00:00Our planet has known terrible floods, powerful tornadoes, destructive hurricanes.
00:06Those dangerous natural disasters are familiar to us.
00:09Just picture this.
00:11Winds howling through the atmosphere at about 500 miles per hour,
00:14and they can stick around for weeks.
00:16These insane winds have the potential to damage the ozone layer,
00:19making our Earth a hostile place for life.
00:22It's not some wild Netflix dystopia.
00:25These are real-life hypercanes.
00:29A hypercane is a hypothetical extreme tropical cyclone,
00:32the likes of which we've never known.
00:35To kick off a cyclone, the sea surface temps have to hit around 122 degrees Fahrenheit,
00:40basically hot enough to sear a rare steak.
00:43It's tough to imagine, especially since that's nearly 22 degrees hotter
00:47than the highest ocean temperature ever recorded.
00:50Yep, the hottest ocean water ever was recorded in Kuwait in July 2020.
00:57What could cause such a serious increase in temperature?
00:59A powerful comet or asteroid impact?
01:02An eruption of a supervolcano?
01:04Or a large underwater eruption?
01:06There's even a theory that a series of hypercanes could have sped up the demise
01:10of non-avian dinos after the infamous asteroid impact.
01:15An important difference between a hypercane and any present-day hurricane
01:20is that a hypercane would rise as far as the upper stratosphere.
01:24That's up to 25 to 35 miles over the surface of our planet.
01:28Meanwhile, present-day hurricanes only go as high as the lower stratosphere,
01:32up to 6 miles above Earth.
01:34It would make a dramatic, catastrophic difference,
01:37but we'll talk more about it later.
01:41Hypercanes could gust to 600 miles per hour.
01:44For comparison, the most powerful recorded tropical cyclone
01:47in terms of maximum sustained winds was Hurricane Patricia.
01:51At its peak, it reached a speed of 215 miles per hour.
01:55This speed pales in comparison with that of a hypercane.
01:59Can you imagine how much destruction such a natural disaster could cause?
02:05Should they ever form, hypercanes will also have an enormous lifespan.
02:10They could rage for a couple of weeks, if not more.
02:13Extremely low pressure inside hypercanes would support massive storm systems
02:18the size of North America.
02:20At the same time, hypercanes could be as small as 15 miles across.
02:25Such relatively tiny formations would lose their strength
02:28in no time after wandering into colder waters.
02:31On the other hand, the waters after a hypercane
02:34could hypothetically remain hot for weeks,
02:37hot enough for more hypercanes to form.
02:42Since a hypercane would reach far up into the stratosphere,
02:46there would be a real chance it could damage Earth's ozone layer.
02:50And it would have devastating consequences for life on our planet.
02:54The ozone layer absorbs some of the harmful radiation from the sun,
02:58preventing it from reaching the planet's surface.
03:00Let's just hope to never see a hypercane in our lifetime.
03:06Another potential disaster that could seriously harm Earth
03:09could be the activity of our very own sun.
03:12I mean a massive solar flare.
03:14Few natural disasters can wreak as much global havoc.
03:18A solar flare wouldn't destroy buildings like a tsunami or earthquake.
03:22It wouldn't end lives in the same way an asteroid or a supervolcano would.
03:27But if the worst comes to the worst,
03:29it would destroy the entire electronic infrastructure of our planet.
03:33Recovering from the consequences of this catastrophe
03:36would cost trillions of dollars.
03:39An incredibly powerful solar flare could cause loads of infrastructures to fail.
03:44Including communication, medicine, banking systems, and transportation.
03:48Earth would be left without electricity for a long time.
03:52And people wouldn't be able to reboot the already broken power grids.
03:56Water supply systems would be out of order.
03:59There would be no food in supermarkets.
04:04In 1859, people in different parts of the world
04:07woke up in the middle of the night because it was so light outside
04:10they thought it was already morning.
04:12The skies were illuminated with colorful auroras.
