Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseIs space weather something that exists? Can it affect us here on earth. Find out the answer to this and many other questions with Daniel and Jorge.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high Yield savings account through Apple Card, apply for Apple Card in the wallet app, subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch, Member FDIC, terms and more at applecard dot com.
Here's a little secret. Most smartphone deals aren't that exciting, to be honest, they're barely worth mentioning. But then there's AT and T and their best deals. Those are quite exciting. They're the kind of deals that are really worth talking about, like their deal in the new Samsung Galaxy Z flip six. With this deal, you can trade in your eligible smartphone, any year, any condition for a new Samsung Galaxy Z flip six.
It's so good, in fact, it will.
Have you shouting from the rooftops. Get yourself down a street level and learn how to snag the new Samsung Galaxy Z flip six on AT and T and maybe grab a ladder on the way home, at and T connecting changes. Everything requires trade in of Galaxy s Note or Z series smartphone Limited time offer two hundred and fifty six gigabytes for zero dollars. Additional fees, terms and restrictions apply. See att dot com, slash Samsung or visit an AT and D store for details.
As a United Explorer Card member, you can earn fifty thousand bonus miles plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an Explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC subject to credit approval, Offers subject to change.
Terms apply. Hey or heey? Doesn't it feel like every day there's something new to worry about? What do you mean, like, what, well, you know that we got forest fires in California's, We've got super hurricanes, we got crazy political situations, we have financial uncertainty, we.
Have that whole question about whether Spider Man is going to be part of the Marvel universe. I mean that one's got me worried.
I know these things could rock our world. Well, unfortunately, I've got a new thing for you to worry about.
I feel like every podcast is a new one, Daniel, that I need to worry about. But what do you mean this time? Are you talking about aliens coming from space to eat us?
Or Oh? No, that's something I would look forward to. No, no, this is getting even by aliens. The arrival of aliens. You know, I would gladly offer up civilization. Our civilization is a meal for aliens if they give us some secrets of the universe.
Let's not elect Daniel to office.
He's not running twenty three.
Well.
No, it turns out that we need to worry about the weather, but not just the weather here on Earth, the weather in space.
Hey, I'm back. This is I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD Comics.
Hi, I'm Daniel Whitson. I'm a particle physicist and I'm pleased to be the co host of this podcast.
And welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we talk about everything that's amazing and crazy and wonderful. And scary and reassuring about our bonkers universe and try to give you an understanding that really settles to the bottom of your brain.
So yeah, I'm back. Thanks for holding down the fort, Daniel. I was gone for a couple of weeks there.
Well, thank you very much for coming back. I think the listeners of the podcast are relieved to have you back. Listen. They have more last and less physics.
More cartoonists per podcast. I mean, that's pretty good value right there.
That's right. And you know, frankly, I was getting tired of deflecting everybody's questions about where you.
Were another mystery of the universe. He had to keep explaining.
I know, I love answering emails and I love answering questions, but some of these questions I didn't know how to answer. People were asking me if I had kidnapped you and traded you to Aliens for some enormous pile of bananas, which.
Did happen once? Did happen once? But not this time?
That's right. No, people were pretty curious.
Yeah, I hope nobody was really concerned. Basically, I just had to go take a nap, basically is what happened.
Maybe people weren't aware that cartoonists have a different life cycle. They hibernate, so you know they fill up all summer and then sleep for six weeks in the winter.
Yeah. Yeah, every six years we have to take it two months nap.
That's right. And so, folks, he's coming back to you extra refreshed, extra funny, extra hilarious. And for those of you who are worried that I had done something to Whorehead, that I kidnapped him, I hope you hear the relief in my voice at his return.
Yeah. No, Actually, what happened was Daniel and I have several big projects going on, and one of them just kind of needed a little bit of extra attention, so I had to step away from the mic a little bit. But it sounds like you guys had a lot of fun while I was gone. You had a lot of fun guests. And then Crystal Dilworth came in and covered for me.
Yeah, Crystal is our guest host, and we had some fun conversations about the cosmic microwave background and other stuff, and my friend Matt came by the podcast, and then I had a few on my own, and let me tell you, it was challenging having a conversation with myself.
But yeah, I'm back, and I'm back for the foreseeable future, at least until Daniel kid naps me again.
