October 13, 2020 • 21 mins
What would you do if you woke up one day and found yourself in a world without electricity, cellphones or the internet? It sounds like the plot of a science fiction film, but if a powerful enough solar flare hits Earth's magnetosphere this could become a frightening reality. Join Matt and Ben as they explore the likelihood of a solar apocalypse in today's Classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's start this week's classic episode with a question. What
would you do if you woke up one day and
all your electronic devices simply didn't work. You couldn't log
onto any website, you couldn't get the lights to switch
on in your house, and of course, your phone was bricked.
(00:21):
This might sound like the plot of many dystopian science
fiction films, but it could one day become science fact.
You see, it turns out that the angry massive star
that feeds all life on Earth could one day become
the instrument of our own civilizations destruction. If a single
(00:45):
powerful enough solar flare hits the magnetosphere of Earth, the
human species could be thrown back into the Stone Age.
Join us as we explore the fact fiction and tear
refying possibility of solar flares and the end of the
world as we know it from UFOs two, Ghosts and
(01:08):
Government cover ups. History is riddled with unexplained events. You
can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't
want you to now. Hello, everyone, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt and I'm Ben, and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. And today
we're talking about the magnificent nuclear powered sphere that's mostly
(01:31):
made up of hydrogen and helium, and it's been burning
for over four and a half billion years, which is
kind of weird to think. You know, when you think
about what a year is, I have a hard time
comprehending an entire month. Well, yeah, that is a long time.
Although it feels like January came and went already, which
is a little weird. Yeah, I feel as there were
(01:52):
time travelers are ripped them winkles. We've become unstuck in time.
But even if we were to travel to the very
beginning of Earth's origins, we would still be running into
that massive ball we call the sun. Uh. A little
funny fact about the Sun, well might be not funny
(02:13):
to some people. It is responsible for all of the
life that we know. The Sun's energy feeds the very
It's the entry level of the world's life forms, and
without it we would not be alive. So if you
want to trace the origins of your existence, uh, in
(02:36):
you're going by the energy, then you are going to
inevitably run into uh. The solar energy that plant forms
taken and it later filters down to you and the
things that you eat. And you can cause an atmosphere
to form so that any kind of plant life or
you know, even earlier than that. Right, and so I
(02:58):
know we're making the sun. Look right here, it sounds like,
you know, an online dating profile for how awesome the
sun is and how much it will take care of
it in the day. Yeah, and it's it's all nurturing
and stuff. Uh. Also, the sun has a dirty open secret,
which is that in a few billion years, uh, this
awesome stellar parent it's a pun. Sorry, somebody put in
(03:22):
the bad pun music. Okay, I earned it. I will
be the last one. But like one of those awesome
parents who occasionally goes on a horrific binge of mass murder,
the sun will expand and destroy the planet. That is
not supervillain hyperbole. It will literally destroy planet Earth. We've
(03:47):
got a while before it happens. But we also, uh,
we also have some uh some other sun shenanigans that
pose a much more clear and present danger. To steal
the title of a movie, it's correct, every once in
a while, that sun gets a little angry. Little parts
of it get angry. When when I say little, I
(04:08):
mean several hundred times the diameter of Earth angry. Wow,
that doesn't make any sense, though it does make sense
because it's a way to show the scale of the Earth.
A small disturbance in the force of the Sun is
uh probably going to be several times larger than the
(04:31):
Earth anyway. And one one thing that we need to
hit real quick or the basic facts. Right, So, how
far away is the Sun? The Sun is about eight
I think it's around eight light minutes away from the Earth.
