WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Space Hurricanes 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:06.680 Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:11.479 there's Chuck and there's the special but normal producer Dave here. 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.080 I just mean special, like in a way that like 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:16.760 sure by special in all the right ways. That's right, 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:19.720 in a romping room sort of way. That's exactly right. 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:23.040 And I'll tell you something else that special, Chuck, Something 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:27.760 very special happened on August twenty, two thousand fourteen, over 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:32.680 the magnetic north pole of this yere planet Earth. For 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:37.320 the first time in the history of humanity, we documented 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:42.520 what's known as a space plasma hurricane in that neat. 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:46.320 It's neat and uh, this is something that wasn't fully 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.200 Um well it was documented here and there, but Nature 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:53.880 Communications wrote about it in February of this year, so 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:57.000 I think it got a lot more attention, um, seven 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:00.600 years after the fact, almost seven years. But yeah, this was, 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:03.720 like you said about the north Pole, it happened over 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:08.679 a few hours. Um. The results of what happened up 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:12.960 there was there were some satellites that were disrupted. Um, 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:15.760 the geo magnetic field got a little kinky for a 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:20.119 little while. But back here on Earth, uh, well below 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:23.440 the eyeonosphere, we we were just like, I don't know 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:25.960 what I was doing in August. I could probably go 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:30.480 back and look unmarkable, though I wasn't thinking about space hurricanes, no, 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:33.399 because no one really noticed, because in August that's a 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:37.480 pretty terrible time typically to see the Auroras um or 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:41.559 at least the Aurora borealis, because the day the days 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:43.679 are so much longer than the nights, so you can't 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:48.240 really see these these fantastic light displays. But had you 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:51.480 been able to see the Aurora borealis that night, you 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.360 would have been knocked right out of your your hiking boots. 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:59.600 Basically because this was again, a space hurricane. It doesn't 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.600 happen every day, and we don't really understand fully how 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:06.000 they happen or why. But they're called space hurricanes because 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:10.280 from what we saw, from what this Nature Communications paper 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:15.640 from February said, um, it bears a striking resemblance to 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:20.800 a tropical hurricane or a cyclone or an Atlantic hurricane, 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:28.000 where there's a mass of energy basically spinning around uh 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:32.760 calm center. There's a million differences between I say, earthbound 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:36.600 hurricane and a space hurricane, but the fact that they're 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:41.440 there you could even call both hurricanes is kind of startling, 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:45.480 And actually it seems to me, Chuck, kind of like 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.480 it's presenting like a new pioneer in scientific research. Now, 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:51.720 like we're like, Okay, how does this happen? Where did 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:54.720 these come from? What is going on here? I agree, 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:56.720 And I also have to admit I was distracted for 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.040 a minute because I was obsessed with trying to figure 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.840 out what I was doing on August? Did you ever 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:05.280 figure it out? No, because I didn't open up my 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:07.240 calendar and go back. But I did find out that 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:09.919 it was a Wednesday, so I know we probably weren't 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:13.840 recording this, and it was a year after our TV 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.120 show aired, which aired over the course of what like 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:22.360 ten days. Yeah, you're probably in hiding still may have been, Yeah, 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.519 but I think that's probably a good place. We can't 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:27.680 break yet, can we? Sure we can? It's a short 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:30.639 stuff ever, anything goes all right, let's take a break. 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:56.440 Then I'll get my head back in the game. Okay, Chuck, 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:58.280 you took a salt tablet, you walked it off, and 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:01.040 now your head's back in the game. Right, My head's 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:03.520 back in the game. Where did you leave off? I 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:08.560 left off about how space hurricanes are basically presenting a 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:15.000 new pioneer frontier in in space research because we didn't 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:18.160 really know they existed. We suspected something like that existed, 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.159 but we certainly had no idea that there were arms 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:27.159 of plasma that that spun around at staggering speeds a 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.159 calm center. But but it's not wind we're talking about. 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.640 These aren't clouds. This is a water vapor like this 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:37.680 is plasma. These are ions and electrons and and just 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.479 incredible energy and magnetism. Has nothing to do with the 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.800 earthbound hurricane, and yet it bears a striking resemblance to it. 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:47.560 It's very bizarre. Yeah, it is interesting, and that there 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:51.159 is uh, what you can think of as precipitation in 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:53.680 both and that we get the rain on Earth and 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:57.920 there's this electric precipitation, and it's super interesting that there 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:00.440 is an eye and that they spin and have arms, 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.159 which you know, uh, obviously it's why they're called hurricanes. 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:06.960 I know. There was one meteorologists in here who in 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.200 the House Stuff Works article that said he thought they 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.240 might have been called space vortex is initially because it 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:16.200 was over the North Pole and resembled the polar vortex, 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:19.039 but they went with the space hurricane, I guess because 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:23.039 it's a little sexier probably. Um. One of the other 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:27.880 ways that they're different is the sheers well from where 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:32.600 they occur obviously the Earth's atmosphere UM from I think 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.560 ground zero, or we should probably just say the ground 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:40.360 the surface, the from the ground to about five to 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:45.440 nine miles up is where you're gonna find an Earth hurricane, yeah, 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:47.719 whereas the space hurricane is in the eyeonmosphere, like I 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.160 mentioned early on. And then the sheer size. Uh, this 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:54.839 one I think was about six hundred miles wide, right, 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:58.200 and which is huge it is that's gets a good size. 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:02.200 It's about double the size of like a giant Atlantic hurricane. 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:09.080 And it's spun really fast miles per hour about d 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:13.440 and sixty kilometers per hour um, just whipping around. And 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:17.880 again there's a calm center where this activity is not happening, 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:22.320 where this rotation is taking place, or is the center 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:27.200 where for the rotation. And we have a fairly good 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:31.480 handle on hurricanes. Are our explanation in our hurricanes episode. 