Super Solar Storms with Lika Guhathakurta

What does it look like beneath the surface of the sun? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice discuss the heliosphere, the Parker Solar Probe, and solar storms with heliophysicist Lika Guhathakurta.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the sun is still at it.

• 0:01Chuck Nice?

  But what's it really up to, Neil?

• 0:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lika Ghurthakuta knows.

• 0:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up on StarTalk.

• 0:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astro physicist. Got Chuck Nice with me. Hey, baby.

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  That's right, your personal ass.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pro physicist.

• 0:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deal with you later on that one.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, we have a returning guest.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes, someone we very much like.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the all time favorites.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes, a StarTalk favorite.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we have Lika Ghurthakuta.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I even think I pronounced it.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  You did it, right. You did it.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lika, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Thank you, and it's great to be here and great to have Chuck in the show. What can I say?

• 1:07Chuck Nice?

  Well, thank you, Lika.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're one of the world's experts on the sun. And those who are consuming this via video, you may notice that her hair is as bright as the sun.

• 1:17Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 1:19Chuck Nice?

  Sun kissed, as they might say.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Perhaps.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Don't go there. Don't go there.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're an astrophysicist and the technical name for your subspecialty, I guess, would be heliophysicist. Do we, we got that right?

• 1:36Speaker 02

  You got that right.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Brand new word about 20 years old.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  I did not know that.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did not know that either.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Brand new discipline, word, perhaps people have used it, but it's a brand new discipline.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A thing unto itself. There you go. Except you were interested in the sun long before that. So what attracted you? Just up because we like a little bit of bio on people every now and then. And someone with such intense interest in such an omnipresent object. You can ask, why, why isn't everybody interested in it? Or how come more people aren't? So what got you into it?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  You know, it's, it's not a traditional approach, right?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  So I'll, I'll give the most honest answer I can give, which is I came to the sun almost by accident. I was trained as an astrophysicist, interested in stars in general. And you know what that is all about, Neil? Then I realized that we spend studying stars that are light years away. And, you know, we have one star which sits only eight light minutes from us and allows us to examine it in exquisite detail. So the sun became the most exciting laboratory I could imagine.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  We can see the surface change, listen to its interior, fly through its atmosphere of late and watch its influence literally move all the way to Earth and the edge of the solar system, which is our Milky Way galaxy.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so right now, do you live in the sun? Is this your?

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you just come out for interviews?

• 3:33Speaker 02

  We do live in the atmosphere of a living, breathing star. What can I say?

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, good. I didn't know she did that. See what she did there.

• 3:42Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was good. So now I remember coming through graduate school, there was a subfield of heliophysics called heliosismology. And they were, you know, borrowing the word from Earth, you know, seismology and Earth.

• 3:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, as you watch earthquake waves move through the earth and they refract and, and bend. And you can infer what the middle of the earth is like.

• 4:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the delayed signals from different points on our surface. And so that made sense to me because earth is like solid. The sun is not solid. So when I heard them talk about this, I was like, yeah, okay, let's see what you got. But I, it's a real subfield. Could you tell me how that works? And is what's going on in the middle of the sun settled science at this point?

• 4:30Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  That, that's, well, you have to give me some time. Lot of, lot of questions kind of coupled together. Heliosismology is very much a well-established subgroup of heliophysics, solar physics. It's exactly how you describe. Now, sun is not solid. I think we all know that. But there are vibrations, sound vibrations taking place in the interior of the sun. And that's what we, so we image the vibrations. And then infer essentially the interior properties of the sun, like the convection zone.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't see inside the sun. Everything has to be inferred.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  That's inside the sun, everything.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is, are all scientists who study this inferring the same thing? So that there's general agreement about what the middle of the sun is up to?

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  Or is it like dentist where you have four out of five dentist surveyed says that you should brush your teeth? I don't know who that fifth dentist is.

• 5:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ain't got no teeth.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Let me say that we do our best. We are doing ultrasound on the sun, okay? It's not a dental office. That's what we are doing. So seismology is like really ultrasound. And the more observations you have, more continuous observations. That's why Solar Dynamics Observatory was created. You know, we needed 99.9% of the data continuously because any data gap can lead to erroneous results.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So SDO, the Solar Dynamics Observatory. We, many of the images we've seen of the sun's surface in high detail are credited to that observatory. It, I assume that's in space somewhere, correct?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  It is in space somewhere. It's actually near our space because the volume of data is so high. We have our own dedicated ground station in New Mexico. So we couldn't send it to like L1. But we are watching the sun nearly 24/7. There are eclipse periods because of its orbit being close to Earth. But yes, there were a lot of thought.

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if it was much, much closer to Earth, it would have daytime and nighttime. And, but you want, you want near 24/7 observations. Obviously, the farther away from you, Earth, the less Earth is going to get in the way.

• 7:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 7:04Chuck Nice?

  Or anything else.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it turns out in this episode, we were mining the questions that had accumulated in our cosmic queries search. And some of them are sun related and we exhumed them for just your arrival here. And then we'll get on with my conversation with you. So Chuck, you got questions for?

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  I got, we just got a few that are specifically for Lika.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are from our Patreon.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  From our Patreon patrons. And by the way, whenever we get the opportunity to say thank you to the Patreon patrons, we definitely offer our heartfelt gratitude because, you know, you give us the money, the money.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't be so crass. You say you give us support.

• 7:46Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, you freely give of yourself to support us.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  You give us your ideas.

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  That's what they're doing.

• 7:56Chuck Nice?

  That's what they're doing. That's true. They do because they offer their, their questions.

• 8:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And perspectives.

• 8:01Chuck Nice?

  And perspectives and, you know, so, um, okay, this is Lothar Erkins. I love the name Lothar. That's so cool. That's like a caveman name.

