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Learn how to identify red holes in the sky as a warning sign for potential danger, and discover what to do when you spot unusual phenomena in the sky. Stay informed and stay safe!
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00:00In January 2022, a volcano eruption happened in the Tonga Islands that forever changed the way we understand GPS signals.
00:10This volcano caused a massive disturbance, sending out a colossal mix of gas and debris in the air.
00:17It generated a shockwave that traveled across the entire atmosphere, reaching all the way to Alaska, and launched a tsunami
00:25over nearby islands.
00:27Over northern Australia, it crafted a weird plasma bubble in the upper atmosphere, which disrupted GPS systems for hours.
00:37People that happened to be under this bubble and in need of precise GPS waited for ages before their device
00:43could receive precious information again.
00:46The exact place where these disturbances occurred is called the ionosphere.
00:51It's the place where our atmosphere meets outer space and looks like this buzzing layer where heat from the sun
00:58turns gases into electrically charged particles.
01:01It can also be seriously unpredictable, changing depending on the weather and thinning out when the sun's rays are less
01:09powerful.
01:10Because it's electrically charged, the ionosphere helps us with our communication needs.
01:15It houses many satellites, including the International Space Station.
01:20Here's how changes in the ionosphere can interact with GPS signals.
01:25Let's say you're playing detective with your friends and need to find them using a special radar.
01:30This radar sends out invisible waves through the ionosphere to locate your buddies.
01:35If everything is normal, you'll find their precise location in no time.
01:41Should those waves go through a place where the ionosphere particles are a bit messed up, the waves might slow
01:48down, get scattered, or change direction, confusing your radar.
01:52In the same way, when GPS signals travel through a damaged ionosphere, they can malfunction.
01:59Scientists have developed a way to fix this, like special sensors to anticipate changes in the atmosphere.
02:06The ionosphere is also sensitive to rockets being launched from Earth, not just storms and volcanoes.
02:14At first, astronomers believed these red patches they were noticing in the sky were similar to the northern lights found
02:21in Sweden, Finland, or Canada.
02:23But they soon figured out there were gaps in the ionosphere.
02:28Beautiful to look at, yes, but experts are worried that these crimson areas might be causing communication and astronomy problems
02:36that we've yet to discover.
02:38Since scientists don't know all the effects of these holes on our environment, it's best to steer clear if you
02:44see a red hole in the sky, just to be safe.
02:47But at least they seal up within 10 to 20 minutes.
02:51Mars has its own eerie set of lights happening in the atmosphere, and you'd think, since it's the red planet,
02:57these lights would also be red.
02:59Should you ever land on its surface, surprise!
03:03At times, the sky turns to a green glow.
03:06This unexpected hue could be very important for future Mars trips, since it can help specialists better understand the Martian
03:14atmosphere.
03:16Or what's left of it.
03:17That's because, at some point in its history, Mars switched from being a warm and wet world to the cold,
03:24dry plains we know today.
03:27How is Mars slowly losing even what's left of its atmosphere?
03:31One popular theory is that Mars' weak gravity, combined with the fact that it doesn't have a strong magnetic field,
03:38lets the atmosphere escape into space.
03:40This vulnerability comes from the solar wind, a constant flow of particles from the sun.
03:48The sun's push over millions of years may have thinned out the atmosphere, grabbing the lighter parts.
03:54Some scientists suggest another possibility.
03:57A colossal impact by another object might have swiped Mars' atmosphere away.
04:03Studying this greenish glow is key to understanding what's going on on the Martian atmosphere, a place satellites can't directly
04:10explore.
04:11Since we plan to visit this neighboring planet in the following decades, scientists intend to develop the perfect spacecraft.
04:19Knowing its atmospheric density helps us build machines tough enough to handle Martian drag.
04:25And we can design parachutes that gracefully descend to the Martian surface.
04:30See these amazing purples and greens lighting up the sky?
04:34That's not your typical Aurora.
04:36It's Steve.
04:38First discovered by regular people, not scientists, some years back, we now know it's the Aurora's more elusive cousin.
04:46Steve is short for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, and was caught on camera back in 2018 by a bunch
04:54of amateur Aurora chasers in Canada.
04:56They then brought it to the attention of NASA scientists.
05:01Here's how this is different from the Aurora, starting with the appearance.
05:05Steve is more of a magenta streak, while the Aurora is usually made out of green ribbons.
05:12Auroras happen with particles from the sun interact with the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere, causing gases to emit light.
05:19Steve is thought to be a separate optical phenomenon that sometimes appears alongside auroras.
05:27While the exact mechanism behind it is still being studied, scientists believe it is linked with charged particles in the
05:34ionosphere that also interact with the Earth's magnetic field.
05:38Now that we know where to look, Steve might not be as rare.
05:42If you're planning to catch a glimpse of it, you'll need to travel to places where auroras usually happen, like
05:48Canada, Alaska, Northern Europe, New Zealand, and Australia.
05:55That's because it's never visible on its own.
05:58It's powered up when the aurora is extra bright during geomagnetic storms.
06:04Auroras can also happen on the sun, too.
