Speaker 1: Imagine a world plunged into darkness. I mean really imagine it,
not just you know, a local blackout, but a deep
silence falling everywhere. The familiar hum of electricity just stops.
The Internet goes completely dark. Every screen you look at
is just blank, lifeless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, stark picture.
Speaker 1: And what if the sort of protective bubble around our planet,
the thing that's kept us safe for billions of years,
starts to fray. What if it leaves as totally exposed
to these well cosmic forces that could genuinely reshape life
as we know it.
Speaker 3: It sounds like something straight out of science fiction, absolutely,
but the core ideas, the seeds of this possibility, they're
actually rooted in some very real, measurable changes that are
happening right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, so today we're doing a deep dive into this
fascinating and honestly sometimes pretty unsettling idea of a plasma apocalypse.
Speaker 3: Right and when we say plasma here, we should probably
clarify we're talking about the superheated, highly energized gas, you know,
where electrons have been stripped from their atoms. It's often
called the fourth state of matter, and it behaves in
these really dynamic, electrically charged ways.
Speaker 1: Got it. And we've got a fair bit of material
to look at today, haven't we.
Speaker 3: We do, Yeah, a pretty big stack actually, everything from
proper scientific journals talking about deep space radiation, the real
measurable stuff, how it affects the human body. Then there
are these detailed historical accounts of massive solar events that well,
they've already caused chaos with our early tech, right. And yes,
we're also going to dig into a let's say, particularly
provocative podcast that gets into some really mind bending claims
about what could happen if Earth's defenses really truly fail.
Speaker 1: Okay, So our mission today is basically to unpack all
of this, help you the listener, sort through the verifiable
science the more speculative stuff, and figure out what it
all genuinely means for us here on Earth. We'll look
at how our planet's magnetic field, which is essential, right,
how it's changing subtly but significantly. We'll cover the very
immediate dangers from solar storms, especially for our super connected
modern world. And then yeah, like you said, we'll step
into some really extraordinary theories about what might happen if
that shield gets seriously compromised. So just laying that out,
what part of this whole topic grabs you the most?
What do you think might really surprise people listening?
Speaker 3: You know? I think it's that exact intersection, the place
where established scientific understanding meets these almost fringe, kind of
mythical concepts.
Speaker 2: That's what makes this whole thing so captivating.
Speaker 3: I think the science community they've known for ages how
crucial the magnetic field is, how it sustains life, and
the threats from the sun. They're not just theoretical, they're
well documented and honestly increasingly worrying in our tech age.
But what's really fascinating is how some of these scientific
realities can almost become a foundation or maybe even inspire
these much more extreme, almost apocalyptic theories. It's this constant dance,
isn't it, between what we actually know and what we
deeply fear.
Speaker 1: That intersection is exactly why we need to dive into this. Okay,
let's start at the beginning. Earth's main protector, this invisible shield,
the magnetic field. It's fundamental. Can you maybe break down
what this shield actually is and why it's just so
critically important?
Speaker 3: Okay, So, at its very heart, the Earth's magnetic field
is this huge dynamic force field, and it's generated deep
deep inside the planet. Specifically, it comes from the swirling
currents of molten iron and nickel in Earth's outer core.
Speaker 2: It's all electrically conductive down there, a giant engine or
something exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, think of it like a massive self sustaining dynamo
constantly churning away, generating these incredibly powerful electrical currents, and
those currents in turn produce the magnetic field. It stretches
way out into space, creating what we usually call the magnetosphere.
Right the magnetosphere, and that acts as our planet's main defense.
It deflects most of the harmful charge particles that the
Sun throws at us, you know, from the solar solar flares,
and it also shields us from the more distant, more
powerful cosmic radiation coming from deep space. Honestly, without it,
our atmosphere would probably be stripped away over time, lifelike
hours impossible due to the constant radiation bombardment.
Speaker 1: And it's been doing this for well an incredibly long time,
hasn't it. It's not a recent.
Speaker 3: Development, astonishingly long. Its stability is remarkable. This field has
effectively protected life on Earth for nearly what three point
eight billion years. That really tells you how fundamental it
is for Earth being habitable. And now it does very naturally.
You know, it fluctuates in strength, it's direction changes over
geological time, sure, but its long term consistency is genuinely amazing,
especially when you think about the well, the turbulent, almost
chaotic processes deep inside the planet that generate it.
Speaker 2: It's been this.
Speaker 3: Constant, enduring guardian just silently deflecting all this nasty radiation,
allowing complex life to evolve and you know, thrive, and.
Speaker 1: It's not just us complex life forms relying on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You often hear about animals, even really creatures having some
kind of connection to this field. How does that actually
work in the animal kingdom?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one of the most amazing links I think
between Earth's geophysics and biology. So many creatures from you know,
big migratory birds crossing continents down to microscopics, single celled
organisms just floating in upon they possessed this sophisticated magnetic
sense it's called magneta.
Speaker 1: Reception bi meter reception.
Speaker 3: Essentially, they have an internal compass. It lets them detect
and use the Earth's magnetic field lines for like orientation
and navigation. It's basically a natural, built in GPS system.
Speaker 1: How do they physically do that? They have little compass
needles inside them Earth.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly ingenious.
Speaker 3: Actually, back in the nineteen seventies, there was this graduate student,
Richard Blakemore. He's looking at muddy pond water right, and
he noticed these single cell bacteria consistently swimming in the
same direction. So through some really careful experiments he showed
they were definitely responding to a magnetic field. And later
research found that these organisms and lots of others actually
contain these tiny structures inside them, bound by membranes, and
inside those structures are magnetic crystals, usually like biogenic magnetic
iron oxide or iron sulfide, so tiny biological magnet pretty much, yeah,
microscopic biological magnets. They physically align themselves with the Earth's
magnetic field lines, giving the organism this direct sensory input.
And just recently twenty twenty one, I think Japanese scientists
made some real progress and understanding the sort of complex
biochemical pathways that translate that physical alignment into an actual
navigational sense in animals. It just really highlights this deep, fundamental,
ancient connection between the field and life itself, right down
to the cellular level.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this incredibly stable, ancient, biologically crucial shield, this
guardian that's been around for billions of years, it's showing
signs of well vulnerability now. And this isn't just theory, right,
we have actual data showing changes are happening.
Speaker 2: We do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is where the observations really become relevant to
our deep dive. Today. We have scientific data from magnetometers
on the ground and satellites up in orbit showing that
Earth's magnetic field is definitely going through a weakening phase
right now. It's measurably dropped in strength by about ten
percent just since the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Ten percent that sounds like quite a lot.
Speaker 3: It is significant, and it's not speculation, you know. It's
a well documented, quantifiable change that scientists are actively keeping
a close eye on.
Speaker 1: And it's not just getting weaker. The north magnetic pole
is actually like physically moving and pretty quickly too.