Until the intergalactic banana space pirates come and offer to trade you for secrets of the universe.
So today we're going to be talking about it. Seems like you had another thing we should be worried about coming from space to harmas or affect this.
That's right. Most of the time, we can live in this little bubble we call Earth and not worry too much about what's going on out there in the universe. I mean, we know because we listen to the podcast that there are crazy things happening in the center of galaxies and enormous violent things happening in the center of stars, but we don't often think about that because we can just ignore everything that happens above the atmosphere and just sort of go about our everyday life.
It seems like that there are always other things happening in the universe, right, Like, we don't just live in a bubble. We live in a solar system with stuff flying around, and with other celestial things out there making noise and throwing things.
That's right. We do live in a bubble. It's a magnetic bubble. There's a magnetic field protects us from most of the stuff that's happening out there, but it's not perfect and sometimes this incredible force field actually does get penetrated by crazy things happening out there in space, and we have to pay attention.
And so to the On the podcast, we'll be talking about what is space weather? Is it usually sunny? Does it rain out in space? What exactly does that mean?
Daniel, Yeah, I think it's a fascinating topic. You know, what is space weather? What does it mean? How does it affect us? What precautions can we take? Can we predict it? You know, can you go on an app and figure out what's going to be happening in space in the next week or two? And I think it helps just connects you to the larger context. You know, weather events here on Earth help you understand what's happening nearby, like, oh, it's not raining here, but it is raining over there. It gives you a sort of a sense of the larger context and space weather sort of a generalization of that. It gives us a sense for what's happening in the Solar system? What's going on?
Like?
What is it like to be on Venus today?
Right? And you know, whether our local station can come up with a pretty cool sounding name for technology to predict it, like a Doppler space radar three thousand that's right.
Pretty soon we're going to have a arms race between local weather stations to have fancier sounding technologies.
It's a quantum Doppler pulsar gamma three thousand million, Doppler or vision?
Was that just all the tech words you can think of?
That's it.
There was a mind right there.
That's it. That's that's all that's in my head.
That's well, let's see if Jorge can do better than the average person on the street that you see Irvine. So I walked around and I wondered, do people even know that space weather is a thing? What do they think it is? And I asked people that you see irvine is their weather out in space? What does that even mean?
So think about it for a second. If someone approached you and ask you if there is weather in space? What would you answer?
Here?
It's what people had to say.
Is there weather in space?
I mean just because the question exists, I'm assuming, so I haven't heard anything about it.
What would that be, like? What does that mean weather in space?
I would guess just like shifts in like antimatter, and how much is like concentrated in certain spaces which could affect I don't know movement of comments anything. I just assume, whether as in storms or rain and when thinks at that level.
No, I don't think there is.
No, that's a good question. I'm not sure about space, but I know that there's weather patterns on specific planets, but I don't know about the oral atmosphere. I have no clue.
I'd say yes, because it's so big, there has to be some somewhere, I think, so, yes, Solar winds.
Solar winds, okay, what are solar winds?
Huge pulses of electromagnetic radiation from a suner or star.
Okay, so it's radiation, not particles. Ye, for the most part radiation. Does that affect us here on Earth?
Not really, because we have the magnetic field of Earth's shielding us from that.
I feel like there is a chance that there is like like water and stuff up there, So that means that there is weather. I've heard of the idea of it, But I don't know personally.
I have heard of space whether I know, you have solar winds, large coronal egections and bombarding the whole Solar system all the time and hits the Earth, and the magnetic field from the Earth deflects it to the poles and this is this is when you see the Northern lights can also affect our communications on Earth, our satellites.
So what do you think of these answers or he Well, it seems that it seems pretty common sense. A lot of people assume that there would be weather in other planets, but maybe people seem skeptical that there would be weather in like actual space, in the space between planets. So that's pretty reasonable, right, Yeah, that is pretty reasonable. Yeah, Like I've seen movies where there's storms, there are storms and Mars and and you know, I imagine you look at a picture of Jupiter there's swirling clouds. So you know, the idea that there's weather out there is not weird to me, but and to other people, it seems. But the idea that there might be weather like in the vacuum of space, that's that's a little bit more hard to understand.
