- 6 weeks ago
🌪️ Scientists are discovering strange vibrations rippling through Earth’s atmosphere, and they’re way more serious than they sound. These invisible waves can mess with satellites, GPS, power grids, and global communications all at once. One strong enough event could trigger failures that cascade across the entire planet. This video explains what atmospheric vibrations are, where they come from, and why modern civilization depends on a very delicate balance. Don’t miss this video if you want to know how something you can’t see could shut everything down. Animation is created by Bright Side.
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Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
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For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
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This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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FunTranscript
00:00A huge power outage hit Spain, Portugal, and parts of southwest France all at once,
00:08leaving millions of people without electricity.
00:11It happened on Monday morning, April 28, 2025, and caused lots of problems.
00:17Airports couldn't function, trains stopped in places like Lisbon and Madrid,
00:21and some hospitals had to cancel surgeries because they had no power.
00:25Everything just came to a stop.
00:27No one is sure yet what caused the blackout.
00:30But the company in charge of Portugal's electricity said it might have been something strange called induced atmospheric vibration.
00:38That's a rare and weird thing that can happen in the sky and might mess with power systems.
00:43It occurs when substantial changes in temperature and wind mess with giant power lines,
00:49making them wiggle and shake in strange ways.
00:52These wobbles can confuse the power system and cause big problems.
00:55So, Wren, the company that runs Portugal's electricity, first said that those weird wobbles might be the reason everything went dark.
01:04But later, they said that was not really what happened.
01:08According to Wren, the real reason for the blackout was a huge voltage change, like a power surge in Spain's power grid.
01:15At that moment, Portugal was using electricity from Spain.
01:18When that enormous power fluctuation hit, it triggered automatic safety systems in Portugal.
01:24Those systems shut everything down to protect power plants.
01:28Sadly, it also caused a nationwide blackout.
01:32During extreme weather in Spain, the air temperature changes fast,
01:36and that makes immense power lines stretch or shrink like rubber bands.
01:40That changes how tight they are and how they move in the wind,
01:44which can mess with both their physical balance and the electricity flowing through them,
01:49making the entire system unstable.
01:52Some experts say that if things get bad enough, this can even break power lines,
01:57cause short circuits, or even damage the towers holding up the lines.
02:01That's why safety systems are always in place.
02:04They're supposed to shut parts of the grid down automatically to stop bigger disasters.
02:09During the blackout, something like a domino effect happened.
02:14When parts of the power grid shut down, it made other parts unstable too.
02:19Some of the big electricity generators couldn't handle the chaos and had to disconnect.
02:24And when you suddenly lose those big generators, the power system can't keep up.
02:29It's something like too many people needing electricity, but not enough of it being made.
02:34It can cause even more blackouts to spread fast.
02:37Nobody knows exactly what started the blackout.
02:41Some people wondered if it might have been a cyberattack,
02:44like someone messing with the system on purpose through computers.
02:47But officials from Spain and the European Commission said that there was no proof of that.
02:53Spain's electricity company made it clear.
02:55Cyberattack?
02:56Nope, that's not the problem.
02:58Still, one big reason so many places were hit is because Europe's power grids are all connected like one big web.
03:07Usually, that's a good thing, since if one country has a problem, another can help by sharing electricity.
03:13At the same time, everything has to stay super balanced.
03:17The amount of electricity being made must match how many people are using it.
03:21If even one part gets knocked out, it can mess things up for other parts nearby, especially if they were depending on it.
03:29In other words, when something big goes wrong, it can travel through that web and cause problems in lots of countries at once.
03:36Just like what happened in this case.
03:38And it's not the first time this kind of thing has happened.
03:43Back in 2003, most of Italy had no power for 12 hours because of a problem with an electricity line connected to Switzerland.
03:52In 2006, overloading of lines coupled with low temperatures caused too much power to search through Germany's grid,
03:59which ended up knocking out power in many parts of Europe.
04:02Anyway, speaking of the recent blackout, by Tuesday morning, things started getting better.
04:07Most of the lights came back on across the Iberian Peninsula.
04:11That's Portugal and Spain.
04:13All of Portugal had power again, and 99% of Spain did too.
04:18Now, the people in charge are trying to figure out exactly what went wrong, and how to make sure it never happens again.
04:25So yeah, power grids are awesome when they work.
04:29When things go wrong, they can go really wrong.
04:32Now, let's travel back into the past, to the year 2012.
04:36Long time ago, huh?
04:38That's when India had one of the biggest blackouts in history.
04:42More than 600 million people lost electricity.
04:45That's like half the country or the entire population of Europe.
04:49This huge mess happened when three enormous power grids all broke down at once.
04:55Yep, those very grids that move electricity around.
04:57So, when they fail, the lights go out everywhere.
05:01Because of this, entire cities just stopped working.
05:04Trains couldn't move.
05:06Water pumps stopped.
05:07Traffic lights went dark, and people were stuck all over the place.
05:11In Delhi, the capital city, the metro shut down, and passengers had to be helped off the trains.
