It missed us by 9 days

in 1859 there was a geomagnetic storm so big that the aurora was visible in hawaii they had telegraph systems some of the operators were reported to be able to send messages even when they weren't plugged into their batteries they were just using the current generated from this geomagnetic storm this thing was the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history it was called the carrington event a solar superstorm like this is not unusual it could happen again today and it would be way worse like way worse it would cost more than the top 10 natural disasters in the u.s combined to recover from so yeah these solar superstorms are getting more and more likely leading up to 2025. so first of all that event is the same type of event that causes the aurora the thing that we were chasing last night the thing that we want to see tonight [Music] [Applause] ever heard of solar cycles the sun has these periods of activity where there's a period of when there are the most sun spots and then periods of a little bit of calm about once every 11 years why every 11 years any guesses like what happens every 11 years seems very like nature to moving waves i was like maybe it's a coincidence it turns out that it's because on average every 11 years the sun's north and south pole switch so the carrington event happened coming into the maximum of the 10th cycle of the sun the 10th since 1755 when we started recording that the sun came in cycles no one noticed that until they were able to see sunspots remember when we went to mount wilson observatory and they were drawing sunspots on paper that was some of the first telescopes that were ever used to look at solar spots do you even know what the sunspots are sounded like a very condescending question have you ever seen a picture of the sun with like all these lines those are all magnetic field lines and if you have a ton of them going into the sun that's where you'll see a sunspot sometimes those magnetic field lines can get like wrapped around each other and twisted and sometimes they'll just like snap and break into more of a smooth kind of configuration and when that happens we see a solar flare this pop like this release i was really surprised because i just hadn't pictured it yet until we started talking about it but when you said we missed a storm it shot up in a direction it shot off in a direction so every 11 years you have more of a potential for a hit of a solar super storm and the last time it missed us by nine days because the sun was just facing the wrong way so yeah 2012 is the near miss where a carrington sized event just missed earth wait it happened in 2012 2012 the end of the world year remember that oh yeah that's so funny yeah but it just the end of our adjustments and it missed us by nine days because the sun spins about every 25 days it just happened to be not facing us by a nine-day miss so we're now on the 25th solar cycle and we're coming into the peak of it you get increased solar flares and you also get increased cmes or coronal mass ejections do you know what that is it's like sun vomit whenever you get that snapping you release a lot of mass that shoots material off into space that we call the solar wind it literally is mass because a bunch of spacex satellites just fell out of the sky when there was a big solar wind event because the atmosphere literally became thicker it became too dense and slowed down the satellites to the point where they couldn't recover and they fell down to earth and burned up the atmosphere that just happened crazy so it's a big deal when the sun's magnetic field flips for us what it means is these periods of heightened and potentially extreme solar activity so the peak of the solar cycle will happen in 2025. so that means increasing solar activity right now which means a higher chance of seeing auroras we've got some solar wind coming geomagnetic storm coming up the aurora is going to come oh dogs we went dog sledding what would mostly happen when a solar storm occurs is that fortunately nothing happens to our bodies but things do happen to our electrical systems because it's a bunch of charged particles during the carrington event this was before even the us civil war so there were only telegraphs and the telegraph systems were sparking it's like using your computer and getting shocked through the keyboard some of them were catching on fire some people were seeing like these amazing swirling colors but it was visible in havana cuba in key west florida and some people thought that their cities were on fire so it was a predominantly red glow all over the sky before we find out how solar super storms affect us a quick message thanks to omaze for sponsoring this video omaze is bringing you the opportunity to win tesla's most sought after top of the line flagship suv and support give power and 501c3 more about them in a minute so supercar stats don't immediately come to mind when you hear suv but that's exactly what the brand new tesla model x plaid brings think versatility but with style and power and an all new interior and updated exterior styling whatever you want to do wherever you want to go be the first to get there with 1020 horsepower taking you a quarter mile in 9.9 seconds and 313 miles of range and then sit back and watch a movie under the stars with your 17-inch cinematic display and glass panoramic roof the wait list for this tesla is currently six months but you can jump that line faster than this suv can go zero to 60. that's 2.5 seconds your donation will support give power and 501c3 give power is on a mission to help the roughly 2.2 billion people around the world who do not have access to safely managed drinking water 501c3 is a new type of nonprofit for the younger generation focused on energy food water and shelter for your chance to win a tesla model x plaid and support a great cause go to omaze.com physics girl and now back to solar super storms so when a solar storm occurs all this mass is ejected from the sun and heads toward us do you know why that creates the aurora oh beautiful okay do you know why neon signs light up neons no when you put a high voltage across a gas that gives the electrons in the gas enough energy to fly off when the electrons come back together with the gas that they flew off of it'll emit a little bit of light that's it with the aurora it's very similar you've got all this mass of hot plasma raining down on earth from the sun and they'll bump electrons off of the gas in the atmosphere and then those electrons will come back together with their atoms and they'll release light so the electrons bump off the gas in the atmosphere exactly earth is like a neon sign in fact you can actually detect the rays coming down from space with fluorescent light bulbs there was a guy at cern that took a fluorescent light bulb and he was able to see like oh we're getting cosmic rays coming down because he's getting flashes of light inside of her fluorescent bulb yeah so we're just blown away at the spectacle yeah like the earth's defenses as it keeps like destructive yeah hitting us exactly like ooh this is so gorgeous do you know what causes the different colors you change the gas that's inside the tube whoa remember how they talked about there's sometimes purples and reds and greens and they happen in different layers of the atmosphere the reason why is because it's different gases at different altitudes of the atmosphere that's where all those pretty shots of space come where you can see the aurora yes sticking exactly so we've been tracking the northern lights for the last week because we've been here in fairbanks alaska trying to see them but there's a website we've been following where you can look at the kp index basically two upward you can kind of see the northern lights then f5 is good northern lights that's what we got last night it was amazing they kind of correspond to storm classes so a kp5 like last night is actually considered a g1 class storm so that could potentially do some damage it could cause your lights flickering minor satellite disruptions and then g5 is potentially widespread power outages failures of transformers they just build up too much charge to the point where they'll blow create fires potentially have grid blackouts electrical grid collapse so this entire city could just collapse not the buildings but we would lose power in the entire city and something like that happened in 1989 in quebec there was six million people that lost power and it was not brought back up for nine to twelve hours again that wasn't even the largest type of solar storm that could happen you wouldn't be able to track on your gps you have no refrigerator you have no xbox you have no washing machine no dryer no computer you wouldn't be able to charge your vehicle if we're moving more toward electric vehicles and the grid goes down which is terrifying anything is plugged in or your computer might get fried your camera might get fried if it's plugged into something chances are the smaller electronics wouldn't be as affected if there's evidence of a solar flare incoming the one of the best things to do would be to unplug all of your so the economic impacts of something like the carrington event 2.6 trillion dollars is one of the estimates 2.6 trillion dollars and it could potentially take four to ten years to recover from why because the grids go down once you damage that much critical infrastructure it takes a long time not only to make that but to repair it all it's a serious problem this is something that scientists have been warning about for such a long time one of the reasons that putting safeguards and boosting our electoral infrastructure is so crucial we think of this as such a modern society where like the the problems of the past don't affect us but in fact this is a problem that affects us more now because we rely so much on electrical based technology and wouldn't have affected cleopatra i'm buying some candles tonight i'm not a doomsday kind of person but like we need to boost our infrastructure i just want to figure out how likely it is for one of these storms to hit us again and they looked at the last 150 years and they found that there were six quote great solar superstorms uh which is the most powerful type of solar superstorm because this is not an unlikely event anyway that's how the aurora works these are the biggest solar storms in recorded history and the near misses so well i said this before and you laughed but that is so much more interesting than i thought it would be [Music]