That's terrifying. Well, yeah, it's terrifying. It's also nice because
it's warm any war, we get that fresh sunlight. We're
(04:52):
in the the old Goldilocks zone. Uh. Then we also
need to talk about how hot or how much energy
it produces. Let's go how hot? How hot is the
Sun at the core? So right at the core, it's uh,
it's over. It's greater than fifteen million degrees kelvin kelvin
not celsius. He's a bit of warm. And we also
(05:13):
know that, in addition to hydrogen and helium, the Sun
is composed of some very strong magnetic fields. Yeah, that's
kind of what keeps the whole system going. And sometimes
those magnetic fields get a bit disrupted, you'll have it's
tough to really paint a picture, but you have to
(05:35):
think about it as for me, at least, this helps
when you think about it as these electromagnetic coils that sometimes, uh,
they tighten a little bit, they get a little tangled,
and they tighten up, and that's when you'll see something
called the sun spot, where it's a little dark on
the surface of the Sun. And if you if you
go check out the Solar Dynamics Observatory, you can get
(05:55):
a really good picture of what I'm talking about, um,
and those are the places that people who observed the sun. Uh, astronomers,
they really get a little nervous when you see, especially
a large sun spot or a sun spot that's kind
of in a cluster. Right. Yeah, we do know that
sun spots tend to occur more towards the equator of
(06:17):
the Sun, and we know that observation of sun spots
dates back pretty far. Several thousand years ago. Astronomers in
China noticed sun spots. So the twelfth century BC a
thing called the Book of Changes because all the good
book titles weren't taken by that point, so you can
still have really cool names like that. Uh, they recorded
(06:38):
a sun spot. They said the Sun was yellow at
its rising and a black vapor as large as a
coin was observed at its center. And then on the
other side of the world, the Aztecs UH ruling Mexico
before the Spaniards arrived, also paid attention to the Sun
and its cycles and it's sun spots. Now, sun spots
(06:59):
are not actual thing, and human beings have been aware
of their existence, if not there um causes for a
long time. And now that we know that the causes
come from magnetic disturbances and the Sun's force, uh, we
also have learned a couple of other things. We've learned
that they're on a cycle, right, that the Sun has
(07:21):
a cycle. Every eleven years or so, it hits what's
called a solar maximum, and that's when these solar flares
are much more likely to occur in clusters, right. Yeah.
And and the reason that they're a little scary is
because they have the potential to cause some serious harm. Uh,
two planet Earth. They also have the potential to cause
(07:44):
harm to a lot of our electronics. Um. And I
guess that's really our communications because they, like I was saying,
they coil up, and they coil really tightly. And sometimes
they'll just release and and base nothing will happen. There
won't be any kind of craziness on the on the Sun.
But sometimes if it goes past the breaking point and
(08:07):
basically those coils snap back in place, you'll have a
solar flare. Solar flare will occur. Yeah, and a solar
flare is a the easy way to find it if
you're looking at it through a telescope, it would be
a sudden brightening observe over the Sun's surface or the
solar limb. And uh, this is a huge release of
(08:31):
energy UM. The number that I found for it was
six to six times ten to the Jewels. It's yeah,
it's crazy because it's it's not only releasing light and
releasing X rays and raise um. It also has the
potential to cause something called a coronal mass ejection or
(08:54):
a cm E. And that's where it gets really hairy
for the Earth, right, Yeah, because the Earth, like the Sun,
has its own magnetosphere, and this magnetosphere is also sensitive
to uh disturbances from the Sun's magnetosphere. Because again, you know,
(09:15):
in the scale of the Solar System, let alone the galaxy,
the Sun and the Earth are really really close, we're
pretty much bumper to bumper, and uh that's that's a
great spot, except when these kind of things happen. So
you and I did a video episode on this that
(09:36):
really caught both of our interests, and we did it
a while back. Right, And here's the question, This is
the question we're gonna answer in this podcast, Matt. Is
it possible that a CME could destroy Earth's selectronics? Yes,
is the answer. Okay, because the CME is essentially a
(09:57):
magnetic shock wave that's being sent out from from the
Sun and depending on where it's headed, if it's headed
towards the Earth, you can have some serious issues. So first,
let's think about what's floating around outside on the let's
say in space really close to Earth. We've got all
(10:20):
these satellites and modern civilization depends on these for a
number of things, right, a ton of things. And if
you have an electromagnetic disturbance that could say, was powerful
