January 5, 2021 • 48 mins
Did you know space has weather? It’s true! In our solar system, tons – literal tons – of highly charged gas and magnetized particles spew from the surface constantly, causing all sorts of weird stuff here on Earth. So far, nothing too bad has happened.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and Jerry's not here.
But we're going to make it through somehow, uh, in
this edition of Stuff You Should Know. Um, I'm going
(00:24):
to call this one Chuck the Icarus Edition, because we
made it through the Sun Podcast just hanging on by
our fingernails before and through just an astounding act of hubris.
We're going to do another Sun related episode. Yeah. We
talked about a lot of this stuff in the Sun one.
Yeah we did, but I don't think we went anywhere
(00:46):
near into this kind of detail. So I'm feeling okay
about redoing this, doing something that that's like kind of
a re redo a little bit. Okay, are you feeling okay?
I'm feeling great. Oh good, I'm glad to hear that.
I don't know if I would say I'm feeling great,
but that's good that you are at least so. Um,
(01:07):
we're talking about the Sun, believe it or not, and
we're talking about a specific thing on the Sun called
solar flares, which you may have heard of, but you
may not know much about unless apparently you've already listened
to our Sun episode. But um, we'll talk a little
bit about solar flawers. But one of the things that
that I think is extraordinarily interesting about solar flowers is
they belong to a larger category called space weather. And
(01:31):
I am just as jazz as can be about the
idea of space weather, aren't you? Uh not as jazz
as you, I don't think, but I do think this
is this is pretty neat stuff, and I'm glad we're
we're getting a chance to make it more clear than
we did before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a good that's
a good point. I'm sure we talked about this before,
(01:52):
but it's probably extremely confusing. So yeah, we're going to
clear all that up. So space weather, especially stuff that
comes from the Sun, come mostly from the surface or
the atmosphere of the Sun, which is extraordinarily active. It's
extraordinarily hot, so hot, chuck. Um that the surface of
the Sun is made of plasma, which a lot of
(02:14):
people consider the fourth state of matter. It's like a gas,
but it's a special kind of gas that um where
the particles are as jazzed about being alive as I
am about the idea of space weather. That's right. They're
supercharged and when they are moving around, they create something
called metic magnetic fields. Not the band, the thing, even
(02:36):
though it is a great band name and a great band. Uh,
and they are gonna you know, magnetic fields have their
own effect on all these particles and what's going on
in there. Yeah. So the the energetic electrons that have
been stripped from the atoms, creating electrons and ions which
have a charge, they create magnetic fields, and then the
(02:57):
magnetic fields they create have an effect on them, um
so that they tend to follow these magnetic field lines.
But the the stuff is so energetic and so hot
that the magnetic fields that develop aren't like this kind
of orderly lines that keep their distance, you know, nice
and tidy like you imagine like a magnetic field to exist.
(03:17):
Like these things are like roiling, curling, twisting. It's just
a big orgy of magnetism up there. That's the only
way to put it. That's it. I had no choice
but to say it like that. Yeah, and then, uh,
you know, this stuff is going on. It's called solar activity,
and it depends on when you're observing the Sun, it's
(03:40):
going to be more or less active. There's a there's
a cycle, it's called the solar cycle that happens about
every eleven years when the magnetic north and south pole switch.
And within that cycle, UM, there's something called a solar maximum,
which is the period kind of where the biggest show
is going on. Yeah, there's also a solar minimum, but
(04:01):
the solar maximum is UM. We're in solar cycle twenty
five apparently, and the solar maximum is coming up on
in two thousand. That's very appropriately UM. And so as
we're reaching the solar maximum, there's gonna be a lot
more of what people call sun spots. By people, I
mean astronomers, of course, um. And sun spots are these
(04:23):
kind of darkish areas on the surface of the Sun.
They can be little, tiny dots, they can be kind
of big, but they look really really small and they
look dark. UM. And the reason they look dark is
because they're relatively cool compared to the rest of the
surface that's around them. Um. But even still, they're super
duper hot and they're still pretty bright comparatively speaking. Yeah,
(04:46):
Like a sun spot is about degrees fahrenheit. Because we're
talking about the sun so cool is a relative term here. Uh.
And as far as bright goes, it's about that's about
ten times as bright as a full moon. So if
you go out at night in a full moon and
it kind of feels like a little cool daylight, a
sun spot is about ten times brighter than that. Right,
(05:09):
So you shouldn't go looking at these things. No, No,
that's a really good thing to say. Is like, we're
talking about a lot of stuff that's gonna make you
want to look at the sun. Don't do it. Just
go online and look at pictures of this stuff on
the sun or videos even we have videos thanks to
the good people at NASA, but um, the sun spots,
So it really just goes to show you how hot
and bright the surface of the Sun is. That these
(05:30):
things seem cool and dark by comparisons. And yeah, and
they are really really big, So the width of them
can get to be up to thirty thous miles across,
which is about the width of Neptune, which is huge,
about four times the width of Earth. Um, and still
they look super dinky compared to the Sun. And the
(05:50):
reason that these things are cooler, chuck, is because they're
spots of magnetism that are so strong that they keep
the heat inside the Sun from poking out right there.
That's how strong the magnetic energy is in these areas. Yeah,
and that's right. And because they're magnets, they form in
little pairs like little buddies, and they appear on the
(06:13):
surface of the Sun. And what we're actually looking at
if you can like go to uh NASA or whatever,
like you said, and see a picture of a sun spot,
what you're looking at is sort of like the two
ends of um. If you think about these magnetic lines there,
these magnetism it's like a filament like a rope. Just
picture them twisted up basically running beneath the sun surface.
(06:34):
And there are some really really cool pictures and stuff.
And then one end of this sun spot is positive,
the other end is negative, and it's they sort of
act like rings of a tree a little bit. As
far as astronomers can like observe these things. The first
sun spots of each cycle are in the midd latitudes
(06:54):
and then they start moving around during the cycle, so
they can kind of see where you are in the
solar cycle by where and how many of these sun
spots there are. Yeah, so the more the closer to
the solar maximum you are, the more sun spots they're
going to be, and the closer they're going to be
to the equator. So they tell a lot about where
where the Sun is in its solar cycle. Um. But
(07:16):
the thing is when these magnetic field lines twists and
and curve and turn, um, they actually can interact with
other magnetic field lines. And when that happens, when they cross,
kind of like the proton streams crossing in Ghostbusters. When
that happens, UM, something called the solar flare, uh happens.
(07:39):
It's a it's an event on the Sun, and it
is such a huge, magnificently energetic event that it actually
can affect Earth things on Earth because it's just so
massive in such a huge release and sudden release of energy.
I had a Ghostbusters ref penciled end later on if
you believe that. Oh, I can't wait to it's been
(08:00):
a long time, when we both have to we have
one each. Um, Yeah, it has. And it's been a
while since we listed dates by the years before since
Ghostbusters came in. Mind has a data attached to it,
and you'll just have to wait. I can't wait. What
a great episode this is shaping out to be. So
these explosions, the magnetic fields are driving these explosions. And
(08:23):
if you you know, if you're lay people like us,
it's you can either look at this is something that's
kind of simple to look at on its surface, or
if you really want to get into it, it's pretty
complex and not easily understood. But the simple answer is,
because we're talking about magnetic fields, is that these adjacent
fields are pointing in opposite directions and they basically wipe
(08:46):
each other out and that releases all this magnetic energy
and all that heat, uh, kind of everywhere that surrounds it.
It just goes spew spew, spew energy heat shooting at
you from the sun. Right, So people have figured this out.
Finally that has to do with, like um, the lines
(09:06):
of magnetism interacting with one another and annihilating one another.
But there's a big mystery attached to this, or there
there was for many many years, and that is that. Okay,
so we understand magnetic annihilation. But to this point, we
thought it took about ten thousand years for two opposite
magnetic fields to annihilate one another. Well, we're talking about here,
(09:28):
these solar flares. They they annihilate one another and release
all this energy in a matter of minutes, maybe an
hour sometimes, So that doesn't quite job. And I think
back in the fifties some scientists started proposing a type
of magnetic energy released called magnetic reconnection. And that is
where magnetic field lines are so um twisty, turney writhey
(09:52):
and energetic that they can actually rip a field line
or like a magnetic field line can rip a part
and then reconnect with some neighbors. When that happens, it's
called magnetic reconnection. And they think that that is the
kind of energetic release that would account for a solar flare. Yeah,
(10:12):
and this, you know, this can cause all kinds of problems,
um for things in space and for people on Earth
even which we'll get to that stuff in more detail
a little bit later. But the point is these things
are super hot. Uh. They burst out to the Sun's corona, which,
if you remember from our Sun Up episode, that's the
outermost atmosphere of the Sun. Rarefied gas is all over
(10:36):
the place out there, and it has I mean, this
is super super hot stuff. Like normally the temperature and
the corona is about you know, a few million degrees kelvin,
but inside that flare, we're talking ten to twenty million
degrees kelvin. And we always like to uh think of
things in terms of either big max or hydrogen bombs,
(10:59):
and in this case, it's got to be hydrogen bombs.
The amount of energy released during a solar flare is
about um it's millions of one hundred ton hydrogen bombs
all at once. Yeah, all at once. That's a really
that's a really important point too, you know, And I
feel like a real schmo for not having calculated that
in big bags calories. I know you could do calories, yeah,
(11:24):
but what's the calorie of a solar flare. I don't know.
I didn't look and I feel like a jackass for
not having looked. Well, they go down easy, I know
that they do. So they're big, huge releases of energy,
and they're they're releases of radiation. They release um radiation
across the electromagnetic spectrum and that includes the visible light spectrum.
