Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the deep Dive. Today we are strapping in
Speaker 2: for a pretty wild ride. We're exploring the most powerful
Speaker 2: space weather event we've seen in more than two decades.
Speaker 3: We really are. This was a true cosmic punch that
Speaker 3: Earth took back in May of twenty twenty four, right, And.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just spectacular to look at. I mean, the
Speaker 2: photos were incredible, but it was scientifically just a gold.
Speaker 3: Mine, a total gold mine. We're unpacking a whole stack
Speaker 3: of sources today, all focused on what's called the Mother's
Speaker 3: Day storm. It happened on May tenth and eleventh, and.
Speaker 2: Space weather scientists have a name for it, right, Superstorm Gannon.
Speaker 3: That's the one Superstorm Gannon. It was classified as a
Speaker 3: G five storm, which is the absolute highest level of
Speaker 3: geomagnetic activity you can have and the data gave us.
Speaker 3: It's fundamentally shifting how we think about planetary defense.
Speaker 2: I think we all saw the headlines, and maybe some
Speaker 2: of you even saw the auroras, which were stunning. But
Speaker 2: the real story, the one we're digging into, happened in
Speaker 2: the invisible shields around our planet exactly.
Speaker 3: Our mission today is to figure out why this storm,
Speaker 3: the strongest in over twenty years, gave us a data
Speaker 3: set we've just never had before.
Speaker 2: It's not just about the storm's initial hit, is.
Speaker 3: It, No, not at all. The core mystery here isn't
Speaker 3: just the immediate violence of it, but the lingering aftermath.
Speaker 3: For the first time, we have this incredibly detailed look
Speaker 3: at how the superstorm assaulted Earth's protective.
Speaker 2: Layers, specifically the plasmosphere.
Speaker 3: The plasmosphere exactly. The initial compression was just brutal. We're
Speaker 3: talking nine hours of intense pressure, but then the recovery
Speaker 3: was so star rangely slow. It took four.
Speaker 2: Days and four days of disruption. That means four days
Speaker 2: where our satellites her infrastructure are vulnerable.
Speaker 3: That's the risk.
Speaker 2: So we're going to walk you through that timeline first.
Speaker 2: How this huge protective layer got squeezed to about one
Speaker 2: fifth its normal size. And then the really critical part,
Speaker 2: how these invisible chemistry problems in the atmosphere, a thing
Speaker 2: called a negative storm created this massive four day supply
Speaker 2: chain problem that left our technology totally compromised.
Speaker 3: It's a fascinating story of physics and chemistry on a
Speaker 3: planetary scale.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's set the stage here, superstorm Gannon. When
Speaker 2: we talk about a geomagnetic superstorm, we're really talking about
Speaker 2: something at the extreme end of the scale. How rare
Speaker 2: was an event like this?
Speaker 3: I mean truly truly rare? Based on all the historical data,
Speaker 3: A G five level storm which this was, happens on
Speaker 3: average only about once every twenty to twenty five years.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we haven't seen anything this intent since the famous
Speaker 3: Halloween storms back in two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: And I remember those They took out a bunch of satellites, right.
Speaker 3: They did, cause all sorts of problems. Yeah, So this
Speaker 3: caannon EVET was in that same leak.
Speaker 2: So that establishes the rarity. Now let's get into the cause.
Speaker 2: What was it on the Sun that shot this this
Speaker 2: once in a generation blast of energy right at us.
Speaker 2: It's not just a solar flare, is it.
Speaker 3: No, it's much much more than that. The storm was
Speaker 3: triggered by a whole series of massive, powerful eruptions from
Speaker 3: the Sun's atmosphere, and they were all timed very closely.
Speaker 2: Together, eruptions of what exactly we.