enough to shut down some of those electronics, which it
can be, that's not good. Right, Yeah, I would say
that's that's apocalyptic. But it's not just satellites. Uh, those
(10:43):
are important, and the lack of communication would be a
terrible thing. But it also has a potential to knock
out the entire energy grid, which is pretty insane when
you think about because depending on where it hits, with
the severity with which it it's it can it has
the potential to a cme to essentially fry some cables
(11:07):
that are going from your power plants, say, to the
rest of the grid. And if that happens, you can
have a rolling blackout, which which could be really bad
because if it if it occurs, then you can have
basically copper wire being fried throughout an entire region of
the U S. And we're just speaking about the U
(11:27):
S right now because that's the model that I've looked at. Yeah,
and that well, we also have the North American model
that can kind of incorporate parts of Canada. So so
we know that when a grid is effective, when a
power grid is affected, it's frighteningly easy to produce a
domino or a snowball effect. So because the grid supplies load, uh,
(11:50):
if it has too much of a load, that it's
just as bad as it not having enough power. When
one segment of this system is destroy a then this
means that other segments of the system will be hit
with things. Uh, The way that the rolling blackout occurs
is that different chains of the power system are trying
(12:13):
to fight an increasing number of anomalies. You know, so
we said a domino effect, right, so when you knock
out one domino, it's next to other dominoes and annox
him out sequentially. UM. I don't want to scare anybody
into thinking that the entire North American power system is
(12:34):
a house of cards, but I do want people to
realize that if the right solar flare or excuse me,
the right CMME hits at the right time, then we
will lose terrestrial power. And this this is where I
could get a little apocalyptic. All right, So, so well
we're talking about disrupting power. You know, it's tempting to think,
(12:58):
oh man, what a what a crappy inconvenience, I'm gonna
have to read a book, go outside? What is that?
But what we're talking about, uh, could potentially be a
disaster that is unprecedented history. Think of all the people
right now just in your town whose lives depend on
a reliable stream of electricity. This would be people in hospitals,
(13:22):
This would be people who are maybe even driving a car,
which is something I wanted to ask you about. UM.
And then let's look at the satellites as well. So
we said losing communication, Yeah, that could be huge. Um.
The ability to communicate using satellite is the reason that
ships don't go off course. The ability to communicate that
(13:44):
way is the reason that planes are able to uh
land without killing everyone and crashing into each other. Now,
hold on, Ben, some people might be saying, and correctly,
I thought that radio played a big part in that
you are correct, and the X rays UV radiation from
a c m E will disrupt the ionosphere, making long
(14:05):
term or excuse me, long range radio communication also go caput.
And this isn't just something that Ben and I are
making up. We've we've actually seen the effects of a
CMME before. One of the one of the only major
times that it actually affected life on Earth was in
eighteen fifty nine UM, when a CMME caused a massive
(14:27):
magnetic fluctuation in the Earth's magnet magnetosphere, which then caused
a couple of things to happen, Like, I know, the
telegraph systems failed at the time, compasses wouldn't work, UM.
And you know that doesn't sound like anything too crazy.
I guess right now. But you have to think about
the load that was on the electrical systems at the time. Um,
(14:48):
it probably wasn't much at all, and they probably didn't
even get to see some of the major effects that
if that would have occurred this year or in a
year when we've had our grid the way it is now, right,
we just haven't seen it in a long time. Yeah,
it's a it's a possible disaster that becomes more disastrous
(15:10):
with time. Now, we do know that there are ways
for things to be shielded from the effects of a SeeMe,
but we know that the vast majority things are not
because the potential of a SME of this magnitude occurring
is relatively rare. It's like winning a very terrible lottery,
worst lottery you've ever won, in the worst little and
(15:32):
the last that you might win. So uh, but I
just want to get back to what you're saying really fast.
That's the idea of losing communication and in a time
when you have no power. Also, Um, that is one
of the great post apocalyptic scenarios where you're cut off
from everybody else, you're confused, you're scared, and you can't
(15:52):
you don't have a good way to get food. You
don't have a good way to get to wherever you
need to get to, and you just feel cut off.
