Next Solar Storm Could Knock Out Civilization, Experts Say

[00:00:01]A powerful [music] solar storm can mess up life on Earth in a catastrophic way.

[00:00:06]It can leave huge regions of our planet without power, disrupt [music] communication and navigation satellites, damage power grids and data centers.

[00:00:16]Scientists warned that the next major solar storm could become one of the most devastating natural disasters.

[00:00:23]And the question isn't [music] if it happens, the correct question is when.

[00:00:29]And the scary part, this kind of weather doesn't happen in Earth's atmosphere at all. It starts 93 million miles away on the sun.

[00:00:39]When the sun becomes active, we can feel it on Earth. This activity can mess with satellites, GPS, radio signals, and even parts of the power grid. Scientists usually group space weather into three main types: radio blackouts, geomagnetic storms, and radiation storms from the sun.

[00:00:59]Each one has a different effect on Earth. Radio blackouts happen when the sun sends a powerful burst of energy, aka a solar flare, our way. When that energy reaches Earth, it hits the upper atmosphere and disrupts the way radio signals travel.

[00:01:15]Geomagnetic storms are different.

[00:01:18]Sometimes the sun launches enormous clouds of superheated gas into space.

[00:01:23]These eruptions are called [music] coronal mass ejections. Imagine billions of tons of solar material blasted away from the sun at a speed of millions of miles hour.

[00:01:34]If one of those clouds comes across Earth, it [music] slams into our planet's magnetic field at full speed.

[00:01:41]The result is a massive geomagnetic storm. We've already seen some serious space weather recently.

[00:01:49]For example, in May 2024, the strongest space weather event since 2003 hit Earth. GPS systems went through massive disruptions.

[00:01:59]The US agricultural industry was hit hard. All because modern farming needs satellite navigation to work properly.

[00:02:08]As for the infamous 2003 event, it completely cut power in parts of Sweden and South Africa. You might be wondering what will happen if we get something even bigger.

[00:02:19]Scientists decided to figure out what a true worst case space weather event might look like.

[00:02:26]Now, worst case doesn't mean a once in a million-year disaster. Planning for something that rare isn't super useful.

[00:02:34]Instead, researchers focused on events that could realistically happen once every 100 to 200 years. Rare, but not impossible.

[00:02:44]When a strong geomagnetic storm hits Earth, it doesn't just affect space. It can actually generate electric currents in the ground, too. And since power lines are excellent conductors, those currents can get inside the electrical grid. It's like extra electricity getting suddenly injected into a system that wasn't designed to deal with it. If the currents are strong enough, they can overload parts of the grid. Safety systems may automatically shut sections down to prevent damage, potentially leading to massive blackouts. Whole regions might stay without electricity.

[00:03:21]But losing power isn't even the worst part. The extra current can also damage transformers. Those massive machines that help move electricity across the grid. Some of these transformers weigh hundreds of tons and can take months or even years to replace.

[00:03:38]This means that even after the storm is over, parts of the electrical network may still remain damaged for a long time.

[00:03:47]The power grid on Earth isn't the only thing at risk. A serious space weather event will first mess with satellites hundreds of miles above our heads. And we depend on satellites far more than most people realize.

[00:04:00]They help us navigate, forecast the weather, communicate with relatives and friends all over the world, and track ships and aircraft.

[00:04:10]During a bad solar storm, many of those satellites could run into serious trouble.

[00:04:16]One problem is radiation. When the sun throws large amounts of energetic particles into space, those particles can slam directly into spacecraft.

[00:04:26]Over time, they can damage electronics and slowly wear down solar panels, shortening a satellite's lifespan.

[00:04:34]During an especially powerful event, some satellites could fail completely.

[00:04:39]But there's another huge problem. A solar flare can actually heat Earth's upper atmosphere. When that happens, the atmosphere expands outward and becomes slightly thicker at altitudes where many satellites orbit.

[00:04:53]The change is tiny, [music] but for satellites, it matters a lot. Imagine riding a bike on a smooth road, and then suddenly someone pours a thin layer of mud over it. You can still move forward, but you'll slow down faster than before.

[00:05:09]Something similar happens to satellites.

[00:05:11]The thicker atmosphere creates extra drag, and that drag slowly pulls satellites into lower orbits. If they lose too much altitude, some spacecraft can fall back into the atmosphere and burn up. And it's happened before. In 2022, [music] solar activity caused Earth's atmosphere to expand right after a batch of Starlink satellites was launched. Around 40 of them couldn't [music] maintain their orbits and eventually re-entered the atmosphere.

[00:05:41]But during a real worst case solar storm, the situation could become way more dramatic. It could also prevent us from tracking satellites and increase the risk of their collisions with space debris.

[00:05:54]The next problem is radio signals. Right now, they're constantly passing through the air around you. Your phone, GPS, Wi-Fi, [music] aircraft communications, ship navigation systems, emergency services, all of them depend on radio waves. And a bad solar storm can mess up many of those signals.

[00:06:16]Solar flares produce [music] bursts of radio energy. And sometimes those bursts become so powerful that they drown out weaker signals on Earth.

[00:06:26]It's kind of like trying to hear someone whisper while a jet engine is running nearby.

[00:06:32]None of this means [music] that a giant solar storm would send us back to the Stone Age. Even a worst case event probably wouldn't be a Hollywood style apocalypse.

[00:06:41]But it could create a chain reaction of problems. Satellites could fail, GPS could become unreliable, flights could be cancelled, and parts of the power grid could be damaged.

