It's night with Dan Ray on DELI Feazy Radio.
All right, Well, a couple of weeks ago, we had some spectacular examples of space weather and we talked with during the eight o'clock hour with a gentleman by the name is Sean Dahl. He's a space weather forecaster at Noah's Space Weather Prediction Center out in Boulder, Colorado. Has had an amazing career. Spent twenty two years in the US Air Force, served around the world in the intelligence
and meteorragical operations fields, continued his studies. He retired from the Air Force in two thousand and seven and has been with the National Weather Service and a weather forecaster for the US Air Force. So I want to welcome Sean back because I was fascinated by some of the things that we talked about. This was the time a couple of weeks ago when people were seeing the northern lights in spectacular fashion. Seawan, welcome back to Nightside. How are you Sean Dahl?
Hi? Dan, thanks, I'm glad to be glad to be back and I'm doing great.
Yeah. No So, Noah is the National Oceanographic and an Aeronautics Administration. Is that have I got the acronym.
Correctly there almost National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Shakes spirit administration. Okay, al right, I was thinking aeronautics, all right. I should have looked that one up ahead of time. There are so many of these acronyms in the in the vernacular. So we're talking about space weather and when I talked to you earlier today, briefly, uh,
it was. It's fascinating because for someone like me, who is not especially scientifically oriented, I learn a lot from someone like you, and I hope our audience also might have some honest questions that they might want to contribute to the conversation we think about. When I think about weather and all of that, I think about sun spots, which I don't understand, but I'm told that depending upon the intensity of sun spots that can infect can impact
our weather. That's not necessarily what we're talking about here, but is that true?
Yeah?
Then sunspots are these massive, strong magnetic field and they're so strong that they disturb the natural rising of light and.
Heat coming up from deeper inside the sun. So think of it like a reverse bathtub plug. The water doesn't go out when the plug's in there. In this case, it's a magnetic plug keeping things from coming up welling up from deeper in the Sun, and these strong magnetic fields,
these that can materialize as major sunspot groups. They're usually they're not always the source of these space one of the storms that can affect Planet Earth, but they're usually the source of most of the significant activity that we experience here.
Okay, and again, I didn't do great in science in school, but I'm smart enough to know that the Sun is about ninety million miles away, ninety three million miles away, and at different times during the years, a little closer in different times during the years, a little further away. How enormous is the Sun? Comparatively? I think all of us know that the circumference of the Earth is I think it's twenty four thousand miles at the equator. How enormous is this? But go ahead's right?
Oh, okay, I finish your question. Sorry, No, I.
Was just saying that I think that when we think about the equator, we think about the Earth, and you know, as this globe and around the center of the Earth on the equator, it's about twenty four thousand miles wide. How much bigger is the Sun to the Earth compared to the Earth.
Yeah, kind of thing is massive. I mean a one hundred and nine planet earths fits side by side just going across the flat Earth facing side of the Sun right across its equator. So that means an enormous amount of Earth fit around the entire Sun right and if one does all the map basically adds up to something on the order of one million planet earths could fit inside of the Sun. So fortunately it's at the perfect distance, being that ninety three or so million miles away, that
we escape most of the harmful things. And this planet has been able to sustain life because it seems to be just at the right distance. But it's so far away it still takes light from the Sun eight minutes to get here.
Yeah, I know when you I did learn that when you see what you think is the dawn on the horizon, it really was sent eight minutes previously from the Sun. Tough things to get those of us who are non scientists are hit around. So so with the sun spots. Starting with the sun spots that activity and let's we'll fill in the middle part. We saw these northern lights, the Aurora borealis I think was the technical name or
is that is that a different phenomenon? I I just want to make sure I'm not making it complete fool of myself here.
No, Dan, you got it absolutely right. That's the scientific name for us in the northern hemisphere.
Okay, great? And is the one in the southern I assumed this one in the southern hemisphere as well?
Right down there. The scientific name is the Aurora Australis.