06:07These luxurious lights happen somewhere around 25,000 miles above a sunspot, a dark magnetic patch on the sun's surface.
06:16Astronomers have only recently discovered our own sun is capable of generating these lights.
06:23So far, they've only spotted aurora-like signals from faraway stars.
06:28Here on Earth, the aurora can last anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.
06:33Maybe even a couple of hours if you're lucky.
06:35On the surface of the sun, though, this phenomenon is a week-long display of intricate lights.
06:43Strange lights in the sky can also happen before an earthquake hits.
06:47Mexico had its share in 2017, lighting up the Internet with pictures of weird celestial shades before a massive magnitude
06:558.1 earthquake.
06:56Some voices in the scientific community wonder if this light phenomenon is indeed connected to earthquakes at all.
07:04Others have this theory that such lights are caused by the release of ionized oxygen from the breaking of certain
07:10rocks.
07:11A photographer from Finland captured these shots of a circular rainbow display in the sky and wondered what might be
07:19causing it.
07:20It's something pretty ordinary.
07:22Pollen.
07:23These colorful rings are called pollen coronas, and they happen when sunlight hits the pollen in the air at a
07:29certain angle.
07:29You can easily tell if you're looking at pollen coronas if they're accompanied by star-like sparkles.
07:36Those are individual pollen grains, and they come in many sizes.
07:40The process is very simple.
07:42Sunlight hits the pollen and scatters into different colors.
07:46Some colors get blocked or crash into each other, creating a pattern known as diffraction.
07:52The pollen in these images is from pine trees, and under a microscope, they look like tiny Mickey Mouses.
07:59Those ears are actually air pockets that help them float in the wind.
08:04The air sacs all line up in the same direction, creating the elliptical shape of the rings.
08:09For these coronas to show up, pollen levels need to be very high.
08:15An astronaut up on the International Space Station once snapped this picture of our planet,
08:20showing these two weird blue patches of light in our atmosphere.
08:24They might seem related to each other, but these lights are two different natural phenomenon that just happen to be
08:30captured at the same time.
08:32The first one, down at the bottom, is a massive lightning strike that zapped somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand.
08:39Lightning is usually pretty hard to spot from way up there because of clouds,
08:43but this time it's struck between them, firing up the walls around it like a luminous ring.
08:48The second blue blob up in the top right happened because of the moon.
08:53The way our natural satellite lines up with the space station lets the sunlight it reflects shoot straight through Earth's
09:01atmosphere.
09:02This turns it into a bright light with a fuzzy halo.
09:05It happens because some of the moonlight bounces off tiny particles in our atmosphere,
09:11making the moon look blue in this picture.
09:13That orange halo curving along Earth's edge is just the atmosphere.
09:19Instead of striking down towards the ground like any normal lightning would,
09:23or at least zipping sideways between clouds,
09:25a gigantic jet blasts upward from the top of the cloud.
09:29It shoots more than 50 miles into the sky,
09:32almost touching the lower edge of space.
09:36The gigantic jet is the most powerful and rarest kind of lightning.
09:41It occurs about 1,000 times a year
09:43and emits up to 50 times as much energy as a regular lightning bolt does.
09:49And not so long ago,
09:50researchers detected probably the largest gigantic jet ever recorded.
09:55It originated in a cloud over Oklahoma in 2018.
10:00The charge transfer was nearly double the previous most powerful gigantic jet.
10:05Scientists said it was comparable to the largest ever detected cloud-to-ground strike.
10:12Lightning balls are small floating spheres of light.
10:15They can be orange, yellow, or even red.
10:17Sometimes lightning balls descend from the sky.
10:20In other cases, they appear out of nowhere, hovering several feet above the ground.
10:25They don't emit any heat and produce very little sound.
10:29Lightning balls can bounce off objects.
10:31If they come across something electrical like a TV,
10:34they usually disappear with a quiet pump, leaving behind the smell of sulfur.
10:40But lightning balls can also start fires or explode.
10:44Scientists believe this phenomenon might be connected to thunderstorms.
10:47But there's no solid proof yet.
10:50While traveling by plane at night,
10:53you might witness huge bright red flashes illuminating the sky at a distance.
10:58They resemble bizarre space jellyfish.
11:01But of course, they're not.
11:02Those are sprites, or red sprites, also known as cloud-to-space lightning.
11:08Such visual shapes flickering in the night sky are large-scale electric discharges.
11:13They happen high above thunderstorm clouds at altitudes of up to 56 miles.
11:19That's why you can't really see them from the ground.
11:22Unlike regular lightning, red sprites are positively charged,
11:26which makes them exceptionally rare,
11:28just a mere 5% of all lightning strikes.
11:32For the first time, people saw this phenomenon in 1886 and photographed it in 1889.
11:39Naga fireballs are weird balls of fire that appear out of the blue in the sky above the Mekong River
11:45in Thailand.
11:46They're also called ghost lights, or Mekong lights.
11:50Those glowing spheres are said to rise from the water into the air.
11:55They can be as tiny as small sparkles, and as large as a basketball.
12:00Locals claim to have seen from 10 to a few thousand fireballs per night.