Speaker 3: Precisely, the north magnetic pole isn't just shifting, It's really
picked up the pace for centuries it moved relatively slowly,
but in the last few decades its speed has dramatically increased.
Right now, it's racing towards Siberia something like thirty four miles.
Speaker 2: It's about fifty five kilometers every year.
Speaker 1: Wow, thirty four miles a year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's quite astonishing.
Speaker 3: It's moving so fast that the people who manage global
navigation systems have had to up their models more frequently
because the predictions for its location just get outdated so quickly.
It's a really clear sign of just how fluid and
dynamic things are inside the Earth's core.
Speaker 1: I've also heard about this specific spot, the South Atlantic Anomaly,
where the weakening is like specially bad. What's going on there?
What are the effects we can actually see?
Speaker 3: Ah? Yes, the South Atlantic Anomaly or SSAA. It's this
huge weird region mainly over the South Atlantic Ocean, but
it also covers parts of South America, and the magnetic
field there is just significantly weaker than anywhere else on
the planet. It's not theoretical you can measure this dip
in the field's strength.
Speaker 1: And does that cause problems?
Speaker 3: It absolutely does. It has immediate tangible consequences. Satellites flying
through that specific zone get hit with much higher levels
of energetic charged particles from space because there's just less
magnetic protection.
Speaker 2: Oh so we've seen.
Speaker 3: Satellites experience glitches, malfunctions, sometimes they even get temporarily disabled
because of this increased radiation. Ex It's a real world,
ongoing example of what happens when our planet shield thins out.
It directly impacts our modern tech. Everything from the GPS
in your phone or car, to global weather forecasting communication networks,
they all rely on these satellites. It really highlights a
very concrete vulnerability in our super connected lives.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've got a weakening field overall, the pole
is moving faster and we have this weak spot the
SAA already causing trouble for satellites. But then there's the
really big one, the idea of a complete magnetic field flick,
a pole reversal. These have happened before, right, This isn't
just speculation.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely, magnetic field flips or geomagnetic pole reversals,
they're a totally established, scientifically proven thing. They've happened hundreds
of times throughout Earth history. We can see it clearly
in paleomagnetic studies basically looking at the magnetic signatures frozen
into ancient rocks. They show without doubt that the magnetic
poles have swapped places over and over again. What's particularly
interesting and maybe a bit unsettling for some is the
more recent research suggesting these flips might actually happen much
faster than we used to think.
Speaker 1: Right, that's the stalagmite evidence you hear about from that
cave in China that seemed to really shake things up.
Speaker 2: A bit exactly.
Speaker 3: There was this really groundbreaking study published I think in
twenty eighteen. It was based on magnetic records preserved inside
an ancient stalagmite from cave in China, and the salagmite
had captured this incredibly detailed record of something called a
geomagnetic excursion, which is like a rapid, short lived change
in the field that happened around one hundred and seven
thousand years ago. Okay, an excursion, not a full flip, right,
an excursion, but the data suggested that during this event,
the Earth's magnetic field went through really significant, really rapid changes.
It might have shifted its direction by as much as
ninety degrees, potentially within just one hundred to two hundred years, well, one.
Speaker 1: Hundred years for a ninety degree.
Speaker 3: Shift, Yeah, which really challenged the older models that usually
estimated full reversals took thousands of years. So it kind
of injected this new sense of maybe urgency into the
scientific discussion.
Speaker 1: One hundred years feels incredibly fast compared to thousands, and
I've seen sources saying we're actually overdue for a major reversal.
Speaker 3: It does feel fast, and yeah, the overdue thing comes
up a lot. The last full stable flip, the one
called the brinhas Matuyama reversal, happened about seven hundred and
eighty thousand years ago. Now, if you look at the
average time between major reversals throughout Earth's history, it's roughly,
you know, two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand years,
So purely from a geological perspective, yeah, you could say
we're technically overdue for the next big one.
Speaker 1: And during these reversals, the field gets much weaker.
Speaker 3: That's the key point. During the reversal process, the field's
strength typically drops significantly, sometimes down to maybe only five
or ten percent of its normal intensity, and becomes really unstable.
You might even get multiple magnetic poles popping up temporarily
around the planet. That's the critical vulnerable period.
Speaker 1: And if that happens, if our shield weakends down to
just ten percent strength during reversal, what are the direct
consequences for us on the surface.
Speaker 3: Well, when the field is transitioning or just in that
severely weakened state, our planet's defenses are seriously compromised. It
means a much higher amount of harmful solar radiation those
energetic cosmic rays they'd hit Earth's upper atmosphere directly. Plasma
from the Sun, which normally gets deflected, would flood into
our atmosphere much more easily, especially at lower latitudes.
Speaker 1: Not just near the poles, so more radiation exposure down.
Speaker 3: Here potentially, Yes, increased radiation exposure on the surface could
impact everything from human health to all the technological systems
that currently rely on having a strong magnetosphere protecting them.
And visually the auroras, the northern and Southern lights, which
are normally stuck up near the poles, they'd likely be
seen much more widely, maybe even near the equator. That
would be a clear sign of just how widespread the
interaction between the atmosphere and these charged particles had become.
Speaker 1: That is a pretty stark picture. But I've also seen
significant pushback, especially online, about how fast these flips actually happen.
One hundred years sounds really alarming, but what's the counter
argument from scientists.
Speaker 3: That's a really crucial point, and it shows how science
is always debating and refining things, while that stalagmite research
is compelling, and it's just these rapid excursions, these temporary
partial shifts can happen. The broader scientific consensus, especially among
geophysicists who study palaeomagnetic records from all over the world,
still suggests that full pole reversals usually unfold over much
longer time scales, often centuries, maybe even several millennia.
Speaker 1: Okay, so centuries are millennia not.
Speaker 2: Decades generally yes.
Speaker 3: For example, if you look at discussions in academic forums
or even places like that Reddit thread discussing this topic,
they emphasize that, yeah, pull shift is proven, we see
it in the record, but the process usually involves this
long period of instability. The field weakens and then it
slowly reorients itself over hundreds, maybe thousands of years. So
the idea of a complete catastrophic flip happening like in
our lifetimes or even in just one hundred years. Most
mainstream scientists consider that extremely unlikely.
Speaker 1: So they're saying, don't confuse a rapid temporary wobble with
a full, long term reversal exactly.
Speaker 3: They caution against taking the timeline for a rapid excursion
and applying it directly to a full reversal. They stress
just how complex these deep geological processes are and the
long time scales involved. It's not really a question of
if the poles will flip again eventually, but more about
how fast and when, And the current consensus still leans
towards a much slower process than some of the more
sensational claims suggest.