Speaker 3: Call them coronal mass ejections or CMEs. You have to
Speaker 3: picture these colossal bursts of material. Basically, the Sun just
Speaker 3: hurled billions of tons of highly charged magnetized plasma straight
Speaker 3: towards Earth.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what's the difference between a normal CME one
Speaker 2: that just gives us some nice auroras up north and
Speaker 2: this kind of monster that can compress our entire magnetic field?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: It really comes down to a few key ingredients. First,
Speaker 3: you need speed speed the CMEs that create again, and
Speaker 3: we're moving incredibly fast, well over one thousand kilometers per second.
Speaker 3: That speed creates this immense pressure when it hits our magnetosphere.
Speaker 2: Okay, so speed is one second.
Speaker 3: You need mass. It was billions of tons of this stuff,
Speaker 3: which ensures it's not just a quick hit, it's a
Speaker 3: sustained push.
Speaker 2: But there's a third thing, right, the really critical factor
Speaker 2: that turns a fast CME into a crushing storm. It's
Speaker 2: about the magnetic field, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, It's all about the magnetic field orientation of that
Speaker 3: incoming plasma cloud. We call it the Bled's component.
Speaker 2: The Bledze component.
Speaker 3: So the Sun has its own magnetic field and it's
Speaker 3: embedded in this CME cloud. Now, if that cloud's magnetic
Speaker 3: field lines are pointing north, they line up with Earth's
Speaker 3: magnetic field, and things are, you know, relatively calm.
Speaker 2: This sort of glands off each other.
Speaker 3: More or less. But if the cloud's magnetic field, the
Speaker 3: brass component, is pointing south, it directly opposes Earth's northward
Speaker 3: pointing field lines.
Speaker 2: And when those opposite fields meet, they don't just bounce.
Speaker 3: No, that's when the fireworks happen. They undergo this violent
Speaker 3: process called magnetic reconnection.
Speaker 2: Which is like what a short circuit.
Speaker 3: It's exactly like a short circuit, but on a planetary scale.
Speaker 3: This reconnection just rips open the boundary of our magnetosphere.
Speaker 3: It's like opening a door and letting a massive amount
Speaker 3: of solar energy, momentum and charge particles poured directly into
Speaker 3: our environment.
Speaker 2: And the Gannon storm had that southward bruss.
Speaker 3: It had a sustained, powerful southward pointing bruhs, and that's
Speaker 3: what allowed for the maximum let's call it coupling between
Speaker 3: the solar wind and our magnetosphere. It was the perfect storm.
Speaker 2: So the store hits on May tenth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: and this intense magnetized plasma just slams into us, and
Speaker 2: our protective layers react pretty much instantly.
Speaker 3: Almost instantly. The major compression phase, the big squeeze only
Speaker 3: lasted about nine hours.
Speaker 2: Nine hours. That rapid energy transfer just tells you how
Speaker 2: powerful that southward bruise must have been.
Speaker 3: It really does. But before we get into the details
Speaker 3: of the squeeze, we should probably define what exactly got squeeze.
Speaker 3: We need to talk about the plasmosphere, right.
Speaker 2: And for everyone listening, this isn't the same thing as
Speaker 2: the magnetosphere itself, right, It's a structure inside of.
Speaker 3: It, exactly. It's an infrastructure, but it's vital for our protection.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's break down the shield. What's the plasmosphere
Speaker 2: made of and why do we care so much if
Speaker 2: it gets damaged.
Speaker 3: The plasmosphere is this dense, kind of doughnut shaped region
Speaker 3: of pretty cold plasma, so low energy charged particles mostly hydrogen,
Speaker 3: ions and electrons. It sits deep inside the magnetosphere and
Speaker 3: it co rotates.
Speaker 2: With the Earth, and its job is what a buffer.
Speaker 3: A buffer is a perfect way to put it. It
Speaker 3: stabilizes the electric and magnetic fields in that inner region,
Speaker 3: and critically, it absorbs and sort of neutralizes a lot
Speaker 3: of the less energetic particles that try to get into
Speaker 3: our environment. It's a key part of our fielding.
Speaker 2: So what happens to all our satellites that live in
Speaker 2: or near that region If the plasmosphere is compromised.