04:15They showed up even in the regions where no one had seen them before.
04:19Like the Bahamas, Hawaii, or Jamaica.
04:23Telegraphs got electrically charged, even though they were disconnected.
04:28Fires started in many regions.
04:30In other words, the consequences were already catastrophic,
04:34even when technology barely existed.
04:37Imagine the avalanche of problems a solar flare could trigger today.
04:43Then there are gamma ray bursts.
04:46You can't come across this kind of radiation in your everyday life.
04:50A gamma ray burst occurs when two neutron stars collide when a massive star collapses.
04:55Gamma rays could turn into a serious danger to our home planet.
05:00If a gamma ray burst happened close to Earth,
05:03it would likely rip our ozone layer away.
05:06And you already know how crucial this layer is.
05:10Plus, gamma rays could create ground ozone.
05:13This kind of ozone could seep into the ocean since it's water-soluble,
05:17and that would lead to a mass extinction of marine life and plants.
05:22According to some theories,
05:24if a gamma ray burst occurred within around 200 light-years away from Earth,
05:28and its jets were pointed directly at us,
05:31our planet would be vaporized.
05:33If the distance was greater, but still in the Milky Way,
05:36the resulting radiation would sterilize all life on the side of the Earth pointing towards the burst.
05:45Another catastrophe that could potentially destroy our planet might be a supereruption,
05:50an eruption of a supervolcano.
05:53Yellowstone Park is located on top of one of those.
05:56The last massive eruption in that region happened about 664,000 years ago.
06:02The next eruption might be due anytime soon.
06:05Luckily, at the moment, there's no evidence that the supervolcano is waking up or getting ready for an eruption.
06:11But if it did happen,
06:13a massive column of lava and ash would shoot up into the air to a height of several miles.
06:19The volcano would keep pumping ash for days on end.
06:23But the most dangerous consequences of the eruption for all living creatures would be ash fallout.
06:28Buildings and trees would collapse under the weight of this dense substance.
06:34In just a couple of days, a 10-foot layer of ash would cover the territory of 50 miles around the center of the eruption.
06:42After the ash got into the stratosphere, the temperatures would start to drop all over the world.
06:48The eruption would most likely be rich in sulfur, an effective sunblocker.
06:53So soon it would get so cold that there would be no summer in the entire world for a few following years.
06:58It would be hard for animals to find food and clean water.
07:03Earth could also encounter a wandering black hole,
07:08a region in space where gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape its clutches.
07:13At the moment, the nearest to us black hole is around 1,500 light-years away.
07:19Seems like there's nothing to worry about.
07:21Well, until you find out about wandering black holes.
07:24Now things definitely get creepier.
07:27If such a black hole entered the solar system, Earth would be doomed.
07:32Recently, for the first time ever, astronomers have found a solitary wandering black hole in our home galaxy.
07:41This space traveler is 7.1 times as massive as the sun and is now 5,200 light-years away.
07:49Scientists discovered wandering black holes before, but those were in other galaxies.
07:55This one is the first to pop up in the Milky Way.
08:01Giant sinkholes could also swallow entire communities.
08:05For example, when one of such sinkholes opened up in the city of New York in the summer of 2022,
08:10it pulled a parked van into the Earth.
08:13And it wasn't the only sinkhole in that area.
08:16Local inhabitants reported around 4,000 sinkholes all over the city between July 2021 and June 2022.
08:24This kind of problem is also very common in Florida, and it's much more serious than it may sound.
08:31Sinkholes open all of a sudden, holding down everything and everyone that happens to be nearby.
08:40Sinkholes appear all over the world.
08:42They're totally unpredictable and form without warning.
08:45Luckily, experts know what causes them.
08:48In some regions, there are vast areas of groundwater.
08:51But during droughts, this water dries up, which creates large, empty caverns.
08:56After heavy rains, the surface over such a cavern is likely to collapse, creating a sinkhole within minutes.
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