00:00On July 23, 2024, Europe's Solar Orbiter spacecraft observed a super-powerful solar
00:07flare erupting from the far side of the Sun. This flare wasn't the most extreme ever recorded,
00:13but still, we got extremely lucky this time not to get fried by it. Such solar flares
00:19often cause long-lived raging radiation storms, and if such a storm moves in the direction
00:25of Earth, it can lead to worldwide blackouts. Before we go deeper into details of that
00:33potentially disastrous solar flare, we need to figure out what exactly this solar phenomenon
00:38is. Solar flares occur because the magnetic fields in the atmosphere of our star are moving
00:44non-stop. When the Sun is approaching its solar maximum, and that's the most active
00:49period of its 11-year-long cycle, which is, by the way, exactly what's happening now,
00:55its magnetic fields get more and more tangled, making our star look like an enormous ball
01:00of tangled rubber bands. They loop around, cross over one another, cut one another off,
01:06and then reconnect. Ever seen iron filings sprinkled on a bar magnet? These filings line
01:13up along the magnetic lines of force. Like that, the hot plasma on the surface of the
01:19Sun is at the mercy of the magnetic lines of force. Sometimes, when the magnetic fields
01:24interact with each other, some plasma gets disconnected from the fields, and its particles
01:29accelerate to immense speeds and send powerful radiation to space. That's what a solar flare
01:35is. Other times, our star throws off massive amounts of matter. Those events are coronal
01:42mass ejections, CMEs. Just one CME can contain as much as 20 billion tons of material. If
01:50that material were rock, it would create a mountain about 2.75 miles across and almost
01:56a half a mile tall. The ejected material often travels at a speed of over a million miles
02:02per hour. Solar flares and CMEs are the most powerful explosions in the solar system, releasing
02:10unimaginable amounts of energy. Solar flares have their own classification according to
02:15their strength. The smallest and weakened ones are A and B class. Then there are C and
02:21M class solar flares. And the strongest are X class flares. A number from 1 to 9, and
02:27in some cases a larger one, accompanies each letter. That's similar to the Richter scale
02:32for earthquakes. A and B class flares are too weak to affect our planet. As for C class
02:38flares, they may have small noticeable consequences. M class flares can cause short radio blackouts
02:44at the poles and weak radiation storms that can still harm astronauts. But the most dangerous
02:50of them all are X class flares. These are flares more than 10 times more powerful than
02:56X1. That's why the classification of X class flares can go higher than 9.
03:02Now let's get back to that recent solar flare. It was X14 class 1. Now we already know that
03:09it means it was an extra strong flare. Other large flares astronomers have detected recently
03:14include an X12 solar flare that happened on the 20th of May and an X10 flare that occurred
03:20on the 17th of July. All of them have come from the back side of the Sun.
03:27If we talk of the Earth side of our star, the largest solar flare that has been recorded
03:31so far within this solar cycle happened on the 14th of May. It was an X8.7 flare that
03:38led to radio blackouts. And a strong geomagnetic storm leading to magnificent auroras all over
03:44the world occurred a few days earlier. Powerful coronal mass ejections accompanied this storm.
03:51As for the July X class flare, it was so powerful that it could've ended up tragically for
03:56us. Luckily, all that magnetically charged plasma blast that accompanied the flare didn't
04:02travel in our direction. If it had, it would've been quite the solar storm. Auroras would've
04:07been incredibly impressive and a wee bit terrifying in their magnificence. But at
04:12the same time, such a dynamic blast of energetic particles hurtling our way could've caused
04:18major technological problems and electrical blackouts like the event in 1989 which severely
04:24harmed Quebec's power grid. Or a much much earlier catastrophe that still managed to
04:29cause a lot of harm to the world. I'm talking about the Carrington event which
04:35occurred in 1859 and was the first documented solar flare affecting our planet. It happened
04:41on the 1st of September and was named after Richard Carrington, the solar astronomer who
04:46witnessed the flare through his own telescope and sketched the Sun's sunspots. According
04:51to scientists, that flare was the most powerful documented solar storm over the last 500 years.
04:58The Carrington event triggered auroras that were visible as far south as the Caribbean.
05:03It led to severe interruptions in telegraph services all over the world, even shocking
05:08some telegraph operators and sparking fires after discharges from the lines ignited telegraph
05:14paper. Another major solar flare that erupted on the 4th of August, 1972, destroyed long-distance
05:21phone communication across a few states, including Illinois. This event even made the American
05:27telephone and telegraph company redesign its power system for transatlantic cables.
05:34Now let's move to March, 1985, when two super-powerful CMEs triggered a geomagnetic storm which,
05:41in turn, set off a power blackout in Canada on the 13th of March. This blackout left around
05:476 million people without electricity for 9 hours. It is said that the flare disrupted
05:52electric power transmission from the Hydro-Québec generation station and melted a few power
05:58transformers in New Jersey. And still, this solar flare was nowhere near the power of
06:03the Carrington event.
06:06The Bastille Day solar storm took its name from the French national holiday because it
06:11occurred on the same day, on the 14th of July in the year 2000. It was an X-5 class event
06:18that caused some satellites to short-circuit and resulted in radio blackouts. It's still
06:23one of the most highly observed solar storm events.
06:27From October to November, 2003, RSTAR unleashed a series of large solar flares and coronal
06:33mass ejections, and they did reach Earth and slam into our atmosphere. Those solar storms,
06:39also known as Halloween storms of 2003, caused aircraft to be rerouted, impacted satellite
06:46systems, and led to power outages in Sweden. Besides, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
06:52couldn't fulfill its functions during this solar onslaught.
06:56On the 28th of October, 2003, the Sun sent a whopper of a solar flare our way. The fire
07:03was so powerful, it overwhelmed the spacecraft sensor that was measuring it. The sensor topped
07:08out at a whopping X-28. But later, scientists figured out that the flare had reached a peak
07:13strength of about X-45.
07:18One more thing that made the Halloween storms so scary was that they happened during a time
07:22in the solar cycle when solar activity is usually quiet. That's 2 to 3 years after
07:28the solar maximum. According to NASA statistics, just 17 powerful flares erupted from our star
07:34during that time.
07:36The Sun spewed out another X-class solar flare on the 5th of December, 2006. It was an X-9
07:42class flare that disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and GPS navigational signals
07:48for around 10 minutes. That solar storm was so powerful, it even damaged the Solar X-ray
07:53Imager instrument on the GOES-13 satellite. It's the same damage to several pixels of
07:58its detector.
08:01In February 2022, SpaceX experienced the terrifying power of our star when a devastating geomagnetic
08:08storm destroyed 38 Starlink satellites worth tens of millions of dollars. It happened shortly
08:14after they were deployed. Unfortunately, Starlink satellites are especially vulnerable to geomagnetic
08:20storms since they're released into extremely low-altitude orbits, between 60 and 120 miles.
08:27They also rely on their onboard engines to overcome the drag force and raise themselves
08:31to their final altitude of around 350 miles over the surface of our planet.
08:38The thing is, during a geomagnetic storm, Earth's atmosphere absorbs energy from the
08:43storm, heats up, and extends upwards. It results in a denser thermosphere, which means more
08:49drag and it can be a serious issue for satellites. That's exactly what happened. The batch of
08:55newly released Starlink satellites didn't manage to overcome the increased drag and
08:59started to fall back, eventually burning up in the atmosphere.
09:06That's it for today! So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like
09:11and share it with your friends! Or if you want more, just click on these videos and
09:15stay on the Bright Side!
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