Speaker 3: Two bad things happen. First, the protective environment is just gone,
Speaker 3: so satellites are exposed to much higher energy particle radiation
Speaker 3: that normally gets filtered out. And the second thing, the
Speaker 3: second is often more insidious. The outer boundary of the plasmosphere,
Speaker 3: we call it the plasmo pause, is a region of instability.
Speaker 3: When that gets compressed, it moves closer to all those
Speaker 3: vital geosynchronous orbits.
Speaker 2: Where our communications satellites are exactly and the extreme changes
Speaker 2: in the electric fields there can cause something called satellite
Speaker 2: surface charging.
Speaker 3: It's like giving the satellite a dangerous static electricity jolt.
Speaker 3: It can totally disrupt its electronics.
Speaker 2: So Superstorm Gannon was basically a brutal real world stress
Speaker 2: test for this entire.
Speaker 3: Region, the ultimate stress test.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's unpack that stress test. We know the
Speaker 2: plasmasphere is this vast charge bubble in its normal state.
Speaker 2: Let's get into the specifics. What are the baseline measurements?
Speaker 2: How big is it normally.
Speaker 3: Under normal quiet conditions? It's huge. We define its outer boundary,
Speaker 3: the plasmo pause, as the point where that plasma density
Speaker 3: just drops off sharply.
Speaker 2: And where is that?
Speaker 3: Usually that boundary typically sits about forty four thousand kilometers
Speaker 3: above the Earth surface.
Speaker 2: Forty four thousand kilometers right.
Speaker 3: It's about six point six earth RADII. It's a really
Speaker 3: comfortable commence buffer zone.
Speaker 2: And just for context, that forty four thousand kilometer baseline
Speaker 2: is well beyond the orbits of our most crucial communication
Speaker 2: satellites geosynchronous orbit is what around thirty six thousand kilometer.
Speaker 3: That's right about thirty five thousand, seven hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: six to be precise. So the plasma pause normally provides
Speaker 3: this crucial protection around that whole geo belt of satellites,
Speaker 3: But during Gannon that high speed southward magnetized CME just
Speaker 3: crushed it, violently crushed it inward.
Speaker 2: So how far inward are we talking? Give us the
Speaker 2: numbers again, because they're just staggering.
Speaker 3: The outer boundary was force fully compressed down to an
Speaker 3: altitude of just nine thousand, six hundred kilometers above the
Speaker 3: Earth's surface.
Speaker 2: Nine thousand, six hundred that's it's.
Speaker 3: An astonishingly low altitude. To put that in perspective, that's
Speaker 3: barely above medium Earth Orbit MOO, which is where a
Speaker 3: lot of our key GPS satellites operate.
Speaker 2: So if I'm doing the math right, thelo asmosphere's radius
Speaker 2: shrank by over seventy five percent. The whole protective layer
Speaker 2: collapse to about one fifth of its normal.
Speaker 3: Size, about a fifth of its volume.
Speaker 2: Yes, in just nine hours. Does the data give us
Speaker 2: any insight into the physics that drove that incredibly fast collapse.
Speaker 3: It does. It's driven by something called the enhanced convection
Speaker 3: electric field.
Speaker 2: Okay, what's that.
Speaker 3: It's generated by that magnetic reconnection we talked about. When
Speaker 3: the southward BROS tears open the magnetosphere, it drives this
Speaker 3: massive short circuit current across the polar caps and that
Speaker 3: creates these incredibly powerful electric.
Speaker 2: Fields, and those electric fields are what stripped the plasma
Speaker 2: away exactly.
Speaker 3: They act like a massive centrifuge. Plasma inside the magnetosphere
Speaker 3: gets caught in this flow and is rapidly spun towards
Speaker 3: the outer boundary where it just gets stripped away by
Speaker 3: the solar winds.
Speaker 2: So the boundary gets pushed dramatically.
Speaker 3: Inward, dramatically it carves out that immense plasma layer and
Speaker 3: just leaves this depleted inner region. The fact that it
Speaker 3: happened in only nine hours, it just shows you the
Speaker 3: incredible strength of those storm time electric fields.
