00:00There are some beautiful auroras happening in the northwest of America right now.
00:04Yes.
00:05So like no scientists have given this a really, really simple explanation.
00:10And it's it's called like a cannibal coronal mass ejection.
00:14That's.
00:15That's the thing that's causing all of these auroras going on right now.
00:19Cannibal.
00:20Corona mass ejection.
00:22Yeah.
00:22That sounds a little terrifying.
00:24I mean, it's kind of.
00:25So funny, right?
00:25Because like just as soon as we get over one kind of Corona, we get hit by another.
00:28But like this.
00:30This one like a cannibal coronal mass ejection.
00:32Like if I break that down for you, it's called.
00:35Caused by sunspots.
00:36So there's a sunspot on the sun called like AR 297.
00:40Five right now.
00:40Okay.
00:41And what it's been doing over the last, say, like few days is.
00:45It's producing up to 17 solar eruptions, two of which.
00:50Um, were I have headed straight towards us.
00:52Now, one of them was traveling far.
00:55And the other, it was the one just like that came just after the.
01:00First one that was emitted now when those, when that second sun like.
01:05Coronal mass ejection caught up with the first, it cannibalized it.
01:09It's sweat.
01:10And then they wrapped it all up into this one big wave of like these, these charged particles.
01:14And then they all.
01:15Swept towards the earth.
01:16And then when they hit it, they caused a geomagnetic.
01:20Storm, what, where they come from in how sunspots are created is mag.
01:25Magnetic fields are created on the sun.
01:26Like the sun is just a giant ball of plasma.
01:29So like there's loads.
01:30loads of charged particles eddying and moving around on like inside the sun across the.
01:35Sun surface now, when you have charged particles moving, you're going to induce some magnetism there.
01:40But because magnetic field lines can't cross and you've got all these moving particles, let's.
01:45Giant traffic jam of particles moving everywhere, you'll inevitably get these field lines bunched up next.
01:50to each other, they'll form into these tight knots that can't escape anywhere else.
01:54And.
01:55Eventually, they will have to snap and release energy.
01:58Now they release energy either in the form of.
02:00solar flare, like a bright flare of radiation, or they'll release energy in the form of.
02:05like chucking out some of that plasma from the sun.
02:07What's the difference between solar.
02:10solar flares and ronal mass ejections.
02:11So solar flares is just the bright flash that you'll see.
02:15of radiation from that from that field line snapping that energy release across.
02:20solar flares and ronal mass ejection is some of the sun's like plasma soup actually being like burnt.
02:25out of the sun.
02:26I love that phrase plasma soup.
02:28Mm hmm.
02:29Yeah.
02:30Tasty.
02:30Tasty.
02:31It's been a nice.
02:32I mean.
02:33pretty.
02:34But.
02:35I mean.
02:35a little terrifying right i mean does it affect earth
02:39um
02:40so it does but not in like a so not in a
02:45in an always really terrible way most of
02:47the time
02:48the earth has a pretty strong
02:50magnetic field
02:50which is really really good news for us
02:52because it protects us from all of the
02:55these like highly energized particles
02:57that the sun has just spewed out at us
02:59um
03:00in this case at like speeds of like two
03:01million miles per hour which is just i
03:03guess
03:0333
03:05times less than the speed of light
03:06pretty quick
03:07um so what the earth's magnet
03:10field will do is it will absorb all of
03:13these particles the energy will
03:15go into stretching out the magnetic field
03:17in space
03:18so it's like it's kind of
03:20bunched out towards the it gives it a
03:22long tail
03:23um and then
03:25most of those particles will gather
03:27kind of towards the poles
03:29you
03:30where they will like go downwards
03:32and then energize some of the molecules
03:35in the atmosphere
03:35and when these when these um molecules
03:38in the atmosphere then give
03:39out
03:40light
03:40um
03:41to in order to kind of go down to a
03:42lower energy level
03:43that's what why
03:45we see the aurora
03:46now because there's so many of these
03:48like particles coming in
03:50you're getting auroras much lower down
03:52um along the northern hemisphere
03:55than you would normally expect to see
03:56that's that's that's that's a pretty
03:59that's
04:00that's a nice effect there um and i
04:02know that
04:03uh people had already taken video
04:05from it
04:05uh this is from manitoba in canada
04:10yeah beautiful just absolutely beautiful
04:13yeah yeah yeah and like
04:15like i think also you could see the aurora in
04:17the u.s certainly like as far south as
04:19pennsylvania
04:20iowa and oregon over the last two days as well
04:22oh right on uh space
04:25weather.com that you guys were sharing
04:27information from uh they showed some
04:30pictures purple i mean purple what a what an aura
04:34that earth is giving