12:05This beautiful and mysterious phenomenon has been baffling people for hundreds of years.
12:11According to one legend,
12:13Naga fireballs are created by a ginormous serpent-like creature named the Naga.
12:19It lives in the Mekong River and spits out spheres of fire to ward off evil spirits.
12:24But, of course, science has a different, way more boring explanation.
12:30It's believed that the spheres of light are related to methane gas that ignites when it comes into contact with
12:36air.
12:37Whistlers are also called electromagnetic dawn chorus.
12:42They're high-pitched sounds that occur in the upper atmosphere during lightning storms.
12:47Even though whistlers are actually electromagnetic waves, they occur at audio frequencies.
12:52That's why they can be converted to audio with the help of a suitable receiver.
12:58They're produced by those lightning strikes where the impulse moves along the magnetic field of our planet,
13:04from one hemisphere to the other.
13:06Voyager 1 and 2 space missions also detected whistler-like activity not far from Jupiter.
13:13It's now known as Jovian Whistlers.
13:16A super-bolt lightning strike is 100 to 1,000 times more powerful than a regular one.
13:23Plus, it can extend far beyond its parent storm.
13:26The largest bolts strike from November to February in the northern hemisphere.
13:31They also seem to occur more frequently over the ocean than dry land.
13:35To figure out where and when the next super-lightning occurs,
13:40scientists use a network of about 100 lightning-detecting stations on six continents.
13:46The station can detect lightning-produced radio waves by tuning in to very low frequencies.
13:51Thanks to this equipment, researchers recorded 2 billion lightning strikes from 2010 to 2018.
13:58Out of them all, 8,000 were super-bolts.
14:01So far, experts haven't figured out what causes these powerful lightning strikes.
14:07Perhaps one of the most mysterious types of lightning is clear-air lightning.
14:12It's also called a bolt from the blue, because it occurs in areas where the sky seems to be blue.
14:18But the most amazing thing about this lightning is that it strikes horizontally.
14:24It's a cloud-to-ground flash, which usually comes out of the side of a thunderstorm cloud.
14:29Then it travels a large distance away from the cloud.
14:32And only after that does it angle down and strike the ground.
14:37Such lightning bolts are known to travel a few miles away from their parent storm cloud.
14:42And the most dangerous thing about them is that they come from a clear blue sky.
14:47Once, a cyclist wearing a helmet experienced a lightning strike to the head,
14:52when the weather was fine and the sky was cloudless.
14:55Experts concluded that the bolt must have originated in a thunderstorm around 10 miles away.
15:03Catatumbo lightning is the world's longest lightning storm.
15:07The heart of the storm, which repeats every year, is over Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela.
15:12This storm towers way higher than a regular one.
15:15Catatumbo lightning occurs for 140 to 160 nights a year, lasts for 9 hours a day, and produces 16 to
15:2540 lightning flashes per minute.
15:28You've probably heard how they say that lightning doesn't strike the same place twice.
15:33Well, Catatumbo doesn't seem to know about this rule.
15:36Or at least, it doesn't prevent storm clouds from gathering in the very same place year after year.
15:43Have you ever seen a rainbow on fire?
15:46If so, most likely it was a fire rainbow.
15:50And it has nothing to do with actual fire.
15:53It's a type of cloud formation known as a circumhorizontal arc.
15:57This rare phenomenon only occurs when the conditions are right.
16:02At first, some high-altitude clouds form.
16:05They're made up of tiny ice crystals.
16:08The sun needs to shine through these clouds at just the right angle.
16:11Then it refracts through the ice crystals and creates an amazing display of colors.
16:16As a result, you see a rainbow-like arc, which looks as if it's on fire.
16:21As for the name, it was given to this phenomenon because of the colors.
16:26Its vibrant hues resemble flames with shades of red, yellow, and orange.
16:32Speaking of terrible storms, we must mention a supercell thunderstorm.
16:37It's the least common type of thunderstorm, but it's also the most dangerous.
16:42It's likely to cause severe weather, damaging winds, very large hail, and even violent tornadoes.
16:48What makes supercells unique is a deep and persistent rotating updraft called a mesocyclone.
16:56Supercells can potentially last for hours and cause great havoc.
17:01Fireworlds, also known as fire devils and fire tornadoes,
17:05look like swirling vortices of fire and ash, eating up debris and combustible gases.
17:11They usually start with a swirl of wind, which you can see thanks to all the smoke.
17:15Rising heat and windy conditions team up to create whirling eddies of air.
17:21These eddies can get so intense that they form a tornado-like vortex.
17:27Fireworlds are more likely to occur during wildfires or firestorms when there's enough wind to create big vortices.
17:34The biggest ones can be massive, uprooting trees that are 45 feet tall.
17:40A fireworld is often called by other names, like a firenado, fire swirl, or fire twister.
17:46But those terms usually refer to a different thing, where a fire is so intense that it creates an actual
17:52tornado.
17:54Fireworlds are a little different because their vortex doesn't usually go from the ground all the way up to the
18:00clouds.
18:00And even if it does, it's not considered a classic tornado, because it doesn't form in the same way.
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