Speaker 2: And this isn't just a theory, right, this is a
Speaker 2: measured physical reality. This is the big scientific achievement here,
Speaker 2: moving from models to direct measurement.
Speaker 3: That's the leap forward. Before Ganon, we had data from
Speaker 3: smaller storms, sure, but getting continuous high res institute measurements
Speaker 3: from inside the collapsing plasmosphere during a G five event
Speaker 3: that was basically impossible.
Speaker 2: The satellites were in the wrong place, or we didn't
Speaker 2: have the right instrument precisely.
Speaker 3: The Gannon event just provided this unprecedented level of detail.
Speaker 2: And having that detail knowing exactly how that boundary moves
Speaker 2: and how fast. That's absolutely critical for future planning, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It's the difference between guessing and predicting. It really is
Speaker 3: knowing a storm this intense can drive the plasma pause
Speaker 3: down to nine thy six hundred kilometers right into key
Speaker 3: operational orbits that lets engineers build better resilience into future satellites.
Speaker 2: So it tells you how much radiation shielding you need
Speaker 2: where you're likely to get these electrical surges exactly.
Speaker 3: It moves space weather forecasting from a sort of qualitative hey,
Speaker 3: a storm is coming, to a quantitative risk assessment tool.
Speaker 3: The risk at this orbit will be x for y
Speaker 3: number of hours. That's the goal.
Speaker 2: The success of this study really seems to hinge on
Speaker 2: just being in the right place at the right time,
Speaker 2: hitting a scientific lottery almost.
Speaker 3: That's a good way to put it. A twenty year
Speaker 3: storm hits right when you have the perfect instruments in
Speaker 3: the perfect position.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the key instrument here, the Erase satellite.
Speaker 3: The Erase satellite was the hero of this whole observation.
Speaker 3: It's a JAXA mission launched back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: JAXA is the Japanese space agency right.
Speaker 3: And its name ERASE actually means rough C or stormy C.
Speaker 3: How fitting, incredibly fitting. Its whole mission is specialized. It
Speaker 3: flies in this elliptical orbit that dips low through the
Speaker 3: inner magnetosphere and then swings way out through the heart
Speaker 3: of the plasmosphere. It's designed specifically to study how this
Speaker 3: region responds to storms.
Speaker 2: So what instruments on a Race actually confirmed that the
Speaker 2: boundary collapsed from forty four thousand kilometers down to nine thousand,
Speaker 2: six hundred.
Speaker 3: The most critical data came from its suite of plasma
Speaker 3: and wave instruments, specifically the Plasma Wave Experiment and the
Speaker 3: soft Electron and ion spectrometer.
Speaker 2: And what do those do?
Speaker 3: They're designed to measure the density, the temperature, and the
Speaker 3: composition of the plasma in real time. So as that
Speaker 3: plasma pause swept past a Rase's orbit, the satellite recorded
Speaker 3: this abrupt several orders of magnitude drop in the cold
Speaker 3: plasma density.
Speaker 2: So it flew right through the boundary.
Speaker 3: It flew right through it and measured the cliff edge
Speaker 3: drop that confirmed the boundary had retreated sharply to an
Speaker 3: altitude below its position.
Speaker 2: So a rice gave us the direct in place evidence
Speaker 2: of the shield collapsing. But the team at Nagoya University,
Speaker 2: led by doctor at Suki Shinbori, they did more than that.
Speaker 2: They synchronized the satellite data with ground based measurements.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that dual approach is what made this study
Speaker 3: so powerful, especially when it came to understanding the recovery
Speaker 3: how so well. They used a RAISE to track the plasmosphere,
Speaker 3: but at the same time they were monitoring the ionosphere
Speaker 3: that's the layer below the plasmosphere, using a huge network
Speaker 3: of ground based GPS receivers.
Speaker 2: How can you use GPS to monitor the ionosphere?