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, of course.

• 8:12Chuck Nice?

  Lothar.

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lothar.

• 8:13Chuck Nice?

  Hello, Dr. T, Lord Nice and Lika. Lothar from Edwardsville, Illinois. Has anybody ever crunched the numbers on how much mass our sun has lost since igniting the fusion process and recorded the results? Just curious. That's weird. Now, but the real question is, because the sun is radiating.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 8:41Chuck Nice?

  Is it indeed losing mass as it's radiating?

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the whole.

• 8:46Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's, that's the shebang right there.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So the real question for Lika is, is this something you guys care about? Cause you can calculate this.

• 8:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very simply, actually.

• 8:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know how much energy is coming off the sun every second.

• 8:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, convert that into mass.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  Mass.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's making that energy by equals mc squared.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now you, that's how much mass is losing per second. Now you ask, how many seconds has the sun been alive?

• 9:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a little brighter in the past, but, and then you get a total mass. So Lika, is this something that matters to the heliophysicist? The rate at which the sun is losing mass? Cause I think the rate is pretty slow.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Well, it, it's not so much the rate.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  But the fact that it is losing mass, how much mass, in what ways?

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In what ways, yes.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  So the, the sun has two main leaks. You already mentioned one. Fusion of, it converts 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium. Of that, 4 million metric tons of mass is converted into energy. That's, um, every second, you know, it is the E equal to mc squared that you mentioned.

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  That's what's going on.

• 9:59Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  But there is another one that people might not know about. Uh, and that is that solar wind carries away roughly another one to two million tons of matter each second.

• 10:16Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Okay, so altogether, the sun at this present time is losing roughly between five and six million metric tons, basically, right?

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  Per second.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  And that sounds alarming until you actually remember the size of the sun, its mass, and over its lifetime, you know, people have calculated because all these scientists are basically known. So you can imagine someone calculated this somewhere. And it's not a difficult calculation. So over its lifetime, the total is only sort of an order of 0.03% of the total mass of the sun. So the sun maintains its weight very well.

• 11:02Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, yeah, unlike me. The sun knows.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're accreting mass while the sun is.

• 11:08Chuck Nice?

  I am accreting mass while the sun is maintaining its mass.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so if the sun has strong gravity, as we all know and love it, that's what keeps us in orbit.

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How is it losing particles? Why don't the particles just stay with the sun? What accelerates them and sends them out?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  You are jumping to all kinds of subtle science questions which I haven't even gone to.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  So you are absolutely right. I mean, everything, you know, on the sun at or things are governed by basically gravity, pressure, magnetic field. Close to the sun that we call the corona, that the particles are dominated by gravity and magnetic field. And then we get to a point where the temperature in the corona rises so much, pressure increases, and particles become what we call the solar wind. And that region is called the Alphanic surface

• 12:14Speaker 02

  or Alphen critical point, where the particles are no longer tethered to the sun by gravity.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  Hey, this is Kevin the Sommelier, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. You're listening to StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 12:45Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Corey, uh, Haas, who says, hey, simple question, does the sun make noise if space allowed for sound to travel?

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, well, you already mentioned that we do some ultrasound measurements. So if sound can move through it, I think this question is, anything we can listen in on, is there some, or if there was some way for sound to cross the vacuum of space, what would the sun sound like?

• 13:19Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a deep, deep question, Neil. I find all sun questions to be deep. By the way, I love these questions. They seem ordinary on the face of it, but really you have to think about it, right? So the answer is the sun is not quiet. I mean, imagine as if I've said something. It rings like an enormous musical instrument, okay? With millions of overlapping pressure waves that I talked about that creates the field of heliosismology and a, and a strong family of these sort of

• 13:58Speaker 02

  oscillations around five minutes. And five minute oscillation is kind of has been known for a while when we started actually, uh, measuring these, um, surface waves. Now, Neil, you already said, right, we cannot hear that sound directly because the vacuum between the sun and earth does not carry ordinary acoustic waves. And I would say, thank God for that. Space is nature's sort of finest, um, soundproofing cancelling device outside of the Bose acoustics, right?

• 14:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I wish my bedroom was space.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  We still listen by, as I mentioned, by measuring, um, the tiny motions and we do it with, uh, ultrasound. So if, if, and this is, this is like, you know, I can't be certain about it, but if we could answer your question, Neil, somehow get those sound to propagate in our environment, it is thought that that would sound like a loud roaring lawnmower.

• 15:09Chuck Nice?

  Lawnmower?

• 15:10Speaker 02

  And, yes.

• 15:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Only on weekends. Don't do that during the weekday.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  Or at least it's not a leaf blower.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  It would be constant, okay? It's not going to stop. That's the other thing, right? So be grateful, Chuck, that, uh, space is a vacuum. Otherwise, we'd be living with that.

• 15:31Chuck Nice?

  Now, see, I would have thought it would have sounded like a, a frying egg.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, quick, quick.

• 15:37Chuck Nice?

  Like that, that makes more sense, but a lawnmower, that's crazy.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  So some of the big waves will do that. Either little ones could be crackling like an egg, you know?

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a couple of things. I just want to reemphasize the concept of a pressure wave.

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was about to.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when I speak, it creates a pulse of energy in the air that is a pulse that moves forward and backwards.

• 16:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it's that forward and backwards pulse that hits your eardrum.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  That causes it to vibrate to your eardrum.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and that's how you move sound.

• 16:06Chuck Nice?

  So now normally, when you think of a pressure wave, not just from, well, speaking, what you, when you hear pressure wave, often that is associated with an explosion, okay?

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:16Chuck Nice?

  So, like, there's an explosion and emanating from the explosion is the pressure wave, which is what does all the damage, right?

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly what does all the damage.