(11:49):
So these things just turned into these enormously bright flares,
which is where the name comes from. And we've figured
out how to classify, and there's a classifying system for
solar flares. It's a lot like the Richter scale UM,
and that there's class A, B, C, M, and X.
That's not really like the Richter scale. What's like the
(12:10):
Richter scale is that each of those classes UH is
ten times more powerful than the previous class. Yeah, so
like an X is the highest, that is ten times
ten times in M, a hundred times of C. And
then once you get to X, uh. You know, if
they didn't go Y and Z, they just said, let's
(12:30):
stick with X and then let's cool. Sure, and it
sounds totally cool, and then let's start attaching numbers to
them so you can have you know, X, one, three,
four and so on. Yeah, and so you know, each
each of those letter grades has a one through nine scale,
but X is so huge the excess scale goes beyond nine.
(12:50):
And I think the biggest, the biggest one that they've
ever caught so far, UM that's ever been recorded. UH
burned out the set answers that were recording it, and
the censors UM were overloaded at X eight And they
did some calculations after the fact and they figured out
that they may have been an X forty five flare.
(13:11):
Back on November four, two thousand three. Yeah, this was
a big deal. This was it was something called the
Halloween Storms of two thousand three, which is kind of
a fun way. Uh, you know, it happened because it
was in October and near Halloween. So while the astronomers
got excited. And this one was a little bit weird
because although it was near the solar maximum, it was
(13:35):
two to three years after the peak, and it was
they said, NASA said it's generally a quiet period, so
they got really really excited. There were seventeen major flares
in that uh Halloween storm, and it was that's something
that is really going to get the white coats pretty
charged up. It totally is I mean an X forty
(13:58):
five that's just funding And I did a little bit
of of derivative calculation. Technically it would be a double
A five A five, you know. I saw weird different
numbers too, though. I saw that the center cut out
at fifteen and the estimate was X. Huh. It's really hard.
(14:19):
It's NASSY even had conflicting information. I think we should
point this out that you just set us up for
a c o A that I wanted to include. So
there's two things. Um, there's a lot of disagreement on
exactly what a solar flare is and the difference between
that and coronal mass ejections, which we'll talk about in
a little bit. And it's not necessarily a disagreement in astronomy, um.
(14:43):
It's a disagreement among people who report on stuff like
astronomy and don't fully understand what they're talking about. So
we ran into that quite a bit. So if we
get something mixed up, please forgive us. And then secondly,
when we're talking about some of these incredible um events
in physics terms, people who are in the field of
(15:04):
physics understand what they're talking about to one another, but
they have a great reputation of not figuring out how
to explain it to the rest of us, and so
they'll put it in different terms. And so when you're
researching this stuff, you're like, are you is this describing
a different thing than this over here or is it
just two different people describing the same thing two different
(15:24):
ways because they're not describing it in the true physics
way because I wouldn't understand. So we ran into that
a lot too, did you. Yeah, And it's frustrating to
literally see two different things both from NASA dot gov
on two different pages. But you know, who are we
too to call out NASA? I think we just did.
(15:46):
We'll call out Space Force, sure. But the point is this,
all of that really underscores the fact that our understanding
of the dynamics on the Sun are still really early
and premature, um, and we're still figuring a lot of
stuff out, including classifying the differences between solar flares and
(16:07):
coronal mass ejections. Yeah, and the light show and the
you know, the fund that the astronomers had in the
Halloween storms of two thousand three was immense, no matter
whether it was x X forty partied either way, they
did they surely did check. They had a little bit
of peach snops and went to tasted some half a
(16:30):
shot of brandy and then went to bed. That's right.
Prove us wrong, nerds, prove us wrong. I say, we
take a break and then come back and talk about
those coronal mass ejections that I teased. Okay, we'll be
right back, everybody, m all right. So I was saying
(17:12):
that it's difficult sometimes to discern the difference between a
solar flare, which is a huge burst of radiation across
the electromagnetic spectrum um all at once, which, by the way,
it takes just a matter of minutes eight minutes to
be exact to reach Earth because we're talking about carriers
of the electromagnetic force, which can travel at the speed
(17:32):
of light. So it's where I guess, eight minutes, but
at the speed of light from the Sun, right. Um.
Coronal mass ejections are something different. Even though they seem
to be associated with solar flares in a lot of cases,
they also seem to be able to kind of stand
on their own too. Either way, they're impressive in their
(17:54):
own right for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think if
you were talking in terms of um visual excitement, like
a solar mass I'm sorry, a coronal mass ejection is
like a full on Grateful Dead concert, whereas a solar
flair is like when John Mayer played with members of
the Grateful Dead. Oh that's mean I was gonna say
(18:18):
it was. It's just an Instagram video lesson of John
Mayor teaching you some Grateful Dead lick because you know well,
but sol solar flares are more magnificent than that. Um,
so man, that's mean. Sorry, Sorry, John Mayor. If you're listening.
I'm not sorry, Josh. Sorry. He uh he's a nice guy,
he apparently, uh has I've seen some stuff like of
(18:41):
him teaching like people how to play Grateful Dead guitar
stuff and it's really really hard what he's doing. So
my hats off, right, So with man, I feel weird.
It just apologized to John Mayer on the stuff you
should know ast about solar flares. You didn't see that coming. No,
(19:03):
it wasn't in my notes. So with coronal mass ejections
at least these these are not necessarily just bursts of
um of radiation like a solar flare is these they
do have some radiation attached, but they're big thing is
um particles, highly charged, super energetic particles that it shoots
(19:25):
like buckshot towards the Earth at incredible speeds. I mean,
they get they get accelerated very close to the speed
of light, not the speed of light, and there's a
big difference between the speed of light and close to
the speed of light. So it takes about three or
four days usually for stuff um that's shot out by
a coronal mass ejection to reach Earth. But when these
(19:45):
things go off on the Sun, there like you said,
they're they're rather impressive. Yeah, like if you were looking
at this stuff and uh with a telescope and high
powered telescope that is I don't I don't think you
could well could you see any of this stuff anything
you have at home? You know, I've got a pretty
good telescope, but it's for nighttime viewing only. So with
(20:07):
the UM, I think you can see coronal mass ejections.
I think solar flares. You're you're best with a radio
telescope or X ray telescope, but the X ray telescope
would have to be outside of Earth's magnetosphere. Do you
have a telescope, yeah, telescope. It's not a radio telescope.
No, no no, no, I just we've never talked, we've never
scoped it up in conversation, and I would be surprised
(20:29):
if you didn't, but I'm glad to know you do.
We do have one. Yea so flares, Like if you
were looking through an X ray or a radio telescope
at a solar flare, it'll look cool, It'll look like
a flash of light. But those coronal mass ejections are
really impressive, big eruptions. Uh, the height can be many
times the size of the Earth, shooting out into space,
(20:50):
like you said, and they're they're kind of like a
belch from the Sun that actually releases part of the Sun.
It's like a bubble of plasma that's just an enormous
um often billions and billions of tons uh in mass,
just coming right at the Earth, full of these incredibly
charged particles UM. And they're so big, so massive, and
(21:13):
the plasma that they're made of is so energetic that
they actually have their own magnetic fields like the sawn
or the Earth UM. So when they finally do come
in contact with the planet, our planet UM, weird things
start to happen because it's own magnetic field and all
of the charged particles within the plasma contact our own
(21:33):
magnetosphere and then also our atmosphere UM, which is almost
designed to UM to deter the worst effects of those
things coming at us from the Sun. Yeah, so our magnetosphere,
that's our little first layer of protection. That would be
like UM, although I was about to say like Wakonda's
(21:53):
protective shield, that may be more like the ionosphere. But
the magnetosphere is that first protect and and it's going
to kind of brush away as many of those charge particles,
these protons that are shooting out as possible, and because
of solar wind though, uh, it's it's it's got a
shape to it. The magnetosphere has like a sort of
(22:13):
a compressed side that faces the Sun. It's got a
little dip near the poles of the Earth where some
really magnificent stuff is going to take place, as we'll
see in a minute. And then it's got this tail
end that flows out from the back, and the Earth's
magnetic field is going to block these particles from most
of the surface. The Sun's the solar wind is going
to push them along toward that tail and then that
(22:34):
dip at the poles is where you're gonna see these
really brilliant auroras. Yes, but the magnetism, the magnetic energy
from the coronal mass ejection can be so energetic that
it can actually push on the sun side, the day
side of the Earth's magnetosphere it's closest to the Sun,
(22:56):
push on it so much that it actually contorts the
Night's the tail end that trails off into space and
presses it together so that when it comes together the
Earth's own magnetosphere um becomes energetic and quivery and then
when it goes back to its normal energy state, it
releases a bunch of energy in the form of light.
(23:17):
And when that happens, the auroras that tend to congregated
the polls can actually show up all over the planet basically,
even very close to the equator. Yeah, which is crazy.
And we'll talk about some of the bigger ones and
some of the surprising places they showed up. But um,
so that's a magnetosphere. I mentioned the ionosphere. That's sort
of um, I guess the secondary protection that is another
(23:41):
high layer of the Earth's atmosphere, and that's going to
stop all the radiation because it's giving out a tremendous
amount of radiation. And if the ionosphere wasn't doing his
job and it wasn't there, we would be in big,
big trouble. Oh yeah, we we'd be toast. I mean, like,
these are incredibly energetic, fast traveling particles close to the
(24:02):
speed of light um and they would just shoot right
through the tissue in our our bodies, uh and do
all sorts of damage because they would probably knock all
sorts of electrons off of our atoms that make up
our cells and our tissue and um, we would either
develop cancer of the long term or just drop dead
from a big enough dose of the stuff. So thank
(24:22):
goodness for the ionosphere. I mean, it saves us like
John Mayor saved the grateful dead. Just in case he's
still listening. There's like a percentage of our audience it's like, yeah, man, preach,
and there's a percentage that was like, oh my god,
I have to turn this off. And then I'd say
the vast majority are like American exactly, the guy that
(24:47):
dated Jen Aniston probably. Um. So you've got the magnanosphere,
you got the ionosphere, and for the most part, these
things are capable of absorbing the worst of the on
belches and flare ups and everything, um, under normal circumstances.