Okay, all right, that makes sense. So what happened out there a couple of weeks ago which allowed us to see these brilliant colors in the you know, a time when it's really dark. And the other question I have is I went up at one point to try to see them and I didn't and a friend of mine said, you're not go ahead. You're supposed to take a picture of them, and that's how you see them on your camera. Was he joking with me? Or I looked up and this was times when they was saying, no, we can
see him outside of Washington and DC and Maryland. Did I miss it by not taking a picture on my cellphone?
You may have, Dan, especially the one that was just like a wee weekend ago or so yeah, little over
seven days ago. Yeah, that one. You know, we'll go back to the one in the main in a minute, but that one there, we reached pretty significant levels, what we call severe levels, not quite to the extreme that we reached with the storm in May, but nevertheless that's still strong enough, severe enough that those northern lights can manifest themselves, and they did all the way down to Florida, across the southern tier state that we wouldn't normally think that the ore would be visible at but it is
now because people There's two things going on. One, people are tuning, understanding, hearing more about space weather. This is thanks to the platforms like yours. This is thanks to work that the government's been doing and advertising and especially social media and those realms that say, hey there's something going on. Even broadcast meter. I'm just starting to talk about this stuff. So people are beginning to look up at the sky at night when maybe they weren't before,
So some are beginning to see it. And the other part is, yes, that digital technology we have is very very good. You can capture things like that red glow pink colors of the upper level aurora out there when we wouldn't normally think one would be able to see it. But our digital technology picks up those photons of light and puts them together on that digital sensor and it accumulates it and voila, there one can see it.
So if I'm reading, if I am understanding correctly, if I'm standing in the same spot next to you and your small f take picture on your camera or your camera or your cell phone, your smartphone, I might say, I don't really see it. I don't really see it, Sean. But you then show me the picture that you just took on your smartphone or on your cell phone or whatever it is, and I'm gonna say, how could the camera see it and not me?
Yeah?
Yeah, isn't that amazing that? I mean, that's the story it is these days. Now in those northern tier states, with that activity, one doesn't have a problem seeing I mean, you get the green colors, you get the red, even some other colors. From time to time it's much further up in the sky and it stands out like a sore thumb. But those southern tier states, it really takes
a lot to see it with your eye. And that was the case back in May that was seen and once again, even this more recent storm, people saw it further south than you'd think, but they also captured it much further south than one would think, just because of that excitement one of particles up there in the atmosphere that's interacting with that storm from the sun and lighting up in that nice bread right bright red color that people were capturing on their phones.
When I want when we get back, I want to talk about the impact again this space weather adverse impact can have on our technology, which we touched upon the other night. But I want to get into that because we all now are slaves to technology, whether we're looking at our computers or our cell phones. We can't live with them, we can't live without them. My name is Dan Ray. This is Nightside. Wanted to be joined again by Sean Dahl, a space weather forecaster for the for
Noah Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. I love talking to Sean because you hear the excitement in his voice. We're going to talk about the problems that these this beautiful space space weather can cause us. And if you are out there and you have a question or a comment, and most of you, I'm sure are stronger in terms
of science than I am. Feel free to join the conversation and UH and and ask questions that maybe I'm not smart enough to ask in this particular set of circumstances. Six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty six one seven nine. Coming back on night Side.
Now, back to Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
My guest Sean Dahl. He's with the National Ocean Ocean and Graphic and Aeronautics Administration. UH, he's with the Noah's Space Weather Prediction Center. I want to talk to you about weather prediction, but I also want to talk initially about as beautiful as as the Aurora borealis is and some of the things we see up there. This does interfere this space weather. I don't know how much of a direct impact that has on our weather per se,
but it does interfere with the technology that we use. Correct.
Oh, that's absolutely right, Dan, It sure does. That's why we that's our real focus here at the Space Weather Predictions Center is the implications on our technology in our society's way of life. That's why we do what we do.
We make direct contact with a lot of these core critical infrastructure technological operators out there, as well as our federal levels of our government, so that if we do ever experience one of these feared and we know it can happen because it's happened throughout history, and I'll be glad to talk to you about some of those events.
That space weather impacts things dramatically, and we don't want to see something on the order of a catastrophic collapse of some element of our technology, such as the power grid of North America.