• 16:26Chuck Nice?

  And so.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an extreme pressure wave.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  An extreme pressure wave. So the sun.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why if it's sound is too loud, it'll blow out your eardrum.

• 16:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The pressure wave is too high.

• 16:34Chuck Nice?

  Right on.

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 16:35Chuck Nice?

  So, but here's what I want to know. Is the sun with these pressure waves, is that the result of like explosions on the sun?

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so.

• 16:43Chuck Nice?

  Like, what is, what is the cause of these pressure waves?

• 16:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You analogize it to a musical instrument. Who's playing? Where's the orchestra?

• 16:49Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Well, in the, I mean, the deep seated orchestra is always at the core, but I'm not going there. It's the conviction zone where there is like a pot of boiling plasma.

• 17:01Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Okay, that creates the magnetic field and everything outward that we experience.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these five minute oscillations that you described, that means something in the sun is repeating every five minutes.

• 17:15Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it one of these sort of convective cells or something else?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yes, if, if, if you pattern, if you actually measured this, right? I said there are many resonant.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, overlapping.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  So you see, see this.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 17:29Chuck Nice?

  That is wild.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and, and let me ask you this. One of the images I saw from the SDO, uh, it was so close up, it, and you could see like the surface of the sun as though it was a gurgling, boiling, it was like, like a cauldron or something.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this, uh, it was, it's almost mesmerizing. You're just, you're just watching it boil.

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, if you were on the sun, you might hear, but you would vaporize first.

• 18:03Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  You're gonna fall down. There is no surface.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 18:07Chuck Nice?

  You'll just fall into the.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  It's got strong gravity. I mean, so many ways to think about this, right? Strange things will happen.

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, interesting. That is interesting.

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I think we have one more question before we resume the episode as intended. What do you have?

• 18:22Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This one is from Monopoly World.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's their handle?

• 18:26Chuck Nice?

  That's the handle that's given.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 18:28Chuck Nice?

  And Monopoly World says this, please tell me everything about the heliosphere.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, do you have five hours?

• 18:38Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Well, I thought nobody would ever ask that question on my show.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's about time.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Ah, seriously.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  I love this question, actually. And yeah, five hours would be an adequate amount of time. Neel, you want to introduce the subject and I'll follow?

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me stoke the engine and then she can drive the train where it needs to go.

• 19:03Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so crank it up.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Allow me to remind people that the Greek word for the sun is helios.

• 19:09Chuck Nice?

  Helios.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and it's where we get the name for the second element on the periodic table.

• 19:14Chuck Nice?

  Helium.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Discovered on the sun before it was discovered on Earth.

• 19:18Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it was of the sun, helios.

• 19:21Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. And so heliosphere, you can ask, there's the sun, but how about everything outside the sun? Does the sun have any influence there? And if it does, let's still connect it back to the sun. So, Leeka, correct me if I'm wrong, everything that the sun touches, I feel like Lion King. Wherever the sun touches is your kingdom?

• 19:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wherever the sun influences particles and magnetic fields beyond itself is the heliosphere.

• 19:52Chuck Nice?

  Is the hel-

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that's right. Is that correct?

• 19:55Speaker 02

  It is correct.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  It is correct.

• 19:58Chuck Nice?

  That's our entire solar system, isn't it?

• 20:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let's find out.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  And the boundary too.

• 20:03Chuck Nice?

  And a boundary as well.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very interesting. Remind me to give this analogy, but, you know, simply put, we all know that, I think we all know, that Earth has a magnetic cocoon or a bubble. And think of it, either way, we can't see it, touch it, but we feel it magnetically. And it's called the magnetosphere. Well, the sun creates a much larger cocoon or bubble with the solar wind. Solar wind doesn't stop anywhere. It continues to propagate, right?

• 20:42Speaker 02

  And it's a bubble that surrounds all the planets and presses against the local interstellar medium. This is like the boundary with our own Milky Way galaxy. That is the heliosphere. And I'd like to say that we have actually punched through the heliosphere. That is, I mean, NASA spacecraft launch in the 70s have done that, right?

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in the comedy worlds, they say you were punching up.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  We are punching out.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Out, out.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Punching out.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. So they are in the interstellar medium. And, you know, this boundary, just like we learned that the Alphen surface boundary, we learned with Parker Solar Probe, that it's, we used to think of it, you know, as spherical surface. That's what we scientists do. We start with the simplest assumptions till, you know, observations tell us something else. Well, it's the same thing here. This, because the two Voyager spacecraft went in two different direction latitude, we know that the heliosphere is not a symmetric boundary, basically.

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a little closer on one side than on another side?

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they respond to the solar wind pressure, magnetic field. It is, and this is, heliosphere is really our home. It protects us from the harmful cosmic radiation from the interstellar medium.

• 22:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So technically, the heliosphere is the solar system. Don't be so planet biased about it.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 22:33Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know, we don't-

• 22:34Speaker 02

  You know, it's a star's environment. I mean, other stars have environment bubbles. They are called astrophires. So this is sun's-

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what about the magneto-pause?

• 22:48Chuck Nice?

  Is that the sun going through like a change of life?

• 22:53Speaker 02

  We pause, we pause.

• 22:55Chuck Nice?

  I'm going through magneto-pause.

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  I am so hot.

• 23:01Chuck Nice?

  Magneto-pause is killing me.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  You pause there, you get your breath, then you keep moving on.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But these boundaries tend to have the word pause in them, if I remember my vocabulary.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Yes, they do. And so basically, what, so magneto-pause is kind of used in reference to Earth's magnetosphere. Helio-pause is in reference to sun's magnetosphere, which is the heliosphere, etc. But what they're trying to do, they essentially describe physics laws, right? So, you know, is it gravity dominated? Is it pressure dominated? Is it magnetic field sweeping out? Those are the conditions that these boundaries define.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember the day, it was reported when the Voyager 1, I think, exited the heliosphere.