But even even when it is protecting life on Earth
(25:10):
like us animals and the plants and the plankton and
you know, um, the whales, that kind of stuff life
here on Earth. Um, there are things that we humans
have developed that can be affected by these this space weather,
by these geomagnetic storms. Yeah, I guess should we talk
(25:30):
about the the Carrington event one of the most exciting events.
I thought it was pretty exciting. Yes, it's pretty good. So, uh,
this is eighteen fifty nine. Um, like this kind of
thing now is pretty magnificent, But I imagine eighteen fifty
nine astronomers were just really really knocked out by something
like this. They said, zeus is beer exactly. Uh. This
(25:53):
is sort of late summer August September and a big
solar storm they later called the Carrington event became him
the strongest one on record. And this is named for
a man named Richard Carrington. He was an astronomer, one
of England's best at the time, and he was in
his observatory and he was hanging out and it was
(26:14):
a sunny day and he was working with his telescope
and he's projecting this image of the sun on a
screen and drawing. He there were cameras at the time,
but I guess the most I don't know, accurate or
efficient way to capture what he saw was to draw
this stuff that he's observing, and that's what he was
doing on September one. Yeah, and while he was drawing
(26:38):
the stuff, um, he saw that some of these sun
spots that he was he was um mapping, I guess,
started to grow really really bright and he got really
excited because he'd been doing this for a while and
this wasn't something he'd seen before. So he jumped up
and he ran to get a friend who was going
to witness this mistake. Yeah, he said. He was gone
for a minute tops. When he came back, he found
(27:01):
that these brilliant flashes of light had already started to
like weakend. Can you imagine. He was a little bummed
about this, but he and he and his buddy still
watched these flares like go, you know, get lower and
lower and then turn into pinpoints and then vanish. Um.
So what he saw he was the first person to
record a solar flare. No one had ever seen anything
(27:22):
like it before. And that was at eleven three am.
It was, it was done, It finished, um and then nothing.
That was it until the wee hours of the morning,
later that night, the morning of the next day, later
that night, which I always just find endlessly confusing. What
that it took that long? No that it's the next
(27:45):
that night is the next morning. For some reason, it
just breaks my brain every time. I realized how sad
that is to admit. Yeah, so in the wee hours,
the skies put on a light show all over the
earth redan purple auroras, very brilliant, very exciting newspapers. You
could like read the newspaper at night. They saw this
(28:07):
stuff in the Hawaii El Salvador and the Bahamas. They
saw the auroras in the boat that nuts. That is nuts. Uh.
There were towns neighboring towns that thought the that like
Shelbyville was on fire, Springfield thought Shelby Bill was on fire,
and vice versa. There were birds chirping, they thought because
they thought it was dawn. Uh. There was a brick
(28:29):
mason crew in South Carolina that got up in you know,
they were like two beers in going to work when
they realized that, hey, it's the middle of the night.
And they looked at each other and said, man, this
is a hundred and twenty five years before Ghostbusters. Oh nice,
very nice. Check. Yeah, well it seemed canned in because
(28:50):
I prem, yeah, well i'll tell you what, how about this.
I'm gonna give you a huge hearty surprise laugh. And
I hinted out the conversation before all right ready, And
they all looked at each other, two beers in, and
said Ghostbusters won't even come out for another hundred twenty
five years. What. Oh my god, I did not see
that coming. Dude, how long has it been since we
(29:11):
talked about I don't know. That's perfect and we'll just
fix that all on editing. That's great, thanks, Chuck. I
need a I need a couple of beers myself after them.
So one of the other things, um, that really went
hey wire was the telegraph system, right, because this is
eighteen fifty nine, and the telegraphs were at the they
were the leading edge, not bleeding edge. He's taught me
(29:33):
that that's totally wrong, the leading edge of technology of
telecommunications at the time, UM. And these telegraph lines depended
on currents being sent over wires, UM. And so those
wires were overloaded by this geomagnetic storm so much so
that sparks were shooting off of the telegraphs. UM. Operators
(29:55):
were getting shocked and burned. The telegraph paper was catching
on fire when was nearby. It was very much like
a movie. All this is happening all over the world
at the same time. It's just crazy. It's like very
very early morning of the next day after the Carrington event, right.
So one of the things that got me was, um,
(30:16):
they they unplugged the batteries to these things, the telegraphs,
and they found that the wires were still so energetic
with electricity from the geomagnetic storm that they could still
send telegraphs even though they had no power of their own.
They were they were able to send telegrams over the
(30:37):
telegraph line even within it's disconnected from the batteries. That's
the fact of the show to me. Oh that's amazing.
Let me that. I mean, they must have thought it
was haunted or something. I think, think like, sure, the
plug is unplugged and it's still working. They're like Zeus's
beard is crazy. There's another thing to um. Some telegraph
(30:59):
operator couldn't send telegraphs even though the lines were active
because the magnetism in these currents was so strong that
the armature, the thing that they tap up and down,
was like fused to the plate beneath it. It was
just the magnets. The magnetism was so strong and it
wouldn't move. Thought it was possessed. The probably left the
(31:22):
room screaming. They did, says is Beard. Oh we got
the third one in there. Yeah. Should we take another break? Yeah?
Oh almost so. So one other thing. Let's just wrap
the Carrington Event up real quick, Okay, so ten am.
The effects of this whole crazy event are are done.
(31:43):
And you know, it gets talked about. This is a
worldwide event, but it's kind of like treated as a
scientific anomaly, right people. People understand what happened and what
caused it and why it happened. Over the years as
we learned more and more about solar flares and coronal
mass ejections, but it didn't become a parent that this
Carrington event was actually a harbinger of like real, much
(32:07):
bigger problems that could happen to us alive on Earth
today until the seventies, and um, maybe we'll take a break, chuck,
and come back and talk about how that could be
problematic right after this great m hm. Alright, So the
(32:47):
world changed a lot between the Carrington event in the
mid eighteen hundreds and in the nineteen seventies when scientists
had a much bigger handle on what this kind of
thing meant. And in the nineteen seventies we were the
whole world was very dependent on electric power. You might
be surprised to learn, right, and they knew like, hey,
(33:10):
if we had another Carrington event today, it could be
a big deal because and we'll get to this later,
but like, we got a lot of metal on this earth,
and we use the earth to ground everything basically with
ground wires, and that creates a unique problem potentially if
we had another event like this. Yeah, the fact that
(33:32):
we chose to use the earth as a ground um
to where are grounding wires go from. Our electrical components
tie into a metal rod that's driven into the earth,
so that whenever excess electricity is generated by the electronics
that we use, it gets distributed through the grounding wire
to the earth where it dissipates. That makes all of
(33:54):
our electronics vulnerable to a geomagnetic storm, because in a
geomagnetic storm, the ground itself can become magnetized. And even
more than that, chuck, We've buried a lot of metal infrastructure,
from like pipes to um cables to all sorts of
metal stuff is snaking through the ground right now, and
(34:15):
when the ground becomes magnetized into geomagnetic storm it can
create it can carry really powerful currents through all the
infrastructure up through the grounds, through the grounding wires, and
into our electronic components, uh including things like power transformers
and overload them to the point where they fail catastrophically. Yeah.
And this, uh, this sort of happened in August two
(34:40):
there was a big, big solar flare that knocked out
our long distance phone communication across Illinois. So that was
just sort of an early example of like, hey, this
can actually have a real effect here on Earth. UM.
And that was that was a big one. It took
I think about fifteen hours to hit Earth, whereas it
usually to two to three days. UM. It also set
(35:02):
off these um we had. It was during Vietnam obviously,
and we had magnetic sea mines in harbors around Vietnam.
It exploded those. Yeah, So I don't know if they
were supposed to be like secretly there and if that
was kind of like oh, whoops, sorry about that, or
if they knew that they were there and and they
just went off. But either way, UM, that was a
(35:24):
pretty scary scene. It was, and apparently it was a
mystery for a long time until somebody finally figured out
why those sea mines all went off. They connected it
to the UM, to that coronal mass ejection, I believe. Yeah,
but you can imagine like all the damage uh that
could occur, Like even if you're just talking about the
electrical grid. If it really blew out, it wouldn't be
(35:47):
just like a blackout, like it would destroy parts of
our electrical grid such that it would take It's not like, hey,
let me go out and fix this over a few
hours during a snowstorm. It's it might take weeks or
months or even up to a year if we had
a big enough, uh like blast to the grid. Yeah,
because I mean it is by necessity. Our electrical grid
(36:11):
is interconnected. So if one part of it gets overloaded,
that can overload other parts that are connected. And if
you have a whole city without power, for let's say
Los Angeles went went out of power for a month,
what would happen? What would be the what would be
the outcome of that? You couldn't do anything? And when
you start thinking like that, you start thinking about, oh
(36:32):
my god, like, think about all the stuff we do
that requires electricity. Everything we do requires electricity in some
form or fashion. And so to be without electricity in
a major city or multiple major cities for even a
couple of weeks is just unthinkable. But that's that's the
level of vulnerability whereat because of the way that our
(36:52):
electrical components are set up because they're grounded. Yeah, and
and not just like a chain reaction and apocalyptic kind
of activity, but um, just monetary loss, like the economic
and financial damage for the city of Los Angeles to
be without power for a month would be astounding. Um.