[00:06:55]That's exactly why scientists spend so much time studying space weather. And now they might have to come up with a pretty cool idea for protecting Earth from powerful solar storms.

[00:07:07]They proposed something called Storm Wall. The idea is simple. What if we don't just wait for solar storms to hit and deal with the damage? What if we weaken the solar storm before it reaches Earth?

[00:07:21]The idea is based on Earth's magnetic field. Our [music] planet is surrounded by a giant magnetic bubble called the magneettosphere. It's like an invisible shield that helps protect us from charged particles coming from the sun.

[00:07:34]Researchers noticed that Earth's atmosphere already helps strengthen this shield. Tiny particles escape from the atmosphere and interact with the outer edge of the magneettosphere.

[00:07:45]So scientists decided to try to boost that process [music] on purpose. Their plan involves six spacecraft orbiting Earth. Each spacecraft would carry materials like barerium or lithium. If you release them into space, sunlight would charge those materials, turning them into a cloud of plasma.

[00:08:06]Plasma is basically a gas whose particles carry electric charges. The sun itself is mostly made of plasma.

[00:08:15]The idea is that those artificial plasma clouds would form near the edge of Earth's magnetic shield. And when a solar storm arrived, the plasma would help absorb, redirect, and weaken some of the storm's energy before it reaches Earth. According to the team's simulations, the system could reduce the strength of a serious geomagnetic storm by 50%.

[00:08:39]That would be a really great result. A storm that's cut in half would mean less damage to satellites, fewer communication problems, fewer GPS disruptions, and less stress on power grids.

[00:08:52]Of course, this is still just a concept.

[00:08:55]Nobody has built the storm well yet.

[00:08:58]Nobody even knows for sure whether it would work exactly as planned in the real world. But the researchers say that the physics behind it checks [music] out. And apparently modern rockets can indeed launch the equipment we'd need for such a mission.

[00:09:14]There's just one problem, and it's money.

[00:09:18]Building and launching six spacecraft wouldn't be cheap. Plus, once the material is released into space, it's gone. you can't collect it, refill it, or use it again.

[00:09:31]The researchers believe that the mission would use about as much material as a dozen large tanker trucks. That's why the price of a truly massive solar storm could be exorbitant.

[00:09:46]A solar storm is crashing into Earth like a cosmic tsunami. First, the atmosphere ignites, sparking massive auroras. High energy radiation slams into the surface, [music] frying power grids, turning lights off across continents and knocking out satellites.

[00:10:03]Planes lose navigation. [music] Radios go silent. GPS systems crash. Radiation levels spike dangerously. [music] Communication collapses. Emergency services scramble in the darkness. And chaos spreads as people struggle to cope. Solar particles start to strip away the very air we breathe, [music] slowly peeling off our atmosphere. Soon, Earth will become a harsh and hostile place. That's what solar activity can do to our planet and its inhabitants if we didn't have a protective shield called the magnetosphere. [music] But even with this barrier, we're still in for serious problems.

[00:10:44]A mysterious 100-year solar cycle may have just restarted, and it [music] could mean decades of dangerous space weather. New research suggests [music] that the unexpected intensity of the ongoing solar maximum may be partly tied to a lesser known 100year solar cycle.

[00:11:02]If the sun is indeed entering its villain arc, solar activity [music] could spike even further in the coming decades. It means more solar flares, [music] more chances of them messing with satellites, and way more of those crazy northern lights people [music] keep posting on Instagram. Sure, not everyone's buying it. Some space nerds want more proof before jumping on this solar hype train.

[00:11:26]Let's break it all down into detail first. [music] The sun goes through a kind of mood swing every 11 years. This is called the solar [music] cycle. It starts off at a solar minimum, which is pretty chill, then slowly gets rowdy.

[00:11:42]We're talking sunspots, solar flares, and other fiery drama. Once we reach solar maximum, the situation starts to calm down again. [music] The sun gets sunspots, dark patches on its surface, like the freckles we humans have when its magnetic field starts [music] flipping out. Literally, the sun's magnetic field completely flips during peak solar drama. Scientists track how many of these spots show up to measure how spicy the sun is getting.

[00:12:11]But wait, plot twist. There are other cycles, too, [music] like the hail cycle, which occurs around every 22 years. This cycle controls how magnetic fields move across the sun. Plus, way back in history, there were moments when the sun basically went on do not disturb mode. During the Monder minimum, our star was basically in sleep mode for 70 years.

[00:12:36]In other words, the sun might be entering a new extra phase and things could get dramatic. On the bright side, that means more auroras. At the same time, it could also cause issues for satellites, GPS, and other stuff we rely on. Let's just hope it doesn't mess with YouTube.

[00:12:57]This extra phase is called the Centennial Glyceberg [music] cycle. It's basically the sun's once every 100 years I do something weird moment. Scientists think it messes with how intense sunspot cycles get. No one has fully worked out how this cycle works yet, but some low-key sloshing of magnetic fields inside the sun might be causing it. Yep, I did say sloshing. Like a giant cosmic smoothie.

[00:13:25]A recent study from [music] March 2025 claims that the CGC might have just hit restart. That could explain why this current solar maximum, the sun's drama phase that started in early 2024, is being so weird and unpredictable. How did researchers figure this out? They looked at something called proton flux.