Speaker 1: That's a really important distinction. Okay, So leaving aside a
full pole flip for a moment, we still have these
very real immediate threats from just regular solar activity. Let's
talk about solar storms, because these aren't speculative at all.
They happen and they pose huge challenges for us.
Speaker 3: Now, absolutely the Sun, I mean, it gives us life,
all our energy, but it can also be this incredibly
powerful and predictable fours. These solar storms we call them
geomagnetic storms. When they actually hit Earth, and interact with
our magnetic field. They happen when the Sun basically blasts
out these enormous bubbles of superheated gas and tangled magnetic field.
Speaker 1: Lines CMEs right coronal mass.
Speaker 3: Ejections exactly CMEs coronal mass ejections. They're made up of
electrically charged particles, mostly protons and electrons, and they travel
at these immense speeds, sometimes millions of miles per hour.
They're essentially massive eruptions of plasma shooting out from the
Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona.
Speaker 1: And when these supercharged blobs of plasma hit Earth, that's
when our magnetic field has to deal with them, even
if it's not flipping precisely.
Speaker 3: When those charged particles slam into our magnetosphere, they interact
really intensely. It causes our magnetic field to get compressed, distorted,
temporarily weakened, and this energetic collision generates huge electrical currents,
both up in the Earth's upper atmosphere and actually within
the ground itself.
Speaker 2: Okay, the most.
Speaker 3: Beautiful result of this, of course, are the auroras, the
northern and Southern lights. That's just atmospheric gases glowing because
they're being excited by these incoming solar particles. But sometimes
the interaction is a lot more disruptive and a lot
less pretty.
Speaker 1: Let's look back then, our early tech, simple as it was,
got a real taste of what a massive solar storm
could do. The eighteen fifty nine Carrington event is always
the one people mention. The stories sound almost unbelievable.
Speaker 3: Oh, the Carrington event. Yeah, September first and second, eighteen
fifty nine. It's still the biggest documented geomagnetic storm we
have on record, and its impact was truly extraordinary for
the time. Telegraph systems that was the cutting edge communication
tech back then, right yuy, the Victorian Internet kind of yeah,
they failed catastrophically. All across North America and Europe. Telegraph
operators reported getting painful electric shocks right through their equipment.
Some even said they saw sparks, arcs of light jumping
from their machines, and maybe most amazing, telegraph paper actually
caught fire spontaneously.
Speaker 1: Some offices hot fire just from the storm.
Speaker 3: Apparently so, and in many cases, these geomagnetically induced currents
flowing through the wires were so strong that operators could
actually disconnect their batteries and the telegraphs kept working power
just by the electricity surging through the lines from the
Earth itself.
Speaker 1: Wow. Imagine that your communication system running on raw, uncontrolled
solar power exactly.
Speaker 3: And the visual effects were just as dramatic and widespread.
The Aurora borealis, which you normally only see way up
north in Canada or Scandinavia, was seen as far south
as Columbia, Cuba, even Hawaii. People apparently woke up in
the middle of the night thinking it was dawn because
the sky was lit up so brightly that far south. Yeah,
it shows just how massive and global the magnetic disturbance was.
It was a real wake up call about the Sun's power,
even though people back then couldn't really grasp what it
would mean for a future world totally dependent on electricity.
Speaker 1: It was another one too, Wasn't there something in nineteen
twenty one affecting reial roads.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Teteen twenty one New York Railroad incident, sometimes called the
Great geomagnetic Storm of May nineteen twenty one. It wasn't
as big as Carrington, but it still caused serious disruptions
to railroad telegraphs and signal systems, especially in the Northeastern
US train dispatchers reported major communication outages, signal failures. It
just showed again how vulnerable even simple electrical infrastructure was.
Speaker 1: Okay, but for something more reason that really hit our
modern grid. We should probably talk about the nineteen eighty
nine Quebec storm.
Speaker 3: Ah, Yes, the Quebec event March nineteen eighty nine, that one,
even though scientists estimated it was maybe three times smaller
than the Carrington event. Smaller, yeah, significantly smaller in intensity,
but it still caused massive disruption. A powerful geomagnetic storm
induced this huge surge that basically caused the entire hydro
Quebec electrical grid in Canada to collapse completely in just
ninety seconds. Ninety seconds ninety seconds. Six million people suddenly
lost power for nine hours on a cold Canadian night.
What happened was these high geomagnetically induced currents GICs they
flowed into the grid, overloaded the high vulcage transformers, tripped
all the circuit breakers, caused widespread damage. It even fried
a transformer way down south of New Jersey. It was
the stark, undeniable warning about how much we rely on
stable electricity now and just how fragile. Our interconnected power
grids really are when the sun gets angry.
Speaker 1: And that brings us right up to today. If a
Carrington level storm or maybe even something smaller hit us now,
with our global dependence on electricity, on the internet, on everything,
the impact would just be catastrophic.
Speaker 2: Absolutely catastrophic. There's no other word for it.
Speaker 3: Our role today is fundamentally different from eighteen fifty nine.
We live in this age of just unprecedented electrical and
technological dependence. The financial costs alone from a modern Carrington
event easily trillions of dollars globally. You'd have lost productivity,
the immense cost of replacing damaged equipment brillions, and that's
just the money. More critically, the risk to human life
would be immense. We depend on these systems for everything
clean water, food distribution, medical care, communication, heating, cooling, you
name it. A huge number of the systems people rely
on every single day, the things that underpin modern society,
they'd all be affected, potentially knocked offline.
Speaker 1: So how exactly does it happen? How do these solar
storms actually knock out our power grids? What's the mechanism?
Speaker 3: Okay, so it comes back to those GICs the geomagnetically
induced currents we mentioned. When a CME hits Earth's magnetic
field and disturbs it, it basically induces powerful electric currents
directly into long conductors on the Earth's surface. I think
power transmission lines, pipelines, even railway tracks. Right, these GICs
can surge through the electrical grantit over one hundred ampers. Now,
that might not sound huge compared to lightning, but think
about a massive high Holtage transformer. They're designed very precisely
to handle alternating current AC, but a GIC is more
like a fluctuating direct current DC. When you force this
large DC like current into a transformer designed for.
Speaker 1: AC, it can't handle it.
Speaker 3: It basically causes the transformer's magnetic core to saturate. It
just gets overwhelmed. The saturation generates successive heat really quickly.
It can lead to internal damage, insulation breakdown, melting windings,
basically the catastrophic failure of these absolutely critical grid components.
It's like trying to force way too much water through
a pipe not designed for it. The pressure just blows
the system apart. And because the grid is so interconnected,
the failure of a few key transformers can cascade, leading
to widespread, long lasting blackouts.
Speaker 1: And it's not just the power grid that's vulnerable. Our
global communication systems, the Internet, everything we rely on to
talk to each other and run things that.