(37:14):
So you know, there's stuff they could do. They could uh,
they could fit some very critical transformers with resistors and capacitors,
but these things are like hundreds of thousand dollars per transformers,
So that's just too much money. So they're not doing that. No,
they're not. And I wonder if there's going to be
like some close call that makes everybody Okay, we need
(37:36):
to invest this in our infrastructure, or you know, are
we going to figure out some other means of you know,
a backup system. I'm not sure that happens to like Topeka.
And then everyone says, hey, if this happened in Topeka
and they lost you know, several hundred dollars, and that's
(37:58):
really mean how it's gonna say? Did you think do
you think Topeka would do it? Do you think that
would convince anybody? I don't know. I'm so sorry Topeka,
but you get my point. If it happens somewhere sort
of in a smaller area than the big cities. Might say, Hey,
that means it could happen to us, the people who
really matter, right, the coastal elites would stroke their beards
(38:21):
and struck their tongues. Yeah so, um so yeah, there's
there doesn't seem to be a lot of initiative right
now to figure this out, and we're just kind of
sitting ducks in a weird way. It's nothing. I don't
think it's anything to lose sleepover. But it's really surprising.
Like the more I dug into this, the more I
was like, huh, this could kind of be a thing someday.
(38:42):
And it's not just you know, the electrical grid uh
here on Earth alone is what is all that would
be affected by that? There um, things we rely on
out in space, like satellites a bad enough to you,
a magnetic storm could affect satellites and a out of weights,
so our GPS systems would be messed up. Or if you,
(39:04):
um so, if you use GPS for really important stuff
like say landing an airplane, you could be in big trouble.
Um and if you're also on planes, the high frequency
radio communications they used to stay in contact with the ground,
especially when they're out over the ocean or something like that. UM,
that can be disrupted by a solar flare or a
(39:26):
chronal mass ejection too. Yeah, or what about a satellite
maybe that is I mean, there are thousands of satellites
up there, but and you know, if a radio satellite
went out, it would be bad, but people could live.
But what if it affected a satellite that's UM in
charge of aiding in national defense. Things could get a
little bit scary if those satellites were down or you know, spacecraft,
(39:49):
their spacecraft up there and they use satellites to help
orient themselves and and keep themselves safe. Uh, there's an
I S S. Although the ice supposedly is UH is
protected right yeah, oh yeah. The the big threat to
UM astronauts from coronal mass ejections and solar flares is
(40:10):
when they're out on spacewalks, when they're doing like labor,
say outside the I S S or something like that. UM.
Just like here on Earth, if we didn't have the
ionosphere of the magnetosphere, UM, we would be in big trouble.
Astronauts can be in big trouble. The I S s
orbits within the Earth's magnetosphere, but it's beyond the ionop
so they are a little more exposed. On the I
(40:32):
S S. It's shielded, so they're not nearly as exposed.
But out on a spacewalk they if it were a
really bad chronal mass ejection, they could be in a
lot of trouble. Um like Sandra her face in that
movie exactly. Uh, what is your last name? I can't remember,
sandraw Burning, Sandra Bullo, Sandra, Sandy Duncan, Sandra Bullock. Yeah,
(40:55):
Sandra Bernhard in that movie Space Space trit Space Craziness.
Did you like that movie Gravity? Uh? Yeah, I thought
it was pretty good if I've only seen it once. Um,
I don't I don't know if I would have cast
her necessarily, but it's fine. Or George Cleaning, I don't
(41:15):
think I would have cast either of him. I mean
I had some issues. I mean it was a magnificent
looking movie, but I think in the end I had
some issues with the story in the script being like
not good enough for how great of a movie it
was trumped up to be. Did Um was that the
by the guy who did The Revenant? I think so? Yeah,
(41:36):
So you and I went and saw The Revenant in
Hawaii Wants when we were on vacation, because what else
is there to do in Hawaii on vacation but go
see movies. And um, we saw The Revenant and this
person next to us was there by by himself, and
he was so upset um by Tom Hardy's character and
just how evil he was that this guy was like
(41:58):
telling him he was the dead of all. He had
his hand up at the screen and was praying against
Tom Hardy. He was really affected by Tom Hardy's character,
which made the movie like even more thrilling because we
would look at the movie and then we watch this
person reacting to the movie too, So it was something
something to see. Yeah, I saw that once as well,
and I saw it on tour with you. Either it
(42:20):
was either Phoenix or San Diego. I don't would have
to look at the dates, but I just remember there
being palm trees. I think it was San Diego. Maybe
when we did a show at that spooky abandoned church, man,
I'm convinced still to this day that that's the church
from the Prince of Darkness that John Carton. That was
a weird show because that was the one I know.
You remember that guy sat on the front row and
(42:41):
shot the whole thing with a video camera and he
looked like he was mad too, like he was documenting
evidence or something to use against us. We both were like,
I think we were so caught off guard. We didn't
know what to say. Do we call this guy and say, sir,
can you please put away your camera? So we just
soldiered on. Yeah, we were pinned down by the unrelenting
glare of the lens. And then he went back to
(43:03):
his apartment and showed it on TV to his roommate,
who was the Tom Hardy guy, right, and that guy
was like, these guys are the devil. I'm praying against them.
Oh man uh alright, so yes, back to the show. Yeah,
where are we? Oh, here's the deal. We're talking about
astronauts and satellite operations and GPS. This isn't stuff that
(43:27):
we have just um said, well, this probably could happen
a lot of it is, but um, this actually has happened. Um.
We'd mentioned the thing in Illinois with the phone systems
and then in um the two thousand three that c
m E that did disrupt satellites and that did disrupt
high frequency radio communications that aviation relies on, and that
(43:49):
did blackout a city in Sweden. Mm hmm, mammo. Everyone
says no, not mammo, yeah, mamo everybody. So this the
kind of thing can happen. It does happen, it's just
never happened on such a massive scale. UM. They figured
out from looking at Arctic ice cores, apparently highly energetic
(44:10):
particles leave um remnants, not revenants, remnants in nitrates frozen
in the ice and at the polls and UM. By
examining these cores, they can see how bad or how
often or how many solar flares of hit Earth in
the past. And they figured out that the Carrington event
is like a five hundred years solar flare, and it
happened about a hundred and seventy years ago. Hopefully we're
(44:33):
in the clear. The key is we're still figuring out
the dynamics of the Sun and solar activity, so we're
not exactly certain that maybe we're not due for a
thousand years solar flare. UM. We're just starting to figure
this out, but we are figuring it out. That's step one.
And we also actually have space weather forecasters here on
Earth at Noah and at the National Weather Service, there
(44:56):
are people whose job it is subtract solar activity and
predict things like coronal mass ejections and solar flares so
that people can, like like utility companies, can maybe take
um steps to mitigate the worst effects. Eventually. I think
right now we've got like eight to ten minute heads up,
so that's not enough. But as we get to understand
(45:16):
it a little more, we'll have more warning time. And
you know, astronauts can plan their spacewalks when they're out
doing stuff like building future space colonies. This is all
going to come into play for that too. Yeah, So
hopefully they can get that up to at least over
an hour. That would help. Sure. So again, it's nothing
to lose sleepover. That's not the point of this episode.
(45:36):
It's more just kind of like ge whiz, this is
this is amazing by Zeus Beard. I've never heard of
anything like the old fourth reference. Yeahs, surprising fourth one
did not see that coming. Did you got anything else?
I got nothing else? All right, everybody chucks that he's
got nothing else. So that's it for this episode, which
means it's time for listener mao. Well, let me see here.
(46:01):
I've actually got quite a few today, which is uh
an abundance. We've been getting more than usual, I haven't. Yeah,
we've been getting good ones. All right, I'll choose this one.
I'm gonna call it Rush Girl. Hey guys, I've been
a long time listener, but you have never But I've
never had a reason to write until your recent Fort
Knox episode. In it you refer to the joke you
(46:21):
had made about women not liking the Three Stooges. By
the way, I got a little grief for that and
also support for that. Weirdly, Chuck made the comment that
it wasn't like he had something had said something true,
but they're like there being no women Rush fans. I
immediately laugh because my future and mother in law is
the biggest Rush fan. I love this lady. She and
(46:43):
my fiance have a bond over this band. In contrast,
I thought the band was made up just for the
movie I Love You Man. Wow. Yeah, Megan did not
know Rush was a real band. She thought that was
a fake band in a movie. Megan, you have a
whole world ready to open up to you. Yes, you do.
(47:03):
I guess that they fit the trope According to my fiance,
they call female rush fans getty corns, which sounds made up,
but he swears it's true getty corns. I don't get that,
but like a unicorn maybe, oh yeah, exactly, or or
it could be candy corn. No, no, I'm sure it's
like the Getty Getty Lee unicorn mash up. I like that.
(47:27):
I didn't get that until just now, so thank you.
At any rate, I can recognize the joke, and I'm
not coming after you for that. I just found it
funny that all the stereotypical male bands you could have picked,
you chose my mother in law's favorite. Thanks for all
you do. Your podcast has gone a long way toward
helping me distress after a day of teaching during COVID.
And that is from Megan Power and Megan, thank you,
(47:50):
and big ups to your mother in law for being
a getty corn. Yeah, not to be confused with candy corn. Well,
if you want to be like Megan and let us
know how we just totally blew your mind somehow or other.