Okay, So I I this where it gets a little scary here. Okay, two hundred years ago, when we had no such thing, I guess probably you might have had Morse code, but that was about it. Now we have radio and television, and we have satellites, and we have stuff that you know, our ancestors never could have even imagined. Okay, As we have become more reliant on technology, I assume that conversely, we're now more susceptible to some of this space weather. Tell us.
Why, yeah, that's so true. That's because we're still learning, you know, where it's developed things at such a fantastic pace, this new technology. I mean, Craig, when I was going to school, there was no such thing as a cell phone, right, you had to do the old rotary dial phone for goodness takes. But now and then a lot of cordless
phones were an exciting thing. But now we all have cell phones and we're all reliant on them so much so that whenever's there's a dropout of one of these devices, like a major celler network, people are looking for immediate answer. And that happened back in February. Space weather actually got blamed for that due to some active the storms and the sun called solar flares. In this case, they did not They were not the cause of the cellular phone
outage back instead Dory. But we had to respond to those questions to including from our own Pentagon, because there's so many people that rely on that, including national security assets. Had concerns about whether or not that was it. But yes, we are quite susceptible to it.
But the beauty is that.
We're aware of this and things going up there are trying to plan for these as much as possible, say satellites in space. The power grid is well aware and they're trying to They have measures in place now that they didn't have twenty years ago to deal with these situations, the communications that we have, the GPS devices that we
rely upon. Unfortunately, these are still very susceptible, and there was major impacts from the storm in May, in particular, a half a billion dollar loss in agriculture is the current reported estimate now because of the GPS precision GPS failure systems from the farmers trying to plant seeds and spray crops in early May.
Wow, what were the farmers doing way back then, way back when. So, from a personal point of view, this space weather, as we begin to experience and we continue to experience it, it was there before and it'll be there after all of us depart this mortal courp It can impact everything from our cell phones to our I guess our computers, our televisions. Can any of that now be channeled and used against us by a foreign military power? Is there any concern about that?
Dan, I think there probably is. I don't I can't speak to that because I don't know. That's not what we're doing at the Space Center. But who does deal with that? As a Department of Defense and our core partners,
the United States Air Force supports those efforts. They have kind of the top secret national security side for military interests in mind when it comes to space weather, because they have an organization just like we have at the Space Weather Pitch Center, but it's for the military side and all those concerns that you're expressing here, that's what
they're monitoring and doing. And it's interesting you brought that up because, in I believe it was the year in nineteen sixty seven, around May twenty third, nuclear war was at option. It was a possibility because of a space weather event. As you can imagine, technology was beginning to loom. Satellites were just beginning to become a thing, Rockets going
into outer space were becoming a thing. But there was an event that happened on the Sun that was so prolific that it caused a lot of these over the horizon radars that are looking for nuclear launches from foreign adversaries to experience a major problem where the effect that it seemed like they were being jammed for instance, highly concerning when you don't have a lot of information right But it was thanks to space weather forecasters that got
the word out that no, we're experiencing this type of event right here. We think that's the cause. And wow, I mean you know, if you don't know what's causing a problem. Even today, we could be having a cyber attack, right, so we need to know whether or not space weather's to blame instead.
Well, I assume that space weather is is if you say it's to blame, it's a natural phenomenon over which no one has control. But to think that a display whatever of sun activity, space weather, whatever you want to refer to it, and I realized they're different, but that they can be related, could have panicked some nation to
launch nuclear weapons because they think they're under attack. I mean, it could have been that the end of the world would be caused really directly by human beings, but indirectly by a natural phenomena called space weather. I mean, that's I've never heard that story before, Sean, that's frightening to think of that.
Oh sure is right now, It's amazing how far we've come Now today, the odds of that happening are much swimmer, right because other nations are doing space weather business when they weren't before. They're invested in this because they have critical infrastructure just like we do. I mean, the last storm back in May caused so many power problems in New Zealand they had to disconnect power to the northern islands up in that country. I mean, this is the
state we're in. And in nineteen seventy two, there was a storm so prolific from the sun, these things we call geomagnetic storms, which caused the aurora that was so impactful immediately upon the storm arrival from the Sun that it actually detonated mines in the waters during the Vietnam War.
I mean, this is the power of these storms from the path and even moving forward, this is a touch of concerns we have today and what this means for our current state of satellites, our current state of communications, our current interconnected power grid system, and so on.