Speaker 3: It's actually a really clever method. We can figure out
Speaker 3: the state of the ionosphere by measuring something called the
Speaker 3: total electron content.
Speaker 2: Or tech total electron content.
Speaker 3: Right, GPS signals have to travel through the ionosphere to
Speaker 3: get to a receiver on the ground. The free electrons
Speaker 3: in the ionosphere cause a tiny but measurable delay in
Speaker 3: that signal's travel time.
Speaker 2: So you measure the delay and that tells you how
Speaker 2: many electrons are up there exactly.
Speaker 3: Using very precise dual frequency GPS receivers, scientists can calculate
Speaker 3: that time delay and from that they can quantify the tech.
Speaker 3: So if the ionosphere is full of electrons and ions,
Speaker 3: the delay is high. If it's depleted, the delay is low.
Speaker 2: And that's the key link here. The ionosphere is the
Speaker 2: supply chain.
Speaker 3: It's the supply chain. It's where the charged particles that
Speaker 3: are needed to refill the plasmosphere, those hydrogen ions are
Speaker 3: generated and stream upwards.
Speaker 2: So if your GPS data shows that the tech is
Speaker 2: dropping everywhere.
Speaker 3: It means your source material for refilling the plasmosphere is compromised.
Speaker 3: And the Nagoya team perfectly synchronized the erase density measurements
Speaker 3: from space with the ground based tech measurements. They proved
Speaker 3: that the long recovery delay up in space was directly
Speaker 3: caused by this massive drop in the particles supplied from below.
Speaker 2: That's incredible, connecting a satellite flying thousands of kilometers up
Speaker 2: with a receiver on the ground, all through a tiny
Speaker 2: signal delay. It shows just how complex space weather observation
Speaker 2: has become.
Speaker 3: It really does. It's not about isolated observations anymore. It's
Speaker 3: about a unified system wide.
Speaker 2: Analysis, and that brings us right to the central mystery
Speaker 2: of the Gannon storm. The nine hour compression violent but
Speaker 2: sort of expected for a storm this big. What wasn't
Speaker 2: expected was how sluggish the recovery was. The shield broke fast,
Speaker 2: but the repair job took forever. What's the normal recovery time?
Speaker 3: Historically for a moderate or even a strong storm, the
Speaker 3: plasma sphere starts to refill pretty quickly. It usually gets
Speaker 3: back to pre storm density levels within say.
Speaker 2: A day or two, so twenty four to forty eight
Speaker 2: hours about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, The magnetic field bounces back, the electric field weakens,
Speaker 3: and the natural flow of plasma from the ionosphere starts
Speaker 3: replenishing those depleted regions.
Speaker 2: But with Gannon, that process stretched over four full days.
Speaker 3: Four days, which is at least double the typical recovery time.
Speaker 3: It's the longest sustained depletion that a RaSE has observed
Speaker 3: since its mission began in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: So why why did the supply changes dry up for
Speaker 2: so long?
Speaker 3: This is where the physics of the compression gives way
Speaker 3: to the invisible but incredibly powerful chemistry of the upper atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Chemistry not physics, right.
Speaker 3: The critical mechanism delaying everything is a phenomenon. We call
Speaker 3: the negative storm.
Speaker 2: Okay, a negative storm, let's define that because it sounds
Speaker 2: like a particle drought. But you're saying it's caused by
Speaker 2: the storm's energy, not a lack of it.
Speaker 3: That's the paradox of it. The superstorm injects an immense
Speaker 3: amount of energy into the polar regions. That energy is
Speaker 3: mostly from accelerated particles and strong electric currents. It intensely
Speaker 3: heats the upper layer of the atmosphere, the thermosphere. That
Speaker 3: heating is the trigger.
Speaker 2: How does heating the atmosphere cause a drought of charged particles?
Speaker 2: It feels counterintuitive.