We love hearing that stuff. You can put it in
an email and wrap it up spanking on the bottom
and send it off to stuff podcasts at iHeart radio
(48:11):
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and Jerry's not here.
But we're going to make it through somehow, uh, in
this edition of Stuff You Should Know. Um, I'm going
(00:24):
to call this one Chuck the Icarus Edition, because we
made it through the Sun Podcast just hanging on by
our fingernails before and through just an astounding act of hubris.
We're going to do another Sun related episode. Yeah. We
talked about a lot of this stuff in the Sun one.
Yeah we did, but I don't think we went anywhere
(00:46):
near into this kind of detail. So I'm feeling okay
about redoing this, doing something that that's like kind of
a re redo a little bit. Okay, are you feeling okay?
I'm feeling great. Oh good, I'm glad to hear that.
I don't know if I would say I'm feeling great,
but that's good that you are at least so. Um,
(01:07):
we're talking about the Sun, believe it or not, and
we're talking about a specific thing on the Sun called
solar flares, which you may have heard of, but you
may not know much about unless apparently you've already listened
to our Sun episode. But um, we'll talk a little
bit about solar flawers. But one of the things that
that I think is extraordinarily interesting about solar flowers is
they belong to a larger category called space weather. And
(01:31):
I am just as jazz as can be about the
idea of space weather, aren't you? Uh not as jazz
as you, I don't think, but I do think this
is this is pretty neat stuff, and I'm glad we're
we're getting a chance to make it more clear than
we did before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a good that's
a good point. I'm sure we talked about this before,
(01:52):
but it's probably extremely confusing. So yeah, we're going to
clear all that up. So space weather, especially stuff that
comes from the Sun, come mostly from the surface or
the atmosphere of the Sun, which is extraordinarily active. It's
extraordinarily hot, so hot, chuck. Um that the surface of
the Sun is made of plasma, which a lot of
(02:14):
people consider the fourth state of matter. It's like a gas,
but it's a special kind of gas that um where
the particles are as jazzed about being alive as I
am about the idea of space weather. That's right. They're
supercharged and when they are moving around, they create something
called metic magnetic fields. Not the band, the thing, even
(02:36):
though it is a great band name and a great band. Uh,
and they are gonna you know, magnetic fields have their
own effect on all these particles and what's going on
in there. Yeah. So the the energetic electrons that have
been stripped from the atoms, creating electrons and ions which
have a charge, they create magnetic fields, and then the
(02:57):
magnetic fields they create have an effect on them, um
so that they tend to follow these magnetic field lines.
But the the stuff is so energetic and so hot
that the magnetic fields that develop aren't like this kind
of orderly lines that keep their distance, you know, nice
and tidy like you imagine like a magnetic field to exist.
(03:17):
Like these things are like roiling, curling, twisting. It's just
a big orgy of magnetism up there. That's the only
way to put it. That's it. I had no choice
but to say it like that. Yeah, and then, uh,
you know, this stuff is going on. It's called solar activity,
and it depends on when you're observing the Sun, it's
(03:40):
going to be more or less active. There's a there's
a cycle, it's called the solar cycle that happens about
every eleven years when the magnetic north and south pole switch.
And within that cycle, UM, there's something called a solar maximum,
which is the period kind of where the biggest show
is going on. Yeah, there's also a solar minimum, but
(04:01):
the solar maximum is UM. We're in solar cycle twenty
five apparently, and the solar maximum is coming up on
in two thousand. That's very appropriately UM. And so as
we're reaching the solar maximum, there's gonna be a lot
more of what people call sun spots. By people, I
mean astronomers, of course, um. And sun spots are these
(04:23):
kind of darkish areas on the surface of the Sun.
They can be little, tiny dots, they can be kind
of big, but they look really really small and they
look dark. UM. And the reason they look dark is
because they're relatively cool compared to the rest of the
surface that's around them. Um. But even still, they're super
duper hot and they're still pretty bright comparatively speaking. Yeah,
(04:46):
Like a sun spot is about degrees fahrenheit. Because we're
talking about the sun so cool is a relative term here. Uh.
And as far as bright goes, it's about that's about
ten times as bright as a full moon. So if
you go out at night in a full moon and
it kind of feels like a little cool daylight, a
sun spot is about ten times brighter than that. Right,
(05:09):
So you shouldn't go looking at these things. No, No,
that's a really good thing to say. Is like, we're
talking about a lot of stuff that's gonna make you
want to look at the sun. Don't do it. Just
go online and look at pictures of this stuff on
the sun or videos even we have videos thanks to
the good people at NASA, but um, the sun spots,
So it really just goes to show you how hot
and bright the surface of the Sun is. That these
(05:30):
things seem cool and dark by comparisons. And yeah, and
they are really really big, So the width of them
can get to be up to thirty thous miles across,
which is about the width of Neptune, which is huge,
about four times the width of Earth. Um, and still
they look super dinky compared to the Sun. And the
(05:50):
reason that these things are cooler, chuck, is because they're
spots of magnetism that are so strong that they keep
the heat inside the Sun from poking out right there.
That's how strong the magnetic energy is in these areas. Yeah,
and that's right. And because they're magnets, they form in
little pairs like little buddies, and they appear on the
(06:13):
surface of the Sun. And what we're actually looking at
if you can like go to uh NASA or whatever,
like you said, and see a picture of a sun spot,
what you're looking at is sort of like the two
ends of um. If you think about these magnetic lines there,
these magnetism it's like a filament like a rope. Just
picture them twisted up basically running beneath the sun surface.
(06:34):
And there are some really really cool pictures and stuff.
And then one end of this sun spot is positive,
the other end is negative, and it's they sort of
act like rings of a tree a little bit. As
far as astronomers can like observe these things. The first
sun spots of each cycle are in the midd latitudes
(06:54):
and then they start moving around during the cycle, so
they can kind of see where you are in the
solar cycle by where and how many of these sun
spots there are. Yeah, so the more the closer to
the solar maximum you are, the more sun spots they're
going to be, and the closer they're going to be
to the equator. So they tell a lot about where
where the Sun is in its solar cycle. Um. But
(07:16):
the thing is when these magnetic field lines twists and
and curve and turn, um, they actually can interact with
other magnetic field lines. And when that happens, when they cross,
kind of like the proton streams crossing in Ghostbusters. When
that happens, UM, something called the solar flare, uh happens.
(07:39):
It's a it's an event on the Sun, and it
is such a huge, magnificently energetic event that it actually
can affect Earth things on Earth because it's just so
massive in such a huge release and sudden release of energy.
I had a Ghostbusters ref penciled end later on if
you believe that. Oh, I can't wait to it's been
(08:00):
a long time, when we both have to we have
one each. Um, Yeah, it has. And it's been a
while since we listed dates by the years before since
Ghostbusters came in. Mind has a data attached to it,
and you'll just have to wait. I can't wait. What
a great episode this is shaping out to be. So
these explosions, the magnetic fields are driving these explosions. And
(08:23):
if you you know, if you're lay people like us,
it's you can either look at this is something that's
kind of simple to look at on its surface, or
if you really want to get into it, it's pretty
complex and not easily understood. But the simple answer is,
because we're talking about magnetic fields, is that these adjacent
fields are pointing in opposite directions and they basically wipe
(08:46):
each other out and that releases all this magnetic energy
and all that heat, uh, kind of everywhere that surrounds it.
It just goes spew spew, spew energy heat shooting at
you from the sun. Right, So people have figured this out.
Finally that has to do with, like um, the lines
(09:06):
of magnetism interacting with one another and annihilating one another.
But there's a big mystery attached to this, or there
there was for many many years, and that is that. Okay,
so we understand magnetic annihilation. But to this point, we
thought it took about ten thousand years for two opposite
magnetic fields to annihilate one another. Well, we're talking about here,
(09:28):
these solar flares. They they annihilate one another and release
all this energy in a matter of minutes, maybe an
hour sometimes, So that doesn't quite job. And I think
back in the fifties some scientists started proposing a type
of magnetic energy released called magnetic reconnection. And that is
where magnetic field lines are so um twisty, turney writhey
(09:52):
and energetic that they can actually rip a field line
or like a magnetic field line can rip a part
and then reconnect with some neighbors. When that happens, it's
called magnetic reconnection. And they think that that is the
kind of energetic release that would account for a solar flare. Yeah,
(10:12):
and this, you know, this can cause all kinds of problems,
um for things in space and for people on Earth
even which we'll get to that stuff in more detail
a little bit later. But the point is these things
are super hot. Uh. They burst out to the Sun's corona, which,
if you remember from our Sun Up episode, that's the
outermost atmosphere of the Sun. Rarefied gas is all over
(10:36):
the place out there, and it has I mean, this
is super super hot stuff. Like normally the temperature and
the corona is about you know, a few million degrees kelvin,
but inside that flare, we're talking ten to twenty million
degrees kelvin. And we always like to uh think of
things in terms of either big max or hydrogen bombs,
(10:59):
and in this case, it's got to be hydrogen bombs.
The amount of energy released during a solar flare is
about um it's millions of one hundred ton hydrogen bombs
all at once. Yeah, all at once. That's a really
that's a really important point too, you know, And I
feel like a real schmo for not having calculated that
in big bags calories. I know you could do calories, yeah,
(11:24):
but what's the calorie of a solar flare. I don't know.
I didn't look and I feel like a jackass for
not having looked. Well, they go down easy, I know
that they do. So they're big, huge releases of energy,
and they're they're releases of radiation. They release um radiation
across the electromagnetic spectrum and that includes the visible light spectrum.
