Sun’s magnetic field may originate close to surface, experts say

Researchers say the new finding could help predict periods of extreme solar storms.

Transcript

00:00Solar storms are caused by the magnetic field of the sun.

00:26What happens is that there's parts of the solar magnetic field, which most of it is

00:30within the sun, but parts of it peek out onto its surface.

00:36And you can think of magnetic field as kind of being like a rubber band.

00:41And the motions near the top of the sun are pulling that rubber band until it gets so

00:46extended that it breaks.

00:49And when it breaks, that then launches the material from the sun out into space.

00:55And if we're unlucky, it can then hit the Earth.

00:58And that's exactly what happened in this recent solar storm.

01:11The recent solar storms, of course, produced this beautiful aurora.

01:16And luckily, other than that, they did not have much impact on Earth.

01:21However, stronger storms could be very different.

01:25In the 1800s, there was an extremely strong solar storm that hit Canada called the Carrington

01:31event.

01:32If that were to hit the U.S. today, it's estimated that would cause between one and two trillion

01:37dollars of damages.