• 24:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's the helio-pause at the end. And we were all excited, but we asked, well, how does it know? And so it had, it has these sensors on board that knows where the sun is because of the sun's influence on them. But then you reach a point where the sensors went haywire.

• 24:19Chuck Nice?

  Right. And couldn't find the sun?

• 24:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Couldn't find this, didn't know which way the sun was, because the sun's influence was dropping while the galactic influence was rising. There's a point where they were about the same and you could no longer uniquely point which way the sun was. It has left the solar system.

• 24:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah. That's pretty cool.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  It's like a compass needle behaves, right?

• 24:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  You know, if you take it to the North Pole, what will it show?

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, which way is it gonna point?

• 24:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, I think it just points every way.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  It goes haywire.

• 24:51Chuck Nice?

  Every way it can, yeah.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you were to personify that, oh my gosh, I don't know. I am without direction in my life.

• 25:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, for the first time.

• 25:07Chuck Nice?

  So when you look at the heliosphere, okay, and then you get to the pause and now you have the galactic influence, right? Okay, now, is the gravity of our star still influencing anything beyond that point as well?

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's a simple thing. The gravity goes forever.

• 25:29Chuck Nice?

  Goes forever.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forever.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Chuck, you are so smart. My God, nobody dare bring up such questions.

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  Well, thank you.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the sun's gravity extends forever, but so does Earth's gravity.

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So does the moon's gravity.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all that really matters to you is that somebody else's gravity that's dominating where you are.

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we exploit that when we go to the moon. We only give the spacecraft enough energy to get to the point where the moon's gravity takes over, and then it falls towards the moon.

• 26:09Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. You don't need anything more than that.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't need rocket fuel to fall

• 26:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  towards the moon.

• 26:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So at that point, of course, Earth's gravity is still there, but it's dominated by the moon's gravity when you're close enough to the moon.

• 26:20Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's where it's the gravity thing.

• 26:22Chuck Nice?

  So our sun's gravity, now here's it, is there something that could fall into the influence of our sun's gravity so far out that it pulls it into our solar system?

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:34Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, let me say, oh, yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Well, isn't that subject for another topic?

• 26:42Chuck Nice?

  That's another topic.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Another show.

• 26:43Chuck Nice?

  That's another show.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  A lot of controversy attached, but it's kind of fun. It's really fun, because we are beginning to look everywhere. And what we had taken for settled signs is very unsettled.

• 27:02Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, love that.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And unsettling.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  And that too, that too. But may I, you know, heliosphere is my favorite thing, right? May I add a couple of more?

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Please, please.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Do it, right?

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you were instructed to say everything there is to know about the heliosphere. That was your instructions, so please proceed.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  So heliosphere literally partly shields the planets from galactic cosmic radiation. And so before you reach interstellar space, you first have to leave home. And that is our home. And, and two thoughts, as I was thinking about this topic, when I said bubble magnetosphere is a bubble or a cocoon, and same thing with sun's magnetosphere, which is the heliosphere. This is like a bubble within a bubble within a bubble, and it takes me to a fractal zone. It's like nature kind of knows how to replicate a good thing. I kind of want to embed that idea. This is, this is how, you know, stars have astrophires.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  So everything you look around has this zone of magnetic field that we can't see, we can't touch, okay? And so my final comment to you is that you live inside a star's gigantic magnetic embrace. It keeps you safe. Do not forget that and thank it.

• 28:37Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 28:38Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty cool. Now, it makes perfect sense that people used to worship the sun.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they knew.

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  They knew, they knew, they knew more than we did. They were like, hey, man, that thing is keeping us safe. All right, we need to show it a little respect.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so Leeka, catch me up on the Parker Solar Probe. Cause last I encountered it, I was telling everybody about how it achieved a, a speed record for any human made object. Because there were some trajectories as it fell towards the sun, where the sun accelerated it. And it was some, still very small fraction of the speed of light, but faster than anything had been sent before. But the Parker Solar Probe, what was its mission and did it accomplish it? And is it still going?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  You know, I'm answering the last question first. Yes, Parker Solar Probe is going strong. You know, the first seven years, it launched in 2018, the first seven years were basically dedicated to doing the prime mission. And after that NASA is going to decide it as operating mission. So what Parker Solar Probe has done now, after 24 orbits, it took it to its closest point called the perihelion. It's about something like close to 10 solar radii, 3.8 million miles. But I know things in solar radii. It is inside of 10 solar radii.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  And then that was important because we wanted to have a little bit of idea of crossing over from the Alphen Zone into the Corona, where the particles actually become solar wind. So we've done 24 of those and reached the closest point. And now we just kind of finished, I think, 28 perihelion in June.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, Leeka, is that closest point within the Corona? Or is it still kind of safe outside the Corona? Cause you said 58 radii, that feels a little distant.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Fancy you would ask that, Neil. That's such a binary question.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Seriously.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, just getting dissed on my own shelf.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  So, so.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  I already told you, right? That the Alphen surface, Alphen Zone is not a spherical symmetric zone. It's not at 5 solar radii, 10 solar radii. We made lots of assumptions.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's not a sign there saying entering the Alphen Zone.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  No, so we are actually close enough that we go in and out. And we are actually able to measure the pristine solar wind in the Corona.

• 31:26Chuck Nice?

  That's very cool.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the best, that's the best of all world.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  That's how it was designed.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're only in it, you're just getting the same measurement. How good is that?

• 31:35Chuck Nice?

  That's really cool.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, very cool.