05:17Without traffic lights, the roads turned into giant traffic jams.
05:21The blackout hit 20 of India's 28 states, including big ones like Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and West Bengal.
05:31In West Bengal, around 200 miners got stuck underground because the elevators stopped working.
05:38Luckily, they were all rescued safely.
05:40Engineers worked all night to fix things, and by the next day, they managed to get the power back on for all three grids.
05:47In India, smaller power cuts happen a lot, especially in cities.
05:53That's because the country doesn't make enough electricity for everyone, and the equipment they use is pretty old.
05:59But a full grid collapse like this is rare.
06:02Before this, it happened in northern India back in 2001.
06:05So, when it happened again in 2012, and across three grids no less, it was very important.
06:13Everything just shut down, and it showed how much the system needed fixing.
06:17But blackouts like these happened in Europe before, too.
06:21Back in 2006, something weird happened because people in Germany got cold.
06:26It was a chilly Saturday night, and families in northern Germany turned on their heaters all at once.
06:32This sudden spike in energy use put a huge load on the power grid.
06:37To make things worse, one major power cable had been turned off for a bit, so a ship could pass under it.
06:43Oh, talk about bad timing.
06:44The grid couldn't handle everything, and it started breaking down.
06:49First, western Germany had blackouts.
06:52Then, things started going wrong in France, where even the big French power company, EDF, couldn't keep up with demand.
06:59Before long, power was going out in Paris, its suburbs, and other parts of the country.
07:04Then, the trouble spread to Italy, Spain, and Belgium, and even Morocco.
07:09Millions of homes were left without power.
07:12In France alone, about 5 million people were left in the dark.
07:16Trains stopped running, and fire crews got loads of calls from people stuck in elevators.
07:22One of the people in charge said the whole thing started falling apart like a house of cards.
07:27Country after country started pulling power from France, which only made things worse.
07:32To stop a total blackout across all of Europe, they had to shut down some electricity for a short while on purpose.
07:40Over in Italy, the lights went out in both northern and southern regions.
07:45This country often imports electricity from other places, so it got hit hard.
07:50A few years earlier, in 2003, most of Italy had gone dark during another big blackout.
07:56Belgium had its own problems, while Spain saw power cuts in some of their larger cities.
08:01Even trains and high-speed rail had to stop in some places.
08:06It all started because too many people needed electricity at the same time, and the European power network couldn't keep up.
08:14Experts later said that the whole thing showed just how badly Europe needed to update and fix its old electricity systems to stop something like this.
08:23It's 10 p.m.
08:25You suddenly feel hungry and go to the fridge, but there's nothing inside.
08:29You decide to hop to the nearest supermarket.
08:32There, you find the snack you want and pay by card.
08:35On the way home, you wonder, was it this easy to get food in the city a century ago?
08:40One of the streetlights flickers and goes out.
08:43You are now in the dark, feeling scared?
08:46Now you know how people felt after sundown in the pre-electricity era.
08:50We are so used to power that we forget that it isn't even a century old.
08:56In 1925, only half of all U.S. homes had electricity.
09:00Without it, nothing would be possible today.
09:03The light in your room, the refrigerator, store signs and credit card.
09:07They all need electricity to run.
09:09So, how did people live without it?
09:13Did our cities lie in complete darkness?
09:15Not quite.
09:16The history of illuminating our homes and streets is thousands of years old.
09:24Recently, 2022, archaeologists discovered the oldest intact oil lamp.
09:29They estimated it was 2,300 years old.
09:33There is evidence of workshops that produced these lamps on a massive scale.
09:37Italian scientists have discovered similar lamps in Modena.
09:40This city was the center of oil lamp production in the Roman Empire.
09:43The workshops were so widespread that they even had different brands.
09:48Fortis, Feitas Bai, and Strobeli.
09:51Some brands were in high demand.
09:53So other manufacturers copied their maker's marks.
09:56And you thought that fakes were a modern problem.
09:59These oil lamps were simple in design.
10:02High-end lamps were made from bronze and other metals.
10:05But the most common material was clay.
10:08People would pour oil through the central hole and then burn a wick inside the nozzle area.
10:12The wick was mostly linen.
10:15But oil lamps were small in size and were used indoors.
10:19There was no way to light a whole street with them.
10:21The alternative was, you've guessed it, candles.
10:28Humans still use candles today.
10:30Your grandma probably has a candle and a box of matches hidden in a drawer somewhere.
10:34Just in case of a power outage.
10:36Humans have been making candles for 5,000 years.
10:39When you think of a candle, you think of beeswax.
10:42But the range of candle materials is pretty wide.
10:45In the Middle Ages, only the rich could afford beeswax candles.
10:49The rest of the population had to be happy with tallow.
10:52By modern standards, candles have terrible energy efficiency.
10:55Do you remember the time when you first saw a candle and tried to touch it?
11:00Ouch!
11:01You never got that idea again, did you?
11:03Candles use a lot of energy to generate heat.
11:06That's why they are far from ideal light sources.
11:09And the light they emit is not the kind we need.
11:11It's infrared.