And that's when the human the human brain goes a
little crazy, and that's when you have the road Okay,
which we really that's the movie that I think about
when I think about the possibilities of a massive cme
(16:14):
um cannibalism, that's what I think about. Okay. Yeah, so
kind of a Lord of the Flies situation. How long
would we have for before civilization collapse without the electronic underpinnings,
especially in the city. Yeah, well, the city is always
one of the worst places to be in a natural
disaster environment. And while while we are saying some scary stuff,
(16:37):
of course we did some due diligence and said that
the possibility of this occurring is relatively small so far
as we know. But here's the tricky part. Okay, So
let's compare to another natural disaster. This would essentially be
a natural disaster in terms of its effects. So we
know already that uh, people are having a great deal
(17:00):
of difficulty predicting the frequency or the strength of natural
disasters that are on Earth, which means there much easier
to observe. Uh, scientists still have a lot of difficulty
accurately predicting eruptions or earthquakes or hurricanes are rather the
path and effect of a hurricane. We have made great
(17:23):
strides in um in our search for better methods of
prediction here, but we have yet to be able to
of the time accurately predict these things. And the Sun,
as close as it may be on a cosmic scale,
is far far beyond our abilities to reach it in
(17:46):
you know, in a practical scale, and especially to make
any kind of predictive models. Right, Yeah, But thankfully we
do have the Solar Dynamics Observatory now, and that is
one of the best best things that to come around,
in my opinion, for a long time from a technology standpoint,
because now we really do we can almost see the
entirety of the Sun at all times now and before
(18:08):
we head out to fiddle away our free time enjoying
all the wonderful electronic goodies before the Sun destroys them all,
before the Sun destroys us all, and before we ask
you some questions, Matt, where can people go to get
more information about this? Okay? So this is where I
go every morning when I get into work, because I'm
(18:28):
extremely paranoid about solar flares and there the sun's activity.
I go to space weather dot com. It's a fantastic source.
You can look at everything from You can get solar
flare alerts from them on your on your phone, which
is pretty cool. Um. You can also look at the
severity of and possibility of solar flares in the next
(18:49):
twenty for our period. You can also go to solar
ham dot net h A M dot net and uh,
that's a really cool place. It's got some of the
best s d O image is up to date stuff.
And again it's got a CMME prediction model, which is
really cool. Again, it's not completely accurate, but it's fascinating
(19:10):
look at and it makes me feel better knowing that
I check it every morning. Yeah, and one last thing,
if you want to just check out the s d
O and you can look up images from the Solar
Dynamics Observatory, go to s A d O dotr G,
s FC dot NASA dot gov. It's kind of a
long one. Hope hopefully you heard that. You may have
to rewind it, but check it out. You can just
(19:31):
search for s d O and NASA. Well, do the
address one more time. It's s D O dot G,
s f C dot NASA dot gov. And Hey, while
you're on a computer trying to figure out if the
sun will destroy us earlier than scheduled, why not take
advantage of the time to uh, let us know what
you think about a couple of questions. I'm gonna fire
(19:54):
a couple off here. Uh. First, and my favorite question here?
What would you do if you woke up one day
and none of the electronics worked? Matt? Do you have
a question? Yeah? I do. Uh. If let's say you've
got an alert on your phone that there's an imminent
(20:15):
coronal mass ejection that's there, it's thought to be able
to take out all of the electricity, and you only
have let's say an hour or two hours before it hits,
what do you do? What's the first thing you do?
I don't know, man, I I don't want to give
my answer away. We'll talk about this later. Oh I'm
(20:35):
not giving my answer away, okay. But what I would
love to give weight is the ways that you can
contact us, Matt. You and I are online all the time,
so that people can write to us at Facebook and Twitter,
where we are conspiracy stuff. You guys were on the
internet in so many places I has and that's the
end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts
(20:58):
or questions about this episode, you can get into contact
with us in a number of different ways. One of
the best is to give us a call. Our number
is one eight three three std w y t K.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
i heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you
(21:19):
to know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Let's start this week's classic episode with a question. What
would you do if you woke up one day and
all your electronic devices simply didn't work. You couldn't log
onto any website, you couldn't get the lights to switch
on in your house, and of course, your phone was bricked.
