Solar Superstorms (Full Astronomy Documentary) | Spark

[Music] a fury is building on the surface of the Sun Jets of superhot gas towering waves of fire the most violent explosions in our solar system science is now taking us on an extraordinary journey into our star to explore the power [Music] and rising threat of solar super storms [Music] we think of the Sun as a constant a tranquil vision eternal [Music] and yet beneath the calm a storm is gathering force it's September 1st the year 1859 [Music] the English astronomer Richard Carentan note signs of turbulence rising across the surface of our star at the beginning of one of the most violent solar outbursts on record searing jets for tens of thousands of kilometers into space vast roiling towers of super hot gas billow upward [Music] temperatures soared to millions of degrees Celsius [Music] amid the turmoil a strange dark region appears a cluster of sunspots now estimated to have been 20 times the size of her [Music] from this region the Sun erupts in what scientists call a coronal mass ejection [Music] over a billion tons of solar particles head in our direction based on the timing of Carrington's observations scientists now estimate that the solar blasts traveled over eight million kilometers per hour observers around the world greeted its arrival as they dissolve tonight solar particles excited oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the upper atmosphere turning the night aglow the northern and southern lights are usually visible only at the poles that night they stretched all the way to the tropics watching from a campsite in the Colorado Rockies a journalist described an auroral light so bright that one could easily read common fruit an observer in Havana Cuba reported that the sky appeared stained with blood and in a state of general conflagration in New York City thousands gathered on sidewalks and rooftops to watch the glowing skies but the spectacle had a dark side in those days Telegraph networks were taking hold as an efficient new means of long-distance communication transcontinental and transatlantic lines were in the words through the week British instruments recorded wild swings in cure magnetic activity electricity began to surge through telegraph wires some operators found they could turn their batteries off and still transmit others received shocks transformers blue had earth been hit by some form of meteoric matter was it a form of high-altitude lightning never-before-seen to scientists the culprit was soon clean it was the Sun and associated forces of electricity and magnetism it was our first warning that our star can threaten the way we live and communicate a modern-day wake up call came in March 1989 the solar outburst took down Canada's hydro-québec power grid leaving 6 million people without electricity for up to nine hours another game in 2003 with Halloween approaching it had been three and a half years since the Sun last erupted in fury at the peak of an 11-year cycle of solar flare ups sunspots appeared unexpectedly over a period of two and a half weeks scientists recorded 17 solar outbursts including the largest emission of solar x-rays ever seen slamming into Earth's upper atmosphere solar particles damaged 28 communication satellites and destroyed to a newly installed GPS based air navigation system went down for 30 hours here is the sequence of eruptions courtesy of the newly launched Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or Soho [Music] the Halloween storms did not stop at earth sweeping past Mars the solar blasts were so strong that it burned out the radiation monitor aboard the spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor [Music] ironically this instrument was designed to study radiation that human explorers might encounter on future missions beyond her [Music] the same posts of solar energy was recorded by the two Voyager spacecraft on their way to the far reaches of the solar system while solar storms are not dangerous to people they can pose a significant threat to our increasingly power and technology dependent world a recent estimate published by the National Academy of Sciences held that an outburst like the one in 1859 could cause damage of one to two trillion dollars in the first year alone rivaling the cost of the worst hurricanes or earthquakes the risk starts with the clean satellites that orbit the Earth as well as the sprawling complex of air travel dependent on satellite GPS navigation it extends to a vast network of electronic phone and Internet wires that knit together and define modern life it's not only the cost of repairing and replacing damaged components but the loss of business and government services extending over the years it takes to recover the problem is not limited to higher latitudes scientists have found that solar plasma can amplify a band of electrical current that orbits the earth snaking its way above equatorial regions this equatorial electrojet can provoke spikes of electrical current on the ground posing risks to electrical grids that may not be set up to handle them the more integrated and global our technological infrastructure becomes the more vulnerable it is this realization has led scientists in the last two decades to launch a fleet of new generation spacecraft designed to closely monitor the Sun they've taken up positions in low-earth orbit to measure incoming solar particles and their interaction with our atmosphere and they are circling out in interplanetary space to track solar activity in unprecedented detail these spacecraft are documenting solar activity in wavelengths up and down the electromagnetic spectrum [Music] with all this data flowing in scientists are drawing an increasingly complex picture of the Sun and its inner workings their aim is to predict solar eruptions more accurately than ever before and to usher in a whole new era in space weather forecasting [Music] this effort includes a powerful new tool super computer programs or models that use the laws of physics to simulate the workings of the universe including stars like our Sun to understand the source of the sun's power we peer into this virtual telescope and look back to the early moments of cosmic history within the first 300 million years gravity to the primordial gas into filaments and dense sentence the first generation of stars ignited [Music] trillions upon trillions of newborn stars flooded the cosmos with intense ultraviolet light that heated their surroundings vast patches of hot gas intersected and