[00:13:46]Basically, it's how many positively charged particles [music] are flying around in Earth's radiation belt. There are two of these belts shaped like donuts that wrap around Earth full of particles [music] from the sun. The thing is when the sun is active, our upper atmosphere swells, which makes [music] the inner radiation belt lose some of those protons. And when the sun is chill, proton numbers go [music] up again. So those protons have been increasing for like 20 years, but just started to drop in the past year, which basically screams CGC has just hit minimum. Time for the sun to crank it back up.

[00:14:26]The data came from NOA satellites [music] that flew through the South Atlantic Anomaly, which is like the Bermuda Triangle of Space. It's this bizarre zone over South America where Earth's magnetic field is weaker and space [music] radiation gets closer to Earth. This area is perfect for observing proton activity without sending a satellite into the actual danger zone.

[00:14:50]So, right now, we're probably nearing the end [music] of the sun's current chaos phase, aka the peak of solar cycle 25.

[00:14:59]Back in May 2024, it hit us with one of the craziest geomagnetic storms [music] in 500 years or so. And yes, that means super bright auroras lighting up skies all over the world, even in places that usually only get [music] clouds and vibes. But the scariest thing, this wasn't supposed to happen. During the last cycle, the [music] sun was oddly calm. So NASA and NOAA looked at that [music] and thought that the next solar cycle would probably be the same. No biggie. Well, they were wrong. And they even admitted it. Now, scientists [music] think that SC24's quiet phase was because of the Centennial Glyceberg cycle being at its low point. That probably made it [music] the quietest sunspot cycle in 100 years. So, now that SC25 is lit again, pretty literally, it might just mean the sun is back to doing what it normally does, being a little chaotic [music] and wild. Recent studies think the CGC minimum [music] is finally over. That would explain why the current solar activity is turning up the heat and why the last one [music] felt like a cosmic snooze.

[00:16:11]An even cooler thing is that a 2024 study used AI to analyze sunspot patterns [music] and found that CGC might be messing with our forecasts more than we thought. And if this long-term mood swing of our star is really back on the rise, future solar cycles could be just as wild as the one we're in now, or even wilder. After all, [music] we've just passed the CGC's low energy mode, and we won't hit the next maximum for another 40 to [music] 50 years, around solar cycle 28. That's a few decades away, but the sun's [music] already throwing tantrums. The scariest part is that future solar activity might be twice as intense as what we're seeing now. You might be wondering right now, why should I care? Well, because when the sun freaks out, it messes with our stuff, especially in space. Satellites get [music] dragged out of orbit because Earth's upper atmosphere literally puffs up like a marshmallow in a microwave when solar activity [music] spikes.

[00:17:12]And this has already happened to a few spacecraft recently. And with tons of private satellite mega constellations like Starlink and its squad, the risk goes way up. There are some, even though those are few, that might not be ready for a full-blown sunage event. Time to wear SPF 100 for your satellites.

[00:17:35]Astronauts are also at risk. More solar flares mean more radiation and more danger for humans in orbit. At the same time, more space tourists and missions mean more people potentially in the sun's cosmic splash zone.

[00:17:49]At the same time, not everyone is buying into the whole CGC is back and ready to party theory. [music] Some experts say it's a cool theory, but we shouldn't get carried away. The thing is, the proton [music] flux, those space particles we've been watching, only started dropping last year. That's not a lot of time. [music] It might just be a short-term dip, like the sun sneezed and now everyone's freaking out. Also, we've only been able to track this stuff properly [music] for 30 to 40 years or so, which is basically nothing in suntime. So, there's no solid before and after data to compare CGC cycles and [music] say, "Yep, this is definitely a pattern.

[00:18:29]Plus, the CGC itself is kind of mysterious. Like, no one can fully agree on what it even is, how it works, or how much it actually [music] messes with sunspot cycles. It's like the Bigfoot of solar science, blurry, weird, and causing drama in group chats. But even skeptics admit [music] that the new study is interesting and well-intentioned, and that it might help us predict future solar cycles better.

[00:18:55]We just [music] need more time, more data, and better definition of the CGC before we treat it [music] like the ultimate weather app for the sun.

[00:19:05]In May 2024, stunning auroras adorning the night sky demonstrated all the power that solar storms emit as radiation. But sometimes our sun does things that are far more destructive. I'm talking about solar particle events. During these events, blasts of protons coming directly from the surface of the sun can shoot out like [music] giant cosmic search lights. According to records, an extreme particle event hits Earth every thousand years or so. It often causes bad damage to the ozone layer and increases levels of ultraviolet radiation closer to the surface of our [music] planet. Luckily, Earth's magnetic field acts as a powerful [music] protective cocoon for our planet, fending off electrically charged radiation from the sun. In its normal state, [music] this field functions like a ginormous bar magnet with field lines rising from one pole, [music] looping around the planet, and dropping at the other pole. This pattern is sometimes called an inverted grapefruit. This vertical orientation of the magnetic field at the poles [music] allows some ionizing cosmic radiation to get through the field as far down as the upper atmosphere. There it interacts with gas molecules [music] and produces the glow we know as auroras.

[00:20:25]But over time, Earth's protective bubble changes. In the past century, the north magnetic pole moved across northern Canada at a speed of about 25 m per year. Plus, it weakened by more than 6%.

[00:20:39]Even more shockingly, according to geological records, there have been periods of time as long as centuries and millennia when our planet's magnetic field was super weak or entirely absent.

[00:20:52]But we'll talk about those tragic times later.

