Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's your friend with too much stuff hanging
Speaker 1: from his rear view mirror. Ali Ward. Let's get started.
Speaker 1: Let's dip into it. This one is about the Sun.
Speaker 1: We got eclips, trivia and tips and dates tossed in.
Speaker 1: It's also a Bogo it's a buy one, get one
Speaker 1: because we have two guests. Thank you NASA for both
Speaker 1: of them, and thank you to wildlife ecology ologists Corina
Speaker 1: Newssim for the intro to India. So I'm gonna be honest,
Speaker 1: we weren't even going to cover this ology right now.
Speaker 1: If we did, we should have put it out a
Speaker 1: couple weeks ago. I've always wanted to cover it, but
Speaker 1: kind of at the last minute, I decided to trek
Speaker 1: to see the eclipse in Texas, and I selfishly, selfishly
Speaker 1: wanted to know how the sun works because everyone's talking
Speaker 1: about it, and because everything alive on Earth would be
Speaker 1: dead without it. It's a key player. I was like,
Speaker 1: let's get this done. So these two guests. One is
Speaker 1: a research scientist and the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA's
Speaker 1: Goddard Space Flight Center now. The other has a bachelor's
Speaker 1: and a master's in mathematics and is on the cusp
Speaker 1: of totality in regards to her PhD and astrophysics from
Speaker 1: Georgia State University. She's self taught in ten computer programming languages.
Speaker 1: She studies solar energetic particles, coronal mass ejections, and has
Speaker 1: had multiple internships with NASA's helio Analytics department at NASA Goddard.
Speaker 1: And these are the folks you want to talk to
Speaker 1: about the Sun, and we will in a sec But first,
Speaker 1: thank you to all of our patrons at patroon dot
Speaker 1: com slash Ologies, who for one dollar a month can
Speaker 1: submit questions before I record. And thank you to everyone
Speaker 1: wearing Ologies merch from Ologiesmarch dot com and for zero dollars.
Speaker 1: Thank you for supporting Ologies just by leaving reviews, and
Speaker 1: you know I read them all and to prove that,
Speaker 1: thank you to very far from the matting crowd who
Speaker 1: said that Ologies is like a cuddle from a friend
Speaker 1: and a hug from the universe and a tickle fight
Speaker 1: for my brain and very far from the matting crowd,
Speaker 1: so they put off writing that review for the last
Speaker 1: five years, So thank you. It's worth the wait. If
Speaker 1: you've left a review, I've read it now heliology. Helio
Speaker 1: straight up means sun in Greek, but the word eclipse
Speaker 1: I just found this out comes from the Latin for
Speaker 1: a failure to appear, which sounds kind of like the
Speaker 1: sun is in some hot water with the judicial system.
Speaker 1: But in this episode, we're going to shed some light
Speaker 1: on what the Sun is made of. Is it fire
Speaker 1: or not? How old is it? How big is it?
Speaker 1: What does the surface of the Sun look like? When
Speaker 1: will it implode on us? What rays are coming off
Speaker 1: of it? What is a sun spot, a solar storm?
Speaker 1: And eclipse an ejection of coronal mass? Are our electronics safe? Also?
Speaker 1: Where can an eclipse happen? Should you go see one?
Speaker 1: Is it that big of a deal? What happens if
Speaker 1: you step out and stare directly into the sun. So
Speaker 1: get to know the center of our solar system with heliologists,
Speaker 1: doctor Michael Kirk and almost just days away from defending
Speaker 1: so I'm declaring it here, doctor India Jackson, let's hop
Speaker 1: right in and meet Michael.
Speaker 2: My name is Michael Kirk, I pronounced are he? Him?
Speaker 3: And his?
Speaker 1: And now we were talking about anome's versusologies. You study
Speaker 1: the sun, so technically you are a heliologist has anyone
Speaker 1: ever called you that?
Speaker 2: Or no, No, you're the first person to ever call
Speaker 2: me a heliologist. We typically call ourselves heliophysicists or you know,
Speaker 2: solar scientists or something like that. But heliologists, no, I've
Speaker 2: never heard that one before, but thanks. Heliophysics is actually
Speaker 2: a relatively new term. It was sort of coined back
Speaker 2: in the late nineties mid nineties. So in terms of,
Speaker 2: you know, the way science goes, this is like still
Speaker 2: a very youthful idea of heliophysics, because what it used
Speaker 2: to be is solar science, you know, studying the Sun,
Speaker 2: and then you study space, and then you study the
Speaker 2: eurosuparate atmosphere. And they were quickly realizing they're all related
Speaker 2: with each other. They're all, you know, part of the
Speaker 2: what we call the heliosphere. So that's where heliophysics came from.
Speaker 2: And so even the word heliophysics is not very well
Speaker 2: known in scientific communities, let alone the general public. But
Speaker 2: we're sort of on a mission that you know, five
Speaker 2: year olds know Trannosaurus rex. That's a hard work, so
Speaker 2: we should know heliophysics as well.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that it was a newer term.
Speaker 1: This is exciting about what exactly is a heliosphere. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever heard that term before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So heliosphere is everything the Sun touches. That's the
Speaker 2: sort of easiest way to describe it. So the Sun
Speaker 2: of course is the source of all our light and
Speaker 2: heat on Earth, but it also is pushing out radiation particles.
Speaker 2: There is a reasonably well defined boundary where it the
Speaker 2: influence the Sun pushes out into interstellar space, and at
Speaker 2: some point the other stars in our galaxy are pushing back,
Speaker 2: and so there's a boundary that the Sun's and radiation
Speaker 2: influence in a bubble, and that's called the heliosphere. And
Speaker 2: so all of the planets are inside the heliosphere. The
Speaker 2: only things that we know of that are outside of
Speaker 2: the heliosphere right now are the voidge spacecraft They actually
Speaker 2: cross the boundary are now and interstellar space.
Speaker 1: So just to quick aside, the Voyager one and Voyager
Speaker 1: two space probe crafts. They were launched in the late
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen seventy seven. They have both crossed interstellar
Speaker 1: space beyond our Son's heliosphere in twenty twelve and twenty eighteen, respectively,
Speaker 1: and Voyager one is about twenty four billion kilometers or
Speaker 1: fifteen billion miles away, and Voyager two, after cruising pass
Speaker 1: the gas planets of our solar system, is now roughly
Speaker 1: twenty billion kilometers or twelve billion miles from Earth. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I can't make it past an eight hour road trip
Speaker 1: without stopping five times to pee and three times to
Speaker 1: purchase truck stop coffee. Also, Michael says that they're having
Speaker 1: like a few communication issues with the voyagers, but I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: they are communicating from several billion miles away. Give them
Speaker 1: grace for not returning your text. NASA, calm down. So
Speaker 1: these voyagers, they're voyaging away tens of billions of miles
Speaker 1: just for scale, distance wise, the Sun is just a
Speaker 1: mere ninety three ish million miles or one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million kilometers away. That's right in our galactic backyard.
Speaker 1: And now, if we can see stars distantly, we're not
Speaker 1: in their heliosphere though, right, we can just see pinpoints
Speaker 1: of light. How do you determine if you can still
Speaker 1: see something?
Speaker 2: Oh? Oh wow, if you can see something, well, so
Speaker 2: the sunlight, like all light falls off exponentially, So every
Speaker 2: two meters you move out from an object, the light
Speaker 2: falls off to four meters or to four times the amount,
Speaker 2: so it's it's exponentially decreasing. So as you move away
Speaker 2: from the Sun, its brightness is limited, and eventually you
Speaker 2: need bigger and bigger telescopes or bigger, bigger apertures to
Speaker 2: be able to see that increasingly faint starlight. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's why we launched NASA launched James Web, was to
Speaker 2: create a really big mirror in space to capture really
Speaker 2: dim objects in So in terms of the Sun's influence,
Speaker 2: the radiation pushing out from the Sun, there's light that
Speaker 2: it's going to go off into space pretty much forever.
Speaker 2: But there is a defined boundary of that solar wind
Speaker 2: flow that flows out from the Sun and provides a
Speaker 2: fluid pressure, so like a pressure of you know, you
Speaker 2: put your hand in front of a water spicket and
Speaker 2: you feel the water pressure and it's a whole lot
Speaker 2: less from the Sun, but there's a pressure pushing out.
Speaker 2: So that's what we define as the edge of the
Speaker 2: Sun's influence. So each star has this bubble around it
Speaker 2: of where it is completely dominant. It's pushing out all
Speaker 2: of the other stuff from the universe, and in defining
Speaker 2: this protective or captive bubble around it. And then depending
Speaker 2: on how big the star is, how bright it is,
Speaker 2: how active it is, those size of those bubbles change
Speaker 2: of the heliosphere itself, and so.
Speaker 1: That solar wind is just a term for how it's
Speaker 1: putting pressure on other things. Are you ever mad that
Speaker 1: it's called wind? Is that so confusing?
Speaker 2: No? Actually, it's a great term because solar wind gets
Speaker 2: you to sort of think about a little bit of
Speaker 2: its weather too. So there's their space weather as well,
Speaker 2: and the solar wind is sort of the it's always
Speaker 2: their wind blowing out from the Sun. By wind, I
Speaker 2: mean these are particles, magnetic fields, so protons, neutrons, electrons,
Speaker 2: magnetic fields just always being pushed out from the Sun
Speaker 2: all the time. And this wind is carried out in
Speaker 2: streams and in clumps and in blobs, and it is
Speaker 2: pushed out. But calling it wind makes you think like, oh,
Speaker 2: that must be some sort of weather phenomenon. And that's
Speaker 2: that's exactly why it's a really good term. Because space
Speaker 2: weather is the changing environment in space caused by the Sun,
Speaker 2: and so astronauts deal with it. Satellites deal with it,
Speaker 2: I mean, planets deal with it too. Our Earth and
Speaker 2: upper atmosphere changes depending on the space weather conditions.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I thought you were gonna be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sucks, they call it wind. I gotta really try
Speaker 1: to explain that when it's career day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are the terms I think are terrible, but
Speaker 2: that's not one of them.
Speaker 1: So what else is terrible?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Can you smell any beans?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: So, I think the hardest thing is that we use
Speaker 2: the term solar system to just talk about the planets.
Speaker 2: And okay, so yeah, you have the planets in the
Speaker 2: solar system, and everybody learns the Solar system and you
Speaker 2: learn the names of the planets, But the solar system,
Speaker 2: if you like, think about the words. It's about the
Speaker 2: Sun and the relationship between the Sun and the planets.
Speaker 2: And so I think the term solar system is great.
Speaker 2: I just wish we could like include a little bit
Speaker 2: more Sun in that solar system description instead of just
Speaker 2: talking about Saturn and Uranus and Neptune.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point. It is called the solar system,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I know the least about the Sun,
Speaker 1: and this is a great time to help me actually
Speaker 1: visualize it. So the Sun is it a huge ball
Speaker 1: of fire. Is it plasma? Is it just a light?
Speaker 1: What is this sun even made up? Do we know?
Speaker 2: Yes? Okay, okay, well next question.
Speaker 1: Oh no, he's kidding, but also not. Let's check with
Speaker 1: another NASA goddard scientist, India Jackson almost PhD Okay.
Speaker 4: My name is India Jackson. My pronouns are she her.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you had to describe what the
Speaker 1: sun was or like how big it is? I have
Speaker 1: no concept of how big the Sun is, like none.
Speaker 1: Are there just arms of plasma that are giant coming
Speaker 1: off of it? Like I can't even visualize it.
Speaker 4: Well, you know the Solar Dynamic Observatory. Have you heard
Speaker 4: of that? No, But you can see daily live images
Speaker 4: of the Sun and it looks like a ball because
Speaker 4: the gravity is pushing towards the center. So that's why
Speaker 4: it looks like a ball. And then you will get
Speaker 4: some solar events. You'll see it looks like stuff is
Speaker 4: crawling on it, those magnetic waves pushing through and some
Speaker 4: of them connect then and you'll see dark spots. Those
Speaker 4: are the sun spots. You'll see some prominences, you'll see
Speaker 4: some filaments, you'll see the big loops are the coronal
Speaker 4: mass ejections.
Speaker 1: What does that look like? A big loop? Like a bubble?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what like a big loop? And I actually studied
Speaker 4: those last year during my summer internship with NASA, trying
Speaker 4: to get those physical parameters from coronal mass ejections during
Speaker 4: certain events, so trying to get how long it is
Speaker 4: from the center of the Sun, the angular with and
Speaker 4: all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: So a coronal mass ejection also called a CME, this
Speaker 1: is a type of solar event, and what happens is
Speaker 1: magnetic fields kind of twist around each other and snap,
Speaker 1: and the Sun expels a bunch of plasma and magnetic
Speaker 1: field from its surface, which can travel to Earth in
Speaker 1: these big bursts, though with a CME it might take
Speaker 1: a few days for that coronal mass ejection to arrive.