Yeah, and the topic of whether on other planets is really fascinating because of course we'd like to understand are those planets livable? Could we ever move there? And can we watch the clouds on other planets and use that to understand what's in the atmosphere? Is there water there? That's a whole other fascinating topic that we're going to dig into in a future podcast. But you're right. Today we're talking about the sort of weather between planets, and some people said, you know, well, there's no water up there, so in space, so how could they be weather? So I think you're right people. So today I'm hoping we're going to expand people's sense for what weather means. It's not just rain and sun.
I like the person who said I have no clue, but I'm gonna say yes, just because space is so big.
I like that answer because we've apply to anything like do you think there are purple elephants in space? Well, it's pretty big, so.
Yeah, yeah? Why not? Yeah my brain says no, but hey, space is big, so yes. And you know, and that's a pretty safe answer, right, isn't it.
Yeah?
It is because if space is infinite, then everything that can exist will exist, and there probably are purple elephants out there. There's probably a planet where it rains purple elephants.
Oh boy, you need a bigger umbrella for that. That's right.
Well, one time in the podcast we were speculating about whether it rains diamonds somewhere. We were laughing about that as an absurdity, and then somebody wrote in and said, actually it rains diamonds here in our solar system. What yeah, I think it's on Urinus.
Well that's cool. I think you would need like an umbrella to invert it to catch all the diamonds.
I don't think diamonds are worth that much if it's raining diamonds. I think on Urinus you've got to use a different kind of engagement ring, maybe water crystals, right, like an ice cube.
It's a whole different market there, that's right.
The Beers has not managed to corner that market.
Right, So let's let's get into it. Daniels. So there's apparently a thing called space weather, is what I'm hearing from you, and that that means there's weather in space and it might actually affect us on a daily basis, might even cause you to lose cell phone signal, which is like, wow, fatal.
Everybody suddenly alert? What uh huh? This is actually relevant to me?
Are you talking about Yeah, I'm right now. There might be a.
You are totally gaslighting our listeners there or.
Weather event that might cause this podcast to skip the bee.
No, it's true because space is not empty. We talk about this a lot, and it's not empty on several levels. Of course, any arbitrary piece of vacuum is actually filled with fluctuating quantum fields, which is amazing. But but space itself is even filled with particles and all sorts of energy. Of course, it's very not dense, it's very sparse compared to the atmosphere around our planet. But there is stuff out there, and specifically it's dominated by stuff that comes from the Sun. And so there's two major things we think about when we think about space weather, and that's the solar wind and the solar radiation.
Because I think you were telling me earlier that you know, for us, space is at least what we call space around the Earth is pretty much dominated by the Sun. Like you know, we're just a small spec compared to the Sun, which is just giant explosion and so pretty much when you say space weather, you really mean sort of like sun weather.
That's right, because the Sun doesn't just pour out photons for us and for you to get a nice hand. It spews out a huge amount of stuff. It spews out particles like protons and electrons are very high speed. And this is what we call the solar wind. And you know, it's not a great name for it because it's really like a solar particle flux or something. But they call it the solar wind.
Like a solar jet maybe.
Yeah, yeah, solar eruption or solar farts or something.
I'm not sure what solar farts. Yes, that is new scientific term.
Well, it might be appropriate because it comes from the digestion of those gases in the sun, right, so hey, and maybe it's just because I'm married to a biologist who studies, you know, digestion and stuff, that I have this stuff on my brain.
I would have gone with solar burbs.
Either way. The Sun puts out a lot of particles like actual mass, right, not just radiation. There's lots of radiation as well, but there's also solar particles. And these particles fly through the solar system and they call it the solar wind, and it's important. It's a big factor in how you can survive out there in space, and also sometimes it penetrates down to the Earth.
Now, is it sort of like a clouds, Like does it form clouds out there? Like can you imagine like swirling you know, clouds or mists of these particles kind of swirling around us? Or is it pretty much like a jet going through us?
They're moving really fast, so they just basically fly away from the Sun in straight lines. So if you want to visualize it, just imagine like the Sun has a billion guns and each one is shooting protons and electrons out in every direction.
Wow. But we have like kind of a force field, right, like we you're saying that our magnetic field kind of deflect some of the some of these particles.