(00:21):
This might sound like the plot of many dystopian science
fiction films, but it could one day become science fact.
You see, it turns out that the angry massive star
that feeds all life on Earth could one day become
the instrument of our own civilizations destruction. If a single
(00:45):
powerful enough solar flare hits the magnetosphere of Earth, the
human species could be thrown back into the Stone Age.
Join us as we explore the fact fiction and tear
refying possibility of solar flares and the end of the
world as we know it from UFOs two, Ghosts and
(01:08):
Government cover ups. History is riddled with unexplained events. You
can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't
want you to now. Hello, everyone, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt and I'm Ben, and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. And today
we're talking about the magnificent nuclear powered sphere that's mostly
(01:31):
made up of hydrogen and helium, and it's been burning
for over four and a half billion years, which is
kind of weird to think. You know, when you think
about what a year is, I have a hard time
comprehending an entire month. Well, yeah, that is a long time.
Although it feels like January came and went already, which
is a little weird. Yeah, I feel as there were
(01:52):
time travelers are ripped them winkles. We've become unstuck in time.
But even if we were to travel to the very
beginning of Earth's origins, we would still be running into
that massive ball we call the sun. Uh. A little
funny fact about the Sun, well might be not funny
(02:13):
to some people. It is responsible for all of the
life that we know. The Sun's energy feeds the very
It's the entry level of the world's life forms, and
without it we would not be alive. So if you
want to trace the origins of your existence, uh, in
(02:36):
you're going by the energy, then you are going to
inevitably run into uh. The solar energy that plant forms
taken and it later filters down to you and the
things that you eat. And you can cause an atmosphere
to form so that any kind of plant life or
you know, even earlier than that. Right, and so I
(02:58):
know we're making the sun. Look right here, it sounds like,
you know, an online dating profile for how awesome the
sun is and how much it will take care of
it in the day. Yeah, and it's it's all nurturing
and stuff. Uh. Also, the sun has a dirty open secret,
which is that in a few billion years, uh, this
awesome stellar parent it's a pun. Sorry, somebody put in
(03:22):
the bad pun music. Okay, I earned it. I will
be the last one. But like one of those awesome
parents who occasionally goes on a horrific binge of mass murder,
the sun will expand and destroy the planet. That is
not supervillain hyperbole. It will literally destroy planet Earth. We've
(03:47):
got a while before it happens. But we also, uh,
we also have some uh some other sun shenanigans that
pose a much more clear and present danger. To steal
the title of a movie, it's correct, every once in
a while, that sun gets a little angry. Little parts
of it get angry. When when I say little, I
(04:08):
mean several hundred times the diameter of Earth angry. Wow,
that doesn't make any sense, though it does make sense
because it's a way to show the scale of the Earth.
A small disturbance in the force of the Sun is
uh probably going to be several times larger than the
(04:31):
Earth anyway. And one one thing that we need to
hit real quick or the basic facts. Right, So, how
far away is the Sun? The Sun is about eight
I think it's around eight light minutes away from the Earth.