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  Very cool.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Very cool. Instead of going to the poles of the sun, that was the original idea of Solar Probe, said, hey, we are going to the sun. We are going to take, and that would have taken very little data and said, no, we want data. And so we created this alternate concept in the ecliptic and we get Venus gravity de-assist to bounce momentum. So it's between Venus and the closest point to sun. And that point is 3.8 million miles. But let's, let's stick to solar radii.

• 32:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the sun's diameter is almost a million miles across.

• 32:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, Leeka said something just casually.

• 32:23Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I gotta stop on it and like give an explanation.

• 32:26Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. She said, what's the word you use?

• 32:29Chuck Nice?

  De-accelerate.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no. Gravitational de-assist?

• 32:35Chuck Nice?

  De-assist.

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  De-assist.

• 32:36Chuck Nice?

  The de-assist.

• 32:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, not de-ass.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But de-assist.

• 32:38Chuck Nice?

  The de-assist.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are so accustomed to hearing about gravitational assist. Because you have a probe that doesn't have enough energy to get to its destination. You come in behind, you sneak up behind a planet.

• 32:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You fall towards the planet, you gain its orbital speed and you keep coming out the other side.

• 32:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can do this, boost your speed, get to wherever you want in the solar system.

• 32:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the problem, you want to get to the sun. The sun is not in orbit.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're in orbit and we launched it from here.

• 33:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta somehow eat that orbital speed.

• 33:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta get rid of it somehow so that we can fall in towards the sun.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  Cause we don't want to overshoot it.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, correct. So, we, if you come the other direction into a planet.

• 33:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get a de-assist.

• 33:21Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 33:23Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And Venus is sitting there conveniently between us and the sun. And so Venus is doing, doing, do.

• 33:30Chuck Nice?

  Doing, doing the breaking for us.

• 33:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doing the breaking for us.

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  That's really cool.

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it seems like, I don't know if it's true or not, that there's been more auroral activity visible at latitudes farther south than usual.

• 33:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the aurora we know comes from the solar wind.

• 33:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the solar wind is stoked, we know, from the solar cycle.

• 33:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Leeka, tell me about the solar cycle. I know it's a big question, but how often do we have you? Okay, the solar cycle and what it does to the solar wind? And is the sun burping up more wind lately than historically? Or are we just better informed? Because we have space weather people saying, look north, go north, this weekend, aurora, check it out.

• 34:17Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it just our awareness or is it really happening?

• 34:20Chuck Nice?

  And what do, what do sun burps smell like, Neil? Is it like pastrami?

• 34:26Speaker 02

  That, that has to be the next cosmic query question and I will answer.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Not right now, because I have to think about it. But it's a great question, I think. What will it answer? So, solar cycle, I, I mean, I, I don't even, we, we talked about this in some of the previous shows, where to begin. But generally speaking, you know, solar, the, the convection zone that we talked about and the convection cells and all that, and the churning of plasma and creating magnetic field with dynamo, all of these creates kind of condition for generating, it is moving plasma creates magnetic field. That's the key thing to remember. It's the same process of dynamo anywhere.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  But in the case of the sun, it has a beat. It has couple of beats, actually.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I just want to add something there. So, it's not just moving plasma that creates magnetic field, it's any moving charge.

• 35:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a plasma is a charged cloud.

• 35:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, so you get the magnetic field for free because there are free charges moving in the, in, in the plasma.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  In the plasma.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. But turbines and things and that generate electricity, they have a magnet, they have charges moving within a magnetic field.

• 35:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it creates a current. But anyway, so it's a, it's a broader fact than just a plasma moving.

• 35:49Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, we have one on Earth, but it's because we have an iron core.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, in our core, but it's, it's, it's liquid.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  But it's liquid.

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, otherwise it would be dead.

• 35:56Chuck Nice?

  It's molten.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If Earth cools completely, we lose our magnetic field.

• 35:59Chuck Nice?

  And, and when we're done, right? We're toast at that point.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we just have to go underground.

• 36:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, and now we're chuds. Now we're chuds.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, please, please continue, Leeka.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Actually, kind of this is something, you know, talking about a little bit more. Whenever you hear the term electromagnetic, we really can't separate electricity and magnetism. They are coupled. They are coupled physical process. One generates the other. One's movement generates the other. And that's what you're saying, Neil. And it depends what's moving and what's stationary. And depending on that, you either create an electric field or a magnetic field.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 36:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's very cool.

• 36:44Chuck Nice?

  I mean, that's a great way to think about it.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's very cool.

• 36:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that they're part of the same thing always.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 36:48Chuck Nice?

  Right, all right, great. That's great.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have this turbulence.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  So, so all this is happening and so we get like couple of signatures from all of this and that is roughly 11 year solar cycle, where the solar magnetic cycle peaks, where we get these sunspots, you know, big gigantic freckles on the sun. They are dark, but they are dark not because they are less intense or energetically less, but because the magnetic field is so strong, it inhibits kind of, you know, outward propagation of radiation. So you see it dimly in comparison to the rest of the surface. So magnetic, so solar max is a period when you have lots of sunspots.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  They basically start at high mid latitude, 50 degrees north and south. Then they gradually decline and then we get into solar minimum. And in solar minimum, there are times when you have no sunspot. That doesn't mean the sun is dead. There is still sort of a basal magnetic field always. And these are things we are understanding better. But another interesting thing that happens is, and that's why I said two beats, right? So there is the sort of the 11 year solar cycle, magnetic field increases, magnetic field decreases. But there is a flipping of the magnetic field also.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  So magnetism has two poles, north and south pole. Take a bar magnet and you will see those polarities if you put iron filings around them. So in the case of the sun, what happens, you know, what was say one polarity in one hemisphere, say northern hemisphere.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Changes completely in eleven years, but in twenty-two years, it goes back to its original polarity. And and Neil, you have to explain this. That's why it's called a one magnetic solar cycle as opposed to one solar cycle. So the outward effect of space weather kind of phenomenon doesn't care quite as much. We haven't at least seen its evidence. More data might lead us to understand it better. But they depend on really the intensity of the magnetic field and how many coronal mass ejections are happening, how many solar storms are happening.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  They happen in each cycle from maximum to minimum.