That's right. We have a multi layer force field. First of all, we have our atmosphere that's sort of the closest thing, and any particle that makes it to the atmosphere is going to bang into all the other particles, right, So that protects you at some level. But even before it gets to the atmosphere, it has to penetrate our magnetic field. And remember charged particles, protons and electrons have a charge will bend when they hit a magnetic field. So because we have a magnetic field, most of this stuff bends around the Earth rather than even hitting our atmosphere. So we are very grateful to our magnetic field. If we didn't have one, like Mars has a very very small one, then this solar wind would basically blow our atmosphere away, all.
Right, So when you say space weather, you mean solar flares and solar.
Winds, that's right. So the key thing is there's stuff out there in space. The Sun is pumping out radiation and particles, And the reason we call it weather is because it's not fixed. It's not like it's the same every day. It varies. And so just like the weather, which is the product of very complex systems interacting and hard to predict, the stuff put out by the Sun is also variable and hard to predict and has a big impact on us. So that's why we call it space weather.
It's not just because I think it's unpredictable. It's also sort of the result of weather in the Sun, right, Like you can almost think of these solar flares and these winds is coming from whatever is happening in the surface of the Sun. That's sort of like sun weather, right.
Yeah, or sun moods. Right. We don't understand the sun. The Sun is a huge mystery, like the most important thing in our solar system. We don't understand how it works. And it's a huge ball of plasma. And because it's plasma, it's ionized particles, it's charged particles, and charged particles, Remember, when they move, they generate magnetic fields. And so the Sun has this enormous magnetic field that comes from this boiling pot of plasma that has encapsulated by this gravitational trap, and it generates this magnetic field. But that magnetic field is also not static because it comes from this ry, constantly writhing, hot, boiling mass.
So it's like churning all the time, and sometimes it burps. That's kind of what a solar flare is.
Yeah. Imagine like a really thick pot of tomato soup like your Italian grandmother might make. You know, it's.
Slowly bubbling an Italian grandmother.
Everybody's Italian grandmother, you know, or the stereotypical Italian grandmother in you know TV shows. That's as close as I come to having an Italian grandmother. Anyway, the bubbling tomato soup eventually forms one of these bubbles net pops and it sprays tomato soup everywhere. So you can sort of imagine the Sun is the same way it uh, And sometimes it has this bright burst of really hot, bright light, and sometimes it actually shoots out like bits of the sun into space.
Really like the plasma inside, like the hydrogen and the whatever it's made out of it.
Yeah, so the plasma is mostly protons and electrons, and sometimes something happens called a coronal mass ejection and it vomits out like a billion kilograms of plasma and it just spews it out into space at like thousands of kilometers per second.
Oh, why you said a solar vomit? Is it also a scientific term? Like I feel like the Sun has a lot of stomach problems here. It's burping, it's vomiting, it's farted.
Some people like to try to understand it in analogy to weather or on Earth. I think it's maybe a better analogy to call it, you know, digestion, Like the Sun is digesting all of this hydrogen and it doesn't always go smoothly.
Maybe the Sun should try a gluten free diet. I hear that.
The sun has seeliac disease. What you're saying, maybe it should try a hydrogen free diet, because I think that's the problem that.
Might be trouble though I don't have any energy, right.
Yeah, exactly, But this is not something rare. This happens on the Sun, these coronal mass ejections. They happen either once a week or like up to four times a day, depending on the solar cycle. The Sun has a cycle that lasts about every eleven years. It flips its magnetic field and it gets really active and then it goes quieter again.
And I think a lot of people have probably seen these in photographs. Like if you see a photograph of the Sun and it don't look at the Sun directly, I'll be able to see them. But if you see photographs with special lenses of the Sun, you'll see like this big fiery ball. But then you see like these loops that come off of the Sun and then come back around that are kind of like kind of like a cow lake on your hair.
Yeah, or like a big bubble of hot tomato sauce. Maybe I shouldn't do these podcasts just before lunch.
I think a lot of people to see these, right, Like, that's what a solar flare is. It burps out stuff, but then it comes back around and so it forms little loops.
Yeah, and there's really two different things. There's a solar flare. A solar flare is just increased in brightness, like more photons, like a bright flash of light, and and a coronal mass ejection that's when it actually spews out material. That's when it spews out this plasma in to space and you get those loops of stuff.