That's terrifying. Well, yeah, it's terrifying. It's also nice because
it's warm any war, we get that fresh sunlight. We're
(04:52):
in the the old Goldilocks zone. Uh. Then we also
need to talk about how hot or how much energy
it produces. Let's go how hot? How hot is the
Sun at the core? So right at the core, it's uh,
it's over. It's greater than fifteen million degrees kelvin kelvin
not celsius. He's a bit of warm. And we also
(05:13):
know that, in addition to hydrogen and helium, the Sun
is composed of some very strong magnetic fields. Yeah, that's
kind of what keeps the whole system going. And sometimes
those magnetic fields get a bit disrupted, you'll have it's
tough to really paint a picture, but you have to
(05:35):
think about it as for me, at least, this helps
when you think about it as these electromagnetic coils that sometimes, uh,
they tighten a little bit, they get a little tangled,
and they tighten up, and that's when you'll see something
called the sun spot, where it's a little dark on
the surface of the Sun. And if you if you
go check out the Solar Dynamics Observatory, you can get
(05:55):
a really good picture of what I'm talking about, um,
and those are the places that people who observed the sun. Uh, astronomers,
they really get a little nervous when you see, especially
a large sun spot or a sun spot that's kind
of in a cluster. Right. Yeah, we do know that
sun spots tend to occur more towards the equator of
(06:17):
the Sun, and we know that observation of sun spots
dates back pretty far. Several thousand years ago. Astronomers in
China noticed sun spots. So the twelfth century BC a
thing called the Book of Changes because all the good
book titles weren't taken by that point, so you can
still have really cool names like that. Uh, they recorded
(06:38):
a sun spot. They said the Sun was yellow at
its rising and a black vapor as large as a
coin was observed at its center. And then on the
other side of the world, the Aztecs UH ruling Mexico
before the Spaniards arrived, also paid attention to the Sun
and its cycles and it's sun spots. Now, sun spots
(06:59):
are not actual thing, and human beings have been aware
of their existence, if not there um causes for a
long time. And now that we know that the causes
come from magnetic disturbances and the Sun's force, uh, we
also have learned a couple of other things. We've learned
that they're on a cycle, right, that the Sun has
(07:21):
a cycle. Every eleven years or so, it hits what's
called a solar maximum, and that's when these solar flares
are much more likely to occur in clusters, right. Yeah.
And and the reason that they're a little scary is
because they have the potential to cause some serious harm. Uh,
two planet Earth. They also have the potential to cause
(07:44):
harm to a lot of our electronics. Um. And I
guess that's really our communications because they, like I was saying,
they coil up, and they coil really tightly. And sometimes
they'll just release and and base nothing will happen. There
won't be any kind of craziness on the on the Sun.
But sometimes if it goes past the breaking point and
(08:07):
basically those coils snap back in place, you'll have a
solar flare. Solar flare will occur. Yeah, and a solar
flare is a the easy way to find it if
you're looking at it through a telescope, it would be
a sudden brightening observe over the Sun's surface or the
solar limb. And uh, this is a huge release of
(08:31):
energy UM. The number that I found for it was
six to six times ten to the Jewels. It's yeah,
it's crazy because it's it's not only releasing light and
releasing X rays and raise um. It also has the
potential to cause something called a coronal mass ejection or
(08:54):
a cm E. And that's where it gets really hairy
for the Earth, right, Yeah, because the Earth, like the Sun,
has its own magnetosphere, and this magnetosphere is also sensitive
to uh disturbances from the Sun's magnetosphere. Because again, you know,
(09:15):
in the scale of the Solar System, let alone the galaxy,
the Sun and the Earth are really really close, we're
pretty much bumper to bumper, and uh that's that's a
great spot, except when these kind of things happen. So
you and I did a video episode on this that
(09:36):
really caught both of our interests, and we did it
a while back. Right, And here's the question, This is
the question we're gonna answer in this podcast, Matt. Is
it possible that a CME could destroy Earth's selectronics? Yes,
is the answer. Okay, because the CME is essentially a
(09:57):
magnetic shock wave that's being sent out from from the
Sun and depending on where it's headed, if it's headed
towards the Earth, you can have some serious issues. So first,
let's think about what's floating around outside on the let's
say in space really close to Earth. We've got all
(10:20):
these satellites and modern civilization depends on these for a
number of things, right, a ton of things. And if
you have an electromagnetic disturbance that could say, was powerful