I'm assuming, and maybe I'm overreacting my last question, then we're going to go to break and we'll get to phone calls. I'm assuming we right now have some astronauts circling the globe who were supposed to be back down here a few months ago, are going to be up until some time in February. One of them happens to be a Massachusetts native, so we're a little bit concerned about herb as well as the other astronauts. Is it conceivable that we could have a situation where again, you know,
a a set of astronauts could be impowerful. I mean we've had we've had astronaut you know, launches that have blown up on re entry. But we've had back in nineteen sixty two, we had I think several astronauts died when when a rocket actually blew up on the platform. The era of Gus Grissom and all of that is the challenger, and we've had tragedies that are closer to Earth.
Is it conceivable that there could be a space weather event which would impact astronauts or is the technology that you deal with such that you could anticipate that and they could get the spaceship, space shuttles or whatever the space ships out of the way.
Yeah, then there's several points to that. Yes, we are very concerned about astronauts safety. We talked to NASSA every single day for the benefits of those astronauts in the space And just like your native Massachusetts female up there, this is what we do. When we have these types of storms they're called radiation storms and are scary, frightening word right, particles coming from the Sun. We're concerned about
those penetrating into human tissue of the astronauts. And that's why we'll be working directly with Houston Mission Control when we go back to the Moon for direct dealing of the astronaut safety, because we know that that can be extremely harmful to them and cause well, very nasty radiation exposure.
Wow. Wow. My guest is Sean Doll. He is a space weather forecaster with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We're going to go to phone calls. I see a very familiar name. Was going to lead us off. Here's that's going to be fun. Uh. There's one line at six one, seven, two, five, four to ten thirty and a couple of lines at six one, seven, nine, three one, ten thirty. This is your opportunity to weigh in and learn something or to try to make a point. You
have that opportunity. Sean is going to stay with us, I hope until eleven o'clock. Will take calls along the way. Feel free to join the conversation. It's a night side with Dan Ray. I find a subject like this so inherently interesting because they know so little about it. I hope all of you can identify with that feeling. There were some subjects saying, now a lot of baseball and politics, but this is an area that is not in my wheelhouse, and I'm learning as much as I can. I hope
you are as well. Back on Nightside, It's Night Side with Dan Ray on w B Boston's news radio. My guest Sean Dole. He's a space weather forecaster for NOAH, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. My first caller, first time she's called the show. I think it's a first. I'm not sure. We'll have to see Nicole Davis. Nicole, how are you? You're still working here?
Thank you. I am not at work right now, and I am safety first, hands on the wheel. But you can hear me, okay, right, perfectly, perfectly phenomenal. So Sean, so good to have you on BEZ. This is something that I am totally geeking out about. And you answered my question earlier about the impact on radio, because I
was really really interested in that side of it. But I have a kind of a tune for for you, you know, one I'd really like to learn more about the process of predicting these because you know, I think if I remember right, the sun is like on an eleven year magnetic cycle, and I really want to know what it's like for you over at Noah, trying to like nail down when these solar storms are going to happen,
the mass ejections, the coronal mass ejections. And then secondly, i'd love to know what you think about the impact of climate change and if that will make these ejections more pronounced, and how it'll impact us on Earth. So I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Hi, Nicole, thanks for calling in, Thanks for those sets of questions. Yeah, forecasting space weather's hard. You know, most of my career has been in regular terrestrial meteorology, and at the time I thought that was difficult. But it's gotten a lot better, right, We've had better models, We've got all sorts of observation platforms and satellites and lightning
detection systems, and we're getting really good. Now we can predict a winter storm seven to ten days in advance, and then as we get closer we just start to iron out how much snow, what the actual swath is going to be, and all that decision support kicks in.