Oh, I see, all right, but they're both sort of the saying they're both the same burp.
Well, we don't really understand. It's the amazing thing. I mean, the sun is the most important thing in our cosmic neighborhood. But it's something we still do not understand. Is as I was saying before, there's these magnetic fields, and people think that sometimes these magnetic fields get twisted and it's like tension in them, and then they can like slide back into place and release that tension, and that might be what causes the solar flares. It might be what causes these coronal mass ejections. But we don't actually know. And we've noticed that sometimes you get these coronal mass ejections more often when you have solar flares, but not all the time. So it's a big mystery. It's a current topic of research.
Okay, So they're not necessarily tied together. You know, sometimes the Sun can just might just spew out extra energy for no reason at all, and sometimes you might get these crazy giant loops.
Yeah, and sometimes you can get these solar flares without coronal mass ejections. And these flares they're huge, like these sun spots, these spots on the Sun that are brighter or darker. They're like, you know, three hundred times the size of the Earth. These are enormous features. It's hard to wrap your mind around how big the Sun is. And so of course when it fluctuates, it can really affect life here on Earth.
All right, So the Sun sometimes has these burps or vomits or farts, and that can cause flares or sun spots or coronal mass ejections, which sort of sound like a heart attack, but.
I don't recommend them.
Yeah, basically throws that stuff into space, and that's what we call space weather, and that space weather can affect us here on Earth in pretty dramatic ways.
Absolutely, it's a big factor in our life, and it can it can even kill you.
So let's get into how space weather affects us, But first let's take a quick break.
With big wireless providers, what you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price you thought you were paying magically skyrockets. With mint Mobile, You'll never have to worry about gotcha's ever again. When Mint Mobile says fifteen dollars a month for a three month plan, they really mean it. I've used mint Mobile and the call quality is always so crisp and so clear. I can recommend it to you. So say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. You can use your own phone with any mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts. So did your overpriced wireless with mint Mobiles dealing yet? Three months a premium wireless service for fifteen bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just fifteen bucks a month, go to mintmobile dot com. Slash Universe. That's mintmobile dot Com slash Universe. Cut your wireless build a fifteen bucks a month at mintmobile dot Com slash Universe. Forty five dollars upfront payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars per month New customers on first three month plan only. Speeds slower about forty gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxi spees and restrictions apply. See mintmobile for details. If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high Yield Savings account through Applecard, apply for Applecard in the wallet app, subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Applecard owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch Member FDIC terms and more at applecard dot Com.
With the United Explorer Card, earn fifty thousand bonus miles. Then head for plas place is unseen and destinations unknown. Wherever your journey takes you, you'll enjoy remarkable rewards, including a free checked bag and two times the miles on every United purchase. You'll also receive two times the miles on dining and at hotels, so every experience is even more rewarding. Plus, when you fly United, you can look forward to United Club Access with two United Club one time passes per year. Become a United Explorer Card member today and take off on more trips so you can take in once in a lifetime experiences everywhere you travel. Visit the Explorer Card dot com to apply today. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC subject to credit approval offer, subject to change.
Terms apply. All right, we're talking about space weather and how it impacts us. So, Daniel, how does space weather affect this? Does it mean like you have to bring out a takeout an umbrella? Would you be protect every once in a while? What does that mean?
Well, it depends a little bit on how you live your life. But one of my favorite stories about space weather is sort of how the phrase was coined. It was like one hundred and fifty years ago, eighteen fifty nine. It was an enormous coronal mass ejection, like the biggest one ever in recorded history, and it sent so much energy in terms of particles raining down here on Earth, that they created sparks from the telegraph network, and so people who were using the telegraph network at the time God zapped and there were sparks flying everywhere and actually started a bunch of forest fires.
So did they notice this coronal mass ejection? Like did they see a giant loop in the sun.
Yeah, they were studying the Sun and they saw this, and at the same time they observed all this stuff happening here on Earth. And that was the first time they realized a hold on a second, maybe something that happens on the Sun, it can actually affect us down here. Until then they thought, oh, we can study the Sun. It's interesting. Obviously it puts out light for us to get for us to enjoy and to feed our plants and everything. But they hadn't really connected observable stuff on the Sun with phenomena here on Earth until then.