Speaker 3: We go down to Almost certainly, yes, think about the
Internet backbone. It relies on this incredible network of submarine
fiber optic cables under the oceans and terrestrial cables crossing land,
all connecting these huge data centers that store everything. A
Carrington's scale storm could induce those GICs directly into these
incredibly long cables that could interfere with the optical signals
carrying the data, maybe even damage the electronic repeaters that
boost the signal along the way, and the data centers themselves.
Speaker 2: They use enormous.
Speaker 3: Amounts of electricity and are full of sensitive electronics. Widespread
power outages and voltage surges would hit them hard.
Speaker 1: So no emails, no texts, no cloud storage, no scientific data,
no AI.
Speaker 3: Pretty much everything could be affected. It could potentially disrupt
the entire global network, stopping servers from talking to each other.
It would effectively take humanity offline globally.
Speaker 1: What about other communication like radio?
Speaker 3: Do we still rely on that we do, especially for
certain things high frequency systems think ground to air communication
for planes, shortwave radio shipped to shotcoms that particularly vulnerable.
They rely on bouncing signals off the ionosphere, a layer
in our upper atmosphere. During a geomagnetic storm, the ionosphere
gets severely disturbed by all those incoming solar particles.
Speaker 2: It basically is up.
Speaker 3: The reflection signals can fade out, get totally garbled, or
just disappear completely. So long distance radio communication could be
cut off.
Speaker 1: And satellites we mentioned the Sou's Atlantic anomaly affecting them
a big strong would be much.
Speaker 2: Worse, much much worse.
Speaker 3: Satellites up there are incredibly exposed. The induced currents from
a storm could literally burn out their circuit boards. The
direct radiation hits could damage sensitive sensors. It could disrupt
their positioning, which is crucial for things like GPS. So yeah,
you'd expect widespread disruptions to satellite phone, satellite internet, radio, TV,
plus all the critical stuff like GPS's navigation, weather forecasting
from space, military communications. The impact would be profoundly disorienting
for pretty much everyone.
Speaker 1: It really sounds less like a possibility and more like
something that's bound to happen eventually. The sources we looked
at seem to suggest it's only a matter of time.
Speaker 2: That really is the scientific consensus.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, solar activity goes in cycles, but big flares and
CMEs are just a natural part of how the Sun behaves.
They're unpredictable in the short term, but statistically they will happen.
It really is only a matter of time before Earth
gets hit by another major geomagnetic storm. Scientists have actually
tried to estimate the probability.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Some studies suggest there's roughly a twelve percent chance of
a Carrington level event happening within any given decade.
Speaker 1: Twelve percent per decade. That's not insignificant, not at all.
Speaker 3: And if a storm like that hit us today, the
power outages could easily last weeks, maybe even months in
the hardest hit areas while they try to replace those massive,
custom built transformers. And then there are the even bigger possibilities,
these Miyaki events.
Speaker 1: Yaki events, what are those?
Speaker 3: These are even larger superflares, much bigger than Carrington. We
know about them mainly from studying ancient tree rings. They
leave a distinct radioactive signature like carbon fourteen spikes. There
are big ones around seven seventy four eighty and nine
ninety three eighty. If something on that scale hit us, now,
the word catastrophic barely covers it. We could be looking
at outages lasting many months, maybe even longer. The societal disruption,
the economic collapse, it's almost unthinkable.
Speaker 1: And the warning time. How much notice would we actually
get if one of these massive CMEs was hitting our way.
Speaker 3: That's probably the most critical and frankly concerning part. We
have organizations like Noa's Space Weather Prediction Center, and they
do a fantastic job monitoring the Sun two core seven.
They issue warnings, but the lead time for a severe
storm is incredibly short.
Speaker 1: How short days, weeks, minutes, two hours. If a really
fast moving CM erupts and it's aimed directly at Earth,
we'd likely only have somewhere between say, fifteen twenty minutes
up to maybe eighteen twenty hours notice before the main
wave of charged particles hits us. Usually it's on the
order of hours, but it can be very fast minutes
or just hours. That's barely any time to prepare anything
significant exactly.
Speaker 3: It's nowhere near enough time to say, physically protect the
entire grit. It presents this huge challenge for minus litigation
and preparedness. It really underscores why making our infrastructure inherently
more resilient is just so incredibly important.
Speaker 1: Okay, this feels like the natural point to pivot. We've
laid out the established science, the real risks of solar storms,
the magnetic field changes. Now we need to step into
some of the more extreme, honestly mind bending theories. We
need to get clear we approach these with critical thinking,
but for a deep dive, if we have to unpack
the full range of what people are discussing. Let's talk
about the Wi Files podcast. So their claims, they seem
to take these scientific realities and push them well somewhere
else entirely.
Speaker 3: Yes, the Wi Files definitely presents a narrative that goes
quite a bit beyond just technological disruption. They put forward
this idea that an approaching plasma event tied to the
weakening earth shield isn't just going to knock out our tech.
They actually claim it will transform reality in ways our
ancestors deeply feared transform reality. That's a big claim, It's
a very big claim. It implies a threat that's much
more profound, maybe even existential, than just power outages and
broken satellites.
Speaker 1: And they try to back this up right, right, They
mentioned things like military documents that supposedly hint at secret
government preparations for something unusual.
Speaker 2: They do.
Speaker 3: They specifically bring up Conplan eight eight eighty eight. That's
the infamous zombie apocalypse contingency plan from the US Strategic Command.
Now that document is real, it's publicly available. It was
genuinely used as a sort of imaginative training tool for
complex disaster.
Speaker 1: Response planning, right, using zombies as a stand in for
any kind of large scale catastrophe exactly.
Speaker 3: It was meant to be a creative way to think
through logistics, command structures, resource allocation without political sensitivities. But
the WI Files interprets its existence very differently. They suggest
it's proof that governments are secretly prepping for something far
stranger and more terrifying than just a grid collapse, implying
they know about a plasma apocalypse threat that involves more
than just physics.
Speaker 1: Okay, And then there's that story from the former marine
Jim Spark about an exercise called Broken Mirror that one
sounds particularly wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Spark's account, as presented in the podcast is pretty extraordinary.
He claims he was part of this classified military exercise
back in two thousand and nine called Broken Mirror. The
supposed scenario was a massive solar flare hitting Earth, triggering
electromagnetic anomalies all over the world.
Speaker 1: Okay, that part sounds plausible as an exercise scenario.
Speaker 3: Right, But here's the chilling part. According to Spark's claim,
he asserts that during this simulation, his unit was specifically
trained to contain biological entities of unknown origin. Biological entities
that's the claim, Biological entities of unknown origin that supposedly
appeared or manifested during the simulated solar flare event. The
podcast strongly implies these weren't just part of the simulation,
but represented a real potential consequence that the plasma itself
could somehow trigger the appearance of unknown life forms.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, biological entities appearing during a solar flare simulation.