But for space, whether trying to forecast some storm coming from the sun ninety three million miles away, and whether or not it's going to hit our tiny little blue marble is very difficult because even though these coronal mass ejections that you mentioned, these CMEs, for people that don't know, these are blasts of solar material, billions of tons of it in fact, heading out into space and enormous speeds or can be extreme speeds, and they also carry along
with it a very strong embedded magnetic field stretching out into space. That's what we're really concerned about is the initial arrival of those CMEs that earth like a direct blow, and then the CME. So though I guess that don't understand the progression of these, think I know something you're familiar with, right, A really strong Arctic cold front coming in from the north, very strong one. You'll get that wind blast as the cold front moves through. Same thing
with the CMEME. We get hit by the shot front of this thing, and then comes the colder air from the air mass pooling into your area. Same thing here with the CME. Now we get the strong magnetic field showing up along with it, and we never know what that's gonna be, Nicole, until it gets one million miles from Earth, so it's already made. It's ninety two million
mile journey. We've seen the CME, we've analyzed it, we've done model runs on it, but we don't have any idea what it actually is light, how strong the magnetic field is, is it favorable to connect with Earth or not? Until it gets one million miles away. That's when we can see the structure of the ames with our observation platforms out there. And as far as the second part of your question goes, it's not so much a concern
about affecting climate. There are studies going on long term studies to see if over a solar cycles some that don't respond as usual. There may be some correlation to changes in climate, but I don't have I'm not an expert on any of that. What I can speak to is we have grave concerns right now because of the
effects of climates differing. We've had more frequencies, more frequent occurrences of super strong heat waves that affect so many people, drastic weather changes, flooding events, but the heat waves of particular are very concerning because when the power grid suffers from a severe extreme geomagnetic storm and the things they are dealing with their If you combine that with a
major restural heat wave going on, that's a problem. They will have a very difficult time mitigating the situation for sure.
Well, great information. Thank you so much, Sean, and thank you Dan for covering this topic. I'm loving this.
Yeah. We talked with Sean about a week and a half ago, and I just thought that again, I'm not this is not my wheelhouse, and I'm learning and listening. I know your interest in it, and I'm so appreciati the fact that you called in on this one. And you know, I just want to make a quick comment about the difficulty of weather forecasting when you think about how many times and sewn. This is not an indictment of weather forecasters, trust me, but you know they'll say this or storm
coming or whatever. I think about this situation down in Florida where Hurricane Helene went through and did a lot of damage, and then Hurricane Milton was coming behind it a few days later, and all the forecasters down there, to my recollection, was saying as bad as Helene was, Milton's going to be worse. They were saying that the waves coming in instead of being just eight feet high.
I saw pictures of weather forecasters standing on step ladders above basketball basketball nets was through ten feet high and saying it's going to be close to thirteen fourteen feet high. It wasn't. Helene was actually I think the tougher storm. And also the advantage of Milton was it just cut through Florida, didn't touch Georgia or South Carolina or North Carolina or Tennessee. So they nailed Helene. But I'm not sure that the weather forecasters did as good a job
on Milton. And I don't know. I'll get a call from either of you and that it just talks about the difficulty of predicting stuff dealing with weather, never mind stuff that's ninety three million miles away. I stand in RPP. We try to do it.
I'm going to defer to Sean because I'm just a fan, not an expert. So I'm all, this is all you, Sean, go.
Ahead, Sean, Yeah, Dad.
You know, the so much of mainstreams and terrestrial weather, what we call synoptic weather, has gotten much easier to predict and forecast and refining it down. You know, hurricanes is a different battle as well. We've got our battle
with space weather and what's going on the sun. Hurricanes are these massive systems, and many times they do an excellent job the models that they scrutinize, the expertise that goes into that of predicting the pan, the path or cone of these hurricanes, right, But sometimes they you just don't get all the information. Things start to change more rapidly than you think from Helen enormous flooding issues afterwards as it got deeper into the Carolinas and Tennessee, and yeah,
you know, how would you figure that's coming? And then the tornado outbreak for Milton was a really catastrophic part of that whole storm. I mean, there's just still so many nuances, even terrestrial weather to figure out.
Yeah more, what I'm just saying is it's difficult to even you know, again, we were told Milton was going to be Now Milton did have a higher death total I think than Helene, but in terms of the damage, the length of the it just it just shows to me how tough it is. It's almost like if you watch a golf tournament and someone hits a two hundred and fifty yard shot, you know, four feet from the pin and then they missed the putt. It's like, how can you hit a two hundred and fifty yard shot
that close to the pin? Everybody should be able to make that putt, but sometimes it doesn't work. That's the that's the only metaphor I can I can compare it to.