That's when they knew, like, hey, the sun burbs, watch out.
Yeah, that's right. Everybody duck under the table. If you hear the Sun's stomach will start to rumble.
Plug your nose of those sunburbs.
That's the most direct connection, Like the Sun is shooting out protons and electrons, and sometimes those protons can get pushed out really fast by one of these coronal mass injections and then accelerated by the Sun's magnetic field, and then they can be strong enough to get through our magnetic field and come down here to Earth.
Wow. And so what was happening at that time, Like the particles came in and somehow they how did they make sparks in the telegraph network, Like did they somehow supercharge the cables or something? What was going on?
Well, there's two things that can happen there. One is you just get an enormous amount of energy dumped into the atmosphere and that ionizes atoms as you have free electrons just running around. And the other thing is that it can create strong magnetic fields for the same reason, and that can create electric pulses and so you have ic. Yeah, if you have wires out there and lots of highly energized electrons, you're basically creating lightning and then you know you're connected to these wires and so you're looking to get zapped.
So it's just sort of like showers, as with energy which creates which just kind of amps everything up and that energy has to go somewhere.
M hm. Absolutely. And so back then the thing we're most sensitive to is a telegraph network, but these days we have an enormous communications network that's very sensitive to this kind of pulses. You can affect the magnetic field here on Earth, you can affect anything that essentially bounces signals around the atmosphere, and anything that has electronics can get zapped.
So like my cell phone, I mean, it has circuits in it, but if it gets showered by particles, those all the electrons going through those circuits can somehow sort of what get you know, frozen, or.
It could get fried. Because your your cell phone is not built to handle high pulses of electricity. It's not it's assuming that the battery in the cell phone is not going to try to kill the cell phone. And so if some strong magnetic field comes and whips up basically a mini electric storm in your cell phone, then yeah, it can fry your cell phone. And it's not just enhanced electromagnetic field, it's actual particles too. Remember that we talked about how radiation can damage things. It's like a billion tiny bullets. Each one can damage your DNA but they can also damage electronics which have become superminiaturized. Most electronic systems are sensitive to radiation, but very few are actually protected against it. Of course, it's not as strong near the surface as it is near the top of the atmosphere because our atmosphere helps diffuse it a little bit. But we have, for example, satellite technology that's up there in space, and if there's bad solar weather, it can destroy a huge amount of satellite technology. I think a billion dollars worth of damage is done every year by solar storms, a billion dollars, a billion dollars. So there's big money in predicting solar weather. Like, if you know a solar storm is kind, you can shut down your satellite or you know, close it up in some way to protect it or move it out of the way. Even there's a huge amount of money in predicting solar weather.
Wow, So you could spend a lot of many putting up satellites up there, but they might get fried.
They will get fried. Yeah, And of course it's not just satellites that will get fried. If you have people up there and a solar storm comes, that means a huge dose of radiation. We can be talking about ten or one hundred times as much radiation as an astronaut will usually get. And you know, out there in space, you're already accumulating more radiation than you do here on Earth because you're not protected by the atmosphere and the magnetic field, and so it can be a fatal.
Pulse and it goes through like the walls of the space station too.
Yeah, it takes a lot of energy to protect yourself from this radiation because it has a lot of energy. The only way to stop it is to have enough material between you and it that it can absorb that energy. So they have special places, for example on the International Space Station that have heavy shielding. They can't shield the entire or the whole thing would be too heavy to be up in space, but they have like a safe room basically, and if they can tell the astronauts fast enough that this dose is coming, they all scramble to the safe room to protect themselves.
Kind of like a tornado. What do you call it, tornado basement or tornado safe zone.
That's right, But I don't think the space station has a basement.
Yeah it does, it's just upstairs.
Right, it's the ad it's the metaphorical tornado basement on the space station. I love that.
That's what I like that. And the idea of a Space Tornadoes is that a thing. Can we can we make it a thing?
I think we should write that. Yep, absolutely, it don't tell everybody that's the project you were talking about when you said you had to go away for six weeks.
Right, that's right. I was working on Space Tornadoes. Yeah, that's that's for next movie, Space Twister.
That's right, and then the sequel, Space Tornado with sharks.
Right, yes, space Sharknado or Galacto maybe Galactic Sharknado, just to up it up.