Speaker 1: Solar flares those are quicker and the most powerful explosions
Speaker 1: in the Solar system, and they emit light and particles
Speaker 1: and electromagnetic radiation that can reach the Earth and your
Speaker 1: face and your laptop in eight minutes. And CMEs those
Speaker 1: can affect life on Earth as well, including our electronics,
Speaker 1: but we have more time to see them coming. They
Speaker 1: move more slowly. Now, speaking of preparation. India is literally
Speaker 1: a week or two away from defending her PhD. This
Speaker 1: is a huge deal. She told me a little bit
Speaker 1: about our dissertation. Are you this close to being a
Speaker 1: doctor or are you a doctor? I know that we
Speaker 1: were catching you like right in the middle of defending.
Speaker 4: Well I haven't defended yet. So I just got the
Speaker 4: final edits for the full dissertation one hundred and thirty
Speaker 4: eight pages, so that will be going out to all
Speaker 4: of my committee members one Monday. So I am this
Speaker 4: close actually so exciting.
Speaker 1: What's the title of your dissertation?
Speaker 4: Advancing solar energetic part of cool prediction using survival analysis
Speaker 4: and cloud computing.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: And I'll be the first black woman to get a
Speaker 4: PhD in physics from GSU.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 4: So I'm making history with that. So my dissertation is
Speaker 4: three parts. First part is using pure statistics in order
Speaker 4: to analyze the time to detection of solo energetic particles
Speaker 4: once it reaches one of our satellites. And then the
Speaker 4: second part is using machine learning, and then the third
Speaker 4: part is the cloud analysis environment that I created using
Speaker 4: Amazon Web Services. It's free, it's open source.
Speaker 1: So this is what India's dissertationists composed of. But looking
Speaker 1: upwards again.
Speaker 2: What's the summer? So I think it was the musical group.
Speaker 2: They might be giants called the sun and the asthma
Speaker 2: of plasma free state of matter, not us, not lifically,
Speaker 2: not silent, And that's really what it is. It's a plasma.
Speaker 2: So the Sun is a big ball of hydrogen and
Speaker 2: helium primarily. There's a few other things in there that
Speaker 2: astronomers just all lump into metals. That's a weird thing
Speaker 2: that astronomers do. But it's primary hydrogen and helium, and
Speaker 2: the hydrogen goes through a fusion process in the Sun's
Speaker 2: core to produce energy, and that's the source of all
Speaker 2: the energy coming from the Sun. Is this fusion process.
Speaker 1: Fusion side note occurs in the Sun when the protons
Speaker 1: of hydrogen atoms smash and they fuse together to make
Speaker 1: a helium and they also release a ton of energy
Speaker 1: in that fusion process. And it takes four hydrogens colliding
Speaker 1: to make a helium. So helios helium, helio Sun. Do
Speaker 1: you get it? I didn't right before. Now, someone please
Speaker 1: tell me I'm not alone because this hurts.
Speaker 2: So you have these positive energy blobs and these negative
Speaker 2: energy particles, and they are in this incredibly energetic soup
Speaker 2: where they are all flowing around. And when you have
Speaker 2: negative and positive energies that are separated from each other
Speaker 2: like that, you can produce magnetic fields. And that is
Speaker 2: the other major thing that drives the Sun. Are these
Speaker 2: currents of plasma causing magnetic fields. And that's really what
Speaker 2: makes the Sun. It's plasma, it's magnetic fields. And understanding
Speaker 2: how those two things interact with each other is complicated.
Speaker 2: Then no, we're understand it to a certain degree, but man,
Speaker 2: there's a ton of stuff we just don't understand about that,
Speaker 2: how the plasma magnetic fields interact, even though the ingredients
Speaker 2: are relatively simple.
Speaker 1: So, according to a NASA piece titled Understanding the Magnetic Sun,
Speaker 1: the surface of our solar body quote writhes and dances
Speaker 1: and it has more rhythm and confidence than you ali.
Speaker 1: Not the last part that's just an assumption. Now. This
Speaker 1: is because when charged particles in the Sun they bang
Speaker 1: and they move around, they also create magnetic fields, which
Speaker 1: just causes them to move more, just like a mash
Speaker 1: pit of elegant stellar plasma. And when we hear always
Speaker 1: that we're made of exploded star stuff, but it's mostly
Speaker 1: helium and hydrogen with some metals. Now do those particles
Speaker 1: change when they leave that sphere or do those become
Speaker 1: sub atomic? I mean I realized that these are very
Speaker 1: perhaps not smart questions, but I might not be the
Speaker 1: only one wondering, So you know, now.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, these are great questions. So when Carl
Speaker 2: Sagan is just saying, you know, we were all stardust,
Speaker 2: that's literally true. However, there was a little little piece
Speaker 2: in there that you refer to, which is exploded stardust,
Speaker 2: and that is actually how you get the metals and
Speaker 2: the heavier elements out of a star is you have
Speaker 2: to go through a supernova.
Speaker 1: Okay, heads up. A supernova is this giant explosion of
Speaker 1: a star. Huge, huge, huge, that's a supernova. And a
Speaker 1: nova is this transient brightening of a white dwarf star.
Speaker 1: We'll get to what that is in a minute. And
Speaker 1: it's burning off accumulated fuel. Novas that comes from the
Speaker 1: word new because it's this pow sudden brightening. However, I
Speaker 1: prefer this now antiquated Chinese term for novas, which is
Speaker 1: guest stars like ooh, solar system guest star. I love
Speaker 1: this nova excited.
Speaker 2: Or nova in general. He doesn't have to be super
Speaker 2: you can just be a regular one. So in that
Speaker 2: process of a star going through its energetic life cycle
Speaker 2: and collapsing in on itself and either blasting out violently
Speaker 2: or just burping off its outer atmosphere, that's how you
Speaker 2: get all of those heavier elements deeper into the Solar system.
Speaker 2: It is that process, that process of the collapsing star,
Speaker 2: the process of the dying star, that produces those heavier elements.
Speaker 2: You need those violent reactions to get iron, to get uranium,
Speaker 2: to get calcium, to get oxygen. I mean, that's how
Speaker 2: you have to go through that cycle. So the original
Speaker 2: stars are conceived to be almost purely hydrogen, and they
Speaker 2: had to go through a burn cycle to produce these
Speaker 2: heavier elements and get them out into the universe.
Speaker 1: So the Sun has to go through some really intense
Speaker 1: shit to make heavy stuff, just like any true artist.
Speaker 4: As far as how compact it is, we really don't know.
Speaker 4: You know, we have different types of stars. You know,
Speaker 4: we have white dwarves, black holes, or stars that have
Speaker 4: collapsed on themselves. So even black holes were stars, right
Speaker 4: and they're mad. Shrink shrink shrink, shrink shrinks, and then
Speaker 4: it'll explode. Our star is a G star and it's
Speaker 4: right there and like midlife, So you have the early
Speaker 4: ones and then you have midlife, and then you have
Speaker 4: the Red Giants, and then you have the white Dwarves,
Speaker 4: and our son is just you know, if it was
Speaker 4: based on like human expectancy, you know, like thirty five
Speaker 4: or something, Okay, forty something, you know right around that age.
Speaker 1: You know, what are those types of stars? Because I'm unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: but like you mentioned, all the way up to like
Speaker 1: a red dwarf, can you go up the line because
Speaker 1: I just don't know any of that.
Speaker 4: So basically, it's the evolution of a star. Right starts
Speaker 4: really hot, then the outer it just starts to cool off,
Speaker 4: and then you start to go down into what we have,
Speaker 4: which is I think we're fifteen million kelvin and then
Speaker 4: it just starts the cool over time, but the mass
Speaker 4: is starting to crash in on it stuff at the
Speaker 4: same time, and then we move on to the Red Giants.
Speaker 4: Have you ever read The Time Machine?
Speaker 1: No? I haven't.
Speaker 4: You never read the book at the time? No?
Speaker 1: Is it good sci fi?
Speaker 4: It is the best sci fi. Yes, you have to
Speaker 4: read it. And it's not that long either. I think
Speaker 4: it's like at the most seventy pages.
Speaker 1: I'll put it on my list. So yes, let's get
Speaker 1: that on my reading list. And if you're like hgh. So,
Speaker 1: Herbert George Wells wrote more than fifty novels and is
Speaker 1: considered the father of sci fi. Also, people called him Birdie,
Speaker 1: and he married his cousin, then they divorced, and he
Speaker 1: married his mother lady, and then he had like one
Speaker 1: million affairs on her. It's any of our business. But
Speaker 1: the Time Machine novella put time travel in everyone's hearts
Speaker 1: and minds, and also Birdie coined the term time travel.
Speaker 1: So one day, maybe we'll all be time tourists, just
Speaker 1: walking around stinky old castles or poking at dinosaur poo
Speaker 1: and taking influencer photos in fits that are made from mammoth.
Speaker 1: We can only hope either way. Quick rundown of stars
Speaker 1: in case this makes you better at Jeopardy, I didn't
Speaker 1: know any of this. Let's run it down. So our
Speaker 1: sun is a main sequence star, which means that it
Speaker 1: started as a clot of gases and dust and then
Speaker 1: it gathered more matter and started spinning and spinning, getting
Speaker 1: hotter and hotter, until fusion happened and hydrogens became heliums now.
Speaker 1: Main Sequence stars make up nine tenths of the stars
Speaker 1: in the universe, and our sun technically is a G
Speaker 1: type main sequence star, and the G is its spectral rating.
Speaker 1: So you can be an O, A B, AN, A
Speaker 1: an F, a G OK, you can be an M star.
Speaker 1: O's are the hottest and the brightest, and M is
Speaker 1: on the cooler and dimmer end, so we're like a G. Right,
Speaker 1: we're in there. Now, what is a red giant star?
Speaker 1: This is a main sequence star that has begun to collapse,
Speaker 1: but the helium fuses into carbon and then that extra
Speaker 1: energy causes them to puff up until they dissipate and
Speaker 1: they become a nebula, which is like a cloudy space
Speaker 1: ghost made of dust and gas. Our star will eventually
Speaker 1: become a red giant, but before that, a blown away
Speaker 1: red giant's core is hanging out, and that's called a
Speaker 1: white dwarf star, and that gets cooler and cooler and
Speaker 1: cooler and cooler. Now, a neutron star is super dense.
Speaker 1: It has an incredibly dense core and that's what's left
Speaker 1: after a supernova. After a star's hydrogen core kind of
Speaker 1: runs out, so it starts fusing heavier atoms like carbon
Speaker 1: and neon and silicon and iron and neutron stars again,
Speaker 1: very dense. Now, if that neutron star spins really fast,
Speaker 1: you got a pulsar. Apparently some of these spin faster
Speaker 1: than blender blades, So you get your little fingies out
Speaker 1: of a neutron star for so many reasons. Now, red
Speaker 1: dwarf stars, not red giant stars. Red dwarfs. Those are
Speaker 1: smaller main sequence stars, and when they release energy, it
Speaker 1: cools down and then it settles back to the surface
Speaker 1: so it can recycle and keep mixing like a cement truck,
Speaker 1: all the while remaining smaller and cooler and existing potentially
Speaker 1: up to fourteen trillion years. Red dwarf stars are like
Speaker 1: these modest stars. They live within their atomic means. They
Speaker 1: just kind of poke a long do in life under
Speaker 1: the radar, like a turtle mining its business. Now, brown
Speaker 1: dwarf stars, ha, those aren't even actually stars. But they're
Speaker 1: bigger than our Solar System's planets, but at their core
Speaker 1: they're not really massive enough to do all that fusion
Speaker 1: and they barely emit light, no offense, and that's fine. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes people refer to our sun as a yellow dwarf,
Speaker 1: but you should ignore those people because they are wrong people.
Speaker 1: So let's get back to our sun. Is it mad?
Speaker 1: Is it stable? How close is it to just exploding
Speaker 1: and then everyone's dead.
Speaker 2: We have a bit of time, it's about we're about
Speaker 2: middle aged. So the Sun's about four and a half
Speaker 2: billion years old, and the Sun will live to be
Speaker 2: about nine niche billion years, so we be about halfway through.
Speaker 2: As the Sun ages, its diameter will change, it will
Speaker 2: puff up its outer atmosphere a bit, so fortunately will
Speaker 2: be long gone by then. I mean, I certainly don't
Speaker 2: expect to be around in a billion years neither. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the but the outer atmosphere of the Sun will eventually
Speaker 2: encompass the orbits of Mercury and Venus and Earth and
Speaker 2: probably out to Mars. As it gets older, as so
Speaker 2: many of us do, you get a little bit, you know,
Speaker 2: a little larger around the waste and the Sun is
Speaker 2: no difference. Yeah, And the Sun will actually puff out
Speaker 2: and encompass those inner planets, and it will those interpellans
Speaker 2: will fall into the sun itself as it's aging.
Speaker 1: That means will get sucked in. So if the notion
Speaker 1: of this is terrifying and exciting, please enjoy our recent
Speaker 1: episode with doctor Robert Gamble on black hole theory cosmology,
Speaker 1: which covers such things like we don't really fully know
Speaker 1: what's happening in the universe or what will happen in
Speaker 1: the future. What the point of life is? I guess
Speaker 1: if you really zoom out, are we divine consciousness embodied
Speaker 1: in what little sacks of love? Are bugs that invested paradise?