[00:20:56]It's easy to imagine what our planet would look like without its protective bubble if you look at Mars. The red planet lost [music] its global magnetic field long, long ago. And once this field disappeared, most of Mars' atmosphere vanished, too. In May 2024, a [music] strong solar particle event hit the planet. It disrupted the operation of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft [music] and made radiation levels at the surface of the red planet rise around 30 times higher than what a person receives during a chest X-ray.

[00:21:30]The sun's outer atmosphere constantly emits a changing stream of electrons and protons. [music] the solar wind. At the same time, the surface of the star also produces bursts [music] of energy, mostly protons, during solar particle events. These bursts [music] of energy have a connection to solar flares, extremely powerful bursts of electromagnetic radiation that can last [music] from minutes to hours. Protons are way heavier than electrons and carry more energy. That's why they can reach lower levels of Earth's atmosphere, exciting gas molecules in the air. These excited molecules emit [music] X-rays invisible to the unaded eye.

[00:22:11]Dozens and hundreds of relatively [music] weak solar particle events happen during every solar cycle. Now, let's speak about solar cycles for a minute. You see, from a distance, the sun seems to be calm and steady. But if you zoom in, you'll see that its surface is constantly seething and churning.

[00:22:30][music] It keeps transforming from a uniform ocean of fire to a chaos of warped plasma and back again in repeating cycle. Every 11 years or so, the magnetic field of our star gets tangled up. Imagine a ball of tightly wound rubber bands. [music] That's what it looks like at such moments. And then at one point, it snaps and flips completely turning the north pole into the south pole and vice versa.

[00:22:57]Right before this event, the sun steps up its activity. It starts to spit out giant [music] blobs of fiery plasma, emit powerful streams of radiation, [music] and grow planetsized spots.

[00:23:11]This period has the name of solar maxima. It's a rather dangerous time for Earth since it gets regularly hit by solar storms. Such storms [music] have the potential to disrupt communications and damage power infrastructure. Even worse, solar storms can harm astronauts working in space and even make satellites crash into the planet. As the cycle ends, it fades back to the solar minima and then a new cycle begins.

[00:23:41]Anyway, back to our solar particle events. Researchers [music] have found traces of extremely strong solar events happening throughout the history of Earth. and some of them [music] were thousands of times stronger than anything our modern instruments have ever recorded. Such extreme solar particle events happen approximately every few millennia. The most recent [music] one occurred around 993 CE.

[00:24:07]Beyond the [music] immediate effect they have, solar particle events can kickstart a chain of chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere. And these [music] processes often lead to depletion of ozone, which isn't a good thing. Ozone absorbs harmful solar UV radiation, which can damage [music] not only our eyesight, but also the DNA of living beings. Plus, changing the amounts of ozone in the atmosphere can impact the climate. [music] In a recent study, researchers used large computer models to examine [music] how extreme solar particle events affect Earth. They found out that if a solar proton event [music] arrives during a period of time when our planet's magnetic field is very weak, then ozone damage can [music] last for 6 years and the level of UV radiation might increase by 25% [music] boosting solar induced DNA damage by around 50%.

[00:25:04]And apparently this dramatic combination of a weak magnetic field and extreme solar proton events happens quite often.

[00:25:12]And some researchers believe that it may even explain a few mysterious occurrences in the past of our planet.

[00:25:19]For example, the most recent period of weak magnetic field started 42,000 [music] years ago and lasted for around 1,000 years. This period included a temporary switch in the north and south poles. Several major evolutionary events happened during that time. For example, the last Neanderthalss disappeared in Europe along with the extinction of marsupial megapa in Australia. Yeah, sadly we won't see any giant wombats and giant kangaroos anymore.

[00:25:50]One [music] more even bigger evolutionary event might also be linked to Earth's geomagnetic field.

[00:25:56]Multisellular animals appeared at the end of the Ediaarin period which started around 635 million [music] years ago and it occurred after a 26 millionyear period of extremely weak or even absent magnetic field.

[00:26:13]The rapid evolution of different groups of animals in the Cambrian explosion about 539 million years ago [music] might have also been related to high UV levels and geomagnetism.

[00:26:24]The simultaneous evolution [music] of hard body shells and eyes in multiple unrelated groups could have been necessary to detect [music] and avoid harmful incoming UV rays.

[00:26:36]A complete reversal of Earth's geomagnetic poles might have a serious impact [music] on the climate of our planet. Luckily, such flips don't happen overnight. The entire process stretches [music] over thousands of years. Plus, even though the magnetic pole weakens [music] during a pole reversal, it doesn't disappear completely. That's why the magneettosphere continues protecting the planet from cosmic rays and [music] charged solar particles, even though there might be some amount of particulate radiation that will make it to Earth's surface. [music] Our planet's magnetic fields are generated by moving electric charges. If some material allows these charges to easily move in it, it's called a conductor. Metal is a great conductor and we often use it to transfer electric currents from one place to another. In [music] this case, the electric currents negative charge called electrons move through the metal. The current is what generates a magnetic field. Earth's outer core is made of liquid iron and nickel. In other words, [music] there are layers and layers of conducting material inside our planet. [music] Currents of charges are constantly moving throughout the core and the liquid metal is also moving and circulating there generating the magnetic field. [music] This magnetic field in turn produces something resembling a bubble around the planet.

[00:27:54]It's called the magneettosphere and it's located above the uppermost part of the atmosphere. [music] This layer shields and deflects high energy cosmic ray radiation which otherwise [music] would be extremely hazardous to people and other forms of life on Earth.