Yeah, but the aliens are sharks somehow, and they travel here in a wormhole that's kind of like a tornado. Hey, you know what, this started as a joke, but I think it's actually a pretty good idea.
Hey, we have a new project, guys.
But you know, space weather isn't all bad. If you get these particles coming into the atmosphere, they don't all just penetrate the atmosphere. Some of them still blue, spiral around the magnetic field and end up in the North Pole, and then you get extra solar and then you get extra northern lights. This Aurora borealis, These glow in the atmosphere of green and blue and crazy dancing lights. Those are very spectacular in a solar storm.
So space weather can be pretty. I mean, it might be killing some astronauts out there, but hey, you might get a better picture.
Y's right, you know, on this podcast we try to look at the bright side of the universe. Even fatal doses of radiation can look pretty in some context. But you know, just like you shouldn't be shooting hurricanes, please, also don't shoot the northern lights.
So it sounds like it affects electronics out there in space and astronauts in space. Maybe you were saying even people in airplanes might get an extra those of radiation, But is it something that I have to worry about it an everyday basis, Like should I check the space whether before I go to the beach.
It doesn't matter a lot for airplanes. You're right, and we should talk about that because people aren't probably aware that every time you fly on an airplane you do get an extra dose of radiation just because you're higher up in the atmosphere and if you happen to be in the atmosphere. When there's one of these solar storms, it can be a serious health issue. And in addition, it can knock out the communications of your airplane. And this happens sometimes planes rely on navigation technology, which can be useless in a solar storm because it relies on things like bouncing signals off the atmosphere, and when a solar storm comes, it basically makes ripples in the atmosphere, and so these signals don't bounce cleanly. They scatter instead of reflecting, and so there's been times when planes had to fly without these signals. Sometimes these outages are minutes. Sometimes these things are days long, and so your plane could be out there flying without the necessary navigational technology thanks to the sun's burp.
But the pilot's still you know, he's okay here or she's okay. They're still steering the plane right.
Oh yeah, they just close their eyes and hope you know, okay.
Good.
No.
Planes all have many ways to navigate and lots of backup systems, but when you lose one, then you're more reliant on the others. But yes, in addition, it can affect you down here on Earth.
Caned though, like will I get extra sunburn or you know, feel a little extra plasma. E if I go to the beach that day.
How plasma do you feel on a normal day? Depends on the day, I guess just enough. That's called poor hey weather, folks. Yeah, it's not a big thing for you to worry about in terms of radiation. These things don't hit the earth broadly, so you're very unlikely to be right in the middle of one. But it can cause like blackouts, like in nineteen eighty nine there was a really powerful geomagnetic storm that set out a huge power blackout in Canada. It left six million people without electricity for hours.
But white, white only Canada. Wouldn't it blanket the whole earth?
Know?
These things are not necessarily earth sized. It's like a jet of particles and just happen to hit Canada.
Oh, they're like specific, They're like little laser beams.
Now you're making it sound like the Sun hit Canada on purpose, Like the Sun is anti Canada.
I'm just saying, you know, I have to be pro Canada.
I love Canada, so I'm very sensitive to any you know, defamation of Canadian character.
Yeah. No, Well, we were just accusing the son of not liking Canadians in nineteen eighty nine.
Yeah, I hope it's you know, it's learned from then, and it's it's moved on. Yeah, and you can actually track this stuff, like you don't have to just be ignorant and hope that the space weather is going to be good. Maybe you are elon Musk and you're launching a satellite tomorrow and you want to know if the solar flare is coming. There are actually a lot of public resources people probably aren't aware about.
All Right, well, let's get into how you might predict space weather or even if that's possible. But first let's take a quick break.
All right.
We talked about space weather and how that's really mostly sun weather, right, and how it involves solar flares and solar burps and vomits.
And that's because we are close to the Sun, right, The Sun is the biggest thing nearby. If we were in the asteroid belt or something somewhere near Jupiter, then your Jupiter has its own weather. Also, it pumps out a lot of radiation, so there'd be weather from Jupiter also.
Yeah, Oh, jovial.
Weather, juvial weather not always so jovial.
Yeah, not a sunny but still pretty joking.
Yeah, if you're, for example, living on the surface of Io, then you have to worry about the radiation from your Jovian planet exactly.