04:35giving off of this aurora and you know i uh
04:40when you mentioned polls i'm like that's why
04:42they're always up there towards yeah we got
04:44to get close
04:45citizen polls then yeah but so okay so that's
04:48the good one
04:50but uh how about damage
04:52okay yes
04:55so damage um so they can cause damage so
05:00one of the most recent kind of power outages that
05:02was caused by a storm of this time
05:05fight was um in the was the 1989 quebec power
05:09cut which was called
05:10by a geomagnetic storm
05:11now most of the time especially when it comes to people who provide
05:15like power lines and stuff a lot of them have shielded like their their their like power
05:20cables and things like that with a kind of
05:22faraday cage basically which diverts the
05:24energy
05:25or they also have like other techniques that allow them to kind of siphon off excess energy
05:30that might be given to power lines by storms like this okay but like that hasn't
05:35always been the case like especially back in 1859 there was a really big event called
05:39the court
05:40great carrington event um which was the largest sort of solar storm in modern human
05:45history i'm sure there have been solar storms uh just as large throughout uh
05:57you
05:50our past but like before that point we weren't really documenting it and we didn't have many
05:54electronics
05:55electronics around so we didn't really care um but in this case the great carrington
06:00event fried most of the telegram systems in the u.s and in europe
06:05had been developed at the time and it also led to auroras that could be
06:10seen around like as far south as the as the caribbean um and like there were people waiting
06:15waking up at night thinking that like thinking that it was daytime in the caribbean
06:20because of these enormous auroras from this event i mean we were freaked out about
06:25it now when we see things like that we know more but i can't even imagine you know over 100 years
06:30ago yeah yeah exactly in terms of um more modern sort of phenomena
06:35phenomena that have caused more modern damage other than the quebec event um recently
06:40actually there was another geomagnetic storm that caused the downing of um 40
06:45like 40 of spacex's starlink satellites that was one thing that happened um
06:50um and on top of that as well there's a potential risk um that
06:55that internet like the internet in general especially in the united states
07:00could be cut out by a geomagnetic storm because a lot of these cables run underwater
07:05through like like latitudes that would be affected by it and like
07:10like you would have a geomagnetic storm they're not shielded so they would basically be
07:15probably quite severely affected by this but as is the case with a lot of things and how
07:20they're done with legislation it's like earthquakes it doesn't often get legislated for until
07:25the worst has already happened yeah that's a shame i mean i really like the internet i really i like
07:30i like to keep it around this is how we get to communicate right
07:35um but but you're saying that we have protections now so
07:40so most i think most like power companies have already built in protections into their
07:45grids for these kind of things it's just yeah you're not going to be getting any like um
07:50i guess coronal mass ejection memes in the middle of a coronal mass ejection you have to wait a few
07:54weeks for them to fix
07:55to step out the underwater cables yeah and and luckily earth you know we have
08:00this nice electromagnetic shield right already built in otherwise we'd be you know goners
08:05yeah it would fry us and it would also fry our atmosphere like a big reason why mars doesn't have much
08:10an atmosphere for instance it doesn't really have very active um magnetic fields
08:15so all of those all of the atmosphere when when it gets hit by this these wave of like
08:20hydrogen like particles protons um like the atmosphere gets stripped away quite
08:25quickly poor mars poor mars yeah but that's why we're here right we're not
08:30we're not we're not i mean we are on mars but you know yeah yeah not yet not yet not yet well
08:35so is there a way to know when things like this will happen
08:40i know we watch the sun we have video of the sun it seems more like after the fact
08:45yeah so you get a bit of advanced warning like for instance
08:50great carrington event is named after richard carrington who spotted like intense solar flares
08:55in the sky like a few like a few hours like maybe about 15 hours
09:00before the actual like event hit but the sun is quite a complex
09:05object like there's loads going on in those magnetic fields it's still really really hard for scientists
09:17you
09:10predict what's going on there yeah if only if only if only well
09:15until until until the next major astronomical event thanks so much ben thank you
09:20you
09:25you
09:30you
09:35you
09:40you
09:40you
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