• 39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the space weather cares less about the polarity of the sun than it does about the intensity of the magnetic field at any given time. So that's a fair statement.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I I want to kind of be very clear about it because polarity does matter at Earth, but it is not the polarity on the sun.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  So what the solar polarity is doing is less consequential.

• 39:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's all I was trying to say.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  But the coronal mass ejections, when they come towards Earth and interact with our magnetic field, our magnetosphere, then the polarity with that the particles are carrying is very important.

• 40:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  You know, in one case, you would actually have a reconnection and particles would penetrate where our magnetosphere is no longer a bubble or a shield. In the other case, they are just going to get deflected.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just bounce off.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  So they repel.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So comment, please, on the greater frequency of reported aurora. Because I looked at how peaky the last solar maximum was. It was not oddly high.

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, you know, maybe even a little low compared with an average over the last fifty years or so or a hundred years. So is this just better reporting? Because I I it was like eleven P M. And I looked to my right, I was driving on Long Island. I looked to my right and the sky was kind of glowing reddish.

• 41:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, wait a minute, the sun set many hours ago. It can't be sunset colors. Wait a minute, I'm facing north. What the? So I pulled over, but pulled out my phone, my camera phone, and took a photo, which is the phone is more sensitive than your eyes are to different colors. And there it was.

• 41:35Chuck Nice?

  Aurora?

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was Aurora. And I'd never seen Aurora on Long Island before in New York. And so.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Do you remember the time, which month?

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do remember the date. It was October tenth, twenty twenty-four. And that year was solar max, isn't that correct?

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So are you friends with the Aurora? Like, yeah, I know that one.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Well, I I have sun's number. I could tell you stories about the sun. And and so this is you're asking a very important question because it is a question in my mind. And someday, when I am not working professionally, I want to go back to science and actually kind of try to understand this. And I I I share whatever I experience and my speculative thoughts on this. I'm not going to go there right now, but it is it is a confluence of two things. We are all very aware. So I would say heliophysics figure that I talked about in twenty twenty-four.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  And overall, the outreach that NASA has done over the years has really seeped into the community consciousness. So people are paying more attention. We have better cameras, so we are capturing this, but still that doesn't answer everything.

• 42:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But however, I do end every show saying.

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  Keep looking up.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  You should, you should.

• 43:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I do. Every show ends that way. So maybe it's us.

• 43:08Chuck Nice?

  Right. Just seeing what we should be seeing because we actually did what we were supposed to do.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're looking up.

• 43:14Chuck Nice?

  Looking up.

• 43:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's a little piece of it. We don't know how big a piece.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Little piece of it. So the aurora happens when solar wind particles come and interact, you know, with our atmosphere dislodging, you know, oxygen atoms to, you know, their electrons to higher orbits. And we get different colors like green at hundred, two hundred kilometers, red with higher energy. These are all oxygen at higher elevation. And then you have blue and green for nitrogen. So we kind of know all this, what exactly is going on. But remember one thing that auroras are most visible

• 43:57Speaker 02

  in the higher southern or northern latitudes around around the magnetic axis. Not and which is substantially different from the actual geography, uh, north-south axis. So May twenty twenty-four was actually one of those auroras where basically it is the first G five. NOAA sort of describes storms in scales and G five is the highest geomagnetic storm scale. And and so that particular, the May twenty twenty-four aurora was G five level

• 44:39Speaker 02

  and it lit up all the way to Ladakh, India, to Florida. I mean, think about being south. It is incredibly south, right? So if if you allow me, I kind of want to describe. There are a couple of personal stories related to aurora that hadn't happened until this solar cycle.

• 45:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, please, yes.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  One is May twenty twenty-four. You know, that happened between May tenth and twelfth, twenty twenty-four. I was in D C. I didn't get to see the aurora. My friends took pictures, you know, as I would have seen it from our deck in Boulder and sent it to me. About a week earlier, uh, dear friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Jennifer Gannon, a space weather scientist from Boulder, passed away. And I was heartbroken. And I wrote a short piece on LinkedIn, essentially celebrating her life. And to me, it felt like that auroral display was nature celebrating her life.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  And I I wrote a little haiku on that. It, yeah. And and this was actually picked up by White House. And we named our first solar storm as Gannon Storm.

• 46:06Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's that's lovely.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  We, meaning, you know, not anybody I know, but White House people, space weather people. This is this is incredible. You know, we have named hurricanes for a hundred years.

• 46:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  But this is the first time that we named a storm.

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's beautiful. That's that's beautiful.

• 46:32Chuck Nice?

  Really is.

• 46:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thanks for sharing that.

• 46:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 46:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  There's one more, one more.

• 46:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Another one, okay.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Well, because they are so personal, I cannot not say it.

• 46:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm, please.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  So the in November twenty twenty-five. Now, you know, this is kind of a sad story. You know, in my life, who has looked at the sun, chased eclipses, studied everything. I had never seen an aurora with my own eyes. I had not. In November, between eleventh to thirteenth of November, and this event reached the G four scale of NOAA. It is like the sun did a private show for me. I saw an aurora so bright from six thirty P M to three A M.

• 47:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  In the morning. And our neighbors thought, you know, I had gone crazy, uh, you know, basically.

• 47:32Chuck Nice?

  Now, I I myself have been in a position where I've seen colors from six thirty P M to three A M.

• 47:40Chuck Nice?