Oh wow, because the weather in Jupiter might be turning out and burping and farting.
Yeah, we know that Jupiter's not static. We can see from here that there are storms on its surface and inside this crazy stuff happening, and so the amount of radiation that Jupiter is emitting is also varying. Now, over here on Earth, we're mostly affected by the solar weather. So you're right. Space weather on Earth is mostly about the Sun because that's the biggest source of weather nearby.
And so it might cause blackouts or fry our electronics or satellites. And so the question is can we predict space weather? Can we like, you know, give the satellites and the astronauts and little heads up.
We're doing everything we can. You know, we'd love to understand the Sun for lots of reasons. One is just practical, like we need to know if our satellites are going to get blown out or protect our astronauts. And the other is it's the most important astrophysical thing nearby, and it's a huge mystery. If we understood better or how the Sun worked, we could understand how other stars work and how long they're going to last and how they were formed, and they're a pretty big important feature of this incredible universe we find ourselves in. So it's a fun mystery, but we just don't understand it because we've only been studying it for you know, one hundred and fifty years or so, and it's literally a huge topic.
I mean, but couldn't we just look at the Sun and tell something's coming our way? Because you know, I imagine we could maybe see the flares before all of the you know, protons and electrons hit us. Wouldn't we have some kind of warning.
Yeah, well, there's two different kinds of things you can do. First of all, that's a great idea. Nobody's ever thought of that before, actually look at the sun to try to predict it. After this call, I'm going to get on the phone with NASA and let them.
Know your idea a new project for us.
Now, there's two things we're trying to do. One is sort of ground up understand the Sun as a theoretical object. Do we know what's going on inside, and so can we use that to predict what's going to happen on the outside. And then you know, if we can get that model to work, we can connect it with recent events. And that's the best way to do it because it can give you a deeper inside and help you understand things in the short term and the long term. And then there's the more practical one. There's the sort of as you suggest, we said, well, we've noticed a connection that there happens to be a coronal mass ejection a few days after a sunspot or fifty percent of the times after sunspots, And so you look for these patterns and try to use them to predict what's going to happen. It's sort of like weather on Earth used to be like, oh, the sky is green, does I mean it's going to be a tornado. We're just looking for these patterns to try to see what gives you clue as to what's going to happen in the next few days.
I think it's a sunturn green, that would be That would be a side something's going on.
Yeah, what would you do with the sun turn green? Or pack your bags and go into the basement.
I would make my Tornado space movie as quickly as possible before.
Well, you've been building your strategic banana reserve for a reason, and so I guess you'd have to tap into that. And this is an active area of research. In fact, it was just a couple of weeks ago that we launched a whole new satellite just to study our atmosphere and the impact of solar weather. It's called Icon and it studies the ionosphere around the Earth, this area of ionized particles it surrounds in the lower atmosphere.
Okay, so there are ways that we can sort of predict these things, and there are people looking into it. But it's still pretty on it's a hot topic, hot but it sounds like it's still sort of we're still sort of at the mercy of the weather.
Absolutely. You know, it's hard enough to understand the weather here on Earth, and we're right in the middle of it. We can observe it in so many ways. We can take any measurement we want. We just go outside now, trying to imagine understanding the weather on something ninety three million miles away. You can hardly take measurements. It's much bigger, it's much more complicated. It's totally different from anything you experience. That's a much more difficult problem to solve scientifically, and it's just as complicated because the solar atmosphere and the solar surface is in motion. It's churning, as you said, So this is not something that's easy to do, and so it's an exciting topic. So those of you interested in helping protect a billion dollar industry every year, or protect astronauts' lives, or just deeply interested in like how the sun works and came we understand it. There's going to be a long future of researching.
You could be the person who invents the quantum Doppler solar three million.
Which summons the shark tornado and ends all life on Earth.
That's right, tuning in at ten o'clock.
For Daniel and Jorge destroy the universe.
All right, Well, the next time you go out there and think about the weather, maybe also leave a little room in your brain for thinking about the space weather as well, and whether that might affect you when you go out.
And whether it's going to be hot or not. Thanks for tuning in.
See you next time.
Before you still have a question after listening to all these explanations. Please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's One Word, or email us at Feedback at Danielanjorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
