out radiation and particles.
And the reason we call it weather is because it's
not fixed. It's not like it's the same every day.
It varies and so just like the weather, which is
the product of very complex systems interacting and hard to predict.
(14:52):
The stuff put out by the Sun is also variable
and hard to predict and has a big impact on us.
So that's what we call it space weather. It's not
just because I think it's unpredictable. It's also sort of
the result of weather in the Sun. Right, Like you
can almost think of these solar flares and these sort
of winds is coming from whatever is happening in the
surface of the Sun. That's sort of like um sun weather, right, yeah,
(15:16):
or sun moods. Right. We don't understand the sun. The
Sun is a huge mystery, like the most important thing
in our solar system. We don't understand how it works.
And it's it's a huge ball of plasma. And because
it's plasma, it's ionized particles, it's charged particles, and charged particles, Remember,
when they move, they generate magnetic fields. And so the
Sun has this enormous magnetic field that comes from this
(15:38):
boiling pot of plasma that has encapsulated by this gravitational trap,
and it generates this magnetic field. But that magnetic field
is also not static because it comes from this rye
constantly writhing, hot, boiling mass. So it's like churning all
the time, and sometimes it burbs. That's kind of what
a solar flair is. Yeah, imagine like a really thick
(15:58):
pot of tomato soup. Your Italian grandmother might make, you know,
it's slowly bubbling. An Italian grandmother. Everybody's Italian grandmother, you know,
or the stereotypical Italian grandmother in you know TV shows.
That's as close as I come to having an Italian grandmother. Anyway,
bubble and tomato soup eventually forms one of these bubbles
(16:19):
net pops and it sprays tomato soup everywhere. So you
can sort of imagine the Sun is the same way,
and it uh and sometimes it has this bright burst
of really hot, bright light, and sometimes it actually shoots
out like bits of the sun into space really like
the plasma inside, like the hydrogen and the whatever it's
made out of. Yeah, so the plasma is mostly protons
(16:41):
and electrons, and sometimes something happens called a coronal mass ejection,
and it vomits out like a billion kilograms of plasma
and it just spews it out into space at like
thousands of kilometers per second. Oh, well, you said a
solar vomit is also a scientific term, Like I feel
like the Sun has a lot of stomach problems here.
(17:02):
It's burping, it's vomiting, it's far. Some people like to
try to understand it in analogy to weather on Earth.
I think it's maybe a better analogy to call it,
you know, digestion, like the Sun is digesting all of
this hydrogen, and no, that doesn't always go smoothly. And
maybe the Sun should try a gluten free diet. I
hear that the Sun has Celiac disease. What you're saying,
(17:24):
maybe you should try hydrogen free diet because I think
that's the problem that might be trouble though you don't
have any energy, right, yeah, exactly. But this is not
something rare. This happens on the Sun very these coronal
mass ejections. They happen either once a week or like
up to four times a day, depending on the solar cycle.
The Sun has a cycle that lasts about it every
eleven years. It flips its magnetic field and it gets
(17:47):
really active and then it goes quieter again. And I
think a lot of people have probably seen these in photographs,
like if you see a photograph of the Sun, and
don't look at the sun directly, I'll be able to
see them. But if you see photographs with special lens
of the Sun, you will see like this big fiery ball.
But then you see like these loops that come off
of the Sun and then come back around that are
kind of like a kind of like a cow lake
(18:09):
on your hair, Yeah, or like a big bubble of
hot tomato sauce. Maybe I shouldn't do these podcasts just
before lunch. I think a lot of people will see
these right Like there, that's what the solar flare is.
It burps out stuff, but then it comes back around
and so it forms little loops. Yeah, And there's really
two different things. There's the solar flare. A solar flare
is just increased in brightness, like more photons, like a
(18:30):
bright flash of light. And a coronal mass ejection that's
when it actually spews out material. That's when it spews
out this plasm into space. You get those loops of stuff. Oh,
I see, all right, but they're both sort of the same.
