Learning the SECRETS Underneath Earth's Great Powerhouse! | Strip the Cosmos | Science Channel

[00:00:02]90 million miles from planet Earth, a cosmic powerhouse shapes our world.

[00:00:11]The sun, a giant nuclear reactor, 1 million times bigger than Earth.

[00:00:18]Its influence extends to the furthest regions of the solar system. It supports all life and protects us from a harsh galaxy.

[00:00:29]>> The basic building block of the universe is a star.

[00:00:33]And the sun is a star.

[00:00:35]The more we know about the sun, the more we could learn about the universe itself.

[00:00:40]>> All of the energy in my body that I'm using to speak and to move originally comes from the sun.

[00:00:47]>> The sun giveth and the sun taketh away.

[00:00:49]So, the sun gives us life, it sustains us, it protects us, but it can also wipe us out in an instant.

[00:00:55]>> The sun is more than a ball of gas.

[00:00:59]It's a complex engine.

[00:01:03]The outside is an ocean of whirling plasma.

[00:01:07]Below that is a bright layer dotted with dark and violent sunspots.

[00:01:20]120,000 miles deeper, plasma swirls in giant vortices, pushing the sun's heat to the surface.

[00:01:33]Down in the core, a nuclear furnace produces the energy of 100 billion tons of dynamite every second.

[00:01:45]All these layers work together to make a colossal cosmic engine that powers life on Earth.

[00:02:03]But, there's a dark side to all this energy.

[00:02:06]These real-time satellite images show lethal solar storms raging on the surface of the Sun.

[00:02:13]At its most active, it can spew out 20 of them every day.

[00:02:22]These energy surges blasting our planet can damage power grids and cause city-wide blackouts.

[00:02:30]>> These aren't made up science fiction movies coming out of Hollywood. We get solar storms all the time, but a really big one could actually bring our civilization to its knees.

[00:02:46]>> The US Air Force is right in the firing line of the Sun.

[00:02:52]Solar storms can fry communication satellites, endangering the life of anyone on board an aircraft.

[00:03:01]That's why the Air Force has eyes on the Sun day and night.

[00:03:06]The men and women of the second weather squadron scrutinize the Sun's activity 24/7.

[00:03:15]The man with his finger on the solar pulse is Staff Sergeant Aaron O'Connell.

[00:03:20]>> It's my job, in a simple way to phrase it, just watch the Sun and report any activity that might occur on it.

[00:03:26]>> The Sun can brew up a storm without any warning.

[00:03:32]The surface of the Sun is a highly volatile layer of plasma, 1,500 mi deep.

[00:03:42]Violent magnetic fields force their way up through this roiling mass.

[00:03:50]The fields rip off loops [music] solar matter thousands of miles high.

[00:03:56]Some of them collapse into solar flares releasing bursts of radiation.

[00:04:06]Others erupt as huge firestorms ejecting billions of tons of superheated plasma at millions of miles an hour.

[00:04:16]These sun storms take just a few days to reach the Earth.

[00:04:23]But the radiation from a flare can hit us within minutes creating a deadly threat to airborne flights.

[00:04:32]So Sergeant O'Connell's telescope [music] constantly monitors the sun's surface for solar flares.

[00:04:42]>> We do have a region that looks like it's getting bright enough to possibly produce a flare. Right now, it is bright enough for a flare, but it's not quite big enough. Um, so we can go ahead and continue to watch it, monitor it.

[00:04:54]>> The Air Force isn't the only organization watching the action unfold.

[00:05:00]Millions of miles from Earth, a fleet of NASA satellites zooms in on the bright region.

[00:05:08]This volatile area could erupt at any time shooting deadly radiation towards aircraft on Earth.

[00:05:19]>> It's wild when you caught up.

[00:05:23]If I hear that it's three minutes alarm burst then uh I'm very worried.

[00:05:27]>> The alarm tells Sergeant O'Connell that the flare has begun to erupt on the surface of the sun.

[00:05:32]>> So that's the start of our flare.

[00:05:37]>> The cause of this brewing flare lies buried deep within the sun.

[00:05:46]Magnetism.

[00:05:49]The sun's magnetic field originates 120,000 miles below the surface.

[00:05:57]Here, one layer moves faster than the layer below it, shearing the highly charged plasma in between.

[00:06:06]This generates massive magnetic fields throughout the sun.

[00:06:12]These powerful fields pierce the outer layers, pushing up towering loops of plasma that can erupt without warning.

[00:06:26]It's a tense time for the Air Force's second weather squadron.

[00:06:30]For now, they can only watch and wait for the sun's next move.

[00:06:37]>> That's our end flare alarm.

[00:06:39]This region's no longer flare bright, and that's the end of our flare.

[00:06:44]>> This time, we're lucky.

[00:06:47]The flare died down before it could escape the sun and hit the Earth.

[00:06:52]Our sun demands constant vigilance, but other stars have an even more violent temper.

[00:07:03]The cosmos seethes with magnetic ferocity.

[00:07:07]>> When we consider the danger that the sun poses, one of the big dangers has to do with its magnetic fields. It has strong fields, and the size and strength of the field is related to a star's rotation rate. So, when stars are young, they rotate much more quickly, and they have much more powerful magnetic fields, which means more powerful explosions on their surface.

[00:07:29]>> One of the most explosive young stars lies 16 light-years away, EV Lacertae.

[00:07:37]It's three times smaller than our sun, and 100 times less bright.

[00:07:43]But this tiny stellar infant packs a punch.

[00:07:47]Spinning six times faster than our sun, its magnetic field is a hundred times stronger.

[00:07:54]In 2008, EV Lacertae produced the largest star storm ever recorded.

[00:08:02]Thousands of times more powerful than any storm from our sun.

[00:08:08]Thankfully, our planet was too far away to be hit.

[00:08:14]The sun is not nearly as violent, but much closer to Earth.

[00:08:23]The next big solar storm could arrive at any time.

[00:08:28]A direct hit could wipe out power across an entire continent.

[00:08:35]So, how can we survive the next big strike?