[00:28:10]The magneettosphere also interacts with the ionosphere, [music] the layer of our planet's atmosphere containing loads of ions and free electrons and capable of reflecting radio [music] waves. The interaction between these two layers and magnetized solar winds is what scientists call [music] space weather.

[00:28:26]The solar wind is normally mild and there's no space weather whatsoever.

[00:28:35]On July 23rd, 2024, Europe's Solar Orbiter spacecraft observed a super powerful solar flare erupting from the far side of the sun. This flare wasn't the most extreme ever recorded, but still we got extremely lucky this time not to get fried by it. Such solar flares often cause long lived raging radiation storms. And if such a storm moves in the direction of Earth, it can lead to worldwide blackouts.

[00:29:06]Before we go deeper into details of that potentially disastrous solar flare, we need to figure out what exactly this solar phenomenon is. Solar flares occur because the magnetic fields in the atmosphere of our star are moving non-stop. When the sun is approaching its solar maxima, and that's the most active period of its 11-year long cycle, which is, by the way, exactly what's happening now, its magnetic fields get more and more tangled, making our star look like an enormous ball of tangled rubber bands. They loop around, cross over one another, [music] cut one another off, and then reconnect.

[00:29:44]Ever seen iron filings sprinkled on a bar magnet? These filings line up along the magnetic lines of force. Like that, the hot plasma on the surface of the sun is at the mercy of the magnetic lines of force. Sometimes when the magnetic fields interact with each other, some plasma gets disconnected from the fields and its particles accelerate to immense speeds and send powerful radiation to space. That's what a solar flare is.

[00:30:12]Other times, our star throws off massive amounts of matter. Those events are coronal mass ejections, CMEs. Just one CME can contain as much as 20 billion tons of material. If that material were rock, it would create a mountain about 2.75 m across and almost a half a mile tall. The ejected material often travels at a speed of over a million miles hour.

[00:30:40]Solar flares and CMEs are the most powerful explosions in the solar system, releasing unimaginable amounts of energy. Solar flares have their own classification [music] according to their strength. The smallest and weakened ones are A and Bclass. Then there are C and Mclass solar flares. And the strongest are X-class flares. A number from 1 to nine and in some cases a larger one accompanies each letter.

[00:31:06]That's similar to the RTOR scale for earthquakes. A and B-class flares are too weak to affect our planet. As for C-class flares, they may have small noticeable consequences. Mc-class flares can cause short radio blackouts at the poles and weak radiation storms that can still harm astronauts. But the most dangerous of them all are X-class flares. These are flares more than 10 times more powerful than X1. That's why the classification of X-class flares [music] can go higher than 9.

[00:31:38]Now, let's get back to that recent solar flare. It was X14 class 1. Now, we already know that it means it was an [music] extra strong flare. Other large flares astronomers have detected recently include an X12 solar flare that happened on the 20th of May and an X10 flare that occurred on the 17th of July.

[00:31:57]All of them have come from the backside of the sun.

[00:32:02]If we talk of the Earth's side of our star, the largest solar flare that has been recorded so far within this solar cycle happened on the 14th of May. It was an X8.7 flare that led to radio blackouts and a strong geomagnetic storm leading to magnificent auroras all over the world occurred a few days earlier.

[00:32:22]Powerful coronal mass ejections accompanied this storm. [music] As for the July X-class flare, it was so powerful that it could have ended up tragically for us. Luckily, all that magnetically charged plasma blast that accompanied the flare [music] didn't travel in our direction. If it had, it would have been quite the solar storm. Auroras would have been incredibly impressive and a wee bit terrifying in their magnificence. But at the same time, such a dynamic blast of energetic particles hurtling our way could have caused major technological problems and [music] electrical blackouts like the event in 1989, which severely harmed Quebec's power grid, or a much, much earlier catastrophe that still managed to cause a lot of harm to the world.

[00:33:08]I'm talking about the Carrington event, which occurred in 1859 and was the first documented solar flare affecting our planet. It happened on the [music] 1st of September and was named after Richard Carrington, the solar astronomer who witnessed the flare through his own telescope [music] and sketched the sun's sunspots.

[00:33:26]According to scientists, that flare was the most powerful documented solar storm over the last 500 years.

[00:33:33]The Carrington event triggered auroras that were visible as far south as the Caribbean. It led to severe interruptions in telegraph services all over the world, even shocking some telegraph operators and sparking fires after discharges from the lines ignited telegraph paper.

[00:33:51]Another major solar flare that erupted on the 4th of August, 1972, destroyed long-d distanceance phone communication across a few states, including Illinois.

[00:34:00]This event even made the American Telephone and Telegraph Company redesign its power system for transatlantic cables.

[00:34:09]Now let's move to March 1985 when two super powerful CMEs triggered a geomagnetic storm which in turn set off a power blackout in Canada on the 13th of March. This blackout left around 6 million people without electricity for 9 hours. It is said that the flare disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Quebec generation station and melted a few power transformers in New Jersey. And still this solar flare was nowhere near the power of the Carrington event.

[00:34:41]The Bastile Day solar storm took its name from the French national holiday because it occurred on the same day on the 14th of July in the year 2000. It was an X5 class event that caused some satellites to shortcircuit and resulted in radio blackouts. It's still one of the most highly observed solar storm events.

[00:35:02]From October to November 2003, our star unleashed a series of large solar flares and coronal mass ejections. And they did reach Earth and slam into our atmosphere. Those solar storms, also known as Halloween storms of 2003, caused aircraft to be rerouted, impacted satellite systems, and led to power outages in Sweden. Besides, the solar and heliospheric observatory couldn't fulfill its functions during this solar onslaught.