They're both the same burp. Well, we don't really understand
is the amazing thing. I mean, the sun is the
most important thing in our cosmic neighborhood. But it's something
(18:51):
we still do not understand. Is, as I was saying before,
there's these magnetic fields, and people think that sometimes these
magnetic fields get twisted and it's like tension in them
and then they can like slide back into place and
release that tension, and that might be what causes the
solar flares. It might be what causes these coronal massive ejections,
but we don't actually know. And we've noticed that sometimes
(19:13):
you get these coronal mass ejections more often when you
have solar flares, but not all the time. So it's
a big mystery. It's a current topic of research. Okay,
So they're not necessarily tied together. You know, sometimes the
Sun can just might just spew out extra energy for
no reason at all, and sometimes you might get these
crazy giant loops. Yeah, and sometimes you can get these
solar flares without coronal mass ejections. And these flares they're huge,
(19:37):
like these sun spots, these spots on the Sun that
are brighter or darker, they're like, you know, three hundred
times the size of the Earth. These are enormous features.
Um It's it's hard to wrap your mind around how
big the Sun is, and so of course when it fluctuates,
it can really affect life here on Earth. All right,
So the Sun sometimes has these burbs or vomits or farts,
and that can cause flares or sun's pots or coronal
(20:02):
mass ejections, which sort of sound like a heart attack,
but I don't recommend them. But basically, yeah, basically it
throws out stuff into space, and that's what we call
space weather, and that space weather can affect us here
on Earth in pretty dramatic ways. Absolutely, it's a big
factor in our life and it can it can even
kill you. So let's get into how space weather affects us.
(20:24):
But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
talking about space weather and how it impacts us. So, Daniel,
(20:45):
how does space weather effectives? Does it mean that you
have to bring out a take out an umbrella? Would
you be protection every once in a while? What does
that mean? Well, it depends a little bit on how
you live your life. But one of my favorite stories
about space weather is sort of how the phrase was poined.
It was like a hundred and fifty years ago, eighteen
fifty nine. It was an enormous coronal massage action, like
(21:06):
the biggest one ever in recorded history, and it sent
so much energy in terms of particles reigning down here
on Earth that they created sparks from the telegraph network
and so people who were using the telegraph network at
the time God zapped and there were sparks flying everywhere
and actually started a bunch of forest fires. So did
they notice this coronal massage action, Like did they see
(21:29):
a giant loop in the sun. Yeah, they were studying
the Sun and they saw this at the same time
they observed all this stuff happening here on Earth. And
that was the first time they realized, to hold on
a second, maybe something that happens on the Sun, it
can actually affect us down here. And until then they thought, oh,
we can study the Sun. It's interesting. Obviously puts out
light for us to get for us to enjoy and
(21:49):
to feed our plants and everything. But they hadn't really
connected observable stuff on the Sun with phenomena here on
Earth until then. That's when they knew, like, hey, the
sun verbs watch out. That's everybody duck unto the table.
If you hear the Sun's stomach will start to rumble
plug your nose of those suburbs, and that's the most
direct connection. Like the Sun is shooting out protons and electrons,
(22:09):
and sometimes those protons can get pushed out really fast
by one of these coronal mass injections and then accelerated
by the Sun's magnetic field, and then they can be
strong enough to get through our magnetic field and come
down here to Earth. Wow. And so what was happening
at that time, Like the particles came in and somehow
they how did they make sparks in the telegraph network,
(22:30):
Like did they somehow supercharged the cables or something? What
was going on? Well, there's two things that can happen there.
One is you're just at an enormous amount of energy
dumped into the atmosphere and that ionizes atoms. Is you
have free electrons just running around. And the other thing
is that it can create strong magnetic fields for the
same reason, and that can create electric pulses. And so
(22:51):
you have if you have wires out there and lots
of high, highly energized electrons, you're basically creating lightning. And
then you know you're connected to these wires and so
you're looking to get zapped. So it just sort of
like it showers, is with energy, which creates which is
kind of apps everything up, and that energy has to
go somewhere absolutely, and so back then the thing we
were most sensitive to was a telegraph network, but these
(23:13):
days we have an enormous communications network that's very sensitive
to this kind of pulses. You can affect the magnetic
field here on Earth, you can affect anything that essentially
bounces signals around the atmosphere, and anything that has electronics
can get zapped. So like my cell phone when it
has circuits in it, but if it gets showered by particles,
(23:33):
those all the electrons going through those circuits can somehow
sort of what gets you know, frozen or you could
get fried because your your cell phone is not built
to handle high pulses of electricity. It's not it's assuming
that the battery in the cell phone is not going
to try to kill the cell phone. And so if
some if some strong magnetic field comes and whips up
(23:56):
basically a mini electric storm in your cell phone, then yeah,
you can fry your cell phone. And it's not just
enhanced electromagnetic fields, it's actual particles. To remember that we
talked about how radiation can damage things. It's like a
billion tiny bullets. Each one can damage your DNA, but
they can also damage electronics which have become super miniaturized.