merged [Music] the largest stars spread additional heat and radiation by exploding in supernovas [Music] this outpouring of energy change the character of the universe down to the smallest of scales [Music] it's tripped electrons away from hydrogen atoms turning nearly all matter in the universe into the ultimate cosmic elixir an electrified gas known as plasma [Music] on our planet plasma can be found wherever temperatures rise to extremes [Music] from the red-hot core of a flame to the white-hot flash of a lightning bolt we create plasma by sending electric currents into a gas such as neon that frees electrons from nuclear and excites them causing the gas to glow in space plasma 2 is electrically charged [Music] as a result when mater moves or swirls around under the influence of gravity it generates a strange driving force magnetism magnetic fields can channel or even block the flow of plasma you can see this on a large scale in the famed m51 galaxy plasma swirling around this spiral galaxy has generated a network of magnetic fields shown in this map these fields carry matter away from the plane of the galaxy in doing so they sat energy from its rotating motion allowing gas to fall toward the center there is a similar dynamic at work deep in the center of some galaxies plasma drawn by the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole forms a spinning disk it generates magnetic fields that spiral up and out they channel a portion of the inflowing plasma into Jets so powerful they approach the speed of light [Music] astronomers have spotted okhla high speed Jets shooting out of many a large galaxy in the case of NGC 1275 magnetic fields generated by a central black hole suspend an intricate network of gas filaments above the galaxies in our own neck of the woods the dynamic properties of plasma the count for the energy we see rippling across the surface of our star masses orbiting telescope the Solar Dynamics Observatory has given us an extraordinary view of a wide variety of phenomenon from fiery jets [Music] and massive white-hot flares the dazzling loops that rise into the sun's atmosphere [Music] to understand how solar plasma can fuel an eruption on the scale of 1859 was so-called Carrington event we must travel deep below its surface in the Sun's core is a nuclear furnace heated to 15 million degrees Celsius [Music] the pressure and the heat rise causing a fusion reaction in which hydrogen atoms crash together merging to form heavier atoms like helium [Music] these fusion reactions give off heat which rises in plumes to the surface of the Sun on a journey that can last tens of millions of years scientists have been using supercomputer models to simulate this journey they have found that as the flow of plasma reaches the sun's outer layer the convective zone it breaks down into complex worlds and loose [Music] near the equator where the Sun rotates quickly it forms vast rolling waves [Music] [Music] because plasma is made up of electrically charged particles these churning motions produce magnetic fields shown here in blue [Music] they thread through the sun's outer layers like vast rivers of energy [Music] if the energy in these fields is strong enough they may twist or snap then spiral upward [Music] [Applause] this computer model takes us just below the surface as the magnetic field pushes through this hellish region it forms immense rising arcs they become enveloped in electrical currents the cloud light features shown here these currents generated by rising and sinking streams of plasma pump energy into the magnetic parts at the arc stretch upward they can draw huge volumes of hot plasma toward the surface where they burst into the solar atmosphere they form so called active regions you can't actually see the magnetic loops but you can see plasma coursing through them rising up one side and draining down the other [Music] at times if these fields transport enough energy to the surface they can fuel magnificent jets called prominences covering an even larger area active regions can burst forth in white-hot solar flares but release the energy of over a million hydrogen bonds [Music] but the magnetic fields that Spiritist energy release can also stifle it as a result active regions are often flanked by sunspots where surface temperatures can drop by as much as 2,000 degrees Celsius four centuries ago Galileo Galilei was the first to argue that these blotches were actually on the Sun surface though he suspected they were clouds [Music] their nature remained unclear until 1908 when astronomer George Ellery Hale demonstrated the link between sunspots and intense magnetic fields [Music] when a cluster of sunspots appears it's a sign that magnetic energy is building below the surface to staggering levels this view captured by the hinode satellite shows energy escaping in the vicinity of a sunspot in wavy grass like structures called spicules at temperatures in the millions of degrees these short-lived Jets are thought to be one reason the solar atmosphere is so much hotter than the visible surface in this sequence you can see a solar flare erupting among a cluster of sunspots this energy release can take on added power if the sunspots rotate like vast hurricanes under the influence of the sun's own spinning motions the magnetic fields begin to twist around and the energy within them to rise these spinning motions have been linked to the largest solar eruptions of all coronal mass ejections a goal of solar astronomy is to catch events like this from multiple angles and in multiple wavelengths as seen in this composite of different telescope views that effort paid off in July 2012 when the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a flare in the making on the visible edge or limb of the Sun one of its sensors designed to record events at 10 million degrees allowed scientists to peer into a tangle of rising arcs [Music] by adding data from the stereo-a spacecraft they were able to create a 3d picture of figure eight patterns in the rising arcs [Music] this twisting configuration preceded the eruption captured here by the Solar Dynamics Observatory [Music] [Music] the event continued to dazzle as plasma flowed up into magnetic arcs and down in what's been called a coronal rain [Music] to rural mass ejections are huge bubbles of gas threaded through with magnetic field lines [Music] they are part of a larger flow of energy from the Sun including a constant stream of particles called the solar wind it can travel to the far corners of the solar