That's a huge leap from blown transformers. How do they
even attempt to connect those dots well?
Speaker 3: The podcast tries to bridge that gap by focusing on
the weird, sometimes poorly understood properties of plasma itself. They
bring up a declassified CIA document from nineteen seventy six
titled Electromagnetic Effects on Human Tissue.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: They claim this.
Speaker 3: Document discusses some strange properties of plasma, including apparently reports
suggesting that under certain conditions, plasma can exhibit behavior that
seems almost intelligent and even get this, appear to respond
to consciousness.
Speaker 1: Plasma responding to consciousness.
Speaker 2: That's out there, it is.
Speaker 3: And the podcast makes a point of noting that three
pages of this particular CIA document are still classified, hinting
of course, that the really sensitive stuff about plasma's true
nature is being kept secret. It all serves to build
this picture of plasma not just as superheated gas, but
as something potentially much more active, maybe even aware.
Speaker 1: And it's not just American documents. They claim the Russians
were onto something similar decades ago, with specific entities.
Speaker 3: According to the WI Files, Yes, they talk about Russian
scientists supposedly starting back in the nineteen fifties studying phenomena
they called phazoids or sometimes plasma ghosts.
Speaker 1: Phizoids plasma ghosts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the belief, as the podcast presents it, was
that these entities are actually always present in our environment,
but they only become visible or maybe only interact with
our reality during periods of intense geomagnetic activity like big
solar storms, or maybe during a magnetic field shift. It
all ties back into this larger theory that energized plasma
hitting a planet with a weakened shield could manifest in
ways that really blow the lines between physics biology, maybe
even the paranormal.
Speaker 1: This all seems to be building towards what is I guess,
the most sensational and honestly pretty terrifying claim in their
whole plasma apocalypse scenario.
Speaker 2: This is really the climax of their narrative.
Speaker 3: Yes, they flat out assert that many governments, including our own,
secretly harbor this profound fear. And the fear is this,
if plasma during a time when Earth's shield is extremely weak,
actually makes it down to the surface, it will actively
look for organic vessels look fasals.
Speaker 1: What kind of vessels?
Speaker 3: Specifically, they claim the millions of human corpses all across
the world, because these bodies are quote capable of using electricity.
The implication is pretty clear that dead bodies could somehow
become conduits or maybe even hosts for this intelligent plasma.
Speaker 1: Wait, so let me just be absolutely crystal clear here.
The claim being made is that plasma coming from the
solar storm hitting a vulnerable Earth could reanimate dead bodies.
That's an absolute extraordinary thing to suggest.
Speaker 2: It is an extraordinary claim. Without doubt.
Speaker 3: It taps into some of the oldest, deepest fears of humanity,
doesn't it. And to try and give this, let's say,
some shred of credibility, the WI Files turns to ancient
history and archaeology. They claim that the ancient Egyptians seem
to have this advanced they be esoteric understanding of this
kind of energy and how it might interact with organic matter.
They cite what they describe as research from Chiro University,
though finding independent verification of this specific research is tricky.
Claiming that Egyptian mummies contain unusually high levels of conductive
metals things like copper, gold, and also specific types of
salts supposedly integrated right into the mummification process.
Speaker 1: Conductive metals in mummies.
Speaker 3: Why, The interpretation presented by the WI Files is that
these materials deliberately formed pathways through the bodies. They argue
this wasn't just symbolism, This was circuitry. The implication is
that it was a deliberate design, maybe to make the
mummified body susceptible to, or perhaps even receptive to, some
kind of external electrical or plasma charge.
Speaker 1: So the mummification wasn't just about preserving the body for
an afterlife journey or honoring pharaohs, but maybe preparing them
to be reawakened by cosmic plasma. That completely reframes everything
we think we know about Egyptian prince.
Speaker 2: That is precisely the implication drawn in their narrative. Yes,
and it leads to their ultimate.
Speaker 3: Dramatic conclusion that the deep hidden fear in governments isn't
just about the lights going out during the next big
solar storm. It's that the storm could turn on the dead,
unleashing this absolute nightmare scenario that's presented as the ultimate
suppressed truth behind all the concern about solar activity.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, that definitely sounds more like a horror movie
plot than geophysics. But they also try to connect this
apocalyptic vision to ancient wisdom, right saying our ancestors knew
about this and left warnings, warnings in stone that we're ignoring.
Speaker 3: Yes, the podcast weaves this kind of conspiratorial historical thread.
The idea is that our distant ancestors didn't just have myths.
They had terrifying legends based on direct experience of the
last magnetic flip, and they knew about the danger from
the sun. They supposedly understood it was a cycle, a
cosmic rhythm, and they left warnings for us carved in stone,
encoded in their massive structures, warnings that the podcast argues,
modern society is either deliberately ignoring or just failing to understand.
Speaker 1: And these warnings weren't just like stories or pictures. They're
saying the giant stone structures themselves all over the world
were part of this.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 3: The theory they present posits that these huge megalithic structures,
you know Stonehenge, the Pyramids in Egypt, lots of sites
in South America, they weren't primarily built for worship or
as tombs, or even just as calendars. Their main purpose,
according to this theory, was to function as highly sophisticated
energy channeling systems.
Speaker 1: Energy channeling systems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, designed specifically to manage or maybe mitigate or possibly
even harness the energies unleashed during these cosmic upheavals, especially
when the Earth's shield was weak during geomagnetic events.
Speaker 1: Okay, like the Nosca lines in Peru, those giant drawings
you can only see from the air, How do they
fit into that idea?
Speaker 3: Exactly like the Nosca lines, Those huge geoglyphs etched into
the desert floor. The why, referencing some fringe scientific theories
suggest they weren't just art or astronomy. They interpret them
as potential landing strips to attract plasma energy, designed to
channel it during geomagnetic storms.
Speaker 1: Landing strips for plasma, that's.
Speaker 3: The theory they present. They point out that the desert
floor in Osca actually has pretty good electrical conductivity, which,
in this speculative idea, would make it suitable for interacting
with maybe attracting or directing plasma energy coming down from
the atmosphere. The massive scale, the precision, the fact you
can only really see them from way up high, it
all kind of lends itself to these more well fantastical interpretations.
Speaker 1: And other big sites too, Stonehinge, the Pyramids, those South
American places. They're saying they all share specific electrical properties
like they form some kind of ancient global network.
Speaker 2: That's the core of this particular hypothesis.
Speaker 3: Yes, the claim is that these giant stone structures Stonehenge,
the Great Pyramids, sites like Puma Punku or Machupicchu in
South America share key electrical properties that supposedly made them
ideal for this energy channeling. Many of them are apparently
built directly on limestone bedrock, which is known to conduct electricity,
and furthermore, a lot of these sites incorporate large amounts
of quarts. Quartz has piezoelectric properties, right, meaning it generates
an electrical charge when we put.
