Cannibal CME, Solar Flares and Sunspots

Live Science

After witnessing the array of Northern Lights as far south as Colorado, we discuss how Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) are formed and what impact they have on Earth.

Transcript

00:00there are some beautiful auroras happening in the northwest of America right now.

00:04Yeah so like NOAA scientists have given this a really really simple explanation and it's it's

00:10called like a cannibal coronal mass ejection that's the that's the thing that's causing all

00:16of these auroras going on right now. Cannibal corona mass ejection. Yeah that sounds a little

00:23terrifying. I mean it's it's kind of funny right because like just soon as we get over one kind of

00:27corona we get hit by another but like this this one like a cannibal coronal mass ejection like if

00:32I break that down for you it's caused by sunspots. So there's a sunspot on the sun called like AR2975

00:40right now. Okay. And what it's been doing over the last say like few days is producing up to 17

00:46solar eruptions two of which were have headed straight towards us. Now one of them was traveling

00:54faster than the other. It was the one just like that came just after the first one that was emitted.

01:01Now when those when that second sun like the coronal mass ejection caught up with the first

01:08it cannibalized it. It swept it all up into this one big wave of part of like these these charged

01:13particles and then they all swept towards the earth and then when they hit it they caused a

01:19geomagnetic storm. What where they come from in how sunspots are created is magnetic fields are

01:25created on the sun like the sun is just a giant ball of plasma so like there's loads of charged

01:30particles eddying and moving around on like inside the sun across the sun's surface. Now when you have

01:36charged particles moving you're going to induce some magnetism there but because magnetic field

01:41lines can't cross and you've got all these moving particles like this giant traffic jam of particles

01:46moving everywhere you'll inevitably get these field lines bunched up next to each other they'll

01:51form into these tight knots that can't escape anywhere else and eventually they will have to

01:56snap and release energy. Now they release energy either in the form of a solar flare like a bright

02:01flare of radiation or they'll release energy in the form of like chucking out some of that plasma

02:07from the sun. What's the difference between solar flares and ronald mass ejections? So solar flares

02:13it's just the bright flash that you'll see of radiation and from that from that field line

02:17snapping that energy release. A coronal mass ejection is some of the sun's like plasma soup

02:23actually being like burped out of the sun. I love that phrase plasma soup. Yeah tasty plasma nice

02:30I mean pretty but I mean a little terrifying right? I mean does it affect earth? So it does

02:41but not in like a so not in an always really terrible way most of the time the earth has a

02:48pretty strong magnetic field which is really really good news for us because it protects us

02:54from all of these like highly energized particles that the sun has just spewed out at us. In this

03:00case at like speeds of like two million miles per hour which is just I guess 33 times less than the

03:06speed of light pretty quick. So what the earth's magnetic field will do is it will absorb all of

03:13these particles the energy will go into stretching out the magnetic field in space so it's like it's

03:19kind of bunched out towards the it gives it a long tail and then most of those particles will gather

03:28kind of towards the poles where they will like go downwards and then energize some of the molecules

03:34in the atmosphere and when these when these molecules in the atmosphere then give out light

03:40in order to kind of go down to a lower energy level that's what why we see the aurora. Now

03:46because there's so many of these like particles coming in you're getting auroras much lower down

03:53along the northern hemisphere than you would normally expect to see.

03:57That's a pretty that's a nice effect there and I know that people had

04:04already taken video from it. This is from Manitoba in Canada beautiful just absolutely beautiful.

04:13Yeah yeah yeah and like I think also you could see the aurora in the U.S. certainly like as far

04:18south as Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon over the last few days as well. Oh right on spaceweather.com

04:26that you guys were sharing information from they showed some pictures purple I mean purple what a

04:33what an aura that earth is giving off of this aurora and you know I when you mentioned poles

04:41I'm like that's why they're always up there towards you we got to get closer to some poles Ben.

04:46Yeah yeah. But so okay so that's the good what how about damage? Okay yes so damage so they can

04:58cause damage so one of the most recent kind of power outages that was caused by a storm of this

05:04type was um in the was the 1989 Quebec power cut which was caused by a geomagnetic storm.

05:11Now most of the time especially when it comes to people who provide like power lines and stuff a

05:16lot of them have shielded like their their their like power cables and things like that with a kind

05:21of faraday cage basically which diverts the energy or they also have like other techniques that allow

05:28them to kind of siphon off excess energy that might be given to power lines by storms like this.

05:33Okay. But like that hasn't always been the case like especially back in 1859 there was a really

05:38big event called the Great Carrington Event which was the largest sort of solar storm in modern

05:44human history. I'm sure there have been solar storms just as large throughout our past but like

05:51before that point we weren't really documenting it we didn't have many electronics around so we

05:55didn't really care. But in this case the Great Carrington Event fried most of the telegram

06:02systems in the U.S. and in Europe that had been developed at the time and it also led to auroras

06:09that could be seen around like as far south as the as the Caribbean and like there were people

06:14waking up at night thinking that like thinking that it was daytime in the Caribbean because of

06:20these enormous auroras from this event. I mean we're freaked out about it now when we see things

06:26like that we know more but I can't even imagine you know over 100 years ago. Yeah yeah exactly.

06:32In terms of more modern sort of phenomena that have caused more modern damage other than the

06:37Quebec event recently actually there was another geomagnetic storm that caused the downing of 40

06:44like 40 of SpaceX's Starlink satellites. That was one thing that happened and on top of that as well

06:51there's a potential risk that internet like the internet in general especially in the United

06:58States could be cut out by a geomagnetic storm because a lot of these cables run underwater

07:05through like latitudes that would be affected by it and like you would have a geomagnetic storm

07:12they're not shielded so they would basically be probably quite severely affected by this

07:16but as is the case with a lot of things and how they're done with like legislation it's like

07:22earthquakes it doesn't often get legislated for until the worst has already happened. Yeah that's

07:27a shame I mean I really like the internet I really I like to keep it around this is how we get to

07:31communicate right but but you're saying that we have protections now. So most I think most

07:41like power companies have already built in protections into their grids for these kind of

07:45things it's just yeah you're not going to be getting any like I guess coronal mass ejection

07:51memes in the middle of a coronal mass ejection you have to wait a few weeks for them to fix

07:54this to power the underwater cables. Yeah and and luckily earth you know we have this nice

08:00electromagnetic shield right already built in otherwise we'd be you know goners. Yeah it would

08:05fry us and it would also fry our atmosphere like a big reason why Mars doesn't have much of an

08:10atmosphere for instance it doesn't really have very active magnetic fields so all of those all

08:16of the atmosphere when when it gets hit by this these wave of like hydrogen like particles protons

08:23like the atmosphere gets stripped away quite quickly. Poor Mars, poor Mars. Yeah but that's

08:28why we're here right we're not we're not I mean we are on Mars but you know not yet. Not yet not

08:33yet. Well so is there a way to know when things like this will happen? I know we watch the sun

08:41we have video of the sun it seems more like after the fact. Yeah so you get a bit of advanced warning

08:49like for instance the Great Carrington event is named after Richard Carrington who spotted like

08:53intense solar flares in the sky like a few like a few hours like maybe about 15 hours before the

09:00actual like event hit but the sun is quite a complex object like there's loads going on in

09:06those magnetic fields it's still really really hard for scientists to predict what's going on there.

09:11Yeah if only if only well until until the next major astronomical event thanks so much Ben. Thank you.

09:30you

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