[00:35:32]On the 28th of October, 2003, the sun sent a whopper of a solar flare our way.

[00:35:38]The fire was so powerful it overwhelmed the spacecraft sensor that was measuring it. The sensor topped out at a whopping X28.

[00:35:46]But later, scientists figure out [music] that the flur had reached a peak strength of about x45.

[00:35:53]One more thing that made the Halloween storms so scary was that they happened during a time in the solar cycle when solar activity is usually quiet. That's 2 to 3 years after the solar maximum.

[00:36:04]According to NASA's statistics, just 17 powerful flares erupted from our star during that time. The sun spewed out another ex-class solar flare on the 5th of December, 2006. It was an X9 class flare that disrupted satellite to ground communications and GPS navigational signals [music] for around 10 minutes.

[00:36:25]That solar storm was so powerful it even damaged the solar X-ray imager instrument on the [music] GOE 13 satellite. It sustained damage to several pixels of its detector.

[00:36:36]In February 2022, SpaceX experienced the terrifying power of our star when a devastating geomagnetic storm destroyed 38 Starling satellites worth tens of millions of dollars. It happened shortly after they were deployed. Unfortunately, Starling satellites are especially vulnerable to geomagnetic storms since they're released into extremely low altitude orbits between 60 and 120 m.

[00:37:02]They also rely on their onboard engines to overcome the drag force and raise themselves to their final altitude of around 350 miles over the surface of our planet.

[00:37:13]The thing is during a geomagnetic storm, Earth's atmosphere absorbs energy from the storm, heats up, and extends upwards. It results in a denser thermosphere, which means more drag, and it can be a serious issue for satellites. That's exactly what happened. The batch of newly released Starling satellites didn't manage to overcome the increased drag and started to fall back, eventually burning up in the atmosphere.

[00:37:43]Whoosh! British astronomer Richard Carrington was observing the surface of the sun through his telescope when he suddenly noticed something strange.

[00:37:53]There were two patches of very bright and [music] white light.

[00:37:58]It's 1859. People are outside working on their farms, harvesting the fruits of their labor.

[00:38:05]Life is different. More nature, less technology. Science is developing. Not even a light bulb is invented yet. It will be invented in 20 years, though.

[00:38:16]Back then, the astronomer didn't know he was looking at what would later be called the Carrington event, the largest solar storm ever recorded.

[00:38:26]In fact, this was the first solar flare we've ever seen and reported. And there was so much going on.

[00:38:34]Auroras, the southern and northern lights, were just amazing. They've been more intense in that year than in the last 160 years.

[00:38:44]Auroras mostly appear near the Earth's poles. But back then, you could see these perfectly illuminated lights in the sky close to both the equator and the poles. They spread across the sky from everywhere from Australia to Canada. If you happen to visit the tropics like Panama, Jamaica, or Cuba, you could also see auroras.

[00:39:06]It was spectacular. Luminous waves were rolling up as far as the zenith, and some were even big enough to cast a shadow on the ground, and the colorful displays were really bright. If you were in Missouri at that time, you could normally read a book by the atmospheric light even after midnight. The light was so strong that the gold miners that were in the Rocky Mountains just woke up, prepared their bacon and eggs, and made coffee without further questions. They thought the sun had risen on a cloudy morning, even though it was 1:00 a.m.

[00:39:38]local time.

[00:39:40]But this extremely strong solar outburst resulted in electrical disruptions from Boston to Paris too. And the telegraph lines. There was so much electricity in the air, telegraph machines could send messages from Pittsburgh to New York without batteries. In Paris, even sparks flew from telegraph machines.

[00:40:02]And now fears are mounting that there's another powerful solar storm coming in 2025. It could cause massive power cuts and blackouts as well as cut off internet access in entire communities, maybe even for months or years. Today, we depend on electricity way more than we did back then. Not only when it comes to gadgets in our homes, but hospitals and other places where technology is simply necessary.

[00:40:30]Electricity is essential even for food.

[00:40:33]As we need electricity to store it, we need it for our everyday things like work and communication.

[00:40:41]Another solar storm as strong as the Carrington event could cause trillions of dollars of damages here on Earth. It would knock out power for up to 40 million people only in the United States for a few years.

[00:40:57]What are solar flares anyway? They are the biggest explosive events that happen in our solar system. So magnetic energy builds up in the sun. Bam. When there's an intense burst of that magnetic energy, that's when the solar outburst happens. This throws off whole waves of energy that move and travel outward. Of course, it impacts other bodies in our solar system, including the Earth. And when these electromagnetic waves interact with the magnetic field of our home planet, a few things happen.

[00:41:30]First, what we get is that electric currents flow in the upper layer of our atmosphere. They heat the air. It's like the Earth gets its own electric blanket.

[00:41:40]This is the stage where you can see stunning auroras over polar regions, but it's also when GPS and radio signals get disrupted.

[00:41:50]As our atmosphere heats, it puffs up similar to a marshmallow. This adds more drag to satellites in low orbit. It means that as the atmosphere expands, [music] it's pushing satellites back down to the surface of our planet. It also knocks small pieces of space junk off their course.

[00:42:09]As strong electric currents flow through the Earth's upper atmosphere, they affect strong currents that flow through our planet's crust, too. This can mess with electrical conductors that sit on top of the crust like power grids. They make the network that carries electricity from generating stations to buildings and homes. And this results in power outages in certain areas and this can be hard to fix. For instance, this happened in Quebec in March 1989. A powerful solar flare burst off the sun.