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:35.760 Notwithstanding science generally understands how hurricanes here on Earth work 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:39.839 space hurricanes. Again, this is new. There was there was 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:42.719 one I read an article about a guy who said, yeah, 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:45.400 we're pretty sure one of these happened like fifty years ago, 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:48.160 but we didn't have anything like the instrumentation today, so 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:50.280 we couldn't document it. This is the first one we've 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:53.560 actually documented, so this is like brand new to us. 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:56.880 But rather than wind and water, vapor and clouds, the 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:00.320 space hurricane is made of plasma. And plasma, as we've 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:03.000 talked about many times, chuck is the fourth state of 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:06.200 matter where it's like solid and then you make it 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:08.760 a little more energetic and it becomes liquid, a little 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.080 more energetic, becomes gas. Well, even more energetic than that 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:16.120 is plasma, where there's it's such high temperature, and of 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.480 course temperature is just another measure. Are you thinking about 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.920 where you were in August fourteen again, No, I'm thinking 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.560 about how plasma is the umami of states of matter. Okay, 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:29.400 good enough, as long as you're thinking about plasma right now. 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:33.040 But it's so energetic and it's so high temperature, which 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:37.320 is a measure of energy that like the electrons and 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:42.800 the positively charged nuclei just get ripped apart and spread 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:44.800 apart so that they don't interact. So you just got 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:51.680 this um electrified magnetized incredibly hot energetic gas, and that 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:54.560 instead of clouds of water vapor what make up the 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:59.560 arms of the space hurricane. Right, And as far as 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.600 the conditions of when this happened in if you remember 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:09.400 from our not the sun episode, but uh, what was 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:12.559 it on solar winds? We do it on space weather? 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.800 Is at it probably when we talked about the eleven 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:19.160 year cycle of the sun. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:21.000 we probably talked about it in both of them, but yes, 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:23.880 space space weather. I think it was better in space weather. 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.920 Uh So at the time when this happened, still don't 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:30.160 know what I was doing that day, but on that Wednesday, 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:33.120 the Sun was at its maximum of that eleven year 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:35.760 cycle that we talked about, uh, and was also at 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.320 a time of what the ACU weather people called low 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:44.320 solar and otherwise low geomagnetic activity. So the people that 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:47.120 they interviewed from ACU weather said that it did resemble 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:51.200 an Earth hurricane and that there was, uh there's usually 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:54.160 like quiet, like the calm before the storm, the quiet conditions, 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.840 and it was the same in space although now I 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.000 think we're having uh we're not sure if it was 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:04.760 the maximum of the eleven year cycle set against low 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.079 geomagnetic activity, or if it was the minimum and this 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.600 is a misprint. Oh, I see, I see, so I see. Um. 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:14.959 So what I understand is that that, yeah, can whatever 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:20.240 it was. The upshot is that space weather was calm, 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.120 like whatever normal space whether we get from the Sun, 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:25.920 it was generally calm, which is weird because you think 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:28.640 that it would be that solar wind from the Sun 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:31.120 that would cause this kind of thing. But they're like, no, 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:34.319 we we actually have no idea where this thing came from. 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:37.720 And the fact that it isn't related to the solar cycle, 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:41.600 that eleven year cycle makes them think that it's probably 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.040 a little more common than we realized, and now that 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:47.040 we know what to look for, we're gonna start noticing them. 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.920 So they think maybe it has to do with change 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:53.679 in the magnetic field lines, where one was like ripped 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:57.280 apart and then connected with the neighbor, releasing a tremendous 0:09:57.280 --> 0:10:00.360 amount of magnetic energy. That's one of the explain nations 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.880 I've seen. There's a few others too. Yeah, and you 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:06.720 know the um to borrow your phrase, The upshot is 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:08.680 is that it's really not going to matter much to 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:13.400 us on Earth. I guess if we had any kind 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:17.439 of um space exploration going on during one of these, 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:19.080 that probably wouldn't be great if you were up there, 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:21.800 just a guess. But they kind of come back with 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:24.760 a line that you always hear when it's something that 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.000 could disrupt satellites is here on Earth, it might mess 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.440 with your GPS. I feel like that's always what you hear. Yeah, 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:35.079 pretty much. Yeah, whenever there's satellite interference, it can be problematic. 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:36.880 I mean that was a big part of the um 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:39.920 Space Weather episode two. But yeah, and why two k am? 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:42.480 I right, yeah, man, we need to do an episode 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.280 just on that. I can't wait to do that. Really, Yeah, 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:49.760 we're going to Okay, the nineties are back, are they? 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.920 From what I understand? You know, a new seventies sort 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:56.440 of disco tech bar is opening in Atlanta this weekend. 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.240 So oh sweet. When things are feeling really good, I 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:01.560 think you and me and Emily and you should all 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:05.320 go get our studio fifty four on. I would love that. 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.559 I'm gonna go get some replacement goldfish from my platform 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:11.679 shoes great because those other ones have been dead for years. 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.560 They're getting a little gamy. I have to you got 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.920 anything else about space hurricanes, nothing else. Look out for him. 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:21.040 It's the new thing. Yeah, just this is going to 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:23.000 get a follow up when we understand them a little more, 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:26.079 because they are amazing. So until then, this was your 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.440 introduction to space hurricanes. I hope you enjoyed it, Chuck, 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:31.720 hope you enjoyed it. They hope you enjoyed it. And 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:39.439 in space stuff, short stuff is out. Stuff you Should 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:41.880 Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:44.720 podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:47.840 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.