Speaker 1: Don't ask me do you ever have existential crises? Or
Speaker 1: are you over it?
Speaker 2: No? I mean not about that, but you know, no,
Speaker 2: I mean I think the thing that I really love
Speaker 2: about astronomy and thinking about the Sun and in so
Speaker 2: many different ways, is it's all cyclical. It's all cycles
Speaker 2: and understanding that the cycles came before you to create you,
Speaker 2: and then eventually the cycles will end, and the cycles
Speaker 2: will continue and you won't be here, but the cycles
Speaker 2: will continue. It's a little bit calming in a way.
Speaker 2: It's not quite so terrifying as you know it's you're
Speaker 2: going to be wiped out tomorrow by an asteroid that
Speaker 2: might be terrify, more terrifying than the Sun's eventual death.
Speaker 1: First, let's get some further humanoid background. How did these
Speaker 1: two big, energetic, powerful brains study such a big, powerful
Speaker 1: ball of energy? And what about your cycle to get
Speaker 1: to where you are? How did you end up a heliologist? Akaa, heliophysicist,
Speaker 1: which we're blowing both terms up right now, But how
Speaker 1: did you end up studying this.
Speaker 2: By accident?
Speaker 4: Really? Okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah, being a heliophysicist does not seem like something even
Speaker 1: stumble into. But do elaborate, Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I went to a small liberal arts college, Whitman College,
Speaker 2: out of high school, and it was a very interesting
Speaker 2: in astronomy. Loved the idea of the universe and dark
Speaker 2: matter and all of those fun exciting topics. And I
Speaker 2: was moving into the dorms my freshman year and I
Speaker 2: was assigned a roommate and his dad was a heliophysicist
Speaker 2: at Stanford, and I remember meeting him and thinking, man,
Speaker 2: your job sounds terribly boring. And so that was my
Speaker 2: first interaction with ialy physics, and I thought, boy, this
Speaker 2: job sounds really boring. So went through my undergraduate degree
Speaker 2: and still loved astronomy. And got a double degree in
Speaker 2: physics and astronomy, and then didn't really know what I
Speaker 2: was doing with my life. I moved back home with
Speaker 2: my parents and worked as a caterer. Me too, I
Speaker 2: worked as a I did landscaping, yeah, just picking up
Speaker 2: odd jobs. And after about six months of that, I
Speaker 2: realized that A I wasn't entirely happy with this life
Speaker 2: living at home with my parents. It's not what I
Speaker 2: aspired to and B I felt like I was wasting
Speaker 2: this four year degree. I just got like, what am
Speaker 2: I doing with my life? So that was a little
Speaker 2: existential crisis thinking speaking of criseses. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: I was, you know, blasting out my resume to anybody
Speaker 2: in my network that I could think of, and I
Speaker 2: was getting nowhere. I even remember cold calling John Mather,
Speaker 2: who is the recent Nobel Prize winner at Goddard Space
Speaker 2: Flight Center, just because I wanted to. It's like, here's
Speaker 2: where I want to be, so maybe if I call him,
Speaker 2: he'll have some advice. And he was really nice. I
Speaker 2: say that that was amazing. Other scientists I cold called
Speaker 2: were not so nice, but he was. He was fantastic
Speaker 2: and again didn't actually give me any specific directions. So
Speaker 2: I decided to take a road trip across the country.
Speaker 2: And I was like, what, I'm not really doing anything.
Speaker 2: I'll visit for friends. I'm just sort of frustrated. Oh man,
Speaker 2: I was in Tennessee and I got a phone call
Speaker 2: and it's somebody from Goddard Space Flight Center had my resume.
Speaker 2: Would I be interested in an interview? Like yes, Like
Speaker 2: I can be there in six and a half hours,
Speaker 2: Like yes, I don't care what it is. And so
Speaker 2: I came in and reviewed to work with Stan Pesnell,
Speaker 2: who's the project scientist for this solar Dynamics Observatory mission,
Speaker 2: and he offered me a job doing some scientific programming,
Speaker 2: doing a little bit of science, and I just left
Speaker 2: at the opportunity. And so, you know, not what, five
Speaker 2: years after a meeting my roommate's dad, who I thought's
Speaker 2: job was terribly boring, here I am working at NASA
Speaker 2: Goddard as a contractor doing telyphysics.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling it is not boring, especially not
Speaker 1: now when we've got an eclipse coming up in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: This is probably the only time that everybody really is
Speaker 2: interested in Heliophysicists otherwise we sort of fly under the radar.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, I think that everyone just doesn't understand
Speaker 1: that the sun is to be understood. It's also solar flarees.
Speaker 1: When there's a solar flare, it's gonna kick your network off.
Speaker 1: Everyone's like cold call in heliophysicists being like what do
Speaker 1: I do? What's going on? But that's amazing that you
Speaker 1: ended up there, and also that you had the gumption
Speaker 1: to call around and say, hey, anyone got any advice
Speaker 1: like that? You could just call Nobel Price Laurian and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, extension four two five? What's that?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: I mean, I have to say that sometimes being naive
Speaker 2: actually is a good thing, because looking at back at
Speaker 2: it now, I was like, wow, that was really ballsy
Speaker 2: of me. But I didn't I didn't really think anything
Speaker 2: of it. It was just like, well, I don't know what
Speaker 2: else to do. Here's a cool guy that I'd love
Speaker 2: to talk to. So sometimes just being naive and taking
Speaker 2: a risk, you know it days off.
Speaker 1: I asked India about her background and how she became
Speaker 1: this rising star in heliology. Did you always know that
Speaker 1: you wanted to go into something astronomical because I know
Speaker 1: that you're you have a focus in math, you have
Speaker 1: a very good math brain. So when did you turn
Speaker 1: from math to the math of the cosmos.
Speaker 4: Well, I always loved astronomy and physics and especially the
Speaker 4: computer science as more of a hobby or something that
Speaker 4: I did on the side, or something that I really loved.
Speaker 4: So I would get like astronomy magazines, you know, physics today,
Speaker 4: those types of things, and I really didn't think that
Speaker 4: there was a direct avenue into physics and astronomy academically.
Speaker 4: It wasn't until I got in touch with my alma
Speaker 4: mater at the time, GSU. Their astro informantics group was
Speaker 4: looking for a statitician to try to help them predict
Speaker 4: solar flares, and I was like, hey, I'm a statistician,
Speaker 4: maybe I can help. And then they were like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you sure can come on in. And then I started
Speaker 4: working with them and helping them do research with NASA.
Speaker 4: And then my advisor, who wasn't my advisor at the time,
Speaker 4: he was like, you know that you can actually get
Speaker 4: a PhD in this. Things are becoming more interdisciplinary because
Speaker 4: you know, you have this idea that things are math, physics, computers,
Speaker 4: you know, just hardcore but since computers started seeping into things,
Speaker 4: things started to become more interdisciplinary. And he was like, hey,
Speaker 4: you do know that with your math background, you can
Speaker 4: like seamlessly go into damn near any branch of science
Speaker 4: that you want with that math foundation, and we need
Speaker 4: you here, so you should consider it. And I was like, well,
Speaker 4: damn okay, yeah, let me try. And then I was
Speaker 4: accepted to GSU to get a PhD in astronomy. I
Speaker 4: started in astronomy, oh okay, and I moved over to physics.
Speaker 4: And that story shocks people, yeah when I tell them
Speaker 4: that transition from astronomy over to physics.
Speaker 1: So yes, even heliologists may not have a clear eight
Speaker 1: minute path from where they started to where they landed,
Speaker 1: which means none of us have to fulfill that expectation.
Speaker 1: Get the haircut, shoot the shot, figure out what you like,
Speaker 1: and you're good at No one's watching but you and
Speaker 1: you have this tiny tiny slice of time in that
Speaker 1: body of yours under the sun to make it fun
Speaker 1: and weird, maga weirder. So many existential crises are being
Speaker 1: fixed right now, but all eyes are well, hopefully not
Speaker 1: directly on the sun, but are also on what you
Speaker 1: do so the eclipse is coming up. Did you see
Speaker 1: the twenty seventeen eclipse.
Speaker 2: I did. I saw it in Central Oregon. I led
Speaker 2: an outreach group for NASA Science in Madras, Oregon, so
Speaker 2: a small town in central Oregon got beautifully clear skies.
Speaker 2: Fortunately I scheduled it so I wasn't actually working during
Speaker 2: the eclipse, which was the best decision ever, and was
Speaker 2: able to just be in a field with family and
Speaker 2: friends and watch the eclipse. And it is absolutely stunning.
Speaker 2: There really are no words to fully describe it. Did
Speaker 2: you see the twenty seventeen eclipse?
Speaker 1: You know what? I didn't. And I had friends, a
Speaker 1: bunch of friends, scientists, friends whoms I love, all took
Speaker 1: a road trip and at the last minute I didn't
Speaker 1: go because I was working on this podcast called Ologies.
Speaker 1: It was like two weeks before we launched, and I
Speaker 1: missed it. And so it's been my dream since twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen to see it because my friends, even skeptic friends,
Speaker 1: were like it was the most surreal feeling to watch
Speaker 1: one of them. My friend doctor Carro Santa Maria was
Speaker 1: covering it for nat GEO, and she said that she
Speaker 1: was alive covering it and started crying. Fade, fade, We're here.
Speaker 4: Here come the bailey beads. Now we can look at it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Where it is.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: You can see the stars.
Speaker 2: You can see the planets.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, you guys, I'm actually crying.
Speaker 2: This is the most incredible thing I've ever seen in
Speaker 2: my entire life.
Speaker 1: What is that experience?
Speaker 2: Like it is? I mean, it is all of that
Speaker 2: in that seeing a total solar eclipse is in terms
Speaker 2: of awe factors, people rank it just below seeing their
Speaker 2: child being born. So it's that level of deeply amazing
Speaker 2: and you don't quite understand what's happening, but it is
Speaker 2: really significant. If you saw a total solar eclips you'd
Speaker 2: remember it. It's not something that you're not quite sure
Speaker 2: if you saw it or not. You probably saw a
Speaker 2: partial eclipse, and partial eclipse is neat. An annular eclipse
Speaker 2: is pretty cool. A total solar eclipse is something you
Speaker 2: tell your grandchildren about. I mean, it is orders of
Speaker 2: magnitude scale different between the experiences. Personally, I would say
Speaker 2: it is the most amazing on inspiring natural event you
Speaker 2: could witness. So you know, if you go to see
Speaker 2: Grand Canyon or the Redwood forests or any of those
Speaker 2: other spectacular like makes you feel small amazing feelings. This
Speaker 2: one is two three times better than that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I cannot overstate it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so more astounding than the Grand Canyon. And maybe
Speaker 1: you're offspring being born, depending on how honest you're being.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't have kids, but I do
Speaker 1: have a picture of myself standing giddy at Arizona's Chasm
Speaker 1: in the earth, went alone. I had a stranger take
Speaker 1: my picture. I loved it. So if you're getting jazzed
Speaker 1: about even watching a live stream, let's set you up
Speaker 1: with some lingo. Okay, So, a partial eclipse. During this
Speaker 1: the moon looks like it takes a bite out of
Speaker 1: the Sun, but it doesn't cover it completely. And an
Speaker 1: annular eclipse is not an annual eclipse, which is what
Speaker 1: I thought it metaphirst. Rather, an annular eclipse is ring like,
Speaker 1: so annular shares an etymology with anus, And an annular
Speaker 1: eclipse is when the Moon covers the Sun, but the
Speaker 1: Sun is larger in the sky than the moon, so
Speaker 1: there's a large ring around it. Now, a total eclipse
Speaker 1: is when the moon obscures the full Sun and we
Speaker 1: only see a little bit of the Sun's corona, which
Speaker 1: is that roiling upper atmosphere of the Sun, and it
Speaker 1: looks like a glow around this silhouetted moon. Now Bailey's beads, hmm,
Speaker 1: that sounds fun. They are. They're twinkly little spots around
Speaker 1: the corona. So as the Moon almost reaches totality, and
Speaker 1: through these little twinkles, they're caused by the rough terrain
Speaker 1: of the Moon's surface, letting some extra chunks of sunlight
Speaker 1: shine in through those mountains. Now, the diamond ring, that's
Speaker 1: a solitary Bailey speed and it shines like a diamond ring,
Speaker 1: of course, but it's more expensive to behold, depending on
Speaker 1: your hotel prices. But the diamond ring shows up right
Speaker 1: before totality. Now, the stages of a total or an
Speaker 1: annular eclipse are stage one, when the Moon just first
Speaker 1: starts obscuring the Sun with just a tiny bite. Stage
Speaker 1: two is when the Moon is just about eclipsing the
Speaker 1: whole lass sun. Totality is when it's at maximum coverage,
Speaker 1: and then the third stage is as it's leaving. The
Speaker 1: fourth is when there's just a tiny bit of moon
Speaker 1: over the Sun. Now, the umbra that's the shadow you're
Speaker 1: under during that total eclipse. But as you go out
Speaker 1: from that center point the umbre and you just see
Speaker 1: an eclipse is partial because of your angle relative to it.