(24:18):
Most electronic systems are sensitive to radiation, but very few
are actually protected against it. Of course, it's not as
strong near the surface as it is near the top
of the atmosphere because our atmosphere helps diffuse it a
little bit. But we have, for example, satellite technology that's
up there in space, and if there's bad solar weather,
it can destroy a huge amount of satellite technology. I
(24:39):
think a billion dollars worth of damage is done every
year by solar storms. Billion dollars, a billion dollars. So
there's big money in predicting solar weather. Like, if you
know a solar storm is coming, you can shut down
your satellite or you know, close it up in some
way to protect it or move it out of the way.
Even um, there's a huge amount of money in predicting
(25:00):
solar weather. Wow, So you can spend a lot of
many putting up satellites up there, but they might get fried.
They will get fried. Yeah, And of course it's not
just satellites that will get fried. If you have people
up there, and a solar storm comes, that means a
huge dose of radiation. We can be talking about ten
or a hundred times as much radiation as an astronaut
will usually get. And you know, out there in space,
(25:22):
you're already accumulating more radiation than you do do here
on Earth because you're not protected by the atmosphere and
the magnetic field, and so it can be a fatal
pulse and it goes through like the walls of the
space station too. Yeah, it takes a lot of energy
to protect yourself from this radiation because it has a
lot of energy. The only way to stop it is
to have enough material between you and it that it
(25:43):
can absorb that energy. So they have special places, for
example on the International Space Station that have heavy shielding.
They can't shield the entire thing, or the whole thing
would be too heavy to be up in space, but
they have like a safe room basically, and if they
can tell the astronauts fast enough that this dose is coming,
they all scrambled to the safe room to protect themselves,
kind of like a tornado. What do you call it,
(26:04):
tornado basement or tornado safe zone? That's right, but I
don't think the space station has a basement. Yeah, it's
it's they it does. It's just upstairs. Right, it's the
ad exact. It's the metaphorical tornado basement on the space station.
I love that. I like that. The idea of a
space Tornadoes is that a thing? Can we make it
(26:26):
a thing? I think we should write that. Yeah, absolutely,
don't tell everybody. That's the project you were talking about
when you said you have to go away for six weeks. Right,
that's right. I was working on Space Tornadoes. Yeah, that's
that's for next movie, Space Twister, that's right, and then
the sequel, Space Tornado with sharks. Right, yes, space Sharknado
(26:47):
or Galacto maybe Galactic Sharknado. Just to open up. Yeah,
but the aliens are sharks somehow, and they travel here
in a wormhole that's kind of like a tornado. Hey,
you know what, This started as a joke, but I
think it's actually a pretty good idea. Hey, we have
a new project, guys. But you know, space weather isn't
all bad. If you get these particles coming into the atmosphere,
(27:07):
they don't all just penetrate the atmosphere. Some of them
still blue spiral around the magnetic field and end up
in the north pole, and then you get extra solar
and you get extra northern lights. This Aurora borealis, These
glow in the atmosphere of green and blue and crazy
dancing lights. Those are very spectacular in a solar storm.
So space weather can be pretty. I mean, it might
(27:27):
be killing some astronauts out there, but hey, you might
get a better picture, that's right. You know, on this
podcast we try to look at the bright side of
the universe. Even fatal doses of radiation can look pretty
in some context. But you know, just like you shouldn't
be shooting hurricanes, please also don't shoot the northern lights.
