The threat is very real.
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TVTranscript
00:00 Bursts of solar flares from the Sun's surface look spectacular,
00:09 but they can pose a danger to us here on Earth.
00:12 If one was to hit us hard enough,
00:13 it would knock our entire planet into darkness.
00:17 Wait, what?
00:18 How can the Sun do that to us
00:20 from a distance of 150 million km (1.2 billion mi) away?
00:24 And what could you do if that happened tomorrow?
00:28 This is WHAT IF,
00:30 and here's what would happen if a massive solar storm hit the Earth.
00:35 It wouldn't be the solar flares that sent us back into the pre-technological era.
00:40 It'd be the giant clouds of hot plasma
00:42 and electromagnetic radiation that the Sun spews out.
00:46 This is a phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME.
00:52 In 2012, a powerful CME shot through the Earth's orbit.
00:56 Luckily, we missed a direct hit.
00:59 We weren't so lucky back in 1859,
01:02 when the electromagnetic radiation of another CME set telegraph pylons on fire.
01:09 The telegraph.
01:10 That's really all there was for technology at the time.
01:14 But now, our entire planet is deeply reliant on electricity and electronics.
01:20 If a solar storm that strong were to strike today,
01:23 we'd be in a much worse situation.
01:27 It would start with an enormous explosion on the Sun's surface.
01:31 The solar flare would zap the Earth's upper atmosphere with a giant electromagnetic pulse.
01:36 This would block radio signals between the Earth and our orbiting satellites,
01:41 but it wouldn't damage them just yet.
01:43 Not until minutes to hours later,
01:45 when a stream of charged particles started bombarding the Earth's magnetosphere.
01:50 These particles would hit some of the satellites and damage their electronics.
01:54 Our communication systems would begin failing.
01:57 But the worst is yet to come.
02:01 After anywhere from 12 hours to several days,
02:04 a cloud of plasma would finally reach the Earth.
02:07 First, it would hit NASA's ACE satellite,
02:10 designed to warn us about the upcoming storm.
02:13 Even with that warning, we'd only have about 30 minutes
02:15 before that space cloud rained down on our magnetosphere
02:18 and triggered a geomagnetic storm here on Earth.
02:22 Hopefully you're not in an airplane at the time,
02:25 because its GPS system would fail,
02:27 and your pilot would have to start navigating without it.
02:30 On Earth, the geomagnetic storm would start to melt our power grid transformers.
02:35 Do you know what that means?
02:36 A global power outage.
02:39 Not much fun for all us power-hungry humans down here.
02:43 All the lights would go out.
02:45 You wouldn't be able to charge your phone or your laptop.
02:48 Your fridge would stop refrigerating,
02:50 and your heater would stop heating you up.
02:53 Make sure you have some spare cash,
02:54 because all the ATMs would be useless,
02:57 just like your credit cards.
02:59 Most likely, you wouldn't even be able to flush your toilet,
03:02 since in most modern cities, water supply is controlled electronically.
03:06 Anything and everything relying on the Internet would shut down.
03:09 No banking services,
03:11 no Internet access in the transportation system,
03:14 and no social media to vent your frustration in.
03:18 We can't control the space weather.
03:20 If the Sun were to send us a direct hit,
03:22 this hypothetical scenario would get real.
03:25 Almost real.
03:27 NASA and the Space Weather Prediction Center
03:29 keep monitoring the activity of our Sun.
03:31 Their three-day forecast would give us a heads-up if our star looked suspicious.
03:36 We might have time to disconnect our transformers
03:38 and switch the satellites into safe mode.
03:41 Maybe one day, we'll build a protective shield around the Earth
03:44 to prevent something like this from affecting us.
03:47 But that's a story for another WHAT IF.
03:50 [music]