Speaker 1: That's called a pen umber and it means almost shadow. Also,
Speaker 1: did you know that watching an eclipse can get you
Speaker 1: shadow band only, and that there are these rippling light
Speaker 1: effects that might shimmer up surfaces and on the ground
Speaker 1: between the first and second contact and after the third contact.
Speaker 1: Those are called shadow bands. Gotcha, They're just called shadow bands.
Speaker 1: Now in terms of the other shadow bands, I don't
Speaker 1: know why your algorithm hates you. That's a different episode. Actually,
Speaker 1: specifically it's tech Topology with Hank Green, which we did
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna link of the show notes. Okay, So
Speaker 1: eclipse wise, those are things to look out for if
Speaker 1: you get yourself under the umbra of a total solar eclipse.
Speaker 1: Life altering. I hear mesmerizing existence affirming something you can
Speaker 1: experience for a few minutes that contextualizes the fragility of
Speaker 1: life in the expanse of the cosmos. And I'm so
Speaker 1: excited it real Like I was just sitting here hout
Speaker 1: with so many questions. It really makes me wonder big
Speaker 1: questions like how is traffic?
Speaker 2: It wasn't awful, No, it was okay. I didn't have
Speaker 2: the worst time because I was anticipating terrible traffic, but
Speaker 2: it was pretty rough a lot of places.
Speaker 1: Because I missed it. I have had a dream to
Speaker 1: see it for the last seven years, and so just
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, I decided to just bite the bullet,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to Caerville, Texas, which is two hours
Speaker 1: outside Austin. Okay, what if I missed my flight? Am
Speaker 1: I sad and screwed for one thousand years?
Speaker 2: So in twenty thirty three, there is the next solar
Speaker 2: clips that will hit the US, but that's the north
Speaker 2: slope of Alaska, so about the Arctic Circle, so it'd
Speaker 2: be a trip anywhere in the continental US. Is twenty
Speaker 2: forty four, and that is going to hit just a
Speaker 2: small little bite of Montana, North Dakota, so again pretty remote.
Speaker 2: You'd have to make a real dedicated trip to see
Speaker 2: it in the continental US. So yeah, it is going
Speaker 2: to be a while until we actually get a good
Speaker 2: chance in the continental US to see a total solar eclipse.
Speaker 1: Non North Americans, I see you. We're going to have
Speaker 1: more on global eclipses and a little bit hangtight. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for all the miles and the Fahrenheits too.
Speaker 1: It's embarrassing. And now in eclipse we've got the Moon
Speaker 1: comes in blocks the Sun. What do you study? Also?
Speaker 1: Are you looking at the coronal ejections during an eclipse?
Speaker 1: How do heliophysicists approach this?
Speaker 2: So eclipses historically have been life altering in terms of
Speaker 2: being able to see one for scientists. And I mean
Speaker 2: that not just like it inspires a lot of awe
Speaker 2: but it has you know, historically been the source of
Speaker 2: confirming Einstein's theory of relativity, discovering helium, I mean like
Speaker 2: those level of discoveries. And now the science that we're
Speaker 2: doing is much more focused on that Sun Earth relationship,
Speaker 2: is understanding the relationship between the Sun and how the
Speaker 2: Sun influences the Earth. So the science that NASA is
Speaker 2: doing for the total solar eclipse both focuses on the
Speaker 2: corona and looking at flows and how material moves out
Speaker 2: from the Sun, how the solar wind forms, all of
Speaker 2: those ideas of material moving off of the Sun.
Speaker 1: So scientists will be looking at the Sun through instruments
Speaker 1: and they'll also turn their literal focus to Earth and
Speaker 1: not the Sun at the same time. Why point their
Speaker 1: gaze away from the Sun. Isn't that like turning around
Speaker 1: backwards at a concert? What are these NASA scientists kill joys? Knuckleheads?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: And the other side of things is I'm studying the ionosphere,
Speaker 2: the upper Earth's atmosphere that is partially ionized by the Sun.
Speaker 2: So the atoms in the upper Earth's atmosphere get some
Speaker 2: electrons stripped off by solar radiation and form a partially
Speaker 2: ionized plasma that covers all the Earth. Did you know
Speaker 2: you're living underneath a cloud of plasma? I did not, No,
Speaker 2: you didn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah the first noos No one told me, Oh god, dive,
Speaker 1: wasn't see seed on that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It's not bad though.
Speaker 1: And remember plasma is made of hydrogen and helium ions
Speaker 1: in a goop alongside electrons. And as stated in the
Speaker 1: paper the Earth's Ionosphere a wallless plasma laboratory, the Earth's
Speaker 1: ionosphere is plasma esque at altitudes above eighty kilometers. So
Speaker 1: above eighty kilometers we have something plasma like. And where
Speaker 1: are satellites in this mix? They're orbiting Earth at about
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty to two thousand kilometers high, so
Speaker 1: at the shallow end of that ionosphere plasma like stuff
Speaker 1: that surrounds Earth. Also. Weirdly, as I was working on
Speaker 1: this episode last night, I looked up and from my
Speaker 1: porch at sunset, I saw this huge glowing silver streak,
Speaker 1: and I realized I was watching a Falcon nine rocket launch,
Speaker 1: just cruising up like a Badminton birdie as casual as
Speaker 1: a lost balloon. And it was carrying twenty two Starlink satellites.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear more on that, you
Speaker 1: can enjoy our space archaeology episode on the space Junk
Speaker 1: and Garbage that orbits us with doctor Alice Gorman, which
Speaker 1: is linked in the show notes. But yes, how are
Speaker 1: these satellites affected by solar shenanigans?
Speaker 2: I mean, like, if you're a satellite, it can be concerning,
Speaker 2: but if you're not in orbit, then you know it's
Speaker 2: actually been here our entire life and our entire existence.
Speaker 2: So the plasma can change depending on the amount of
Speaker 2: solar radiation hitting that diada ionosphere. So when the Sun
Speaker 2: is covered for a brief second, all of those processes
Speaker 2: that strip off electrons stop, and so there's a recombination.
Speaker 2: The nature of the plasma change in the ionosphere.
Speaker 1: Okay, so plasma recombination, it's a little bit like it sounds.
Speaker 1: The positive ions in plasma bump into an electron or
Speaker 1: a negative ion and they're like, hey, oh my god,
Speaker 1: how are you? And then they head off in the
Speaker 1: sunset to go make a new neutral atom. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that reverse ionization in the Earth's ionosphere plasma can happen
Speaker 1: when the Sun is covered for.
Speaker 2: A sec and then the Sun pops back out again
Speaker 2: and you can watch how all the ions change and
Speaker 2: then get reionized again the Sun comes back into view.
Speaker 2: So it's a really interesting natural experiment because you can
Speaker 2: watch all of this happen in real time and then
Speaker 2: watch how it changes and how it affects the rest
Speaker 2: of the atmosphere, how it moves out and waves across
Speaker 2: the atmosphere. And so there's a number of science experiments
Speaker 2: probing the ionosphere to try to understand what are the
Speaker 2: specific effects on the Sun and how do small changes
Speaker 2: in the Sun affect changes in our own atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And will helio physicists will they be hunkered down looking
Speaker 1: through instruments and running code, or do they set things
Speaker 1: up to observe and then they all peace out and
Speaker 1: go to the path of totality and then meet back
Speaker 1: up on Wednesday or whatever to look at the data.
Speaker 2: Most people are the second type. A lot of our
Speaker 2: instrumentation are set to run automatically. We know where the
Speaker 2: sun is in the sky. It's big and it's bright.
Speaker 2: It's easy to find. So a lot of the efforts
Speaker 2: are getting all of the experiments set up now. And
Speaker 2: that being said, there are some real time adjustments that
Speaker 2: are being made.
Speaker 1: Michael says. Some heliophysicists are launching a suborbital rocket mission
Speaker 1: to probe the Earth's honosphere and what will be a
Speaker 1: partial eclipse from their vantage point, but back down on Earth.
Speaker 2: Though the majority of heliophysicists have their hotel booked three
Speaker 2: years ahead of time. I know exactly where they're going
Speaker 2: to be. They have their eclipse glasses and are just
Speaker 2: going to enjoy it.
Speaker 1: What about you?
Speaker 2: I will be in Dallas, Texas. So part of my
Speaker 2: role at NASA is to lead the Healiophysics Education Activation
Speaker 2: Team or NASA HEAT, and our job is to get
Speaker 2: heliophysics out into informal and informal learning audiences, so that's classrooms,
Speaker 2: after school, clubs, talks, and societies. So we are doing
Speaker 2: a big push in Dallas and we'll be at the
Speaker 2: Dallas Arboretum watching the eclipse and doing activities with kids
Speaker 2: and families.
Speaker 1: And how many seconds or minutes of totality will there
Speaker 1: be there? And can you explain a little bit about
Speaker 1: why there's a path of totality and when it becomes
Speaker 1: partial versus total?
Speaker 3: Is it dark?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So they in Dallas. I think we're getting just
Speaker 2: about four minutes of totality, so that the path of
Speaker 2: totality is it's it all comes down to the spherical
Speaker 2: geometry of the Sun Earth Moon relationship. I mean, it
Speaker 2: is literally just how things are positioned in the sky.
Speaker 2: So the length of totality, how many minutes of totality
Speaker 2: you get, are based on the distance from exactly where
Speaker 2: you are, exactly where the moon is and exactly where
Speaker 2: the Sun is down to you know, down to the
Speaker 2: inches or millimeter level. If you start walking perpendicular to
Speaker 2: the path, like as you're leaving the path, the amount
Speaker 2: of totality will start falling off quite quickly, and so
Speaker 2: by the time you reach the edge of the path
Speaker 2: of totality, the Sun is no longer completely blocked by
Speaker 2: the Moon from your perspective, and you get zero minutes
Speaker 2: of totality.
Speaker 1: For this April eighth, twenty twenty four North American one.
Speaker 2: Though the path width is I want to say, one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty miles wide, So for in sixty miles
Speaker 2: ago from the exact right place to see that alignment
Speaker 2: between the Sun, Moon and Earth to give you four
Speaker 2: minutes where the Moon is completely blocking the Sun, and
Speaker 2: then sixty miles away you are exactly in the wrong
Speaker 2: place or just missed that, and you only see a
Speaker 2: partial eclipse. It's a deep partial, like ninety nine percent coverage,
Speaker 2: but it's still just a partial eclipse. So it's amazing
Speaker 2: to think, like these are human scale sizes, Like you
Speaker 2: can drive sixty miles in an afternoon. It's easy to do.
Speaker 2: And that is the major difference between a partial and total.
Speaker 2: So eclipse is that position. So all of those relative
Speaker 2: positions and relative sizes of things in the sky all
Speaker 2: line up perfectly to be in that path of totality
Speaker 2: for that few fleeting minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm so I'm so excited. I definitely feel like I
Speaker 1: have made the right decision to haul myself to Texas
Speaker 1: for this, Like I've been regretting it for seven years,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I'm due for another life changing
Speaker 1: every seven years, Right, I can have a little life
Speaker 1: changing as a treat. Can I ask you some questions
Speaker 1: that listeners have submitted?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Okay, we got a lot of questions. We have two
Speaker 1: guests and a solar event on the horizon, so we're
Speaker 1: going to get to those questions, including the audio questions.
Speaker 1: You can submit if you're in the ologies, Pals, Friends
Speaker 1: or BFF tire. But before we do, let's donate to
Speaker 1: a few relevant charities and one I hear that is
Speaker 1: doing amazing work is Astronomers Without Borders and April is
Speaker 1: Global Astronomy Month and Astronomers without Borders does sidewalk astronomy,
Speaker 1: online observation events, astro arts and crafts, and sharing of
Speaker 1: observational equipment via celestron and more. So to learn more,
Speaker 1: you can go to Astronomers Without Borders dot org. And
Speaker 1: we're also going to donate to a cause in India's name,
Speaker 1: which is the Grady Memorial Hospital Health Foundation, which is
Speaker 1: based in Atlanta and whose mission is to work tirelessly
Speaker 1: to ensure that every individual in the Metro Atlantic community
Speaker 1: is guaranteed access to world class, compassionate healthcare, regardless of
Speaker 1: their ability to pay. And they are a Grady Memorial
Speaker 1: Hospital Health Foundation. So those donations were made possible by
Speaker 1: sponsors of the show. Okay, your questions. First, one off
Speaker 1: is from Diana from Daniel Martin.
Speaker 6: Good Hey, Ellie, Daniel here from Australia. I had a
Speaker 6: question about solar eclipses or is it a eclipses? What
Speaker 6: is the plural of eclipse?