(11:49):
So these things just turned into these enormously bright flares,
which is where the name comes from. And we've figured
out how to classify, and there's a classifying system for
solar flares. It's a lot like the Richter scale UM,
and that there's class A, B, C, M, and X.
That's not really like the Richter scale. What's like the
(12:10):
Richter scale is that each of those classes UH is
ten times more powerful than the previous class. Yeah, so
like an X is the highest, that is ten times
ten times in M, a hundred times of C. And
then once you get to X, uh. You know, if
they didn't go Y and Z, they just said, let's
(12:30):
stick with X and then let's cool. Sure, and it
sounds totally cool, and then let's start attaching numbers to
them so you can have you know, X, one, three,
four and so on. Yeah, and so you know, each
each of those letter grades has a one through nine scale,
but X is so huge the excess scale goes beyond nine.
(12:50):
And I think the biggest, the biggest one that they've
ever caught so far, UM that's ever been recorded. UH
burned out the set answers that were recording it, and
the censors UM were overloaded at X eight And they
did some calculations after the fact and they figured out
that they may have been an X forty five flare.
(13:11):
Back on November four, two thousand three. Yeah, this was
a big deal. This was it was something called the
Halloween Storms of two thousand three, which is kind of
a fun way. Uh, you know, it happened because it
was in October and near Halloween. So while the astronomers
got excited. And this one was a little bit weird
because although it was near the solar maximum, it was
(13:35):
two to three years after the peak, and it was
they said, NASA said it's generally a quiet period, so
they got really really excited. There were seventeen major flares
in that uh Halloween storm, and it was that's something
that is really going to get the white coats pretty
charged up. It totally is I mean an X forty
(13:58):
five that's just funding And I did a little bit
of of derivative calculation. Technically it would be a double
A five A five, you know. I saw weird different
numbers too, though. I saw that the center cut out
at fifteen and the estimate was X. Huh. It's really hard.
(14:19):
It's NASSY even had conflicting information. I think we should
point this out that you just set us up for
a c o A that I wanted to include. So
there's two things. Um, there's a lot of disagreement on
exactly what a solar flare is and the difference between
that and coronal mass ejections, which we'll talk about in
a little bit. And it's not necessarily a disagreement in astronomy, um.
(14:43):
It's a disagreement among people who report on stuff like
astronomy and don't fully understand what they're talking about. So
we ran into that quite a bit. So if we
get something mixed up, please forgive us. And then secondly,
when we're talking about some of these incredible um events
in physics terms, people who are in the field of
(15:04):
physics understand what they're talking about to one another, but
they have a great reputation of not figuring out how
to explain it to the rest of us, and so
they'll put it in different terms. And so when you're
researching this stuff, you're like, are you is this describing
a different thing than this over here or is it
just two different people describing the same thing two different
(15:24):
ways because they're not describing it in the true physics
way because I wouldn't understand. So we ran into that
a lot too, did you. Yeah, And it's frustrating to
literally see two different things both from NASA dot gov
on two different pages. But you know, who are we
too to call out NASA? I think we just did.
(15:46):
We'll call out Space Force, sure. But the point is this,
all of that really underscores the fact that our understanding
of the dynamics on the Sun are still really early
and premature, um, and we're still figuring a lot of
stuff out, including classifying the differences between solar flares and
(16:07):
coronal mass ejections. Yeah, and the light show and the
you know, the fund that the astronomers had in the
Halloween storms of two thousand three was immense, no matter
whether it was x X forty partied either way, they
did they surely did check. They had a little bit
of peach snops and went to tasted some half a
(16:30):
shot of brandy and then went to bed. That's right.
Prove us wrong, nerds, prove us wrong. I say, we
take a break and then come back and talk about
those coronal mass ejections that I teased. Okay, we'll be
right back, everybody, m all right. So I was saying
(17:12):
that it's difficult sometimes to discern the difference between a
solar flare, which is a huge burst of radiation across
the electromagnetic spectrum um all at once, which, by the way,
it takes just a matter of minutes eight minutes to
be exact to reach Earth because we're talking about carriers
of the electromagnetic force, which can travel at the speed
(17:32):
of light. So it's where I guess, eight minutes, but
at the speed of light from the Sun, right. Um.
Coronal mass ejections are something different. Even though they seem
to be associated with solar flares in a lot of cases,
they also seem to be able to kind of stand
on their own too. Either way, they're impressive in their
(17:54):
own right for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think if
you were talking in terms of um visual excitement, like
a solar mass I'm sorry, a coronal mass ejection is
like a full on Grateful Dead concert, whereas a solar
flair is like when John Mayer played with members of
the Grateful Dead. Oh that's mean I was gonna say
(18:18):
it was. It's just an Instagram video lesson of John
Mayor teaching you some Grateful Dead lick because you know well,
but sol solar flares are more magnificent than that. Um,
so man, that's mean. Sorry, Sorry, John Mayor. If you're listening.
I'm not sorry, Josh. Sorry. He uh he's a nice guy,
he apparently, uh has I've seen some stuff like of
(18:41):
him teaching like people how to play Grateful Dead guitar
stuff and it's really really hard what he's doing. So
my hats off, right, So with man, I feel weird.
It just apologized to John Mayer on the stuff you
should know ast about solar flares. You didn't see that coming. No,
(19:03):
it wasn't in my notes. So with coronal mass ejections
at least these these are not necessarily just bursts of
um of radiation like a solar flare is these they
do have some radiation attached, but they're big thing is
um particles, highly charged, super energetic particles that it shoots
(19:25):
like buckshot towards the Earth at incredible speeds. I mean,
they get they get accelerated very close to the speed
of light, not the speed of light, and there's a
big difference between the speed of light and close to
the speed of light. So it takes about three or
four days usually for stuff um that's shot out by
a coronal mass ejection to reach Earth. But when these
(19:45):
things go off on the Sun, there like you said,
they're they're rather impressive. Yeah, like if you were looking
at this stuff and uh with a telescope and high
powered telescope that is I don't I don't think you
could well could you see any of this stuff anything
you have at home? You know, I've got a pretty
good telescope, but it's for nighttime viewing only. So with
(20:07):
the UM, I think you can see coronal mass ejections.
I think solar flares. You're you're best with a radio
telescope or X ray telescope, but the X ray telescope
would have to be outside of Earth's magnetosphere. Do you
have a telescope, yeah, telescope. It's not a radio telescope.
No, no no, no, I just we've never talked, we've never
scoped it up in conversation, and I would be surprised
(20:29):
if you didn't, but I'm glad to know you do.
We do have one. Yea so flares, Like if you
were looking through an X ray or a radio telescope
at a solar flare, it'll look cool, It'll look like
a flash of light. But those coronal mass ejections are
really impressive, big eruptions. Uh, the height can be many
times the size of the Earth, shooting out into space,
(20:50):
like you said, and they're they're kind of like a
belch from the Sun that actually releases part of the Sun.
It's like a bubble of plasma that's just an enormous
um often billions and billions of tons uh in mass,
just coming right at the Earth, full of these incredibly
charged particles UM. And they're so big, so massive, and
(21:13):
the plasma that they're made of is so energetic that
they actually have their own magnetic fields like the sawn
or the Earth UM. So when they finally do come
in contact with the planet, our planet UM, weird things
start to happen because it's own magnetic field and all
of the charged particles within the plasma contact our own
(21:33):
magnetosphere and then also our atmosphere UM, which is almost
designed to UM to deter the worst effects of those
things coming at us from the Sun. Yeah, so our magnetosphere,
that's our little first layer of protection. That would be
like UM, although I was about to say like Wakonda's
(21:53):
protective shield, that may be more like the ionosphere. But
the magnetosphere is that first protect and and it's going
to kind of brush away as many of those charge particles,
these protons that are shooting out as possible, and because
of solar wind though, uh, it's it's it's got a
shape to it. The magnetosphere has like a sort of
(22:13):
a compressed side that faces the Sun. It's got a
little dip near the poles of the Earth where some
really magnificent stuff is going to take place, as we'll
see in a minute. And then it's got this tail
end that flows out from the back, and the Earth's
magnetic field is going to block these particles from most
of the surface. The Sun's the solar wind is going
to push them along toward that tail and then that
(22:34):
dip at the poles is where you're gonna see these
really brilliant auroras. Yes, but the magnetism, the magnetic energy
from the coronal mass ejection can be so energetic that
it can actually push on the sun side, the day
side of the Earth's magnetosphere it's closest to the Sun,
(22:56):
push on it so much that it actually contorts the
Night's the tail end that trails off into space and
presses it together so that when it comes together the
Earth's own magnetosphere um becomes energetic and quivery and then
when it goes back to its normal energy state, it
releases a bunch of energy in the form of light.
(23:17):
And when that happens, the auroras that tend to congregated
the polls can actually show up all over the planet basically,
even very close to the equator. Yeah, which is crazy.
And we'll talk about some of the bigger ones and
some of the surprising places they showed up. But um,
so that's a magnetosphere. I mentioned the ionosphere. That's sort
of um, I guess the secondary protection that is another
(23:41):
high layer of the Earth's atmosphere, and that's going to
stop all the radiation because it's giving out a tremendous
amount of radiation. And if the ionosphere wasn't doing his
job and it wasn't there, we would be in big,
big trouble. Oh yeah, we we'd be toast. I mean, like,
these are incredibly energetic, fast traveling particles close to the
(24:02):
speed of light um and they would just shoot right
through the tissue in our our bodies, uh and do
all sorts of damage because they would probably knock all
sorts of electrons off of our atoms that make up
our cells and our tissue and um, we would either
develop cancer of the long term or just drop dead
from a big enough dose of the stuff. So thank
(24:22):
goodness for the ionosphere. I mean, it saves us like
John Mayor saved the grateful dead. Just in case he's
still listening. There's like a percentage of our audience it's like, yeah, man, preach,
and there's a percentage that was like, oh my god,
I have to turn this off. And then I'd say
the vast majority are like American exactly, the guy that
(24:47):
dated Jen Aniston probably. Um. So you've got the magnanosphere,
you got the ionosphere, and for the most part, these
things are capable of absorbing the worst of the on
belches and flare ups and everything, um, under normal circumstances.