Channel: Physics Girl

Views: 3,498,828

Keywords: physics girl, dianna cowern

Id: 85-p9EIEVUA

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Scrabo]

UK National Grid on a repeat of the Carrington Effect

It wouldn’t be the armageddon people may be imagining. Effects would likely be localised rather than across the whole country, with regions affected in a similar way to how they might be in a terrestrial storm which can knock out power lines and leave small areas without power.

Of course they were just referring to their own grid and not all electricity grids are equal. There are also still satellites to worry about.

[u/RenVesir]

you can literally just shut things down while a solar storm passes and then turn it back on for no damage. With a few days warning the average every year hurricane literally does 10 times the damage an "apocalyptic" solar storm would do.

[u/Bkwrzdub]

Don't wanna sound like a tin foil hat wearing nerd but I keep a raspberry pi and a radio in tin foil for just such an emergency.... Just incase

[u/BeardedAvenger]

What happens for people with Pacemakers and other medical implants?

[u/chickenstalker]

No it won't "wipe out" our electronic infrastructure. Some disruptions, sure but modern electronics can withstand solar flares. If it gets to the stage where it can't, then the solar flare is strong enough to kill us by radiation alone.

[u/Goatsonice]

The way she talks feels weirdly condescending, I know its likely just excitement though.

[u/socium]

FUCK. Well I guess better luck next time :(

[u/pete_moss]

This is a good counterpoint video. It gets into the weeds a bit more but the TLDW is that there are ways to harden grids against this that exist and are in place or are being rolled out. In some cases they are cost prohibitive and generally a CME is less of a worry for your grid than conventional weather disasters.

[u/Xarax23]

Hmm. How are people going to get to their bitcoins?