Whether it's an imperfect science.
My friend, you bet you thanks to Gold. We'll talk soon. We see you soon. Okay, thanks so.
Much, No problem, think, Sean, listen to this.
Let's try we get one more quick call in here before our break. And again, I'm just interested in what people are going to ask. Rob is in Ohio. Rob, you go right ahead. You're next with Sean Dahle, Space weather forecaster with Noah, go right ahead.
What happened in Southern Airline Spike two four two nurse package?
I have no idea this is. This is a crank caller who we occasionally get. And so we will get rid of this crank caller. I recognize his voice. We'll just lose them. Guys, don't need them, We're gone. We have these guys who, for some reason, no matter what you're talking about, they want to call and they we opened phone lines up. Sorry, uh, Sean will take quick break. I got Steve from Fort Devons, of course, which was a military installation here in Massachusetts for decades, and Jack
down to the Cape. If anyone else wants to join us. Six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty is the number. Rob was actually from Ohio, but he some issues. We'll be back after this on Nightside.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World nights Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
My guest is Seandall. He's a space weather forecaster. It's a big realm of forecasting here and something we're going to be hearing more of as the years go by. He's working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Next up from Fort Devons, Massachusetts, Steve, Steve, welcome, you are next on nice. I appreciate you calling in. You're next with Seandal Gorighthead. Steve.
Hey, Dan, how are you doing? Thanks for having me cms. Wow, they are something right. They can devastate everything from electronics to infrastruction to you name it. The military though, that's what we call a Faraday case on every vehicle everything. So actually you didn't hear that from me. But anyhow, if people want to concern because these are going to be happening more and more often because we're seeing the
Aurora borealis coming through and that's from a cme. Also, so what people can do to protect themselves, right, because what's going to happen anyone who has an elective vehicle to get it? It's done.
See, let me let me do this if I could, Steve, could I get you to direct the question to my guest. The sounds to me like you know a lot about this stuff, but I suspect the guest wh would love to have a question and they all need Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, Steve, thanks for calling in. Let's make one distinction here because there's sometimes confusion. I'm not saying you're having it here. But there's a something called electromagnetic pulses and there's something called geomedically induced currents. So the genies the geomagnetically induced currents are these geomainnetic storms from the sun costs. The good news for you and for everybody is that
those storms will not affect like your home appliances. They won't affect the transmission lines running from a small capacitor to your home. But those storms effect, on the other hand, are the high voltage transmission lines and the huge transformers
that direct and control that current distribution. That's why when we have a geomayaneting storm that's so extreme, our concern is that the power grid is going to go down, not for just the city block, not for a county, not just the state, but a number of states where one hundreds of people could lose power. An electromagnetic pulse, on the other hand, that's something usually associated with things like nuclear detonations. Now that kind of thing will trick
vehicles and things to that extent. So just to make sure that everybody understands that as far as our science knows and understands, these Geomania storm so far do not have any direct impact on our electric vehicles. That's not to say they don't on their GPS systems, but fortunately they have other measures in place, sensors that tell where they're out in the road and things, so we don't anticipate any problems there. But these are the conversations we
continue to have as technology develops. We do know that the storm and may Steve maybe had some effect on some Bluetooth devices. They're still trying to figure out whether that's actually true and correlatable or not. But there may have been something like that going on. But as far as any direct impact to somebody's home or their electronic appliances, no, we don't know of anything like that that happens from these storms. Right by the way, the level of the storm. They hold up.
For one second, Steve, can you hear us? Just hold up for one second the point that my guests just made. Sean, there's a book. We've interviewed this author before about electronic magnetic pulses EMPs. His name is Ray Gorram. The book
is seventy seven Days in September. It's been out a while, but I found it to be a fascinating book about what would happen if all the power grids went down, and this his hypothetical involved some small country exploding a couple of small nuclear bombs over the US and wiping out the grid. And it's a tough book to read in terms of you realize that there are people out there who would love to take the grid down. And I know that Sean knows probably much more about this
than I do. But what the book I was referring to today was written by a fellow named Ray Gorum seventy seven days in September. I'm looking at edit right now. Go ahead, Steve. You with the final comment that you wanted to make it.