So it sounds like it affects electronics out there in
space and astronauts in space. And maybe you were saying
even people in airplanes might get an extra those of radiation.
(27:50):
But is it something that I have to worry about
in an everyday basis, Like should I check the space
weather before I go to the beach? Um, it doesn't
matter a lot for airplanes. You're right, and we should
talk about that because people aren't probably aware that every
time you fly in an airplane you do get an
extra dose of radiation just because you're higher up in
the atmosphere, and if you happen to be in the
atmosphere when there's one of these solar storms, it can
(28:11):
be a serious health issue. And in addition, it can
knock out the communications of your airplane. And this happens
sometimes if planes rely on navigation technology, which can be
useless in a solar storm because it relies on things
like bouncing signals off the atmosphere, and when a solar
storm comes, it basically makes ripples in the atmosphere, and
so these signals don't bounce cleanly. They scatter instead of reflecting,
(28:34):
and so there's been times when planes have had to
fly without these signals. Sometimes these adages are minutes. Sometimes
these things are days long, and so you're plane could
be out there flying without the necessary navigational technology thanks
to the sun's burp. But the pilots still, you know,
he's okay, he's here, she's okay, they're they're still still
staring the plane, right, Oh yeah, they just close their
(28:55):
eyes and hope, you know, okay, good. You know, planes
all have many ways to nad a gate and lots
of backup systems. But when you lose one, then you're
more reliant on the others. Um But yes, in addition,
it can affect you down here on Earth, can it? Though?
Like will I get extra sunburn or you know, feel
a little extra plasma E if I go to the
beach that day. How plasma E do you feel on
(29:17):
a normal day? Depends on the day I get just enough.
That's called four Hey, weather folks, Yeah, it's it's not
a big thing for you to worry about in terms
of radiation. These things don't hit the Earth broadly, so
you're very unlikely to be right in the middle of one.
But it can cause like blackouts, like in there was
(29:38):
a really powerful geomagnetic storm that's set out a huge
power blackout in Canada. It left six million people without
electricity for hours. But wait, white white only Canada. Wouldn't
it blanket the whole earth? No, these things are not
necessarily earth sized. It's like a jet of particles and
just happen to hit Canada. Oh, they're like specific or
(30:01):
like little laser beams. Now, you're making it sound like
the Sun hit Canada on purpose, Like the Sun is
anti can I'm just saying, you know, I have a
pro Canada. I love Canada, so I'm very sensitive to
any you know, defamation of Canadian character. Yeah. No, well
we were just accusing the Sun of of not liking Canadians. Yeah.
(30:21):
I hope it's you know, it's learned from then, and
it's it's moved on. Um. Yeah, And you can actually
track this stuff, like you don't have to just be
ignorant and hope that the space weather is going to
be good. Maybe you are elon Musk and you're launching
a satellite tomorrow and you want to know if the
solar flare is coming. There are actually a lot of
public resources people probably aren't aware about. All Right, well,
let's get into how you might predict space weather or
(30:44):
even if that's possible. But first let's take a quick break.
All Right. We talked about space weather and how that's
(31:04):
really mostly sun weather, right, and how it involves solar
flares and solar bourbs and vomits, and and that's because
we are close to the Sun, right, The Sun is
the biggest thing nearby. If we were in the asteroid
Bells or something somewhere near Jupiter, then your Jupiter has
its own weather. Also, it pumps out a lot of radiation,
so there'd be weather from Jupiter also, Yeah, a jovial weather.
(31:29):
Juvial weather not always so jovial. Yeah, not a sunny
but still pretty job. Yeah, if you're, for example, living
on the surface of Io, then you have to worry
about the radiation from from your Jovian planet exactly. Ah wow,
because the weather in Jupiter might be turning out and
burp ing and farting. Yeah, we know that Jupiter is
(31:51):
not static, and we can see from here that there
are storms on its surface and inside this crazy stuff happening,
and so the amount of radiation that Jupiter is emitting
is also varying. Down over here on Earth, we're mostly
affected by the solar weather. So you're right. Space weather
on Earth is mostly about the Sun because that's the
biggest source of weather nearby, and so it might cause
(32:11):
blackouts or fryer electronics or satellites, and so the question
is can we predict space weather? Can we like, um,
you know, give the satellites and the astronauts and little
heads up. We're doing everything we can. You know, we
love to understand the Sun for lots of reasons. One
is just practical, like we need to know if our
satellites are going to get blown out or protect our astronauts.