But even even when it is protecting life on Earth
(25:10):
like us animals and the plants and the plankton and
you know, um, the whales, that kind of stuff life
here on Earth. Um, there are things that we humans
have developed that can be affected by these this space weather,
by these geomagnetic storms. Yeah, I guess should we talk
(25:30):
about the the Carrington event one of the most exciting events.
I thought it was pretty exciting. Yes, it's pretty good. So, uh,
this is eighteen fifty nine. Um, like this kind of
thing now is pretty magnificent, But I imagine eighteen fifty
nine astronomers were just really really knocked out by something
like this. They said, zeus is beer exactly. Uh. This
(25:53):
is sort of late summer August September and a big
solar storm they later called the Carrington event became him
the strongest one on record. And this is named for
a man named Richard Carrington. He was an astronomer, one
of England's best at the time, and he was in
his observatory and he was hanging out and it was
(26:14):
a sunny day and he was working with his telescope
and he's projecting this image of the sun on a
screen and drawing. He there were cameras at the time,
but I guess the most I don't know, accurate or
efficient way to capture what he saw was to draw
this stuff that he's observing, and that's what he was
doing on September one. Yeah, and while he was drawing
(26:38):
the stuff, um, he saw that some of these sun
spots that he was he was um mapping, I guess,
started to grow really really bright and he got really
excited because he'd been doing this for a while and
this wasn't something he'd seen before. So he jumped up
and he ran to get a friend who was going
to witness this mistake. Yeah, he said. He was gone
for a minute tops. When he came back, he found
(27:01):
that these brilliant flashes of light had already started to
like weakend. Can you imagine. He was a little bummed
about this, but he and he and his buddy still
watched these flares like go, you know, get lower and
lower and then turn into pinpoints and then vanish. Um.
So what he saw he was the first person to
record a solar flare. No one had ever seen anything
(27:22):
like it before. And that was at eleven three am.
It was, it was done, It finished, um and then nothing.
That was it until the wee hours of the morning,
later that night, the morning of the next day, later
that night, which I always just find endlessly confusing. What
that it took that long? No that it's the next
(27:45):
that night is the next morning. For some reason, it
just breaks my brain every time. I realized how sad
that is to admit. Yeah, so in the wee hours,
the skies put on a light show all over the
earth redan purple auroras, very brilliant, very exciting newspapers. You
could like read the newspaper at night. They saw this
(28:07):
stuff in the Hawaii El Salvador and the Bahamas. They
saw the auroras in the boat that nuts. That is nuts. Uh.
There were towns neighboring towns that thought the that like
Shelbyville was on fire, Springfield thought Shelby Bill was on fire,
and vice versa. There were birds chirping, they thought because
they thought it was dawn. Uh. There was a brick
(28:29):
mason crew in South Carolina that got up in you know,
they were like two beers in going to work when
they realized that, hey, it's the middle of the night.
And they looked at each other and said, man, this
is a hundred and twenty five years before Ghostbusters. Oh nice,
very nice. Check. Yeah, well it seemed canned in because
(28:50):
I prem, yeah, well i'll tell you what, how about this.
I'm gonna give you a huge hearty surprise laugh. And
I hinted out the conversation before all right ready, And
they all looked at each other, two beers in, and
said Ghostbusters won't even come out for another hundred twenty
five years. What. Oh my god, I did not see
that coming. Dude, how long has it been since we
(29:11):
talked about I don't know. That's perfect and we'll just
fix that all on editing. That's great, thanks, Chuck. I
need a I need a couple of beers myself after them.
So one of the other things, um, that really went
hey wire was the telegraph system, right, because this is
eighteen fifty nine, and the telegraphs were at the they
were the leading edge, not bleeding edge. He's taught me
(29:33):
that that's totally wrong, the leading edge of technology of
telecommunications at the time, UM. And these telegraph lines depended
on currents being sent over wires, UM. And so those
wires were overloaded by this geomagnetic storm so much so
that sparks were shooting off of the telegraphs. UM. Operators
(29:55):
were getting shocked and burned. The telegraph paper was catching
on fire when was nearby. It was very much like
a movie. All this is happening all over the world
at the same time. It's just crazy. It's like very
very early morning of the next day after the Carrington event, right.
So one of the things that got me was, um,
(30:16):
they they unplugged the batteries to these things, the telegraphs,
and they found that the wires were still so energetic
with electricity from the geomagnetic storm that they could still
send telegraphs even though they had no power of their own.
They were they were able to send telegrams over the
(30:37):
telegraph line even within it's disconnected from the batteries. That's
the fact of the show to me. Oh that's amazing.
Let me that. I mean, they must have thought it
was haunted or something. I think, think like, sure, the
plug is unplugged and it's still working. They're like Zeus's
beard is crazy. There's another thing to um. Some telegraph
(30:59):
operator couldn't send telegraphs even though the lines were active
because the magnetism in these currents was so strong that
the armature, the thing that they tap up and down,
was like fused to the plate beneath it. It was
just the magnets. The magnetism was so strong and it
wouldn't move. Thought it was possessed. The probably left the
(31:22):
room screaming. They did, says is Beard. Oh we got
the third one in there. Yeah. Should we take another break? Yeah?
Oh almost so. So one other thing. Let's just wrap
the Carrington Event up real quick, Okay, so ten am.
The effects of this whole crazy event are are done.
(31:43):
And you know, it gets talked about. This is a
worldwide event, but it's kind of like treated as a
scientific anomaly, right people. People understand what happened and what
caused it and why it happened. Over the years as
we learned more and more about solar flares and coronal
mass ejections, but it didn't become a parent that this
Carrington event was actually a harbinger of like real, much
(32:07):
bigger problems that could happen to us alive on Earth
today until the seventies, and um, maybe we'll take a break, chuck,
and come back and talk about how that could be
problematic right after this great m hm. Alright, So the
(32:47):
world changed a lot between the Carrington event in the
mid eighteen hundreds and in the nineteen seventies when scientists
had a much bigger handle on what this kind of
thing meant. And in the nineteen seventies we were the
whole world was very dependent on electric power. You might
be surprised to learn, right, and they knew like, hey,
(33:10):
if we had another Carrington event today, it could be
a big deal because and we'll get to this later,
but like, we got a lot of metal on this earth,
and we use the earth to ground everything basically with
ground wires, and that creates a unique problem potentially if
we had another event like this. Yeah, the fact that
(33:32):
we chose to use the earth as a ground um
to where are grounding wires go from. Our electrical components
tie into a metal rod that's driven into the earth,
so that whenever excess electricity is generated by the electronics
that we use, it gets distributed through the grounding wire
to the earth where it dissipates. That makes all of
(33:54):
our electronics vulnerable to a geomagnetic storm, because in a
geomagnetic storm, the ground itself can become magnetized. And even
more than that, chuck, We've buried a lot of metal infrastructure,
from like pipes to um cables to all sorts of
metal stuff is snaking through the ground right now, and
(34:15):
when the ground becomes magnetized into geomagnetic storm it can
create it can carry really powerful currents through all the
infrastructure up through the grounds, through the grounding wires, and
into our electronic components, uh including things like power transformers
and overload them to the point where they fail catastrophically. Yeah.
And this, uh, this sort of happened in August two
(34:40):
there was a big, big solar flare that knocked out
our long distance phone communication across Illinois. So that was
just sort of an early example of like, hey, this
can actually have a real effect here on Earth. UM.
And that was that was a big one. It took
I think about fifteen hours to hit Earth, whereas it
usually to two to three days. UM. It also set
(35:02):
off these um we had. It was during Vietnam obviously,
and we had magnetic sea mines in harbors around Vietnam.
It exploded those. Yeah, So I don't know if they
were supposed to be like secretly there and if that
was kind of like oh, whoops, sorry about that, or
if they knew that they were there and and they
just went off. But either way, UM, that was a
(35:24):
pretty scary scene. It was, and apparently it was a
mystery for a long time until somebody finally figured out
why those sea mines all went off. They connected it
to the UM, to that coronal mass ejection, I believe. Yeah,
but you can imagine like all the damage uh that
could occur, Like even if you're just talking about the
electrical grid. If it really blew out, it wouldn't be
(35:47):
just like a blackout, like it would destroy parts of
our electrical grid such that it would take It's not like, hey,
let me go out and fix this over a few
hours during a snowstorm. It's it might take weeks or
months or even up to a year if we had
a big enough, uh like blast to the grid. Yeah,
because I mean it is by necessity. Our electrical grid
(36:11):
is interconnected. So if one part of it gets overloaded,
that can overload other parts that are connected. And if
you have a whole city without power, for let's say
Los Angeles went went out of power for a month,
what would happen? What would be the what would be
the outcome of that? You couldn't do anything? And when
you start thinking like that, you start thinking about, oh
(36:32):
my god, like, think about all the stuff we do
that requires electricity. Everything we do requires electricity in some
form or fashion. And so to be without electricity in
a major city or multiple major cities for even a
couple of weeks is just unthinkable. But that's that's the
level of vulnerability whereat because of the way that our
(36:52):
electrical components are set up because they're grounded. Yeah, and
and not just like a chain reaction and apocalyptic kind
of activity, but um, just monetary loss, like the economic
and financial damage for the city of Los Angeles to
be without power for a month would be astounding. Um.