enough to shut down some of those electronics, which it
can be, that's not good. Right, Yeah, I would say
that's that's apocalyptic. But it's not just satellites. Uh, those
(10:43):
are important, and the lack of communication would be a
terrible thing. But it also has a potential to knock
out the entire energy grid, which is pretty insane when
you think about because depending on where it hits, with
the severity with which it it's it can it has
the potential to a cme to essentially fry some cables
(11:07):
that are going from your power plants, say, to the
rest of the grid. And if that happens, you can
have a rolling blackout, which which could be really bad
because if it if it occurs, then you can have
basically copper wire being fried throughout an entire region of
the U S. And we're just speaking about the U
(11:27):
S right now because that's the model that I've looked at. Yeah,
and that well, we also have the North American model
that can kind of incorporate parts of Canada. So so
we know that when a grid is effective, when a
power grid is affected, it's frighteningly easy to produce a
domino or a snowball effect. So because the grid supplies load, uh,
(11:50):
if it has too much of a load, that it's
just as bad as it not having enough power. When
one segment of this system is destroy a then this
means that other segments of the system will be hit
with things. Uh, The way that the rolling blackout occurs
is that different chains of the power system are trying
(12:13):
to fight an increasing number of anomalies. You know, so
we said a domino effect, right, so when you knock
out one domino, it's next to other dominoes and annox
him out sequentially. UM. I don't want to scare anybody
into thinking that the entire North American power system is
(12:34):
a house of cards, but I do want people to
realize that if the right solar flare or excuse me,
the right CMME hits at the right time, then we
will lose terrestrial power. And this this is where I
could get a little apocalyptic. All right, So, so well
we're talking about disrupting power. You know, it's tempting to think,
(12:58):
oh man, what a what a crappy inconvenience, I'm gonna
have to read a book, go outside? What is that?
But what we're talking about, uh, could potentially be a
disaster that is unprecedented history. Think of all the people
right now just in your town whose lives depend on
a reliable stream of electricity. This would be people in hospitals,
(13:22):
This would be people who are maybe even driving a car,
which is something I wanted to ask you about. UM.
And then let's look at the satellites as well. So
we said losing communication, Yeah, that could be huge. Um.
The ability to communicate using satellite is the reason that
ships don't go off course. The ability to communicate that
(13:44):
way is the reason that planes are able to uh
land without killing everyone and crashing into each other. Now,
hold on, Ben, some people might be saying, and correctly,
I thought that radio played a big part in that
you are correct, and the X rays UV radiation from
a c m E will disrupt the ionosphere, making long
(14:05):
term or excuse me, long range radio communication also go caput.
And this isn't just something that Ben and I are
making up. We've we've actually seen the effects of a
CMME before. One of the one of the only major
times that it actually affected life on Earth was in
eighteen fifty nine UM, when a CMME caused a massive
(14:27):
magnetic fluctuation in the Earth's magnet magnetosphere, which then caused
a couple of things to happen, Like, I know, the
telegraph systems failed at the time, compasses wouldn't work, UM.
And you know that doesn't sound like anything too crazy.
I guess right now. But you have to think about
the load that was on the electrical systems at the time. Um,
(14:48):
it probably wasn't much at all, and they probably didn't
even get to see some of the major effects that
if that would have occurred this year or in a
year when we've had our grid the way it is now, right,
we just haven't seen it in a long time. Yeah,
it's a it's a possible disaster that becomes more disastrous
(15:10):
with time. Now, we do know that there are ways
for things to be shielded from the effects of a SeeMe,
but we know that the vast majority things are not
because the potential of a SME of this magnitude occurring
is relatively rare. It's like winning a very terrible lottery,
worst lottery you've ever won, in the worst little and
(15:32):
the last that you might win. So uh, but I
just want to get back to what you're saying really fast.
That's the idea of losing communication and in a time
when you have no power. Also, Um, that is one
of the great post apocalyptic scenarios where you're cut off
from everybody else, you're confused, you're scared, and you can't
(15:52):
you don't have a good way to get food. You
don't have a good way to get to wherever you
need to get to, and you just feel cut off.