Speaker 3: It does. The heating fundamentally changes the atmosphere composition. It's
Speaker 3: a process called upwelling. Normally, the ionosphere is dominated by
Speaker 3: lighter atoms like atomic oxygen and hydrogen, but the intense
Speaker 3: heating near the poles causes that neutral atmosphere to expand
Speaker 3: and rise, and as it rises, it drags up heavier
Speaker 3: molecular gases from lower altitudes, mostly molecular nitrogen end to
Speaker 3: and molecular oxygen O two.
Speaker 2: So the storm basically pumps heavy gas molecules up into
Speaker 2: a region where they don't normally belong exactly.
Speaker 3: It completely changes the chemical balance, and these heavier molecules
Speaker 3: into and OH two the incredibly effective at capturing free electrons.
Speaker 3: It's a process called recombination.
Speaker 2: So they basically mop up all the free charges.
Speaker 3: They act like a massive chemical drain. The rate at
Speaker 3: which free electrons recombine with positive ions just accelerates dramatically,
Speaker 3: so all the electrons and positive ions that should be
Speaker 3: available to stream up and refill the plasmisphere you're just
Speaker 3: rapidly getting neutralized back into plain old gas molecules.
Speaker 2: So, just to be clear, if the storm had only
Speaker 2: compressed the magnetic field, the recovery would have been pretty quick.
Speaker 2: It would have been but because the storm also caused
Speaker 2: this chemical shift, this upwelling of heavy gas, it broke
Speaker 2: the particle production line.
Speaker 3: It broke the supply chain by destroying the raw materials.
Speaker 3: The key raw material for refilling the plasmosphere is the
Speaker 3: atomic oxygen ion O plus, and oplus reacts with hydrogen
Speaker 3: to produce the lighter hydrogen ions H plus meat that
Speaker 3: stream upward. But when the ionospheres is suddenly flooded with
Speaker 3: N two and O two, the oplus ions just rapidly
Speaker 3: recombined with them. Instead, it stops the from producing the
Speaker 3: hplus needed for the refill.
Speaker 2: And this negative storm effect, it wasn't just at the polls,
Speaker 2: was it.
Speaker 3: It spread, It spread globally. The data shows that the
Speaker 3: changes in atmospheric circulation driven by that intense polar heating
Speaker 3: rapidly transported this chemically altered air mass across vast areas
Speaker 3: down towards the.
Speaker 2: Equator, which is why the GPS network saw that tech
Speaker 2: drop everywhere.
Speaker 3: Precisely. That widespread depletion ensured that the plasmosphere's refill mechanism
Speaker 3: was compromised, not just locally, but globally for four straight days.
Speaker 2: And this link. This is the big takeaway, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Had we ever empirically documented this exact sequence before the heating,
Speaker 2: the upwelling, the recombination leading to a four day depletion.
Speaker 3: We had theoretical models that suggested this could happen, but
Speaker 3: the Gannin storm provided the definitive, continuous, multilayer.
Speaker 2: Proof, the smoking gun.
Speaker 3: The smoking gun, the simultaneous data from a race in
Speaker 3: space and the GPS network on the ground offered irrefutable proof.
Speaker 3: It's the negative storm's chemical can over the system's recovery speed.
Speaker 3: And this is a huge realization for space weather forecasting.
Speaker 3: Why because means the threat level stays high long after
Speaker 3: the initial solar shock has passed. The true duration of
Speaker 3: risk is dictated by upper atmosphere chemistry, not just plasma physics.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's shift from that invisible chemistry to the
Speaker 2: visible drama and the real world damage. The compression of
Speaker 2: the shield was so extreme that millions of people got
Speaker 2: this breath taking spectacle auroras way outside their normal homes.
Speaker 3: That was the most obvious sign of this form's intensity. Normally,
Speaker 3: you know, auroras are confined to these narrow bands around
Speaker 3: the magnetic poles, usually above sixty degrees latitude, the auroral
Speaker 3: ovals exactly. That's because the magnetic field funnels the incoming
Speaker 3: charged particles into the atmosphere at those specific points.