[00:42:40]Shortly after that, another burst sent out a billion tons of gas directly to our planet. People there experienced a 12-hour [music] blackout.

[00:42:51]Only a couple of months later, in August, another solar flare burst towards our planet. It was even bigger than the one that occurred in March. It caused damage to microchips across the world and left Quebec in darkness once again.

[00:43:07]Flares can be more dangerous for the technology we have than for ourselves.

[00:43:11][music] In winter 2022, a solar storm knocked a fleet of over 40 Starlink mini satellites out of orbit. Solar storms often happen at the same time when the sun releases large bubbles of solar material we know as CME or coronal mass ejections. These bubbles can have billions of tons of plasma which can move at millions of miles hour. That way, solar storms fire out radiation, whereas CMEs are plasma [music] eruptions.

[00:43:43]CMEs and solar flares discharge particles and radiation. As they hit the upper part of Earth's atmosphere, they form [music] radio waves. We call them geomagnetic storms. They form new currents and add energy into electrical grids that are usually passive. This way, they threaten to overload them.

[00:44:03]Take electricity [music] that's coming out of your wall plug as an example. It changes back and forth by about 50 [music] hertz depending on the country you live in. Radio waves usually broadcast about 85 to 105 million hertz.

[00:44:18]Gamma rays and X-rays have frequencies of up to 50 quintilion hertz. Solar radiation is the same one your phone uses for power, only a couple billion times stronger and kind of out of control.

[00:44:32]Researchers believe a powerful solar storm might hit us in 2025.

[00:44:37]These storms get to their peak, which by the way can turn pretty violent every 11 years. We mostly get lucky because they bypass us, but [music] we can't expect our good fortune to last forever. Now, we have about a 2 to 3% chance for a Carrington level event to happen in this decade. The shorted electrical grid wouldn't be only a one-time loss. It would take us up to 10 years to recover from something like that.

[00:45:05]That way, humankind might be set back by nearly 20 years if it happens.

[00:45:12]All those particles wildly bursting around could cause damage to our satellites. We could lose communications that way. no TV, internet, or GPS. We'd be dealing with very, very strong radiation. There's a possibility people would face some long-term issues because of that. What could such an amount of solar radiation do to our DNA, especially those that are not protected by the magnetic field of our planet, like astronauts?

[00:45:42]Humankind can try to protect the [music] internet against the next enormous solar storm. The first thing we can do is to shore up power grids, undersea cables, and satellites against being overloaded.

[00:45:52][music] And we can look for methods of predicting such storms in the long run.

[00:45:59]That's [music] hard because these storms have been happening for millions of years, and we've been able to record them for less than a century. Plus, the technology these storms affect is only two decades old.

[00:46:12]At the moment, we can observe the activity of sunspots, which are black patches on the solar surface that tell us it's the area with high plasma activity. And by checking them, we can predict solar storms up to 2 days before they strike our planet. But we can't track them the way we follow hurricanes.

[00:46:30]Hopefully, we'll be more ready by 2025 to avoid an internetless future.

[00:46:35]Although, it would be cool to take a break from social media, don't you think?

[00:46:43]So, what's going on with all the news about the sun? Some say that [music] the sun is getting angry. Well, what does that mean exactly? And should we be concerned? Frankly, [music] yes, we should be concerned. It's generally not a good thing to get too much sunshine.

[00:46:57]The ultraviolet component of sunlight is harmful [music] to the skin. That's why humans have adapted a spectrum of skin pigmentation. The more sunlight there is to protect ourselves [music] against, the more pigmentation we need. Big floppy hats and of course bottles of high SPF oil-free sunscreen help too, especially for fair skinned people. But what is planet Earth going to do? First, let's get a good estimate of just how [music] angry the sun is likely to get.

[00:47:25]The sun usually goes through an active, calm, active cycle every [music] 22 years with highs and lows occurring every 11 years. Why that happens, no one knows. It just [music] does. There's probably a reason, but scientists haven't figured it out yet. They do know that with each cycle, the sun reverses its magnetic poles. That in itself is pretty astounding, especially when you consider that Earth hasn't reversed [music] its magnetic poles in the last 600,000 years. Lately, the sun has been extremely calm, the calmst [music] it's been in over a 100 years. In fact, that's unusual, too. The active calm active cycle [music] has turned into an active calm calm cycle. But that's changing and it's why we are notifying brightsiders [music] about what to expect in the coming few years. The terms calm or active [music] or angry refer to the amount of high energy radiation that the sun gives off.

[00:48:19]Thankfully, the amount of visible light the sun gives off [music] doesn't change very much. That would be a serious problem. If the sun were to get just 6% dimmer or brighter, the Earth would either freeze or fry. Observing sunspots is the easiest way to measure how active the sun is. The more sunspots [music] that are visible, the more active the sun is. A graph known as the butterfly diagram tracks the 11-year period of sunspot activity. The butterfly [music] diagram shows how sunspots disappear regularly from the surface of the sun and reappear [music] regularly in other locations. NASA predicted that the present cycle of solar activity [music] would be calm like the previous one, but it's starting to look like that is not the case.