  I'm not sure. I'm not gonna say it was Aurora.

• 47:44Chuck Nice?

  It was very beautiful.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  The sun didn't speak to you in color, but your mental state did, which is

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that works sometimes too.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Pretty awesome.

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not? Why not? So, the sun has these storms every now and then.

• 48:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they have to be aimed towards Earth for that to affect us in the way we described with, for Aurora.

• 48:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if it's not aiming towards Earth, then it just misses Earth.

• 48:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Then it goes to Mars or any other place, or directly into heliosphere.

• 48:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I just want to be clear that not every storm observed on the sun results in Aurora on Earth.

• 48:25Chuck Nice?

  So with that in mind, I wanted to ask both of you, I can't remember the name of the movie, but the, I believe the opening scene is these catastrophic coronal mass ejections that are so massive that now in the movie, they say these microwaves come to Earth

• 48:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And melt?

• 48:46Chuck Nice?

  And melt, like half the damn, half a city.

• 48:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 48:51Chuck Nice?

  And they're like very random. Some things melt, some things don't.

• 48:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was in 2012?

• 48:56Chuck Nice?

  Is that 2012?

• 48:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there's another one where they geologists go to the middle of the earth to find out what happened.

• 49:01Chuck Nice?

  That's the core.

• 49:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The core.

• 49:02Chuck Nice?

  That's the core.

• 49:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the core. Yeah, I think you're talking about 2012.

• 49:05Chuck Nice?

  Is that 2012?

• 49:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and they pull that, they pull that, that out of their ass.

• 49:08Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 49:09Speaker 02

  You know, you know what? I, I, I kind of, because we know so little, honestly, honestly. So it's not, okay, one thing we can say, we haven't seen this from the sun, we don't expect to see it, probabilistically speaking. But it is not impossible for other stars. We now study exoplanet, right? And I think heliophysics informs the exoplanet signs. So we have all these red dwarf stars with gigantic sunspots that we don't see on our sun. And they produce coronal mass ejections and storms that are of the gigantic proportion.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  And so what they could do, we don't know. I mean, that's why science is so beautiful. You know, we export our knowledge to any place in the universe. And sun and earth, they are laboratories.

• 50:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what, we even can bring past data into the present if it can give us insight into what we should fear. For example, I could spend a moment, because we're running a little bit short in time here, but I, the stuff I want to make sure we hit. Was it 1859, this famous

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Carrington event?

• 50:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Carrington event, the famous solar flare that short circuited the brand new telegraphs that they had along the railroad to communicate from one station to another. Have we had that event since then and, but we were not as susceptible? Or would such an event today knock out all of our satellites, which are right now, Elon alone has 12,000 satellites up there?

• 50:52Speaker 02

  It's actually a fascinating question, because one of the things we don't get to measure during such a storm, even during Carrington event, I think there was only one magnetometer in Mumbai, Colaba Mumbai that measured the actual magnetic field. So something happens on the sun, but something that all those mass magnetic field particles have to interact with Earth. That is where space weather phenomenon is actually happening, right? Where the ionosphere gets more ionized, where electricity sort of funnels into

• 51:35Speaker 02

  through the soil into grids and we get power outages, where energetic particles can, you know, spoil satellite sensors, where astronauts are worn for radiation, where high altitude aviation is susceptible again for radiation.

• 51:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I want to know is, is it a G5, G10? What level storm will put our satellites at risk? Because we have a lot of assets right now.

• 52:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In space.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  As a scientist in me, Neil, I think we limit ourselves when we put those restrictions. We don't know enough to say, because there are many different phenomena interacting with many different environment. There's magnetic field, there's energetic particles, there is radiation. So sometimes even, and I can give you an example, do you want me to give you an example?

• 52:27Chuck Nice?

  Please do.

• 52:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Please.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Okay, so I think in late January, early February 2022, Starlink, you know, launched something like some 49 satellites, which it does very periodically. Everybody pays attention to space weather, what the sun is doing, and NOAA actually informs everyone. And, and so they were aware, there was a very mild coronal mass ejection going on, so they were familiar and said, no, we can launch into that. They launched and, you know, about 38 to 39 of those satellites are, didn't reach

• 53:10Speaker 02

  launch orbit with this really medium class coronal mass ejection. So what happened? What happened is that the sun launched many coronal mass ejections that gradually started hitting the thermosphere, ionosphere and created a lot of drag. And the Starlink satellites didn't have enough propulsion, enough delta V to launch them.

• 53:37Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 53:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's yet another way you can impact

• 53:41Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 53:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the set, the health and safety of a satellite.

• 53:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 53:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot about that, Mika. Oh my gosh. So do we know what level the Carrington event was from 1859?

• 53:51Speaker 02

  From every indication, it was absolutely G5, and I don't think we have the scales right. We get saturated, so we need to, you know, really think deeply, and I think NOAA and space weather community is thinking about it to really amplify the scales.

• 54:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, plus the, there are a lot of military satellites that are radiation hardened.

• 54:14Chuck Nice?

  They better be.

• 54:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there are ways you can sort of, and there are others, for, for example, you can, we have some of our telescopes, depending on whether we're going into a meteor shower or some other phenomenon, we can actually put the telescope in safe mode.

• 54:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 54:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Close it down, turn it over.

• 54:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 54:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, so there are ways to mitigate this.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  That's why prediction is so important.

• 54:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, space weather, that people just live in the space weather pages.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:47Chuck Nice?

  And people don't talk about space weather the way we talk about our weather, hot enough for you? No, they don't do that. It's got real consequences.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  That is, that is going to change, Chuck.

• 54:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Mark my, mark my war, get me back in 10 years if I'm still here and not blended with the corona. And I'll prove myself right.

• 55:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you blended with the corona, it would become that much more colorful.