Speaker 2: But during Gannon, the field was so compressed that it
Speaker 2: allowed those particles to get in much deeper, much closer
Speaker 2: to the equator.
Speaker 3: That's right, When the field is squashed down to nine
Speaker 3: six hundred kilometers, the field lines get warped and stretched,
Speaker 3: and it effectively widens the area where particles can rain
Speaker 3: down into the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: And that led to photos of auroras in places like.
Speaker 3: We saw reports and incredible photos from places like Rikubetsu
Speaker 3: in Japan, which is mid latitude, even as far south
Speaker 3: as Mexico and across southern.
Speaker 2: Europe, which is just unheard of.
Speaker 3: It's a clear historical marker when you see red and
Speaker 3: green aurora displays from those regions, it tells you one thing.
Speaker 3: The farther the aurora travels from the poles, the stronger
Speaker 3: the geomagnetic storm was.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's a beautiful visible side. Now let's talk
Speaker 2: about the ugly invisible technological impact that lasted for that
Speaker 2: whole four day recovery.
Speaker 3: Right when the plasmasphere is gone and the ionosphere is
Speaker 3: chemically compromised, our technology is put under serious stress.
Speaker 2: Let's start with satellites. What happened to them?
Speaker 3: The stress was widespread. Satellites in low and medium Earth
Speaker 3: orbit experienced significant electrical issues. When that shield collapses, the
Speaker 3: flux of high energy particles.
Speaker 2: Just shoots up and that causes it leads to.
Speaker 3: The surface charging and internal charging of satellite components. This
Speaker 3: can cause electrical glitches, system resets, and in some severe
Speaker 3: cases reported during gannon satellites just temporarily stop transmitting data altogether.
Speaker 2: And that heating of the thermosphere we talked about that
Speaker 2: has a physical effect too, right.
Speaker 3: It absolutely does. When the thermosphere heats up, it expands,
Speaker 3: which increases the atmospheric density at those low orbit altitudes,
Speaker 3: which means more drags, significantly more atmospheric drag. For these
Speaker 3: huge satellite constellations, that drag forces them to burn more
Speaker 3: fuel to stay in orbit, which shortens their lifespan. It
Speaker 3: also makes collision avoidants much more complicated.
Speaker 2: Now, let's talk about the service we all rely on constantly, GPS.
Speaker 2: People talk about GPS disruption, but what was the specific
Speaker 2: measurable effect of that four day negative storm on navigation accuracy?
Speaker 3: The impact was very real and measurable. GPS and other
Speaker 3: navigation systems they rely on incredibly precise timing to calculate
Speaker 3: your location, and that timing has to be corrected for
Speaker 3: the signal delay caused by the total electron content in
Speaker 3: the ionosphere.
Speaker 2: So if the tech suddenly plummets during a negative storm,
Speaker 2: the standard models that the GPS system uses to calculate
Speaker 2: that delay, they become totally wrong.
Speaker 3: Wildly inaccurate during the gannin storm and for days after,
Speaker 3: the models, which are designed for normal conditions, were overestimating
Speaker 3: the correction needed because the ononosphere was so depleted.
Speaker 2: And that caused ranging errors.
Speaker 3: Significant ranging errors. For your phone, maybe it means a
Speaker 3: little inaccuracy you miss a turn, but for high precision applications,
Speaker 3: commercial aviation, autonomous tractors, and farming, which need centimeter level accuracy,
Speaker 3: that error margin just ballooned to completely unacceptable levels.
Speaker 2: And this degradation was measured across the planet for the
Speaker 2: full four days.
Speaker 3: For the entire duration of the negative storm.
Speaker 2: Yes, and what about radio, Things like high frequency radio
Speaker 2: use for long distance communication also broadly affected.
Speaker 3: The ionosphere is what reflects HF radio waves back to Earth,
Speaker 3: allowing you to communicate over the horizon. When the chemical
Speaker 3: balance is disrupted and the particle density changes so dramatically
Speaker 3: the reflective properties of the ionosphere change, you get blackouts,
Speaker 3: you get signal fading dropouts, temporary blackouts across key frequency bands.