Speaker 2: It under pressure.
Speaker 3: So the theory puts all this together, that conductive bedrock,
the piezoelectric quarts, the specific global placement often aligned with
supposed energy lines or telluric currents of the Earth, and
suggests it formed this vast network, a network design, not
just a channel, but maybe even to manipulate or control
these cosmic energies during times of magnetic instability or plasma storms.
Speaker 1: Okay, right, we have definitely presented some truly out there
claims now explored them as they're presented in that source.
It is absolutely essential we pivot back hard now ground
ourselves in some critical thinking. We have to differentiate the
documented facts from the wild fiction. What does that debunk
this perspective, for example, say about these ex stream theories
like the plasma ghosts and reanimated corpses.
Speaker 3: This is where scientific skepticism and the demand for actual
evidence become absolutely paramount. That Reddit thread we mentioned, the
one specifically reviewing the plasma apocalypse video, offers a really sharp,
unfrankly necessary critique. Overwhelmingly the users there dismiss ideas like
a purple vortex opening up from space or plasma reanimating
the dead, as well as pure fantasy.
Speaker 2: One called it.
Speaker 3: A bad sci fi writer's wet dream filled with scientific buzzwords.
Speaker 1: Okay, so pretty blunt, then very blunt.
Speaker 3: The consensus among those critical voices is that while the
video might sprinkle in some legitimate scientific terms plasma, magnetic
field CMEs, it twists them completely out of context. It
stretches their meaning to support these entirely unsubstantiated, purely sensationalist narratives.
Speaker 1: So the basic argument is, if someone makes a really
extraordinary claim but provides zero sensible, verifiable evidence, you just
shouldn't accept it.
Speaker 3: That's precisely the core of the debunk this argument, and honestly,
it's a fundamental principle of science itself. If a source
fails to provide any sensible, repeatable, independently verifiable evidence for
something as outlandish as biological entities appearing during a solar
flare or plasma turning corpses into zombies, well there's simply
no rational basis to accept it as true. In those cases,
the claim effectively debunks itself through its sheer lack of
credible support. And just to hammer the point home again,
that same discussion explicitly reinforces the mainstream scientific.
Speaker 2: View on pull shifts.
Speaker 3: Yes, pole shift is a proven theory, we see it
in the rocks, but it typically takes centuries more likely
millennia to fully happen, which directly contradicts that alarming one
hundred years claim.
Speaker 2: For a full reversal.
Speaker 3: It just underscores the scientific communities much more measured, nuanced
understanding of these incredibly slow, deep geological processes. They stress
that a rapid, catastrophic flip like the one described in
some theories is just extremely unlikely in our lifetimes.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that. That dose of scientific sobriety is
definitely needed here because while the plasma apocalypse with zombies
and purple vortexes might be sensational fiction, the actual tangible
dangers of space radiation and solar events are absolutely real
and they have serious documented effects on human health, both
for astronauts in space and theoretically for us down here
if Earth's shield were ever severely compromised.
Speaker 3: Indeed, astronauts, especially on missions beyond the protection of Earth's
main magnetic field, face significant well documented health risks from
ionizing radiation. It's something NASA and other space agency study
and try to mitigate constantly.
Speaker 2: There are three main sources they worry about.
Speaker 1: Okay, what are they?
Speaker 3: First, and maybe the trickiest one to deal with is
galactic cosmic radiation GCR. These are incredibly high energy particles,
mostly protons, helium nuclei, and the nuclei of heavier elements
like island. They come from way outside our Solar system,
from supernovae other big galactic.
Speaker 1: Events, so cosmic rays from deep space.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and they pose an enormous threat mainly because they
have very high linear energy transfer or LED That means
they dump a lot of energy into a very small
area as they zip through biological tissue, causing these dense
tracks of ionization damage. Plus they're incredibly penetrating. They can
go straight through several centimeters of typical spacecraft shielding like aluminum.
It's estimated that, on average, a hydrogen ion from GCR
will pass through every single cell nucleus in an astronaut's
body about once a day.
Speaker 1: Every cell every day. Yeah, it's an incredible amount of
constant bombardment.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: And while those hydrogen ions are the most common, it's
the heavier ones, the hvae nuclei, things like iron or
silicon nuclei stripped a bear, that are less frequent but
much more damaging. An astronaut might only get hit by
one of those every few months, but each hit is
particularly destructive. They can cause really complex DNA damage that
cells find very hard to repair properly.
Speaker 1: Okay, so GCR from deep space, what's the second source?
Speaker 3: The second source is solar particle events or SPEs. These
are the sudden, intense bursts of energetic particles, mostly protons,
but also some heavy ions that come directly from the
Sun during big solar flares.
Speaker 2: Of those CMEs we.
Speaker 1: Talked about right. The solar storms.
Speaker 3: Exactly their intensity and how often they happen very a
lot with the Sun's eleven year activity cycle. These are
the particles that cause those geomagnetic storms on Earth, and
they pose a more acute short term radiation threat to
astronauts because they can deliver a very high dose very
quickly if astronauts aren't properly shielded.
Speaker 1: Okay, gr SPEs, and you said there were three, what's
the third.
Speaker 2: The third one is kind of counterintuitive.
Speaker 3: It's intravehicular radiation, sometimes called secondary radiation. This isn't radiation
coming directly from outside. It's actually generated inside the spacecraft itself.
Inside it happens when those high energy GCR and SPE
particles smash into the atoms of the spacecraft's shielding material.
These collisions cause nuclear fragmentation. They break apart the incoming
particles and the atoms of the shield, creating a shower
of secondary particles, things like beta particles, X rays, gamma rays, neutrons,
more protons, alpha particles, other heavy charged particles.
Speaker 2: So even behind the.
Speaker 3: Shield, astronauts are still being exposed to this complex mix
of secondary radiation generated by the primary radiation interacting with
their habitat.
Speaker 2: It's a continuous, multi layered challenge.
Speaker 1: Wow. So, thinking hypothetically again, if Earth's shield weakened dramatically
and we on the surface started getting exposed to similar
levels of this stuff, what would the long term health
effects look like for us? What do we know from
steady astronauts?
Speaker 3: Well, the long term health effects from chronic exposure, based
on astronaut data and ground based research, are definitely concerning.
The biggest worry is a significantly increased lifetime risk of
developing various types of cancer. We also see a higher
risk of cataracts forming in the eyes. More broadly, radiation
exposure can lead to genetic alterations and cells, It can
delay and impair the body's ability to heal wounds, and
it's linked to a range of degenerative tissue disorders, especially
cardiovascua disease. There's even evidence suggesting it can accelerate the
overall aging process at a cellular level, potentially reducing lifespan.