Speaker 2: Hmm, I've heard both. I say eclipses, but I've heard
Speaker 2: eclipses as well, so I prefer to say eclipses, but
Speaker 2: that might be in an American English thing.
Speaker 1: So yeah. But main question, Daniel says is.
Speaker 6: Total solar eclipses seem to have been quite uncommon here
Speaker 6: in Australia, at least from my experience. Is that actually
Speaker 6: the case? Are the places in the world where total
Speaker 6: solar eclipses are more likely to occur? And if so, why?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is actually a really fun question, So
Speaker 2: don't worry, Australia is going to get plenty of eclipses
Speaker 2: coming up here in the next decade, So yes, you've
Speaker 2: had not many, but I think in the twenty thirties
Speaker 2: or maybe it's like twenty twenty nine through twenty thirty nine,
Speaker 2: Australia is going to see something like three or four
Speaker 2: eclipses across the continent. So Australia is a great place
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: Coming up Australia. I've never seen you in person, but
Speaker 1: one day I want to meet your wombats, I want
Speaker 1: to meet your kangaroos, I want to see your ologites.
Speaker 1: But you last saw an eclipse, hopefully safely with glasses,
Speaker 1: on the day of Our Lord four twenty in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. It's like a year ago. But if you
Speaker 1: missed it, you can mark your calendar for July twenty second,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight. Put a note in your phone as
Speaker 1: Sydney is right in the path of totality. And you've
Speaker 1: also got a few in the next decade. November twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty thirty July thirteenth, twenty thirty seven, December twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty thirty eight. Put them in your phone. But if
Speaker 1: you miss the twenty thirty eight one, you better be
Speaker 1: in good health because you're gonna be waiting another thirty
Speaker 1: years for one in Australia. I know someone prone to
Speaker 1: putting things off. Don't pull them me. Get your tickets,
Speaker 1: Get book your flights.
Speaker 2: Book your flights now, hotels, rental cars, yeah, just get
Speaker 2: it all done right now.
Speaker 1: I cannot find a rental car in Austin. By the way,
Speaker 1: we were looking on Craigslist to maybe buy like a
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars a twenty year old car to use
Speaker 1: for the week and then just sell it before we go.
Speaker 1: We're like, is that legal? I don't know. Yeah, rental
Speaker 1: cars scarce in Austin. And now what about other continents?
Speaker 1: Do helu physicists today go around like solar storm chasing
Speaker 1: or clips chasing like tornado experts.
Speaker 2: Yes, in a word, yes, I have a couple of
Speaker 2: good friends that will spend thousands, tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: dollars to see solar eclipses. This is their own personal
Speaker 2: money on personal vacation time. I mean, they're not funded
Speaker 2: to do a research project anything like that. It's just
Speaker 2: because they love them so much. So going to see
Speaker 2: a total solar eclipse is definitely about the journey as
Speaker 2: it is. I'm about seeing the eclipse itself.
Speaker 1: There's a word for this, and it's umbrephile, meaning someone
Speaker 1: who's drawn to the shadow. So if you like eclipses,
Speaker 1: feel free to update that hinge profile. Nerds find each other.
Speaker 2: So the next total solar eclipse after this one is
Speaker 2: in Iceland and Spain, which I think sounds like a
Speaker 2: pretty cool journey, so I hope to be in Spain
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty six. But more generally, clipses happen in
Speaker 2: the northern hemisphere a little more frequently than the southern hemisphere,
Speaker 2: and this statistically bears out over five thousand years if
Speaker 2: you look at five thousand years of eclipses and put
Speaker 2: all the paths on a map and stack them on
Speaker 2: top of each other. NASA actually has a great visualization
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 1: If you need a picture, I mosey on over to
Speaker 1: the NASA site five thousand years of Total Solar Eclipses,
Speaker 1: which featured a printable map should you need it. With
Speaker 1: more eclipses represented in lighter, warmer colors like a heat map,
Speaker 1: and the northern hemisphere, you are certainly favored to see them,
Speaker 1: And the NASA site says kind of jauntily a total
Speaker 1: solar eclipse can happen absolutely anywhere on Earth. In fact,
Speaker 1: there isn't a single pixel on the map that isn't
Speaker 1: visited by at least one eclipse. They say, not a
Speaker 1: single goose egg in any of the fourteen point six
Speaker 1: million points sampled by the map. That's good odd over
Speaker 1: a long period of time.
Speaker 2: The reason for this is the seasons. In the Northern Hemisphere,
Speaker 2: the Sun appears slightly smaller in the sky during the
Speaker 2: summertime than the Southern Hemisphere southern summertime, So when you
Speaker 2: have the Sun appearing slightly smaller in the sky because
Speaker 2: we're a little bit further away, it's easier for the
Speaker 2: moon to line up to block the entire disc of
Speaker 2: the Sun. That being said, you know, on average, I
Speaker 2: think it's three hundred and twenty to three hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty years between any one location having eclipses. So you know,
Speaker 2: if you're standing on the ground, on average, you can
Speaker 2: wait three hundred and sixty years between seeing an eclipse.
Speaker 2: I think in the Northern Hemisphere it's like three hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty years, in the Southern Hemisphere it's like four
Speaker 2: hundred and ten years or something like that. So it
Speaker 2: is more than a human lifetime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you gotta really take your vitamins. Oh, Hydrick, if
Speaker 1: you want to catch that, if you want to not travel.
Speaker 1: It's been eighty four years. So this next one was
Speaker 1: on the minds of patrons Olivia Lester, Kara Young, Rachel Kamara,
Speaker 1: Amanda l Ask, Bonnie M. Rutherford, Sam Gilbert, Megan Walker, shown,
Speaker 1: Thomas Kine, Tyra Peria. First time question asker is Dylan
Speaker 1: s and Claire Ritchie, as well as Jen Baker, who
Speaker 1: asked why how do sun farts flares affect us?
Speaker 3: And?
Speaker 1: Hi? This is Deborah from Placentia.
Speaker 4: Can you explain the relationship between solar flares and sun spots? Thanks,
Speaker 4: that's actually a question. A sun spot is you can
Speaker 4: physically see a sun spot. It's like a black hole
Speaker 4: on the sun. It's like an actual black hole. A
Speaker 4: solar flare you can see in videos. It's an actual
Speaker 4: goddamn flare.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool, like a flame kind of coming off.
Speaker 4: No, that's the CME. Well, I'm not gonna say first
Speaker 4: in sequence. We don't know if it's in sequence. We
Speaker 4: know that the probability of a sun spot, then a flair,
Speaker 4: then a CNME being in sequenced is pretty high. Okay,
Speaker 4: I'll say that. But sun spot shows through the corona.
Speaker 4: It's a cooler spot there, Flair, it's the same spot,
Speaker 4: but it's flashing now okay. And then the cme huge
Speaker 4: bubble coming out of it, and that's a coronal mass ejection.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay. And where does does the bubble like pop
Speaker 1: and yurb? What's in that urb?
Speaker 4: Well, it's like a jump rope, so it's not an
Speaker 4: actual bubble. It's like a jump rope. It's like a
Speaker 4: cord and then snap sometimes, I mean well every time
Speaker 4: it will snap. It doesn't just stay there forever.
Speaker 1: Does it floop around like one of those one of
Speaker 1: those gas station dancing socks.
Speaker 4: Not from what I've seen, Not saying that it won't
Speaker 4: ever happen, but not from what I've seen. From what
Speaker 4: I've seen, it's just it. It's like a loop and
Speaker 4: then the plasma starts to fall down from the loop,
Speaker 4: and it's pretty cool to see. But we do believe
Speaker 4: that they are connected, but we don't have concrete proof
Speaker 4: that it's in sequenced spot flare seeing me.
Speaker 1: Will these mess up your life or do you have
Speaker 1: to do that yourself? Jen's Girl Alvarez had a question
Speaker 1: about the Sun.
Speaker 3: Hi, this is Jensquirrel Alvarez. I have a question about
Speaker 3: the Sun. What's the deal with solar flares? And why
Speaker 3: do they fuck up GPS and all that stuff? And
Speaker 3: can I just blame all of their prop on solar flares?
Speaker 3: I feel like I should be able to.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So a solar flare is an eruption on
Speaker 2: the Sun where you get twisted magnetic fields on the
Speaker 2: Sun to the point where they actually break and reconnect
Speaker 2: with each other. So this is called magnetic reconnection. It's
Speaker 2: incredibly energetic Visually. You can think of it as like
Speaker 2: if you take a rubber band and you twist it
Speaker 2: too much. I don't know, Like I had one of
Speaker 2: those little airplanes growing up where it was a rubber
Speaker 2: band driven one. You wind the propeller and if you
Speaker 2: got a little too enthusiastic, like I did many times
Speaker 2: you wind it too many times, the rubber band would
Speaker 2: snap and then it would hurt your fingers, and yeah,
Speaker 2: your a little plane would be ruined. That is kind
Speaker 2: of equivalent to what happens on the Sun. So you
Speaker 2: get magnetic fields twisting and swirling around each other, and
Speaker 2: you get enough sheer, enough twisting in those magnetic fields
Speaker 2: where they actually will reconnect, they'll break and release a
Speaker 2: bunch of energy, and the amount of energy that's something
Speaker 2: like a medium sized solar flare releases more energy in
Speaker 2: a few seconds than all of humanity has ever used.
Speaker 2: No rout. Yeah, so everything from fires, caveman fires all
Speaker 2: the way up to nuclear reactors, everything that releases more
Speaker 2: energy in that a few seconds than humanity's ever used. Wow,
Speaker 2: very energetic.
Speaker 1: I checked into this and yeah, via NASA, the energy
Speaker 1: burped off from a solar flare can be ten million
Speaker 1: times greater than the energy released from a volcanic explosion.
Speaker 1: Is that not scary enough? Okay? NASA also whispered to
Speaker 1: me on one of its websites that the most powerful
Speaker 1: solar flares have the energy equivalent of a billion hydrogen bombs,
Speaker 1: enough energy to power the whole world for twenty thousand years.
Speaker 1: Solar panels bring them on to the Sun though a
Speaker 1: solar flare barely notices, just a little blip. It's like
Speaker 1: telling someone who's the most gorgeous person you've ever seen,
Speaker 1: you like their kneecaps. They're like, okay, thanks solar flares
Speaker 1: not that big a deal to the Sun. But it's
Speaker 1: a good thing that we have pocket computers and heliophysicists
Speaker 1: that have Excel sheets to keep an eye on this.
Speaker 1: Back in eighteen fifty nine, there were two amateur astronomers
Speaker 1: who happened to notice what is thought to have been
Speaker 1: a massive coronal mass ejection a CME on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Sun. And one of them was Richard Carrington,
Speaker 1: for whom the great solar storm known as the Carrington
Speaker 1: Event of eighteen fifty nine was named. The other guy
Speaker 1: was Richard Hodgson. He got a raw deal. Nothing named
Speaker 1: after him that I know of. That's just my opinion.
Speaker 1: So okay, what was this? What happened? A few patrons
Speaker 1: had questions, including about the scale of it through our
Speaker 1: modern eyes, Bonnie and Rutherford, Kelly Schaeffer, Carrington Event enthusiast
Speaker 1: Tim and Cassidy McKee. So India told me a little
Speaker 1: bit more about this legendary space weather.
Speaker 4: Have you heard of the Carrington Event? Never heard of that? Okay,
Speaker 4: you should look that up to This happened in the
Speaker 4: eighteen hundreds and it caused child what the head bag?
Speaker 4: Then the little Morse coal thing oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I forget telograms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll go with that. It caused issues
Speaker 4: with that.
Speaker 1: Yes, this thing hit the Earth's magnetosphere hard, possibly because
Speaker 1: one right before it cleared the way via its own
Speaker 1: solar wind. But as a result, the telegraph operational systems
Speaker 1: were jacked, Sparks flew from some of the towers, some
Speaker 1: telegraph lines ran despite not being plugged into power at all. Now,
Speaker 1: the night sky all the way from the poles to
Speaker 1: the equator was streaked with auroras. These gauzy, pink to
Speaker 1: sometimes blood red tendrils described by one witness as quote
Speaker 1: crimson fleecy vapors. And these appeared at much lower latitudes
Speaker 1: than one would ever expect from a geomagnetic aura, kind
Speaker 1: of a late summer light show that stopped us Earthlings
Speaker 1: in our tracks in eighteen fifty nine to stare up
Speaker 1: at the sky. And yeah, it also stopped some telegraph
Speaker 1: operators in their tracks because they were zapped into unconsciousness. Now,
Speaker 1: I was reading through this paper the Carrington solar flares
Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty nine consequences on life, and I didn't
Speaker 1: see any mention of deaths attributed to the Carrington event.