(37:14):
So you know, there's stuff they could do. They could uh,
they could fit some very critical transformers with resistors and capacitors,
but these things are like hundreds of thousand dollars per transformers,
So that's just too much money. So they're not doing that. No,
they're not. And I wonder if there's going to be
like some close call that makes everybody Okay, we need
(37:36):
to invest this in our infrastructure, or you know, are
we going to figure out some other means of you know,
a backup system. I'm not sure that happens to like Topeka.
And then everyone says, hey, if this happened in Topeka
and they lost you know, several hundred dollars, and that's
(37:58):
really mean how it's gonna say? Did you think do
you think Topeka would do it? Do you think that
would convince anybody? I don't know. I'm so sorry Topeka,
but you get my point. If it happens somewhere sort
of in a smaller area than the big cities. Might say, Hey,
that means it could happen to us, the people who
really matter, right, the coastal elites would stroke their beards
(38:21):
and struck their tongues. Yeah so, um so yeah, there's
there doesn't seem to be a lot of initiative right
now to figure this out, and we're just kind of
sitting ducks in a weird way. It's nothing. I don't
think it's anything to lose sleepover. But it's really surprising.
Like the more I dug into this, the more I
was like, huh, this could kind of be a thing someday.
(38:42):
And it's not just you know, the electrical grid uh
here on Earth alone is what is all that would
be affected by that? There um, things we rely on
out in space, like satellites a bad enough to you,
a magnetic storm could affect satellites and a out of weights,
so our GPS systems would be messed up. Or if you,
(39:04):
um so, if you use GPS for really important stuff
like say landing an airplane, you could be in big trouble.
Um and if you're also on planes, the high frequency
radio communications they used to stay in contact with the ground,
especially when they're out over the ocean or something like that. UM,
that can be disrupted by a solar flare or a
(39:26):
chronal mass ejection too. Yeah, or what about a satellite
maybe that is I mean, there are thousands of satellites
up there, but and you know, if a radio satellite
went out, it would be bad, but people could live.
But what if it affected a satellite that's UM in
charge of aiding in national defense. Things could get a
little bit scary if those satellites were down or you know, spacecraft,
(39:49):
their spacecraft up there and they use satellites to help
orient themselves and and keep themselves safe. Uh, there's an
I S S. Although the ice supposedly is UH is
protected right yeah, oh yeah. The the big threat to
UM astronauts from coronal mass ejections and solar flares is
(40:10):
when they're out on spacewalks, when they're doing like labor,
say outside the I S S or something like that. UM.
Just like here on Earth, if we didn't have the
ionosphere of the magnetosphere, UM, we would be in big trouble.
Astronauts can be in big trouble. The I S s
orbits within the Earth's magnetosphere, but it's beyond the ionop
so they are a little more exposed. On the I
(40:32):
S S. It's shielded, so they're not nearly as exposed.
But out on a spacewalk they if it were a
really bad chronal mass ejection, they could be in a
lot of trouble. Um like Sandra her face in that
movie exactly. Uh, what is your last name? I can't remember,
sandraw Burning, Sandra Bullo, Sandra, Sandy Duncan, Sandra Bullock. Yeah,
(40:55):
Sandra Bernhard in that movie Space Space trit Space Craziness.
Did you like that movie Gravity? Uh? Yeah, I thought
it was pretty good if I've only seen it once. Um,
I don't I don't know if I would have cast
her necessarily, but it's fine. Or George Cleaning, I don't
(41:15):
think I would have cast either of him. I mean
I had some issues. I mean it was a magnificent
looking movie, but I think in the end I had
some issues with the story in the script being like
not good enough for how great of a movie it
was trumped up to be. Did Um was that the
by the guy who did The Revenant? I think so? Yeah,
(41:36):
So you and I went and saw The Revenant in
Hawaii Wants when we were on vacation, because what else
is there to do in Hawaii on vacation but go
see movies. And um, we saw The Revenant and this
person next to us was there by by himself, and
he was so upset um by Tom Hardy's character and
just how evil he was that this guy was like
(41:58):
telling him he was the dead of all. He had
his hand up at the screen and was praying against
Tom Hardy. He was really affected by Tom Hardy's character,
which made the movie like even more thrilling because we
would look at the movie and then we watch this
person reacting to the movie too, So it was something
something to see. Yeah, I saw that once as well,
and I saw it on tour with you. Either it
(42:20):
was either Phoenix or San Diego. I don't would have
to look at the dates, but I just remember there
being palm trees. I think it was San Diego. Maybe
when we did a show at that spooky abandoned church, man,
I'm convinced still to this day that that's the church
from the Prince of Darkness that John Carton. That was
a weird show because that was the one I know.
You remember that guy sat on the front row and
(42:41):
shot the whole thing with a video camera and he
looked like he was mad too, like he was documenting
evidence or something to use against us. We both were like,
I think we were so caught off guard. We didn't
know what to say. Do we call this guy and say, sir,
can you please put away your camera? So we just
soldiered on. Yeah, we were pinned down by the unrelenting
glare of the lens. And then he went back to
(43:03):
his apartment and showed it on TV to his roommate,
who was the Tom Hardy guy, right, and that guy
was like, these guys are the devil. I'm praying against them.
Oh man uh alright, so yes, back to the show. Yeah,
where are we? Oh, here's the deal. We're talking about
astronauts and satellite operations and GPS. This isn't stuff that
(43:27):
we have just um said, well, this probably could happen
a lot of it is, but um, this actually has happened. Um.
We'd mentioned the thing in Illinois with the phone systems
and then in um the two thousand three that c
m E that did disrupt satellites and that did disrupt
high frequency radio communications that aviation relies on, and that
(43:49):
did blackout a city in Sweden. Mm hmm, mammo. Everyone
says no, not mammo, yeah, mamo everybody. So this the
kind of thing can happen. It does happen, it's just
never happened on such a massive scale. UM. They figured
out from looking at Arctic ice cores, apparently highly energetic
(44:10):
particles leave um remnants, not revenants, remnants in nitrates frozen
in the ice and at the polls and UM. By
examining these cores, they can see how bad or how
often or how many solar flares of hit Earth in
the past. And they figured out that the Carrington event
is like a five hundred years solar flare, and it
happened about a hundred and seventy years ago. Hopefully we're
(44:33):
in the clear. The key is we're still figuring out
the dynamics of the Sun and solar activity, so we're
not exactly certain that maybe we're not due for a
thousand years solar flare. UM. We're just starting to figure
this out, but we are figuring it out. That's step one.
And we also actually have space weather forecasters here on
Earth at Noah and at the National Weather Service, there
(44:56):
are people whose job it is subtract solar activity and
predict things like coronal mass ejections and solar flares so
that people can, like like utility companies, can maybe take
um steps to mitigate the worst effects. Eventually. I think
right now we've got like eight to ten minute heads up,
so that's not enough. But as we get to understand
(45:16):
it a little more, we'll have more warning time. And
you know, astronauts can plan their spacewalks when they're out
doing stuff like building future space colonies. This is all
going to come into play for that too. Yeah, So
hopefully they can get that up to at least over
an hour. That would help. Sure. So again, it's nothing
to lose sleepover. That's not the point of this episode.
(45:36):
It's more just kind of like ge whiz, this is
this is amazing by Zeus Beard. I've never heard of
anything like the old fourth reference. Yeahs, surprising fourth one
did not see that coming. Did you got anything else?
I got nothing else? All right, everybody chucks that he's
got nothing else. So that's it for this episode, which
means it's time for listener mao. Well, let me see here.
(46:01):
I've actually got quite a few today, which is uh
an abundance. We've been getting more than usual, I haven't. Yeah,
we've been getting good ones. All right, I'll choose this one.
I'm gonna call it Rush Girl. Hey guys, I've been
a long time listener, but you have never But I've
never had a reason to write until your recent Fort
Knox episode. In it you refer to the joke you
(46:21):
had made about women not liking the Three Stooges. By
the way, I got a little grief for that and
also support for that. Weirdly, Chuck made the comment that
it wasn't like he had something had said something true,
but they're like there being no women Rush fans. I
immediately laugh because my future and mother in law is
the biggest Rush fan. I love this lady. She and
(46:43):
my fiance have a bond over this band. In contrast,
I thought the band was made up just for the
movie I Love You Man. Wow. Yeah, Megan did not
know Rush was a real band. She thought that was
a fake band in a movie. Megan, you have a
whole world ready to open up to you. Yes, you do.
(47:03):
I guess that they fit the trope According to my fiance,
they call female rush fans getty corns, which sounds made up,
but he swears it's true getty corns. I don't get that,
but like a unicorn maybe, oh yeah, exactly, or or
it could be candy corn. No, no, I'm sure it's
like the Getty Getty Lee unicorn mash up. I like that.
(47:27):
I didn't get that until just now, so thank you.
At any rate, I can recognize the joke, and I'm
not coming after you for that. I just found it
funny that all the stereotypical male bands you could have picked,
you chose my mother in law's favorite. Thanks for all
you do. Your podcast has gone a long way toward
helping me distress after a day of teaching during COVID.
And that is from Megan Power and Megan, thank you,
(47:50):
and big ups to your mother in law for being
a getty corn. Yeah, not to be confused with candy corn. Well,
if you want to be like Megan and let us
know how we just totally blew your mind somehow or other.
We love hearing that stuff. You can put it in
an email and wrap it up spanking on the bottom
and send it off to stuff podcasts at iHeart radio
(48:11):
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
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