Speaker 1: What about our brains, our ability to think? Clearly? That
seems pretty central to everything. Would radiation affect that absolutely?
Speaker 3: Radiation poses a very real threat to the central nervous system,
The CNS studies, particularly those done at places like NASAs
Space Radiation Laboratory using particle accelerators to simulate GCR, have
clearly shown cognitive health risks, especially for missions beyond low
Earth orbit where the natural shielding is much less.
Speaker 1: What kind of cognitive effects.
Speaker 3: Even relatively low doses of GCR like radiation seem to
interfere with complex cognitive functions things like learning new information,
forming memories, making decisions under pressure. They can all be
negatively impacted. In more severe cases, high doses can actually
kill nerve cells neurons. This means in astronauts executive functions,
their ability to plan ahead, solve problems, manage multiple tasks,
stay focused could potentially deteriorate over the course of a
long mission. That's obviously a huge risk for mission success,
let alone their long term health. Makes you think twice
about complaining about bad Wi fi. Doesn't it imagine your
brain's signals getting scrambled by cosmic rays?
Speaker 1: Yeah, really puts things in perspective. And our immune systems.
We rely on those so much, especially in new or stressful.
Speaker 3: Environments, another major concern. There's well documented evidence showing a
decline in immune system performance in astronauts. This leads to
an increased susceptibility to infections, including opportunistic ones caused by
microbes that are normally harmless but take advantage of a
weakened defense system, even microbes living inside their own.
Speaker 1: Spacecraft so easier to get sick.
Speaker 3: Yes, and beyond that, chronic radiation exposure has also been
linked to an increase in immune system over activity disorders,
things like allergies, asthma, ezema, possibly even autoimmune conditions where
the body attacks itself. Basically, radiation seems to throw the
immune system out of balance, weakening its ability to fight
infection while potentially making it over react in other ways.
Speaker 1: And in a really bad acute situation like getting caught
in a massive solar particle event without enough shielding.
Speaker 3: Right, if the dose from a big spe is high enough,
it can cause acute radiation sickness. The symptoms can range
from severe fatigue, nausea, vomiting and wretching all the way
up to serious organ damage and in extreme cases it
could be fatal.
Speaker 1: This also connects to things we know happen to astronauts
just from being in microgravity. Right Like there are mune
systems weaken wounds don't heal as well. That's not just radiation,
it's the whole space or environment.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right to link those. Microgravity itself, separate from radiation,
is known to weaken the immune system. It also significantly
slows down wound healing, partly because things like collagen production
and cellular repair mechanisms don't work quite the same way
without gravity.
Speaker 2: So when you combine the effects of microgravity.
Speaker 3: With the constant stress of radiation exposure, the overall health
risks definitely compound. It really drives home just how uniquely
adapted our biology is to specific conditions here on Earth,
including our gravity and our protective magnetic field change. Those
fundamental conditions and our bodies are put under enormous strain.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, given these incredibly serious, very real dangers for astronauts,
what are we actually doing about it? What kind of
mitigation strategies are being developed to protect people heading into
deep space? And maybe thinking, hypothetically, are there lessons here
for Earth if our shield continues this concerning trend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a huge amount of scientific and engineering brain power
is focused on exactly this. When it comes to radiation
protection technologies, there are several main approaches being worked on.
Speaker 2: The most straightforward is passive shielding.
Speaker 1: Passive shielding like just putting stuff in the way.
Speaker 3: Essentially, yes, using materials, dense materials placed between the radiation
source and the astronauts. Things like aluminum have traditionally been
used for spacecraft structures. Water is actually a pretty good shield,
especially against certain types of radiation. Polyethylene, a type of
plastic rich in hydrogen, is also very effective, particularly against GCR.
Speaker 2: Okay, and looking ahead for missions.
Speaker 3: To Mars, people are seriously considering using the Martian soil itself,
the regolith as building material. You could pilot up over
habitats or even build underground using the planet itself as
a massive shield. But passive shielding has its limits. It's heavy,
which is a big problem for launching things into space,
and it's not perfectly effective against those really high energy
GCR particles that ah, the ions we talked about, They
can still punch through quite a bit of material.
Speaker 1: Right, the heavy stuff. So if just putting material in
the way isn't enough, what about more active approaches.
Speaker 2: Like force fields exactly, that's active shielding.
Speaker 3: It's definitely the more cutting edge, maybe sci fi sounding,
but very actively researched area. The idea is to use
powerful fields to actually deflect the charged particles away.
Speaker 2: From the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: How would that work?
Speaker 3: There are a few concepts. Electrostatic shielding would use highly
charged plates to create an electric field that repels incoming
charged particles. Superconducting magnetic shielding would use incredibly powerful magnets
much stronger than Earth's field locally to bend the trajectories
of the particles, steering them away. There's even theoretical work
on plasma radiation shielding, using a confined cloud of superheated
plasma around the ship to act as a kind of
deflector shield.
Speaker 1: Wow, are these actually feasible?
Speaker 3: They're still largely in the research and development phase. They
face huge challenges in terms of complexity, the massive power
required to generate these fields continuously, and the sheer mass
of the systems themselves, but they hold enormous promise, especially
for enabling those long duration missions to Mars and beyond.
People are also looking at hybrid methods, combining passive and
active shielding for the best effect, and another sophisticated idea
is called nuclear fragmentation.
Speaker 1: Nuclear fragmentation, Yeah, the.
Speaker 3: Goal here isn't just to block the radiation, but to
actively change it. You try to design the shielding so
that when the most dangerous, high energy heavy ions hit it,
they break apart. They fragment into lower charge, less damaging particles.
But you have to be really careful doing this to
make sure the fragmentation process doesn't accidentally create a worse
shower of secondary particles inside the ship. It's a complex
balancing act.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the hardware, the engineering shields. What about biology?
Are there ways to make the astronauts themselves more resistant
or help them repair damage after they've been exposed.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: This is a huge area of biomedical research right now.
Scientists are working hard on developing biological and pharmaceutical countermeasures.
These fall into a couple of categories. There are radio protectors.
These are drugs or compounds you'd take before a potential
high exposure period proactively to try and minimize the damage
radiation causes at the cellular level.
Speaker 2: Then there are radio mitigators.
Speaker 3: These are treatments you'd administer after an exposure has already
happened reactively to help the body repair the damage or
reduce the severity of the long term consequences.
Speaker 1: Are there more futuristic ideas being explored?
Speaker 2: Oh, definitely.
Speaker 3: Gene therapy is a really fascinating they're still highly speculative area.
For example, scientists are looking at proteins found in extremotolerant
organisms like Tartar grades. You know those microscopic.
Speaker 1: Water barkings, the ones that can survive anything exactly.