Speaker 1: But of course, they couldn't have polled everyone. Now. It
Speaker 1: did note, however, that the US press of the time
Speaker 1: indicated some anecdotal incidences of abnormal behavior, like an increase
Speaker 1: in public drunkenness in New Orleans. Let them party, it's
Speaker 1: an event now. It also continues that the only statistical
Speaker 1: anomaly which could be found is an increase in birth
Speaker 1: rates in Paris nine months after the Carrington event. Hey,
Speaker 1: is your romantic connection electric or is it just the
Speaker 1: actual atmosphere lavian rose colored sky? Perhaps so. Now when
Speaker 1: we refer to a Carrington class event, it's like, who
Speaker 1: that's a big boy. Now. As for Richard Carrington himself,
Speaker 1: life did not pan out in his favor. I checked
Speaker 1: out this book The Sun Kings, The Unexpected Tragedy of
Speaker 1: Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began
Speaker 1: by Stuart Clark, and it details that beneath the veneer
Speaker 1: of Carrington's scientific success was the consuming rot of family duty.
Speaker 1: He inherited his family's brewery, which consumed most of his
Speaker 1: time just logging through it and getting to his astronomy passion,
Speaker 1: which was really good at just became harder and harder
Speaker 1: and harder, and he applied and was passed up for
Speaker 1: a job at Cambridge because of some office politics. And
Speaker 1: then his wife was found dead in her bed of
Speaker 1: a sedative overdose, and he was kind of low key
Speaker 1: blamed for it, like maybe he killed her, but people
Speaker 1: said he didn't. And then he died alone in his
Speaker 1: mom's house, locked in a room, shortly thereafter, of a
Speaker 1: sudden brain hemorrhage, though the room was littered with empty
Speaker 1: bottles of the same sedative that killed his wife, Rosa.
Speaker 1: So he in his will gave two scientific societies two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars each. That's a ton of money, even though
Speaker 1: one didn't even acknowledge him after his death. Can you
Speaker 1: believe that?
Speaker 4: Rude?
Speaker 1: He also asked to be buried his favorite observatory spot
Speaker 1: on a hill, but his mother was like nah, and
Speaker 1: just chose to bury him elsewhere. But above his grave
Speaker 1: is an inscription in Latin that says, thus do we
Speaker 1: reach the stars? So in death he is remembered and
Speaker 1: his life and the Carrington event is said to have
Speaker 1: birthed the whole new interest in space weather. Also really
Speaker 1: thinking about Richard Hodgson, the other amateur astronomer, I think
Speaker 1: he got off just fine. Now, what if you want
Speaker 1: to see an aurora without it being a gigantic, unpredictable sunstorm.
Speaker 1: So you patrons had aurora spotting questions such as Shannon
Speaker 1: no Grady, Eileen Lands, Matt Thompson, Cool, Nickstar, and first
Speaker 1: time question asker Ashland Noble, and Michelle Cabrera who wrote
Speaker 1: in a few years back, my husband and I drove
Speaker 1: to the northern ass end of Finland to see the
Speaker 1: aurora for my birthday. Only, just as we were getting
Speaker 1: packed and ready to go, hubby happened to check out
Speaker 1: solar activity for that year and month and found out
Speaker 1: that we were at the bottom ass end of the
Speaker 1: eleven year cycle of solar activity.
Speaker 6: Boo.
Speaker 1: But we did manage to see some northern lights and
Speaker 1: we thought they were amazing. But we were so little
Speaker 1: bummed at the idea of minimal northern lights. So a
Speaker 1: little advice. Some say that the best place to post
Speaker 1: up is in the upper northern hemisphere at the time
Speaker 1: of the spring and the autumn equinoxes, with October giving
Speaker 1: a better shot at clearer skies. Now we're at a
Speaker 1: solar maximum, all right, we're solar cycle twenty five. It
Speaker 1: peaks in July of twenty twenty five, so you have
Speaker 1: an even better chance at catching a glimpse of auroras,
Speaker 1: which are solar flares and CMEs those coronal mass ejections.
Speaker 1: Michael explains.
Speaker 2: So what happens is there's a ton of radiation that
Speaker 2: gets blasted off there, and I mean like X rays,
Speaker 2: ultraviolet radiation. If it's really big, you'll get to see
Speaker 2: some visible light coming out of it. And it's just
Speaker 2: all this high energy radiation rushing towards the Earth. And
Speaker 2: what can happen is it can a change the ionosphere,
Speaker 2: so it can disrupt signals passing through the ionosphere. So
Speaker 2: GPS satellite it's in orbit, its signal passes through the
Speaker 2: ionosphere and comes to your phone. When that ionosphere is disrupted,
Speaker 2: those signals can get moved around and you can get
Speaker 2: you know, your uncertainty on your GPS goes from a
Speaker 2: few feet to you know, a half mile or something
Speaker 2: like that, so you can get lost. It can say
Speaker 2: you're someplace else. Yeah. The other thing is with chronal
Speaker 2: mass ejections, they're sometimes related, sometimes not. So that's when
Speaker 2: a whole lot of plasma comes off the Sun. This
Speaker 2: is a big burst of electrons, protons and neutrons all
Speaker 2: in this magnetic cloud. It comes racing off the Sun
Speaker 2: and that can actually impact satellites itself. So the electronics
Speaker 2: on satellite, and you know, you have a bunch of
Speaker 2: free electricity just floating around in magnetic fields. It's not
Speaker 2: so great for sensitive electronics. Every time there's a big
Speaker 2: solar storm, there's usually a satellite that is tough coming
Speaker 2: back online again. So that's that's really the other effect.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you could blame all of your
Speaker 2: problems on solar flares, but I mean it's not a
Speaker 2: bad excuse. If you got lost on the way to
Speaker 2: the grocery store or to your office or something like that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you could probably blame solar flare.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna blame I'm just gonna blame solar flash everything,
Speaker 1: if that's okay. Thanks so much. Many of you had
Speaker 1: solar storm anxiety, and I'm looking at you. Chryslis, Ashton Edward, Rice,
Speaker 1: Anna Thompson, Kendall, am Andy Townsend, Earl of Grahamiltan, Aurora Cullen,
Speaker 1: first time question Master's Pachcha, Domino Cone and Claire Richie
Speaker 1: who asked, how scared should we be of solar flares?
Speaker 1: Eke I asked India. She did not mince words. Okay,
Speaker 1: and now what can we do to prepare if we
Speaker 1: know a solar store is coming? I mean other than sunscreen?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don you think we could do do? But a
Speaker 1: tinfoil hat? Does a tinfoil hat help?
Speaker 4: Well? We know it's common mm hmm. We can build
Speaker 4: things so that it's harder to penetrate through, you know,
Speaker 4: just like if a tornado's coming, What can we do prepare? Yeah,
Speaker 4: get your ass in the basement and let it do
Speaker 4: his thing, you know, like it's just like any other
Speaker 4: type of weather. We can't stop it, we can't prevent it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we could just brace your fucking self.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I had.
Speaker 1: To sound so, you know, but it's the sun. It's huge,
Speaker 1: it's huge, yellow and bright. Wait is it yellow? What
Speaker 1: am I talking about? I don't know. Patrons Christine Pisteine
Speaker 1: Eso Party, Alyssa, Gregory Matt Herschel, Mariann Breckenridge, Appolina Pinia,
Speaker 1: Megan Kelly, Charlie McKenzie, and first time question askers Katie
Speaker 1: Munos carry lincourt on behalf of May who is ten.
Speaker 1: Sorry about my swears. We do have classroom safe episodes
Speaker 1: called somologies, which are g rated. But everyone wanted to
Speaker 1: know about colors. Alison hats Owl and siram Mans wanted
Speaker 1: to know why the sun were sung because in cyrus words,
Speaker 1: whose light is she shielding? We'll never know about the
Speaker 1: fashion secrets, but let's ask Michael about colors. On behalf
Speaker 1: of those other patrons.
Speaker 2: So the sun produces all wavelengths of light, So every
Speaker 2: single wavelength of light there is from gamma rays all
Speaker 2: the way down to radio waves, so sun produces them
Speaker 2: all the spectrum of light that it produces, so it
Speaker 2: produces all those different colors. If you look at the
Speaker 2: visible spectrum, the visible spectrum of light from the sun
Speaker 2: peaks in sort of the pale yellow to yellow green color.
Speaker 2: So like right there, that's the peak of the spectrum.
Speaker 2: So that is the color of light coming off the
Speaker 2: sun in sort of a generic case. But if you
Speaker 2: go into space and you take a picture like astronauts
Speaker 2: did when they were on the moon, the sun looks white.
Speaker 2: I mean it is a white color to not yellow.
Speaker 2: So the reason we see yellow is because of our atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Our atmosphere scatters blue light particularly well, that's the reason
Speaker 2: why the sky looks blue is because it scatters blue
Speaker 2: light and kind of it scatters around and glows. And
Speaker 2: so when you take the sun sort of white light
Speaker 2: and scatter away some of the blue, the shorter wavelengths
Speaker 2: and it moves it from sort of a white color
Speaker 2: into a little bit more yellow orange color. So that's
Speaker 2: why we see the sun as suncolored.
Speaker 1: Why is the sun going night night on the horizon
Speaker 1: so pretty? According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
Speaker 1: weather scientist and sunset enthusiast Stephen F. Graffiti in a
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two article titled Simply the Science of Sunsets,
Speaker 1: so when the sun is low, like a daybreak or
Speaker 1: dusk in the sky, the path of sunlight through the
Speaker 1: atmosphere is longer, giving more distance for the blue light
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum to scatter elsewhere. And he writes
Speaker 1: that a beam of sunlight that at a given moment
Speaker 1: helps produce this red sunset over the Appellachians is at
Speaker 1: the same time contributing to a deep blue late afternoon
Speaker 1: sky over the Rockies. But la sunsets are gorgeous because
Speaker 1: our air is full of soot and cancer, right, not
Speaker 1: so big ol'd flim flam Sunsets are actually generally muted
Speaker 1: by these large aerosol particles like pollution, and the typical,
Speaker 1: really beautiful sunsets usually involve clean air with low humidity,
Speaker 1: not a lot of moisture in the air, and the
Speaker 1: right kind of high clouds to catch the glow of
Speaker 1: the sunset and then reflect it downward. So patrons love
Speaker 1: to sail, Nan and Charlie Mackenzie. I hope that gives
Speaker 1: your sunsets even more context for you to stare at.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's why we think it's on fire
Speaker 1: because we think, oh, flames are kind of yellow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, But the sun is a whole lot hotter
Speaker 2: than flames, and so that's where it's a little bit misleading.
Speaker 2: But in you just simple terms, you look at a
Speaker 2: flame in a fire and you look at the sun
Speaker 2: and like, yeah, that's about the same color.
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, so that's the story on the hue.
Speaker 1: What about heat? Maria Ka, Rachel Fuller, Megan Morgan, Eric Clarson,
Speaker 1: Michelle Park and Kelly and Scarlette p. Just so you
Speaker 1: have this blazing number, burning a hole in your pocket.
Speaker 1: The Sun's core is about fifteen million degrees celsius are
Speaker 1: about twenty seven million in fahrenheit. That's the core. The
Speaker 1: middle ish layer, the photosphere is only about ten thousand
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or fifty five hundred degrees celsius. And then
Speaker 1: as you go up through the chromosphere it raises five
Speaker 1: hundred degrees celsius. But then for thousands of miles above
Speaker 1: the surface of the Sun, that golden crown, the Sun's corona,
Speaker 1: starts getting hotter again, up to one million degrees celsius
Speaker 1: or one point eight fahrenheit, so really hot, less hot,
Speaker 1: really hot again. So that's some serious incineration. Can we
Speaker 1: harness all that energy to our advantage other than just
Speaker 1: growing and sustaining every living thing on Earth, which is
Speaker 1: what the Sun is already doing? Lexi Cable, Lynette Villa,
Speaker 1: Simone Francoure, and Figmunt wanted to know This next question
Speaker 1: is kind of a garbage question. Sweet chilly first time
Speaker 1: question asker wants to know, what if we built an
Speaker 1: enormous catapult on Earth and took all of our garbage
Speaker 1: and launched it into the Sun. Once a month. Could
Speaker 1: this save us from ourselves?
Speaker 2: Well, a catapult would be hard. You might be able
Speaker 2: to do like a trebuche. I don't know. So I
Speaker 2: understand the vibe of like, oh, we have a bunch
Speaker 2: of trash that we've created, let's just get rid of it.
Speaker 2: But I think that it would cause more harm than
Speaker 2: good because that trash has a ton of really useful
Speaker 2: resources in it. I mean, I know it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: that way, but those heavy metals that are left over
Speaker 2: in your batteries and all those things are actually useful
Speaker 2: in terms of sustaining life on Earth, and so in
Speaker 2: a short term, yeah, it could be helpful. It would
Speaker 2: not be a recipe for keeping humans going on Earth,
Speaker 2: because eventually we'd get rid of all of the heavy
Speaker 2: metals on this planet and we need some of them
Speaker 2: for technologies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: God, that's a good answer. Okay, that's good to note.
Speaker 1: We'll keep the garbage for now, I mean we.
Speaker 2: Still have to do something with it.