system causing even distant Saturn to light up in colourful Aurora's to understand what a powerful force the solar flow can be take a look at Earth's sister planet Venus [Music] the European spacecraft Venus Express recently found that solar winds are steadily stripping off lighter water molecules in its upper atmosphere sending them flowing away from the planet's night side over the eons what's left and Venus's atmosphere is a witch's brew of acidic gases and carbon dioxide [Music] looking at Venus from orbit you'd see a dense layer of high-altitude clouds from 45 to 60 6 kilometers above the surface [Music] these clouds are so dense and reflective that Venus absorbs much less solar energy than Earth even though it's 30 percent closer to the Sun [Music] and yet down on its surface Venus is like a house on fire with its windows forever closed Venus is in the grips of a runaway greenhouse effect with an atmosphere that claps increasing amounts of solar energy temperatures hover at 464 degrees Celsius hot enough to melt LED air pressures are 90 times higher than its sea-level on Earth at higher elevations a fine mist forms not of water but of the rare metal tellurium and iron pyrites known on earth as fool's gold it can form a metallic frost like snowflakes in hell [Music] the surface is packed with volcanic formations ranging from lava domes to large eruptive summits with water unable to take hold here these formations continually replenish the noxious atmosphere [Music] how did Earth avoid such a harsh fate [Music] when a solar blast moves out into space it extends well above and below the orbits of the planets [Music] sweeping by Venus it takes aim at our planet [Music] when it hits the blast slams into a kind of protective shield one that Venus lacks [Music] earth spin causes molten iron circulating deep in its core to generate magnetic fields they extend beyond our atmosphere enveloping the earth in what's called the magnetosphere it devotes most of the incoming solar particles past the earth while Earth's magnetic field may be strong it does not shield us from the worst solar eruptions this supercomputer model was created by scientists to understand the events that can trigger coronal mass ejection on the scale of 1859 it shows magnetic arts rising hundreds of thousands of kilometers above the surface a sign that electrical energy is coursing through them [Music] when this energy reaches a critical threshold the arcs become unstable they unravel suddenly and violently in a coronal mass ejection [Music] this has the effect of clearing a hole in the solar atmosphere if the arcs reform a second eruption moves out with even greater force in speed the great solar storm of 1859 actually his birth in several powerful pulses [Music] the first one produced bright Aurora's on Sunday August 28th a second more energetic blast struck the following Thursday we got a taste of how powerful such an event can be in July 2012 [Music] the masses stereo-a spacecraft recorded two small coronal mass ejections [Music] followed by a Carrington scale blast [Music] at this event occurred a week earlier it might have hit us with catastrophic effects scientists used it as a test case for understanding the behavior of Earth's magnetosphere under a powerful solar onslaught a computer model shows a normal day the solar wind flows continuously past the earth distorting its magnetic field and pulling it around the back in a tail like structure a typical coronal mass ejection pushes Earth's field in and lengthens its tail the magnetosphere remains largely intact a Carrington scale event is a different story it severely compresses Earth's magnetic field while packing the boundary with plasma [Music] to find out how this plasma actually reaches earth scientists have simulated its approach in one of the largest solar computer models ever produced the solar plasma heads toward our planet aboard streams of magnetic field shown in blue on its leading edge where it pushes up against Earth's magnetic field turbulence develops [Music] [Music] tracts begin to open up in Earth's protective armor the fissures widen millions of tons of electrified gas now surged through in jet like flows that can engulf the planet no one knows exactly why but solar magnetic activity rises and falls in a cycle that lasts about 11 years [Music] at the Deaconess cycle the Sun can churn out as many as three coronal mass ejections in a day [Music] they grace us with spectacles of color and light beautiful beyond measure [Music] they are a reminder of the intimate connection between our planet and our star when Aurora's crown our atmosphere they may stretch hundreds of kilometres into space imagine being able to see them spread far and wide before you like astronauts can board the International Space Station [Music] the station was built to protect them from solar radiation they are safe as long as they stay inside lately thanks to high-resolution digital cameras astronauts have allowed us to share the view out their windows as solar plasma reaches across the void to paint our skies in greens and blues and reds today scientists are keeping a close watch on solar activity while working to improve forecast models [Music] with enough advance warning airplanes can be diverted away from the polls satellites can be powered down or turned away from on rushing solar plasma on the ground power grids can be protected by temporarily shutting them down meanwhile scientists are racing to add another line of defense knowledge of how and when the Sun can threaten us solar storms like the one documented by Richard Carrington in 1859 are thought to hit earth about every 150 years at that rate we may be due for another with every violent eruption the Sun relinquishes another clue and another warning to brace ourselves for the next solar superstore [Music] [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 703,496

Rating: 4.6150012 out of 5

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, Learning, How To, education, documentary, factual, mind blown, full documentary, 2017, 2016, 2015, full, space documentary, bbc documentary, Science documentary, Solar Flares, Exploding Sun, Northern Lights, Can the sun destroy earth, Sun, Can the sun turn off all power, Looking at sun, astronomy documentary, solar superstorms, solar flare, solar flare documentary, super storms, the universe, quantum physics, engineering documentary, dangeoussun

Id: dVNRChcQJaE

Length: 48min 23sec (2903 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 22 2017