Speaker 3: They can survive incredible extremes, including the vacuum and radiation
of space. So researchers are studying the proteins that protect
their DNA, wondering if we could potentially use gene therapy
to give human cells some of that enhanced radio resistance.
Speaker 1: Wow, Tartar grade genes in humans.
Speaker 3: Well maybe not the genes themselves, but harnessing the protective mechanisms.
And another really revolutionary idea, but one being actively researched,
is inducing therapeutic hibernation or torporin astronauts for the long
transit phases like the Journey.
Speaker 1: To Mars Hibernation like in the movie.
Speaker 3: Pretty much the idea is to significantly lower their metabolic rate,
put them in a state of suspended animation. This would
theoretically reduce their cellular activity, making their cells less vulnerable
to radiation damage and just generally reduce their resource consumption
during the trip. It sounds like pure sci fi, but
labs are genuinely working on making it feasible. It's less
about cutting edge science now and more about engineering the
systems to support it safely.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely incredible. What about just the day to
day monitoring keeping track of astronaut healths during these hazardous missions.
Speaker 3: Oh, the monitoring is incredibly rigorous and comprehensive. Astronauts go
through intense medical exams throughout their entire careers, annual checkups,
really thorough pre flight assessments to make sure they're in
peak physical and mental condition, and then extensive post flight
medical testing. What kind of tests everything you can imagine,
detailed blood work, looking at biochemical markers, assessing their musculoskeletal
health after time, and microgravity checking their cardiopulmonary function. And
it doesn't just stop when they get back. There are
long term health follow up programs designed specifically to watch
for any occupation related injuries or diseases like those radiation
induced cancers that might only show up years or even
decades after the missions.
Speaker 1: And can they actually measure the radiation damage inside the
astronaut's body like get a personalized.
Speaker 3: Reading, Yes, they can through a sophisticated technique called biodos symmetry.
This typically involves taking biological samples off in lymphocyte samples,
which are a type of white blood cell, from the
astronauts both before and after their flight. By looking for
specific changes in these cells like chromosomal aberrations or other
biomarkers of radiation damage, scientists can get a direct in
vivo estimate of the cumulative biological dose the astronaut actually received.
It's highly personalized because it reflects not just the external
radiation field, but how that individual's body responded, considering their
unique radio sensitivity, the exact shielding they had, other mission stresses.
It allows for a much more targeted medical follow up
and helps refine and risk assessments for future missions.
Speaker 1: And they're also monitoring the environment inside the ship constantly.
Speaker 3: Absolutely continuous monitoring of the spacecraft's environment is crucial things
like air quality, water purity, checking for any build up
of potentially toxic chemicals. It's all part of ensuring a
healthy living and working space, minimizing any additional stressors on
top of the radiation and microgravity and there.
Speaker 1: Must be strict limits on how much radiation they're allowed
to be exposed to over their career.
Speaker 3: Definitely, International bodies like the International Commission for Radiological Protection
ICRP set guidelines for occupational radiation exposure. For workers on Earth,
the limit is usually around twenty milliseivers or mSv per
year averaged over five years, but astronauts, especially beyond low
Earth orbit, face way.
Speaker 2: Higher doses than that.
Speaker 3: How much higher well on the International Space Station, which
still gets significant protection from Earth's magnetic field, the average
dose might be somewhere between point five to one millisv
per day trip to Mars. Estimates are maybe around one
point eight four mulas fee per day during the transit
feesas so, those standard Earth based limits just.
Speaker 2: Don't apply directly.
Speaker 1: So what they do.
Speaker 3: Astronaut doses are monitored constantly in real time using docimiters
worn by the astronauts and placed around the spacecraft. Mission
planners work very hard to keep exposures as low as
reasonably achievable. That's the Elerara principle. They'll adjust mission plans,
maybe rotate crew assignments, even limit career flight time, all
to manage each individual astronaut's cumulative lifetime radiation exposure and
stay within agency specific limits, which are generally higher than
terrestrial occupational limits, but still aim to keep long term
health risks acceptable.
Speaker 1: Okay, wow, we have really covered a massive amount of
ground today. We've gone on quite a journey, haven't we,
Spanning from like the deep physics inside the Earth way
out to cosmic radiation from distant stars, and even gipped
into some seriously speculative, almost paranormal sounding theories.
Speaker 2: We really have.
Speaker 1: We started with the very real stuff, right, the scientifically
documented threats from our weakening magnetic field, the power of
solar storms. We looked at how these things could genuinely
cripple our global infrastructure, plunge us into this silent, disconnected world,
and this serious health impacts both for astronauts out there
and you know, hypothetically for us down here if that
shield wasn't doing its job.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, we definitely ventured into the more speculative
side of things, those theories presented in sources like the
WI files, the plasma ghosts, the really extraordinary claim about
the Dead rising powered by plasma, the whole idea of
Egyptian mummies being wired like circuits.
Speaker 1: Right, and the idea of ancient stone structures all over
the world being these sophisticated energy channeling systems built as
warnings by our ancestors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we covered that whole range.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems pretty clear stepping back now. While
some of the really sensational stuff, you know, the Purple vortex,
is the solar power zombies, that stuff clearly lacks scientific evidence.
It gets rightly dismissed as fantasy by the wider s
scientific community. But the core concerns, the worries about Earth's
magnetic field changing, the very real dangers of solar storms
hitting our fragile infrastructure. That stuff is grounded in solid, ongoing.
Speaker 3: Research, absolutely, and that research isn't just academic. It's driving
serious efforts to protect astronauts for sure, but increasingly it's
becoming really critical for thinking about how we safeguard our
civilization right here on Earth.
Speaker 2: It's this fascinating mix, isn't it.
Speaker 3: You've got what some people interpret as these ancient warnings
or deep seated myths bumping right up against the most
cutting edge space, whether science and geophysics being done today.
Speaker 1: It really is the warnings, whether people think they're metaphorically
etched in stone by ancient peoples or literally beamed down
from satellites by our own instruments, they seem to be
calling for our attention.
Speaker 3: Either way, Understanding these cosmic forces it's not just an
intellectual exercise. It's about grasping the fundamental dynamics that shape
our planet's environment, our technological vulnerability, and really are in
the universe.
Speaker 1: So as our planet's invisible shield keeps doing it subtle
but really profound dance with the Sun, and as we
become evermore tangled up in these delicate technologies, it does
raise a pretty big question for all of us, doesn't it.
What responsibility do we have, as this supposedly advanced species
to really get our heads around these cosmic forces, not
just for the incredibly brave people who will eventually travel
far beyond Earth, but for the future the resilience of
our super interconnected world right here. Are we truly paying
attention to the warnings, both the ancient ones that some
believer are literally written into the landscape and the modern
ones being pain seekingly gathered by science from deep space.
It's definitely something to think about as we continue navigating
our wealth our precarious but pretty amazing existence in the cosmos,