- 6/26/2025
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.
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TechTranscript
00:00there are some beautiful auroras happening in the northwest of america right now yeah so like noah
00:06scientists have given this a really really simple explanation and it's it's called uh like a cannibal
00:12coronal mass ejection that's the con that's the thing that's causing all of these auroras going on
00:18right now cannibal corona mass ejection yeah that sounds a little terrifying i mean it's it's kind
00:24of funny right because like just soon as we get over one kind of corona we get hit by another but
00:28like this this one like a cannibal coronal mass ejection like if i break that down for you
00:34it's caused by sunspots so there's a sunspot on the sun called like ar 2975 right now okay um and what
00:41it's been doing over the last say like few days is producing up to 17 solar eruptions two of which
00:49um were i've headed straight towards us now one of them was traveling faster than the other it was the
00:55one just like that came just after the first one that was emitted now when those when that second
01:03sun like the coronal mass ejection caught up with the first it cannibalized it it swept it all up into
01:10this one big wave of part of like these these charged particles and then they all swept towards the earth
01:16and then when they hit it they caused a geomagnetic storm what where they come from in how sunspots are
01:23created is magnetic fields are created on the sun like the sun is just a giant ball of plasma so
01:29like there's loads of charged particles eddying and moving around on like inside the sun across the sun
01:35surface now when you have charged particles moving you're going to induce some magnetism there but
01:40because magnetic field lines can't cross and you've got all these moving particles like this giant traffic
01:45jam of particles moving everywhere you'll inevitably get these field lines bunched up next to each other
01:50they'll form into these tight knots that can't escape anywhere else and eventually they will have
01:56to snap 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 from
02:07the sun what's the difference between solar flares and ronal mass ejections so solar flares is just
02:13the bright flash that you'll see of radiation from that from that field line snapping that energy release
02:19a coronal mass ejection is some of the sun's like plasma soup actually being like burped out of the
02:25sun i love that phrase plasma soup mm-hmm yeah tasty nice uh i mean pretty but i mean a little terrifying
02:36right i mean does it affect earth um so it does but not in like a so not in an always really terrible
02:46way most of the time the earth has a pretty strong magnetic field which is really really good news for
02:52us because it protects us from all of these like highly energized particles that the sun has just
02:58spewed out at us um in this case at like speeds of like 2 million miles per hour which is just i guess
03:0433 times less than the speed of light pretty quick um so what the earth's magnetic field will do is it will
03:12absorb all of these particles the energy will go into stretching out the magnetic field in space
03:18so it's like it's kind of bunched out towards the it gives it a long tail um and then
03:25most of those particles will gather kind of towards the poles where they will like go downwards and then
03:32energize some of the molecules in the atmosphere and when these when these um molecules in the atmosphere
03:39then give out light um to in order to kind of go down to a lower energy level that's what why we see
03:45the aurora now because there's many of these like particles coming in you're getting auroras much lower
03:52down um along the northern hemisphere than you would normally expect to see that's that's that's that's a
03:59pretty that's a nice effect there um and i know that uh people had already taken video from it uh this is
04:07from manitoba in canada beautiful just absolutely beautiful yeah yeah yeah and like i think also
04:16you could see the aurora in the us certainly like as far south as pennsylvania iowa and oregon over the
04:21last two days as well oh right on uh spaceweather.com that you guys were sharing information from uh they
04:29showed some pictures purple i mean purple what a what an aura that earth is giving off of this aurora
04:37and you know i uh when you mentioned poles i'm like that's why they're always up there
04:43towards yeah we got to get closer to some poles ben yeah yeah but so okay so that's the good what uh
04:51how about damage okay yes so damage um so they can cause damage so one of the most recent kind of power
05:02outages that was caused by a storm of this type was um in the was the 1989 quebec power cut which was
05:09caused by a geomagnetic storm now most of the time especially when it comes to people who provide like
05:15power lines and stuff a lot of them have shielded like their their their like power cables and things
05:20like that with a kind of faraday cage basically which diverts the energy or they also have like other
05:27techniques that allow them to kind of siphon off excess energy that might be given to power lines
05:31by storms like this okay but like that hasn't always been the case like especially back in 1859
05:38there was a really big event called the great carrington event um which was the largest sort
05:43of solar storm in modern human history i'm sure there have been solar storms just as large throughout
05:49our past but like before that point we weren't really documenting it and we didn't have
05:54many electronics around so we didn't really care um but in this case the great carrington event fried
06:01most of the telegram systems in the us and in europe that had been developed at the time and it also
06:07led to auroras that could be seen around like as far south as the as the caribbean um and like there
06:14were people waking up at night thinking that it like thinking that it was daytime in the caribbean
06:20because of these enormous auroras from this event i mean we we're freaked out about it now when we see
06:25things like that we know more but i can't even imagine you know over 100 years ago yeah yeah exactly
06:32in terms of um more modern sort of phenomena that have caused more modern damage other than the
06:37quebec event um recently actually there was another geomagnetic storm that caused the downing of um
06:4440 like 40 of spacex's starlink satellites that was one thing that happened um and on top of that as
06:51well there's a potential risk um that internet like the internet in general especially in the united states
06:59could be cut out by a geomagnetic storm because a lot of these cables run underwater through like like
07:06latitudes that would be affected by it and like you would have a geomagnetic storm they're not shielded
07:13so they would basically be probably quite severely affected by this but as is the case with a lot of
07:18things and how they're done with like legislation it's like earthquakes it doesn't often get
07:23legislated for until the worst has already happened yeah that's a shame i mean i really like the internet
07:28i really i like to keep it around this is how we get to communicate right exactly um but but you're
07:37saying that we have protections now so most i think most like power companies have already built in
07:44protections into their grids for these kind of things it's just yeah you're not going to be
07:48getting any like um i guess coronal mass ejection memes in the middle of a coronal mass ejection you
07:53have to wait a few weeks for them to fix this to power the underwater cables yeah and and luckily earth
07:59you know we have this nice electromagnetic shield right already built in otherwise we'd be you know goners you
08:04you know yeah it would fry us and it would also fry our atmosphere like a big reason why mars doesn't
08:09have much of an atmosphere for instance it doesn't really have very active um magnetic fields so all
08:15of those all of the atmosphere when when it gets hit by this these wave of like hydrogen like particles
08:21protons um like the atmosphere gets stripped away quite quickly poor mars poor mars yeah but that's why
08:28we're here right we're not we're not i mean we are on mars but you know yeah yeah not yet not yet
08:34well so is there a way to know when things like this will happen i know we watch the sun we have
08:41video of the sun it seems more like after the fact yeah so you get a bit of advanced warning like for
08:49instance the great carrington event is named after richard carrington who spotted like intense solar
08:54flares in the sky like a few like a few hours like maybe about 15 hours before the actual like event
09:01hit but the sun is quite a complex object like there's loads going on in those magnetic fields
09:07it's still really really hard for scientists to predict what's going on there yeah if only if only
09:13well until until the next major astronomical event thanks so much ben thank you
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