Speaker 1: For more on how much garbage our little species makes
Speaker 1: and where it goes and what we should do with it,
Speaker 1: and how much of your recycling is actually recycled. Please
Speaker 1: get your heartbroken and see our Discard anthropology episode with
Speaker 1: sanitation expert and NYU professor doctor Robin Nagel. It is
Speaker 1: the opposite of garbage. It's a wonderful episode. It's also fascinating. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk about making atomic and sub atomic friends. So
Speaker 1: Lisa Huis, Ricky Gervitz, Mike Campbell, Marine Flood, Carlos Baracol,
Speaker 1: Tiger Udi. First time question asker is to buy a
Speaker 1: g Daniel Beck and Donachello. In Donachello's words, asked if
Speaker 1: a person were to be thrown in the sun, would
Speaker 1: their atoms become part of the Sun's nuclear fusion reaction,
Speaker 1: thereby contributing to the light which feeds our planet. But
Speaker 1: on a less visual note, first time question asker Victoria
Speaker 1: Maslek wanted to know where does the Sun get its
Speaker 1: energy from? Yea and what's in the center. Is it
Speaker 1: like a gobstopper, fantastic convention, revolutionize the industry.
Speaker 4: You can suck them and suck them and suck them.
Speaker 1: And I'll never get any smaller. Never, they said, don't
Speaker 1: think they do a few more tests.
Speaker 2: Don't I think it's like a god stopper because it's
Speaker 2: really really hot, you know, talking about millions of degrees,
Speaker 2: and I don't think god stoppers are quite that hot.
Speaker 2: But the core of the sun is where you get fusion.
Speaker 2: You take hydrogen through a few different steps, you can
Speaker 2: fuse into helium. And that process of taking hydrogens and
Speaker 2: forcing them together, and that's why you need to have
Speaker 2: extreme heat for fusion, is that how do you force
Speaker 2: these hydrogens together. Well, you get them going really fast
Speaker 2: when it's really hot, and then they eventually will slam
Speaker 2: into each other and you can get fusion. That process
Speaker 2: of fusion, it releases a tremendous amount of energy, and
Speaker 2: it's so much energy that it would actually blow itself
Speaker 2: apart if you just had the core of the Sun.
Speaker 2: So if you just had the solar core by itself,
Speaker 2: there's enough energy being produced that it would blow itself apart. However,
Speaker 2: there's a whole lot more sun there than just the core.
Speaker 2: There's many other layers stacked on top. And the gravity
Speaker 2: of all of those other layers, all that other hydrogen
Speaker 2: helium pushing down on the core. It in balance between
Speaker 2: the energy being produced and pushing out from the interior
Speaker 2: of the Sun and the gravity pushing it into the
Speaker 2: Sun to create this nice little stationary ball. And so
Speaker 2: that's why the Sun is the size it is, because
Speaker 2: it's a balance between the gravity pulling all the material
Speaker 2: in and the energy being produced at the core pushing
Speaker 2: everything out.
Speaker 1: I asked India about this as well. I like to
Speaker 1: think of it like it's solid in the middle, and
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that it's not.
Speaker 4: Well, all of the chemicals that we know comes from stars,
Speaker 4: you know that, right, Like when stars explode, all of
Speaker 4: the you know, hydrogen, helium, iron, all of that comes
Speaker 4: from an exploding star. Because what happens is nuclear fusion
Speaker 4: takes place. You know, our sun is mostly a hydrogen
Speaker 4: and helium and the speeds are so fast they crash
Speaker 4: into each other and it causes those heavier elements. So
Speaker 4: there is a core of the sun. Do we know, oh,
Speaker 4: if you can stand on that shit? Probably not. I
Speaker 4: don't know if it's actually solid, But what I do
Speaker 4: know is that there are heavier elements inside that we
Speaker 4: can actually like physically touch on Earth.
Speaker 1: All right, we need a whole episode on nuclear power,
Speaker 1: but quick aside. A few months ago, China announced some
Speaker 1: major success with a nuclear fusion reactor that acts as
Speaker 1: an artificial sun and it smashes atoms together to form
Speaker 1: heavier ones, which releases heat like the sun that can
Speaker 1: be used as a power source. And currently nuclear power
Speaker 1: plants use fission they're splitting atoms, but leaving this risk
Speaker 1: for radioactive waste that can harm us in the planet. Now,
Speaker 1: by contrast, fusion based power appears to be much safer, cleaner,
Speaker 1: and using hydrogen from seawater as fuel could power humanity
Speaker 1: for millions of years if we all don't die first.
Speaker 1: Not to be sad about it anyway, exciting stuff. Also,
Speaker 1: in a few days, I'm going to be in Texas,
Speaker 1: where a lot of things are corganchuan except for the
Speaker 1: sun in the sky this time of year, thankfully, But
Speaker 1: when it comes to size, what about our beloved sun?
Speaker 1: Not that it matters, but patrons Matt Soccato, Kara Young,
Speaker 1: Gig Knows, Wendy Miller, Scarlett p m A. B Ewen Monroe,
Speaker 1: Megan Morgan, Dave Cannon, and first time question asker Wendy
Speaker 1: Parson wanted to know how ours stacks up and how
Speaker 1: big is our sun compared to other sons? Do we
Speaker 1: have a tiny soun? Do we have a big sun?
Speaker 2: It's pretty small cool. Yeah, we have. It's called a
Speaker 2: dwarf star, and the reason it's a dwarf is just
Speaker 2: where it is on the evolutionary spectrum evolutionary line as
Speaker 2: stars go. But it's not that big. Really, stars get
Speaker 2: a whole lot bigger than the Sun. That's a good
Speaker 2: thing that it's not that big either, because if we
Speaker 2: were around a more energetic star, it'd be a whole
Speaker 2: lot harder to sustain life, because the Sun is nicely,
Speaker 2: a little bit active, but not crazy. It's not gonna,
Speaker 2: you know, irradiate the entire Earth every couple of years
Speaker 2: and kill a living things, which would be terrible.
Speaker 1: So yeah, as it stands, our Son is about thirty
Speaker 1: three thousand times the mass of Earth and it makes
Speaker 1: up ninety nine point eighty six of the mass of
Speaker 1: our solar system. Well, what if it were even bigger?
Speaker 1: What if we did supersize it? Patron's okayist, mom's husband,
Speaker 1: Emily Stuffer, Pafka thirty four, Melissa Cool, last name, Ward
Speaker 1: GG knows, and first time question asker Colleen Chick. I
Speaker 1: wanted to know about the Goldilocks Zone, a very lovely
Speaker 1: habitable range we happened to live in. If we had
Speaker 1: a bigger sun, would we need to be further out
Speaker 1: to be in a Goldilock zone.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, to be in that ideal zone. But it's
Speaker 2: the unstableness of those magnetic fields, so that if you
Speaker 2: have a bigger star, you're going to have more energy
Speaker 2: produced in the star, which means that all of the events,
Speaker 2: all of those things that happen on our son can
Speaker 2: be more energetic. Also, if you get small enough, you
Speaker 2: get these crazy convection currents where the materials pulled out
Speaker 2: from deeper into the star and pulled out to the service,
Speaker 2: which means you can get you know, really crazy magnetic fields,
Speaker 2: and they observe these and satellites of these crazy huge
Speaker 2: flares coming off of a star, and crazy huge, I
Speaker 2: mean like as much energy coming off of a flare
Speaker 2: as a star is producing at that time, So like
Speaker 2: the star will get twice as bright in the sky
Speaker 2: kind of a thing, and like that's not really sustainable,
Speaker 2: however far you are from it.
Speaker 1: Rachel Cash wants to know when the Sun and the
Speaker 1: moon cross paths. It's a kiss, isn't it. I bet
Speaker 1: it is, they say.
Speaker 2: I mean it could be a kiss, It could be
Speaker 2: a dance too. I think it's more like a Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's more of a dance, more like a passing, a
Speaker 2: passing touch. They don't really kiss as much as like
Speaker 2: they just walk by each other slowly sort of maybe
Speaker 2: give each other the eye and then going. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's flirty or because they don't like each other.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure about that. But yeah, it's less kissing
Speaker 2: and more just like, you know, passing each other, like
Speaker 2: ship's passing in the night.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can't ship them quite yet. The last questions
Speaker 1: I always ask are usually what's your favorite and your
Speaker 1: least favorite thing about what you do? But because there's
Speaker 1: so much opportunity here, I'm going to ask you some
Speaker 1: people want to know Ken not for some question Asker
Speaker 1: and Meghan Morgan wanted to know what are the current
Speaker 1: mysteries about the Sun that heliologists and heliophysicists don't understand? Like,
Speaker 1: is there a mystery that vexes you that we don't
Speaker 1: We just don't know yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there are several. The one that is most
Speaker 2: frequently answered or held up then all that say what
Speaker 2: my favorite one is most frequently one is talking about
Speaker 2: the solar corona. What you'll be able to see during
Speaker 2: a total solar clip. So the solar corona is millions
Speaker 2: of degrees. The surface of the Sun is, you know,
Speaker 2: a few thousand degrees, five six thousand degrees. Why, how
Speaker 2: that's weird. It's like you're sitting at a campfire and
Speaker 2: you're walking backwards in the air is getting hotter? Like,
Speaker 2: that's not how it's normally supposed to work. So there's
Speaker 2: plenty of energy coming out from the Sun to heat
Speaker 2: the corona. That's not the problem. The issue is how
Speaker 2: do you get the energy from the surface of the
Speaker 2: Sun into the corona in such a way that you
Speaker 2: heat it up to millions of degrees.
Speaker 1: So, yes, the outskirts of the Sun hotter than the surface. Bonkers.
Speaker 1: Michael loves this fact, as do I. And I found
Speaker 1: this recent twenty twenty three study titled Polarization of decaleless
Speaker 1: kink Oscillations of Solar coronal loops published in the journal Nature,
Speaker 1: and it opens with this declaration that quote decayalless kink
Speaker 1: oscillations of plasma loops in the solar corona may contain
Speaker 1: an answer to the enigmatic problem of solar instellar coronal heating.
Speaker 1: Huh so. A space dot Com article was titled Scientists
Speaker 1: may finally know why the Sun's outer atmosphere is so
Speaker 1: freakishly hot, and it tried to explain it to non
Speaker 1: heliologists like us, saying that the waves are relatively weak,
Speaker 1: but they don't decay in strength over multiple cycles, and
Speaker 1: they may potentially supply a large amount of energy into
Speaker 1: the corona over time. So by not decaying, the heat
Speaker 1: and the energy could be building up instead of cooling
Speaker 1: down as expected. Folks are working on it, but now
Speaker 1: every time the sun hits your face on a warm
Speaker 1: summer afternoon, just think about those hot, hot polarization of
Speaker 1: decayless kin ostellations.
Speaker 2: Heliologists are that's an outstanding problem. We have ideas, there
Speaker 2: are no conclusive answers yet, so it's a weird. One.
Speaker 2: My favorite is solar cycles. So the Sun goes through
Speaker 2: eleven year cycles from quiet where there aren't very many
Speaker 2: flares or sunspots, to very active where there are lots
Speaker 2: of flares and sunspots, which is kind of where we
Speaker 2: are now about every eleven twelve years. We don't know
Speaker 2: why exactly. I mean, we have some thoughts, but we
Speaker 2: really don't know why, Why is it eleven years? Why
Speaker 2: does it go through a cycle, what's causing that to
Speaker 2: begin with? Is it that way forever or just right now?
Speaker 2: I mean, all those questions are still really outstanding on
Speaker 2: what is actually going on with the solar cycle. But
Speaker 2: it's been served by astronomers for oh, three d and
Speaker 2: fifty years now, so it's not like it's going away
Speaker 2: eleven years.
Speaker 1: I wonder what's going on with that. I'm sure astrologers
Speaker 1: have a lot of thoughts about it. India mentioned solar
Speaker 1: cycles ups and downs. To me, the sun has moods
Speaker 1: India explain.
Speaker 4: We do have solar minimum and solar maximum, so we're
Speaker 4: actually going into a maximum right now.
Speaker 1: I believe what does that.
Speaker 4: Mean where we have the most solar events? So it's
Speaker 4: no compared to the minimum. Yeah, we don't need that.
Speaker 4: It happens we ever eleven years. Roughly every eleven years
Speaker 4: is the solar cycle.
Speaker 1: So it's an election year. It's like four years of
Speaker 1: a pandemic, Like, isn't that enough? We need an eleven
Speaker 1: year solar cycle?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know it is a bipartisan effort, So
Speaker 4: I will say that space weather is a bipartisan effort,
Speaker 4: but we are going into a maximum right now, and
Speaker 4: we use time series analysis for you know, that's well,
Speaker 4: the solo cycles were figured out before we even involve computers.
Speaker 1: So let's turn the spotlight to what brightens the days
Speaker 1: of these two heliologists. What's your favorite thing about your
Speaker 1: job or about being a scientist or being a heliologist.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you just like love that gets
Speaker 1: you're excited.