And that's when the human the human brain goes a
little crazy, and that's when you have the road Okay,
which we really that's the movie that I think about
when I think about the possibilities of a massive cme
(16:14):
um cannibalism, that's what I think about. Okay. Yeah, so
kind of a Lord of the Flies situation. How long
would we have for before civilization collapse without the electronic underpinnings,
especially in the city. Yeah, well, the city is always
one of the worst places to be in a natural
disaster environment. And while while we are saying some scary stuff,
(16:37):
of course we did some due diligence and said that
the possibility of this occurring is relatively small so far
as we know. But here's the tricky part. Okay, So
let's compare to another natural disaster. This would essentially be
a natural disaster in terms of its effects. So we
know already that uh, people are having a great deal
(17:00):
of difficulty predicting the frequency or the strength of natural
disasters that are on Earth, which means there much easier
to observe. Uh, scientists still have a lot of difficulty
accurately predicting eruptions or earthquakes or hurricanes are rather the
path and effect of a hurricane. We have made great
(17:23):
strides in um in our search for better methods of
prediction here, but we have yet to be able to
of the time accurately predict these things. And the Sun,
as close as it may be on a cosmic scale,
is far far beyond our abilities to reach it in
(17:46):
you know, in a practical scale, and especially to make
any kind of predictive models. Right, Yeah, But thankfully we
do have the Solar Dynamics Observatory now, and that is
one of the best best things that to come around,
in my opinion, for a long time from a technology standpoint,
because now we really do we can almost see the
entirety of the Sun at all times now and before
(18:08):
we head out to fiddle away our free time enjoying
all the wonderful electronic goodies before the Sun destroys them all,
before the Sun destroys us all, and before we ask
you some questions, Matt, where can people go to get
more information about this? Okay? So this is where I
go every morning when I get into work, because I'm
(18:28):
extremely paranoid about solar flares and there the sun's activity.
I go to space weather dot com. It's a fantastic source.
You can look at everything from You can get solar
flare alerts from them on your on your phone, which
is pretty cool. Um. You can also look at the
severity of and possibility of solar flares in the next
(18:49):
twenty for our period. You can also go to solar
ham dot net h A M dot net and uh,
that's a really cool place. It's got some of the
best s d O image is up to date stuff.
And again it's got a CMME prediction model, which is
really cool. Again, it's not completely accurate, but it's fascinating
(19:10):
look at and it makes me feel better knowing that
I check it every morning. Yeah, and one last thing,
if you want to just check out the s d
O and you can look up images from the Solar
Dynamics Observatory, go to s A d O dotr G,
s FC dot NASA dot gov. It's kind of a
long one. Hope hopefully you heard that. You may have
to rewind it, but check it out. You can just
(19:31):
search for s d O and NASA. Well, do the
address one more time. It's s D O dot G,
s f C dot NASA dot gov. And Hey, while
you're on a computer trying to figure out if the
sun will destroy us earlier than scheduled, why not take
advantage of the time to uh, let us know what
you think about a couple of questions. I'm gonna fire
(19:54):
a couple off here. Uh. First, and my favorite question here?
What would you do if you woke up one day
and none of the electronics worked? Matt? Do you have
a question? Yeah? I do. Uh. If let's say you've
got an alert on your phone that there's an imminent
(20:15):
coronal mass ejection that's there, it's thought to be able
to take out all of the electricity, and you only
have let's say an hour or two hours before it hits,
what do you do? What's the first thing you do?
I don't know, man, I I don't want to give
my answer away. We'll talk about this later. Oh I'm
(20:35):
not giving my answer away, okay. But what I would
love to give weight is the ways that you can
contact us, Matt. You and I are online all the time,
so that people can write to us at Facebook and Twitter,
where we are conspiracy stuff. You guys were on the
internet in so many places I has and that's the
end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts
(20:58):
or questions about this episode, you can get into contact
with us in a number of different ways. One of
the best is to give us a call. Our number
is one eight three three std w y t K.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
i heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you
(21:19):
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