(32:32):
And the other is it's the most important astrophysical thing nearby,
and it's a huge mystery. If we understood better how
the Sun worked, we could understand how other stars work
and how long they're gonna last, and how they were formed,
and there are pretty big important feature of this incredible
universe we find ourselves in. So it's a fun mystery,
but we just don't understand it because we've only been
(32:53):
studying it for you know, a hundred and fifty years
or so, and it's a literally a huge topic. I mean,
but couldn't we just look at the Sun and tell
if something's coming our way, because you know, I imagine
we could maybe see the flares before all of the
you know, protons and electrons hit us, when we have
some kind of warning. Yeah, well, there's two different kinds
(33:13):
of things you can do. First of all, that's a
great idea. Nobody's ever thought of that before. Actually look
at the sound to try to pregent. After this call,
I'm going to get on the phone with NASA and
let them know your idea and a new project for
us now there's two things we're trying to do. One
is sort of ground up understand the sun for as
a theoretical object. Do we know what's going on inside?
And so can we use that to predict what's going
(33:35):
to happen on the outside. And then you know, if
we can get that model to work, we can connect
it with recent events and and that's the best way
to do it because it can give you a deeper
inside and help you understand things in the short term
and the long term. And then there's the more practical one.
There's the sort of as you suggested, we said, well,
we've noticed a connection that there's happens to be a
(33:55):
coronal mass ejection a few days after a sun spot
or the times after sunspots, and so you look for
these patterns and try to use them to predict what's
going to happen. It's sort of like whether on Earth
used to be like, oh the sky is green, does
I mean it's gonna be a tornado? We're just looking
for these patterns. Who try to see what gives you
a clue as to as to what's going to happen
in the next few days. I think the sun turn green.
(34:17):
That would be that would be a side something's going on.
What would you do if the sun turned green? Or
pack your bags and going to the basement. I would
make my Tornado space movie as quickly as possible before. Well,
you've been building your strategic banana reserve for a reason,
and so I guess you'd have to happen into that.
And this is an active area of research. In fact,
(34:40):
it was just a couple of weeks ago that we
launched a whole new satellite just to study our atmosphere
and the impact of solar weather. It's called Icon and
it studies the iono sphere around the Earth. This this
area of ionized particles that surrounds um in the lower atmosphere. Okay,
so there are ways that we can sort of predict
these things, and they're people looking into it. But it's
(35:01):
still pretty it's a hot topic, hot and um, but
it sounds like it's still sort of we're still sort
of at the mercy of the weather. Absolutely. You know,
it's hard enough to understand the weather here on Earth,
and we're right in the middle of it. We can
observe it in so many ways. We can take any
measurement we want. We just go outside now, trying to
imagine understanding the weather on something nine three million miles away,
(35:24):
You can hardly take measurements. It's much bigger, it's much
more complicated, it's totally different from anything you experience. That's
a much more difficult problem to solve scientifically, and it's
just as complicated because the solar atmosphere in the solar
surface is in motion. It's churning, as you said, So
this is not something that's easy to do, and so
it's an exciting topic. So those you interested in helping
(35:45):
to protect a billion dollar industry every year, or protect
astronauts lives, or just deeply interested in like how the
sun works and can we understand it, there's gonna be
a long future of research. You could be the person
who invents the quantum Doppler solar three million, which summons
the shark tornado and ends all life on Earth. Right,
(36:06):
tuning a tune in at ten o'clock for Daniel and
Jorge destroy the universe? All right, Well, the next time
you go out there and think about the weather, maybe
also leave a little room in your brain for thinking
about the space weather as well, and whether that might
affect you when you go out and whether it's going
(36:27):
to be hot or not. Thanks for tuning in, See
you next time. Before you still have a question after
listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
(36:49):
one Word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel
and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
Heart Ready for more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
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