[00:49:05]Presently, we are in solar cycle number 25. That's the 25th 11-year solar cycle since 1755 when recordeping began. This cycle of solar activity is expected to peak in 2025. The sun has already exceeded the number of sunspots NASA had predicted. [music] So, it doesn't look like this solar cycle is going to be a calm one. It looks like we are going to have some very active sun [music] blasting radiation on Earth for the next several years. In early February 2022, [music] 40 out of 49 SpaceX communication satellites in orbit above the atmosphere were destroyed by an explosion on the sun. High-speed electromagnetic plasma gas from the sun, known as solar wind, caused the Earth's [music] atmosphere to compress, and Elon Musk's satellites lost their orbital integrity and crashed back into Earth. Sunspots look like dark [music] spots on the sun, but they aren't dark. They're just not as bright as the surface of the sun. To get a better idea, take a lit [music] 25 W light bulb and hold it in front of a lit 100 W light bulb. The 25 [music] W light bulb will appear dark. That's the same way it is with sunspots. Sunspots on [music] the surface of the sun almost always come in pairs. This is because sunspots are magnetic storms [music] in the plasma gas of the sun. One sunspot will be magnetic positive and the other sunspot will be magnetic negative.

[00:50:32]Between the two sunspots, which [music] can be many times bigger than the Earth itself, there flows an electric current that carries a fiery arc of ionized gas with it. Solar flares are something else we should be concerned about. [music] They are a powerful electromagnetic explosions on the sun associated with sunspots. As the super [music] hot plasma gas on the sun churns and twists, it also twists the magnetic field lines in the sunspots. When these lines snap, [music] a powerful explosion releases X-ray and gamma radiation at the speed of light. Visible gases are also released. [music] Solar flares have a classification system according to how powerful they are. X-class solar flares are the most dangerous. This type of solar flare can cause radio blackouts across Earth and harm satellites, [music] astronauts in orbit, and even passengers on high alitude airplanes.

[00:51:25]>> [music] >> M-class solar flares cause spectacular aurora at the north and south pole areas [music] on Earth, while C-class solar flares have almost no effect on Earth.

[00:51:36]But solar flares are not the biggest explosions [music] on the sun. CME stands for coronal mass ejection, and these [music] are much more massive than solar flares and more dangerous when they're headed our way. As the name indicates, [music] coronal mass ejections are explosions that originate on the sun's corona. [music] They hurl millions of tons of hot ionized gases outward from the corona.

[00:52:00]The word corona [music] is derived from the Latin word for crown, and it's the layer of thin, bright gas around the sun's [music] surface. The corona of the sun is much hotter than the surface of the sun. The surface itself is about 10,000° F, but the corona is somewhere between 1 to 2 [music] million°. The why and how the corona is so much hotter than the surface of the sun is another major mystery that scientists have yet to [music] completely work out. A recent theory claims the corona is heated by sound waves and the sun's nuclear reactions make a lot of noise. Project Gong, which stands for Global Oscillation Networking Group, was set up on Earth to monitor the sound waves on the sun. Cool, huh? Turns out the sun is ringing or oscillating like a [music] bell. And we have five observation sites across the globe. One in India, Australia, one in the Canary Islands, one in Chile, and one in California that keep a constant [music] watch over the 10 million sound waves moving on and around the sun. Now that the sun is entering an active [music] phase, we can expect to see more powerful CMEs heading our way. The gases expelled by the sun are ionized and stripped of electrons by the intense heat. This causes them to form a proton storm that can travel [music] through space at speeds of around 500 m/s.

[00:53:24]These positively charged atomic nuclei will mostly be blocked or deflected by the magnetic field that [music] extends around Earth. Our atmosphere is no help against a proton storm. Although the last mile of air above the surface of the Earth [music] stops the harmful X-rays from solar flares, the particle wind from the sun can only be stopped by Earth's magnetosphere. [music] We can look forward to some spectacular aurora around Earth's magnetic poles.

[00:53:51][music] And it's very possible that these aurora will extend down to the mid latitudes when the Earth is moving through a coronal mass ejection. Currently, the United States has a space probe headed for the solar corona. Because the corona of the sun extends outward [music] for many millions of miles, the Parker Solar Probe, as it's called, is cruising 3.8 million miles from the surface of our star, or about 1/10enth the distance to Mercury. The probe is experiencing temperatures of 2,400° F, but it is also kept at perfect room temperature. A 4 and 1/2 in thick carbon composite heat shield protects the telescopes and magnetometers in the probe that measure the intensity of the solar wind. The five antenna that protrude into the coronal gases are made of a nobium alloy which can withstand the extreme temperatures of the corona. The recent [music] doublecom cycle of the sun is a bit concerning when trying to predict how active the sun will get this cycle.

[00:54:51]The sunspots completely disappeared for a long time from the entire surface of the sun. It is as if the magnetic distortions we usually see on the photosphere of the sun [music] had collapsed into its interior. Intense magnetism is coming to the surface now and breaking through into the corona.

[00:55:09]The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, [music] Colorado is predicting that this solar cycle, cycle number 25, will be one of the strongest ever. The last solar cycle was very calm with a sunspot [music] count of only 116. The average is 170, but the prediction for this cycle is between 210 and 260 sunspots, which would be one of the strongest cycles ever. We stand to lose more satellites to a stronger solar wind. We can also expect electric grid overloads as the proton storm peaks in 2025. That means we should expect an interruption to our internet services as positively charged protons get into the wires, run into the transformers, and overload them. On March 12th, 1989, a powerful CME hit Earth [music] and created absolute havoc with our power grids. Will we experience anything of this magnitude in the near future? Well, stay sharp, bright siders. That's it for today. So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.