Speaker 4: I genuinely love all of it. I love everything about
Speaker 4: being a scientist. I love being able to discover things
Speaker 4: like Survival analysis is a statistical method that has its
Speaker 4: origin in medicine, and it's been used in finance and
Speaker 4: even been used in gambling and betting. So it's basically
Speaker 4: predicting time to an event. So it started as time
Speaker 4: to death, so you would have a collection of cancer
Speaker 4: patients and then you will analyze their time to death.
Speaker 4: And this technique has never been used in space weather
Speaker 4: to detect the time to detection of soli energetic particles.
Speaker 4: So what I found is that survival analysis gives us
Speaker 4: the same outcome as any other method that we've used,
Speaker 4: which means that it could be viable. That's what's exciting
Speaker 4: about science. It's like, Okay, it's you know, not technically
Speaker 4: something new that I discovered, but this new technique can
Speaker 4: be used in this field. Ah. And that is what's
Speaker 4: so much fun about being a scientists and then collaborating
Speaker 4: with other scientists, and then of course let's talk about
Speaker 4: the obvious working with people at NASA, you know, actually
Speaker 4: going onto a NASA base, actually getting a NAW that's
Speaker 4: the ID, and then being able to be a part
Speaker 4: of programs that people dream about.
Speaker 2: You know, you follow your dream.
Speaker 1: As for Michael's favorite factoid, patrons Daniel White, James Nance,
Speaker 1: Tiger Dy and Doug Stewart all asked what is your
Speaker 1: favorite fact about the Sun? What is something that you
Speaker 1: just wish everyone knew?
Speaker 2: So I think my favorite, like little g whiz about
Speaker 2: the Sun is the the energy produce of the core.
Speaker 2: We talked about that earlier. Okay, So energy is produced
Speaker 2: in fusion and then it starts moving outward from the
Speaker 2: core of the Sun. It takes maybe ten thousand years
Speaker 2: ash to get from the core of the Sun to
Speaker 2: the surface of the Sun. And then it takes eight
Speaker 2: minutes from the sun serves the Sun to our eyes. Wow,
Speaker 2: So that little photon you know, is born in the fusion,
Speaker 2: and then it keeps on getting scattered and reabsorbed move
Speaker 2: to other places because the Sun is dense and it's hot,
Speaker 2: and it's a very chaotic environment, but there's lots of
Speaker 2: mixing and there's there's lots of activity going on. So
Speaker 2: it takes this random warmth is bouncing around for you know,
Speaker 2: years and years and years, all the way until it
Speaker 2: gets the surface of the Sun. And then once it
Speaker 2: reached that photosphere layer, that the layer that we see
Speaker 2: when you're using your safety eclipse glasses. I'll get there
Speaker 2: your solar safely, little reviewing gas. The layer, that layer
Speaker 2: that you see, the photon goes pretty much on a
Speaker 2: direct path from there to your eye. And so when
Speaker 2: you see the Sun, that photon was formed thousands of
Speaker 2: years ago and then in a matter of minutes lands
Speaker 2: in your eye and then you interpret it as the Sun.
Speaker 2: And that little like that little factoid is just it's
Speaker 2: amazing because the sun is just bright in the sky
Speaker 2: and thinking about how all that light got to where
Speaker 2: you are just always always amazes me. And that's a
Speaker 2: fun one.
Speaker 1: I love that it has been waiting in the wings
Speaker 1: sort of like and that it's just like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And any last advice to people who are planning to
Speaker 1: see the eclipse. I definitely got my eclipse glasses early,
Speaker 1: which is shocking that I did anything early, but I
Speaker 1: made sure to get them from a vetted source. I
Speaker 1: know that there's some fakes out there that can sizzle
Speaker 1: your retinas apparently. Also, lest you think that these warnings
Speaker 1: are like that, don't cross your eyes for sec because
Speaker 1: they're gonna stick like that, or a watermelon seed can
Speaker 1: grow vines in your colon, this one has merit and
Speaker 1: it also has a name solar retinopathy or eclipse retinopathy,
Speaker 1: and it is a light induced injury to your central
Speaker 1: retina or macular tissue which can lead to a permanent
Speaker 1: loss of your central vision. And for more on parts
Speaker 1: of the eye, you can see the Ophthalmology episode with
Speaker 1: friend and I expert doctor Reed Weynus. It's a good one.
Speaker 1: Now you need solar viewing glasses at a rating it's
Speaker 1: called ISO one two three one two dash two to
Speaker 1: be exact, to be safe. And yeah, there are fakes
Speaker 1: out there horrible, so check places like the American Astronomical
Speaker 1: Society for Trustable Brands and Links. If you have time,
Speaker 1: hang on if you've got good ones in case another
Speaker 1: eclipse rolls by your sky in a few years, or
Speaker 1: if a friend needs them on their travels, because you
Speaker 1: want an eclipse to be life changing in a good way,
Speaker 1: not in a way that results in a lot of
Speaker 1: ophthalmology appointments, even if your doctor is cool. Like read
Speaker 1: any other advice.
Speaker 2: If you do have the chance to use some eclipse glasses,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't be able to see anything through them except
Speaker 2: extremely bright lights, like if you have a halogen bulb
Speaker 2: or a flash on a camera. You can see that
Speaker 2: in the eclipse glasses, but nothing else like there should
Speaker 2: be should not be able to see any other lights.
Speaker 1: So during a partial eclipse or even during the stages
Speaker 1: of two or three, you can hold up a calender
Speaker 1: and you can see the dozens of little crescent shaped
Speaker 1: shadows that the sun casts. And during this recent partial
Speaker 1: eclipse in La last October, Jared and I were walking
Speaker 1: Grammy and all the dappling of sun through the tree
Speaker 1: leaves looked hook shaped, so cool. You can also look
Speaker 1: for crafts using pinhole cameras, even a disco ball will
Speaker 1: throw scattered light in the shape of the eclipse. Sun
Speaker 1: also sunscreen and water. Can you do that if you
Speaker 1: get heat stroke? There's too much traffic for an ambulance.
Speaker 1: Now what about psychological preparations?
Speaker 2: And then, sort of on a personal note, I would say,
Speaker 2: because there's a high chance of clouds. It's springtime in
Speaker 2: the northern hemisphere and there is a chance that it's
Speaker 2: going to be cloudy, make the eclipse a more of
Speaker 2: an event. Get to where if you're going early, bring
Speaker 2: a picnic. I don't know, bring family and friends, go
Speaker 2: to a party and do some fun activities. If it's
Speaker 2: clouded out, but it's still going to get dark outside,
Speaker 2: you can still observe the world around you and how
Speaker 2: that changes as the sun is obscured by the moon
Speaker 2: and it gets dark around you.
Speaker 5: So I I hope that everybody sees a beautifully clear
Speaker 5: day that day, But you know, just to make sure
Speaker 5: that you don't pin all of your hopes and wishes
Speaker 5: and dreams on those few fleeting moments of cloudless skies.
Speaker 1: That's good, that's very very good advice. Smart.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's always Spain in twenty twenty six, and
Speaker 2: I hear that's really nice.
Speaker 1: There must be little pods of people that travel together,
Speaker 1: like see in a couple of years, which is darling.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it's sort of like I don't know the
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead. There's just following the.
Speaker 1: Umber files assemble, aspiring umber files. Start looking for hotels
Speaker 1: for like twenty thirty eight, figure out a rental car. Now,
Speaker 1: let me tell you. I'm sure you're ticking down to
Speaker 1: the days when you travel, so you gotta start packing
Speaker 1: up your glasses.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I have my binoculars, the solar viewing binoculars.
Speaker 2: I have my glasses. I you know, have all my
Speaker 2: NASA stickers to give away on the flight. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm really getting excited for this. Also, NASA will be
Speaker 2: doing a live broadcast. To check out NASA dot Gov
Speaker 2: or go to the nasta's YouTube page and you can
Speaker 2: see a live broadcast of the eclipse. Will have telescopes
Speaker 2: across the path, so if it's cloudy where you are,
Speaker 2: you can still virtually visit most Law Mexico or Torreon,
Speaker 2: Mexico where it's likely to be clear. I will pop
Speaker 2: on and say hi, and then Dallas during the recording,
Speaker 2: so you can come here about the Dallas eclipse. And
Speaker 2: one of the anchor desks is in Curvill so you
Speaker 2: should go and check out the NASA events on the
Speaker 2: river Walk and Curvele.
Speaker 1: I'll have to get myself a free sticker, lam I'm
Speaker 1: here there here, they're giving them out nice. I'm so
Speaker 1: thankful that you're able to spare some time and talk
Speaker 1: to me about this. I'm so excited about going. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad I'm going.
Speaker 2: I am really excited to get the word out to
Speaker 2: all of your listeners. I know that it has been
Speaker 2: a buzz in my community for years, and so I'm
Speaker 2: always a little obstruck when i hear somebody like oh
Speaker 2: this is there and clips coming up like oh yes,
Speaker 2: It's like where have you been? But really it's a
Speaker 2: chance to celebrate that the sun, celebrate the Sun Earth connection.
Speaker 2: So I'm just really excited for everyone here to take
Speaker 2: a moment on Monday, April eighth and just experience as
Speaker 2: Sun Earth connection for yourself.
Speaker 1: So ask bright people, damn questions because the explanations are stellar. Lama,
Speaker 1: thank you so much to almost doctor India Jackson, doctor
Speaker 1: Michael Kirk, and all the folks at NASA. Goddard who
Speaker 1: made this possible, including Abby Sarah. For more on our
Speaker 1: two heliologists and heliophysicists and their info and social media.
Speaker 1: Those are all linked in the show notes. There's also
Speaker 1: a link to NASA's Total Solar Eclipse live broadcast for
Speaker 1: April eighth, and I'll be in Texas and I'll be
Speaker 1: back with a field trip episode of the whole situation?
Speaker 1: Am I going to be hitchhiking in the tumbleweed outer
Speaker 1: reaches of central Texas? We'll see now. For kid friendly
Speaker 1: episodes of ologies, check out smologies that's SMO, l ogi
Speaker 1: e s. Those are all linked at aliwar dot com
Speaker 1: slash smologies. They're in the show notes. They're g rated
Speaker 1: shorter versions of ologies the classrooms safe. Also look for
Speaker 1: an exciting announcement about a change we're making on May sixteenth.
Speaker 1: We're at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Ali
Speaker 1: Ward on both. Ali has one l joined the Patreon
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com, slash ologies or get your ologies
Speaker 1: summer merch at ologiesmerch dot com. Linked in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Aaron Talbert Adminsiologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick makes our
Speaker 1: professional transcripts Kelly ar Dwyer makes the website, and while
Speaker 1: Dilworth is our scheduling and travel producer, Susan Hale is
Speaker 1: the managing director and also did extra research and a
Speaker 1: ton of fact checking. Jake Chafee is our assistant editor.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jake, I'm sorry I said Chaffy last week.
Speaker 1: I'm mad at myself. Welcome to the FAM. Lead editor,
Speaker 1: who also assisted with research is the warm and bright
Speaker 1: Mercedes Maitland of Maitland. Audio. Nick Thorburn made the theme
Speaker 1: music And if you stick around until the end of
Speaker 1: the episode, I divulge a secret from my soul this week.
Speaker 1: It's that I have one hundred percent been a dufist
Speaker 1: in the past and looked directly at the sun during
Speaker 1: a partial eclipse by stacking like six pairs of sunglasses
Speaker 1: on top of each other. And now I know that's
Speaker 1: not a good idea and I won't do that again. Also,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, there was this incredibly way
Speaker 1: spookier than it needed to be Disney movie called The
Speaker 1: Watcher in the Woods and Aaron Talbert, your Ologies podcast
Speaker 1: Facebook group admin, who I have known since we were
Speaker 1: for we watched it together on several occasions, and Betty
Speaker 1: Davis plays a very creepy woman who lives in a
Speaker 1: weird old house. And I guess. Also Kyle Richards is
Speaker 1: it Kyle Richards or Kyler Richard anyway is a real
Speaker 1: housewife of Beverly Hills, but was a main character as
Speaker 1: a child actor. Also spooky and an eclipse features heavily
Speaker 1: in the plot of Watcher in the Woods. And Okay,
Speaker 1: first off, they don't make scary movies for kids like
Speaker 1: they used to, because this one straight up scarred my soul.
Speaker 1: But it also made me eerily fascinated with eclipses. So
Speaker 1: I'm one hundred percent rewatching it before I had to
Speaker 1: tell excess to see how it holds up. I watched
Speaker 1: the trailer like five minutes ago. Goosebumps, scared, actually scared.
Speaker 1: Watch Her in the Woods? Gonna rewatch it?
Speaker 4: Ernie you with me?
Speaker 1: I hope, so, Okay, be safe, don't stare at the sun.
Speaker 1: I'm asking you that, I'm asking me that, Okay, Field
Speaker 1: trip incoming, Bye bye, Pacadermatology, homeology, cry doo zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, pathology, tethnology, seriology, elatology.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 4: Solar eclips