Yeah, yeah, I do so. Prior to President Obamama believe in UH is UH you know, in the January time there, he made an executive order to I don't know if anyone's aware of this, to for incoming inbound UH particles projections from the sun or from space. And it mainly is from the Sun because now we're studying in the sun in the CMEs. Now that they're not let's look at the Carriken event for instance.
You're giving me way too much information here, and I got out.
The big thing is people protect themselves for an event like this. It's an event. We had an event that was a level event for when if it gets to a level event eight or higher and it's bound to happen.
Okay, great, Steve, Thank you for the warning. Steve, I gotta I gotta accommodate. A couple of other callers, very interesting observations. Thank you very much. Let me go next to Jack Down of the Cape. Jack on Cape Cod you're next on nice side with my guest Sean Dahl awesome.
Uh.
The fact that we're experiencing Aurora down here on Cape cod and below to me, indicates that the magnetos magnique magnetosphere density is weakened. And so, uh, my concern. And I've got two points. I'm going to put one point. I'll follow to the other point.
You got to be quick, Okay, I got you some time here, but you got to be a little quicker than Steve. Go ahead.
Good.
Uh, the magnetosphere and its potential oscillation to a poll shift and what would that indicate? And I think we're looking at some indications. The second point, Danu, the power grid, the AC and the DC, the high voltage versus the low voltage, Dan, I want you to look into this. There were there were back in the AC DC Edison Tesla days, Wars on Current. We got to look into this and bring it up on another show.
So yes, send me some information on that. Let me let me get my guests to respond to the first point you made, Sean go right ahead.
Yeah, the you know when the CMEs interact with Earth's protective magnetic barrier, that's what he's talking about the magnetosphere. This is how all the interaction happens. This interaction changes the structure and causes currents of energy to naturally flow all the time because we're always connected to the sun.
It's just the CMEs exasperated. These natural currents they flow and they build up on these high voltage transmission lines, and these high voltage transmission lines ferry hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity across miles and miles from Canada down across our country, and it's that connection that builds up these currents. Look for shortcuts, right. That's why we're told not to put a fork in an electric socket as a kid, because that electricity walls shoot out there
and get into your body. Same thing here, these electrical currents. If the ground that we live on is highly resistive to current, it's going to look for those shortcuts naturally, and that's how they find them. So there's some areas of our country that are more prone to those build ups of electrical energy. Direct current, in relation to the point that was just made, showing up on an alternating current system is not good. It causes all sorts of
anomalies and it builds up in overheats transformers. If it's not accounted for. So I think that's the you know, in relation to the point I can come up with it with the caller just talked about.
All right, Jack, appreciate it. Send me information on that second point and maybe I can put a sheltergether the for us. Okay, we'll do sure, Dan or Noah will give you my direct emails so you can send it to me and I'll respond to you. I want to thank you very much, Sean. Again, I've learned a lot, but in learning a lot, I now realize how much
I need to learn. I'll tell you there's nothing that was asked that you did not bring clarification to and I just want to say thank you very much for your time tonight and as we go on over the next few months in the next few years. Love to have you back here and talk more about it, because it sounds to me like this is an area of science that is going to explode literally and figuratively in the years ahead.
Yeah, thanks Dan, thanks for having me back. Glad to come back anytime. And we're in the grips of solar maximum that was just announced for this cycle last week by NASA Noah joint conference. But it doesn't mean we're on our way down. We still got all of this year, all of next year, and even into twenty twenty six. Some of the strongest storms in history have been two years after solar maximum, so we've still got an issue
to deal with over the next couple of years. So space where there's still going to be a story to be talked about.
Sounds great. Sean. I really appreciate your time. I can't tell you much. I appreciate your time if this is an area that that fascinates me, and I wish I had studied harder in science classes and a little less English than poly side. Thanks so much, Sean, appreciate the call. Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you.
You're very welcome. Thank you. We're going to take quick break. Eleven o'clock news is here, as is the eleven o'clock hour just around the corner, and we'll be back on nightside.