• 55:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh, look at that, Neil.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 55:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was good.

• 55:14Chuck Nice?

  That was good, man.

• 55:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was pretty good. All right, what's coming down the pike in the future in missions to the sun?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  So the community, the world has launched, you know, lots of interesting missions. PUNCH, polarometer to unify the corona and heliosphere. It's a constellation of four small satellites in polar sun synchronous low earth orbit. And, and they image the solar wind. You know, that, that's a gap area in imaging, in understanding how solar storms are born on the surface of the sun and propagate through the corona into the planetary medium and touch us here at Earth.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  And that is really going to connect in imaging from the surface of the sun all the way to Earth, and it's extraordinary science. You know, we can connect it to auroras in our future. Then we have things like IMAP, right, Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe. And that is actually looking at the heliosphere, the original question. It operates from Lagrange point one with instruments and it is kind of, it's still, it, it started taking its science data, I think, in February, and it is trying to sharpen sort of the discovery that one of the earlier missions called IBEX,

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Interstellar Boundary Explorer, which was discovery, you know. All of a sudden, you look at the heliosphere from inside the heliosphere, inside the bubble, and you see this giant ring in high energy energetic neutral atoms. So IMAP is going to shed light on that, but it also serves as a space weather buoy.

• 57:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see what you did there. You said it would shed light on it. I see that. You catch that? And so what, what you implied there is these missions, they can't use visible light, because not all of this is giving us the imageable substance in visible light. You need other bands of the spectrum to image the high energy.

• 57:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 57:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What bands of light, ultraviolet, X-rays, I guess?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Well, ultraviolet, X-rays, white light, infrared, all of those. But outside of that, yeah, I mean, some of these you have to be outside of Earth's atmosphere, otherwise they get absorbed. So that's why we have to launch. You know, before we launch sort of extreme ultraviolet and X-ray satellites, this is way back, right? We did not really know that the sun was a cauldron, as you described very early on, of this

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Sort of seeding plasma. You can see that in white light.

• 58:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Leica, is the United States a leader in the world in studying the sun? Or what other countries are players here in this space?

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Sun belongs to no one.

• 58:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  And sun shines on every flag. There are very many interesting missions from all over the world. Europe plays a very big role. European Space Agency Solar Orbiter, which is in partnership with NASA. And it takes us up to thirty, thirty-five degrees above the ecliptic. So we can view the poles of the sun. Never before done before. We have Proba Three also in Europe that created two spacecraft to create artificial eclipse. Externally occulted chronograph at extreme with two spacecraft.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  And they are finding out again sort of new sources of slow solar wind. The thing is, every time you look somewhere, you find something.

• 59:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is eclipses on demand.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Eclipse, I love that eclipses on demand.

• 59:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Uh, India had launched Aditya L one. Aditya is sun in Sanskrit, which is part that L one looking at the surface of the sun, interior with magnetic field of the sun with in situ instrument. So Aditya is India's eye on the sun. We have JAXA.

• 59:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  JAXA, the Japanese, uh, uh, Space Agency.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Right. And then there is China. China is doing amazing stuff. So Kuafu L one mission that was conceived of about twenty years ago. It's launched. It's measuring all kinds of phenomenon, including, including X-ray. So what every agency is doing is looking at the gap areas that, you know, a while ago, we had as a community created and trying to fill those gaps.

• 1:00:12Chuck Nice?

  Is this a cooperative effort? Is this information shared around the world with all the other scientists?

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  So except for China, everything else is shared.

• 1:00:25Chuck Nice?

  Uh, except for China.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Right now, right now, yeah.

• 1:00:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, the Artemis Accords.

• 1:00:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:00:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which are a modern day attempt to create some level of cooperation in space.

• 1:00:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:00:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In particular, if you discover something that could impact the safety or security of my next mission.

• 1:00:42Chuck Nice?

  Somebody else.

• 1:00:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Either my hardware or my wetware people.

• 1:00:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:00:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The brains. Then you are obliged to share that.

• 1:00:51Chuck Nice?

  To share that.

• 1:00:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But China, last I checked, had not yet signed.

• 1:00:53Chuck Nice?

  Hasn't signed.

• 1:00:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But India has signed it and the list of countries you'd expect have signed it.

• 1:00:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:00:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the list of countries you might expect wouldn't sign it, hasn't signed it yet.

• 1:01:01Chuck Nice?

  Of course, China, Russia.

• 1:01:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  Sunlight is perfectly symmetric, shines everywhere, right?

• 1:01:09Chuck Nice?

  Everywhere.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  But how it touches us as human being, our culture evolves. That's like that heliosphere, heliosphere border or the Alphanic Zone border. It's very crooked.

• 1:01:23Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 1:01:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 1:01:24Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. That was, that was profound.

• 1:01:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's.

• 1:01:27Chuck Nice?

  That's a mic drop.

• 1:01:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a mic drop.

• 1:01:29Chuck Nice?

  We like it.

• 1:01:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Leica, that's all the time we have. This has been a delight. To catch up with you and thanks for sharing those two stories. Sad but beautiful. And about your friend and about yourself.

• 1:01:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what role Aurora played within it. We'll have to catch up with you again. Uh, just, you know, if the sun burps or anything or misbehaves, you're, you're going to be on our hotline, okay?

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  Well, when you get those cosmic query questions, you know.

• 1:01:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, well, there it is.

• 1:01:58Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  On the sun heliosphere, because everything is under that, so.

• 1:02:03Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 1:02:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything under the sun.

• 1:02:05Chuck Nice?

  Under the sun.

• 1:02:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Chuck, always good to have you, man.

• 1:02:10Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 1:02:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. This has been StarTalk. Uh, this was the heliophysics edition.

• 1:02:18Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 1:02:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.