Speaker 3: And because the recovery was so slow, these communication issues
Speaker 3: were persistent and really hard to mitigate for four days.
Speaker 2: Which brings us back to the real importance of these findings.
Speaker 2: Knowing that your technological environment is going to be hostile
Speaker 2: for four plus days after a major strike, that's crucial information.
Speaker 3: It completely transforms risk assessment. Before this, we might have
Speaker 3: estimated the risk period to be forty eight hours. Now
Speaker 3: we have empirical evidence that for a G five event,
Speaker 3: the chemical fallout prolongs that vulnerability period to at least
Speaker 3: ninety six hours.
Speaker 2: So satellite operators need to have contingency plans that last
Speaker 2: much longer.
Speaker 3: Much longer. It means they need to be prepared for
Speaker 3: a longer period of risk, maybe initiate protective maneuvers for
Speaker 3: laws longer than they previously thought necessary. This new clarity
Speaker 3: on the chemistry is essential preparation for the next big one.
Speaker 2: This has been just an incredible deep dive. We've traced
Speaker 2: this path all the way from a massive solar eruption
Speaker 2: down to the invisible molecular chemistry that dictates how fast
Speaker 2: our global technology can recover.
Speaker 3: It's quite a journey.
Speaker 2: We started with that violent instantaneous compression of Superstorm Gannon,
Speaker 2: where Earth's plasma shield just collapsed from forty four thousand
Speaker 2: kilometers down to nine thousand, six hundred in only nine hours.
Speaker 3: And we ended up understanding this profound vulnerability that was
Speaker 3: hidden in the aftermath. The real scientific revelation of this
Speaker 3: storm wasn't just the strength of the punch. It was
Speaker 3: the sluggishness of the recovery.
Speaker 2: That four day delay, That four day.
Speaker 3: Delay, the longest we've observed since twenty seventeen, was directly
Speaker 3: because of the negative storm, the massive widespread chemical depletion
Speaker 3: of the ionosphere.
Speaker 2: So to put it simply, the physics of the storm
Speaker 2: broke the shield fast, but it was the chemistry of
Speaker 2: the upper atmosphere that delayed the r It just choked
Speaker 2: off the supply line of particles needed to refill that
Speaker 2: protective bubble.
Speaker 3: And the study gives us the clearest picture we've ever had,
Speaker 3: thanks to that combined data from the ERASE satellite and
Speaker 3: the ground based GPS network, of the precise link between
Speaker 3: solar energy, atmosphere chemical changes, and the multi day vulnerability
Speaker 3: of our protective environment. It really does alter how we
Speaker 3: define space weather risk.
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean for you listening right now?
Speaker 2: It means that when scientists talk about space weather, they're
Speaker 2: not just talking about magnetic fields anymore. They are talking
Speaker 2: about atmospheric chemistry that directly affects the stability of your
Speaker 2: GPS and your communication systems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the protection of our modern world isn't just about
Speaker 3: how strong the initial shield is. It's about how quickly
Speaker 3: that particle supply chain can be restored.
Speaker 2: So let's leave you with a final thought on that.
Speaker 3: If a superstorm that happens only once every twenty to
Speaker 3: twenty five years can cause these measurable multi day disruptions
Speaker 3: to essential services, just consider this. What would the impact
Speaker 3: look like if we were hit by an even rarer,
Speaker 3: truly historic event, something like the eighteen fifty nine Carrington event,
Speaker 3: a storm maybe ten times stronger than Gannon.
Speaker 2: Given that our society is just exponentially more reliant on precise,
Speaker 2: uninterrupted satellite technology today than we were even twenty five
Speaker 2: years ago, that four day lag time could easily become
Speaker 2: a two week lag time after a major event, and.
Speaker 3: That becomes a truly existential infrastructure risk.
Speaker 2: Something tom all over the next time you rely on
Speaker 2: your GPS to get you somewhere.
Speaker 4: People most nations, said the School da