11:12Humans cannot see this sort of light.
11:14The numbers are staggering.
11:16Only 1% of candlelight is visible to us humans.
11:19Modern light bulbs are way more efficient.
11:21They shine 80 times brighter than candles.
11:26In such dim conditions, our ancestors had to be imaginative.
11:30For instance, they covered artwork with a thin layer of gold.
11:33This technique was called gold leaf.
11:35Artists didn't do this to make their artwork look luxurious.
11:38They wanted their paintings to glow in the candlelight.
11:41And they had another ally in the struggle against darkness, natural light.
11:45Have you ever wondered why old churches have tall, elongated windows?
11:48Their main function was to let sunlight inside.
11:52After all, these structures were huge.
11:54There was no other way to illuminate them.
11:56Just take Notre Dame, Paris, France, as an example.
12:00It covers an area four times as large as a hockey rink.
12:03And the building was 211 feet high.
12:05That's about half as tall as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
12:08So it made sense to build large windows.
12:12In homes, mirrors had the same effect as windows.
12:15They would reflect natural light around the house.
12:17Before electricity, our homes were packed with mirrors.
12:21And how many do we have today?
12:22One in the bathroom and maybe one in the hallway.
12:25That's because we no longer need them to reflect light.
12:29All those mirrors have been replaced with a simple flip of a light switch.
12:33Today, interior designers advise people to remove mirrors from their bedrooms for better sleep.
12:38Talk about a plot twist.
12:40But what about buildings that people visited at night time, such as theaters and opera houses?
12:46The solution was surprisingly low-tech.
12:49Candles.
12:50Like, thousands of them.
12:53Builders mounted them on large chandeliers.
12:55But there was a problem.
12:57All those candles created heat and would burn for an hour or so, max.
13:02Playwrights and composers had to add pauses, so staff would have time to replace the candles.
13:08Have you ever shattered a light bulb by accident?
13:10Not a pleasant experience.
13:13But luckily, you can clean the glass with a broom in seconds.
13:16Before electricity, such clumsiness cost people their lives.
13:20Knocking over a candle could start a major fire.
13:23And there was another danger.
13:25Ladies wore long dresses that presented a fire hazard.
13:28Our ancestors were literally playing with fire.
13:31And this is all indoors.
13:32Outside the house, you would have to carry a flaming torch.
13:37Or hope that the sky wasn't cloudy, so you could navigate by moonlight.
13:41And one smart American decided not to go out at night at all.
13:45Benjamin Franklin went to bed at 10 p.m. and got up at 5 a.m.
13:49But over in London, going out at night created a new business.
13:54Link boys carried torches for Victorians.
13:56These youngsters would wait outside inns for patrons to come out after dark and offer their services.
14:00And they did their job in times of thick fog as well.
14:04That's the English weather for you.
14:08Before electricity, it was dangerous to go outside after sundown.
14:11But this was about to change in 1807.
14:15That's when a German engineer, Frederick Windsor, lit a street in London using gas lamps.
14:20It was finally becoming possible to go out at night and feel safe.
14:24Now these gas lamps weren't easy to operate.
14:26At dusk, a lamplighter had to carry a torch to turn them on, so to say.
14:30And then, at dawn, they had to do another round to put out the flames.
14:34That sounds like some good cardio.
14:36And it was.
14:37During their entire career, a lamplighter could easily walk 150,000 miles in total.
14:43And then came electricity.
14:46In the 1870s, Thomas Edison was the first to produce commercial light bulbs.
14:51A city in the west of Romania, Timisoara, became the first place in Europe to have electric streetlights.
14:57Half of the homes in Britain had electric power by the end of the 1930s.
15:02The age of electricity had begun, but there was still room for improvement.
15:08At the time, the most common type of light bulb was incandescent.
15:12This means that the light bulb has a filament inside that produces light when heated by electric power.
15:18This type of bulb is similar to a candle.
15:21It produces heat rather than light.
15:23And the ratio will stun you.
15:2595% of the electricity that flows through the light bulb is converted into heat.
15:30Yes, you've heard it right.
15:32Only 5% of energy is used for creating actual light.
15:35Despite this, electric power has changed the way we live.
15:38In the year 1800, only 2% of the world's population lived in cities.
15:45And there is a good reason for this.
15:47Cities were dark places, illuminated only by candles and oil lamps.
15:51There was no street lighting.
15:53After electricity became a thing, the numbers turned.
15:56According to the World Bank, more than half of the world's population, 56%, lives in cities today.
16:02And our urban settlements look a lot different than they did just a century and a half ago.
16:08They now shine bright on satellite images.
16:10From space, Las Vegas is the city that shines the brightest at night.
16:15But the story of illumination is far from over.
16:19In 2006, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S., became the first metropolitan area to use LED for street lighting.
16:26It is short for light-emitting diodes.
16:29This new type of lighting uses at least 75% less energy than the light bulb perfected by Edison in the 1800s.
16:36And they last longer, too.
16:38Up to 25 times.
16:42That's it for today.
16:44So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
16:49Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
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