Neil deGrasse Tyson and Lika Guhathakurta Discuss Our Current Solar Cycle

Could a coronal mass ejection wipe out all electronics? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Matt Kirshen learn about The Carrington Event, eclipses, and how the Parker Solar Probe doesn’t melt with heliophysicist, Lika Guhathakurta.

How does energy get out of the sun? What happens below the sun’s surface? We break down the photosphere, helioseismology, and the sound of the sun. We discuss the 2024 North American solar eclipse and some of Lika’s favorite eclipses. What makes some longer than others?

We explore the category five coronal mass ejection that caused colorful auroras more south than before. What determines the color of the aurora? How much notice do we get before a CME reaches Earth? Can we predict when they happen? We break down the 1859 Carrington Event and what it would look like today. Could a CME wipe out all electronics? How big would the CME have to be?

Learn about the Parker Solar Probe and its mission to get closer to the sun than ever before. Could we touch the surface of the sun? How does the probe not melt? Discover the solar cycle and how AI is helping with solar research. Plus, could we ever control the sun?

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Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!

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Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction: The Sun’s Big Year
04:20 – The Inside of The Sun
7:52 – What The Sun Sounds Like
9:31 – Comparing Eclipses
16:50 – Why So Much of the World Saw Aurora?
21:58 – Measuring Coronal Mass Ejections
26:42 – Could We Have Another Carrington Event?
31:43 – The Parker Solar Probe
37:20 – Why Does the Sun Have Cycles?
41:30 – Could We Predict Solar Storms with AI?
50:54 – Collecting Data From The Sun
52:27 – When Will The Sun Die?
53:53 – Thoughts on The Sun
57:28 – A Cosmic Perspective

everyone said alert alert big explosion on the sun I’m told this was the most powerful you have a measure for the electric current that is produced as a phenomenon of this geomagnetic storm penetrates Earth’s crust goes deep into the soil and it can create electromagnetic fluctuation voltage fluctuation for our Transformers we only work in the realm of mysterious you can’t see them you can touch them you touch them you get [Music] born this is Star Talk Neil degrass Tyson here your personal astrophysicist I got with me Matt kersen my co-host hey how you doing Matt how’s it going welcome to my office here it’s it’s very nice being back at the Hayden planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History we got to walk past dinosaurs I’m in the office with all the the science ties and the the telescopes the stuff and everything here yeah all the business and you’re hearing the time so all the animals are in place yeah all the animals are currently pretending to be just exhibits and while the kids are around and then everyone goes and then we know what happens so welcome to New York and you’re normally in La you’re hosting your own podcast yeah probably science that’s where we do it from all right one day it’ll be definitely science and then call me it’s never going to happen but uh we’ll call you for sure but it’s never going to get upgraded So today we’re doing an entire episode on the Sun I’m aware of that thing yeah you heard of the sun I’ve I’ve I’ve heard talk of it yeah yeah the sun’s been busy lately oh it’s been hiding hiding and and and and then not hiding and it’s been it’s been sending off little oh right it’s been spotting it’s been uh I know a little bit about the Sun but not enough to make a whole episode out of it so we’re going back to our good friend from NASA welcome back to start talk G you do that very well you got that right soft touch oh no thank you welcome back you are a heloh physicist we’ll get to that in just a moment but with NASA and you’re the lead program scientist for NASA’s living with a star initiative I used to be oh so what is living with a star not that we have a choice it’s it’s just as we say it but it’s a program and it tells you you know how to understand the Sun so that we can live with its various whims and fancies and storms and everything else that you’re seeing so we have so the sun has attitude oh you wouldn’t believe I think it’s a teenage star oh teenage uh oh plus it has acne oh God so so your oldest Stars your ones that are in the process of dying out you know where you stand with them they’re a little entrenched in their views you know it’s it’s good to raise children like I have too and so you better understand it that you know actually it’s kind of funny star cycle and human life cycle there are lots of parallels it’s kind of wonderful to use analogy sometimes right to describe and that’s why I say you know yeah sun is kind of in its bad adulthood phase is rebelling all sorts of we don’t know what it is doing we were not there when it was well that’s why I brought you in here to tell us what it’s doing now now you’re fessing up and saying you don’t know what it’s doing let’s back up so heliophysics does that mean you get more physicists coming to your field than astronomers who look through telescopes in their lives yes okay and it’s not just looking at the sun right heliophysics is a connected science inter disciplinary signs where you understand the Sun as a star and its impact on everything else it touches and it touches everything near the sun in its environment as a star and in its environment and its electromagnetic connection to everything else in the solar system out to the edges of solar system interstellar medium so do you care only what comes off the surface of the Sun would you care what the sun is doing deep inside absolutely I mean if you don’t know what’s creating the energy you know how do you know whatever else is happening and I’m not telling you that NASA devotes time to kind of creating missions that probe into the core of the Sun but we have learned that right over time so what we are doing now is trying to figure out you know that energy that escapes from fusion and sort of percolates through thee into convective Z and that’s where kind of all these goobly gos happen it’s called all right technical official it down a bit for the lay person here what are we talking so this energy takes a long time to come out the radiative uh radiation right from uh the fusion basically and it then percolates through the convective Zone where all of the material you know all of the atoms they they are all blasted into their native Elementary world right electrons protons ionized uh nuclei so these are charged particles and getting uh charged by the blast of this radiation Sun rotates kind of in a weird way and many planets do it’s it’s differential rotation because it’s not a solid body right it’s got uh but so different places different latitudes rotate at different yes and the all this creates it’s like basic Dynamo right so you have charge particles rotating mag yes that is the key what do I get what do I win nothing so it creates these convection cells and all that and and they take a long time you know to kind of percolate up and and so these are the things we we try to probe inside sort of of this Photosphere the yellow ball we see but you can’t see inside so how do you get in there we we can’t see but we can hear but we can’t hear either it’s all a spectrum she making it up let’s not compare the universe with our limited range of sensory perception so that’s what we are doing so we are picking up acoustic so yes sun is opaque to sort of radiation because it takes so long for it to emerge out from the core into the uh surface that’s why we can see it as an object in the sky right okay but acoustic waves it’s transparent to that when we figured that out said okay like I can see you in one way I’ll try another way so we measure AC figuring this out we are we at Nasa that’s what we do you know but the cleverness is not at Nasa we all breakfast that’s what we do it’s all of you it’s the entire academic you know Aerospace World they are the clever people MH we just have to figure out how politically to maneuver an idea to create enough political will and resources so it’ll be funded okay that’s the that’s the making the sausage part of this so you said acoustic waves does that mean like the Sun Rings like a bell yes yes so it is for fun actually we do create what the sun sounds like or any other data you can put it right into uh sort of spectrum of what it would sound like if it could hear because the pctures are different right our hearing uh perception is very different from the way the Sun Rings but absolutely it does that right I mean there’s this and sound penetrates through and so you get like I know what geophysicists do for earthquakes in an earthquake same oh yeah the waves moology they can tell you how dense the core is it doesn’t go as far as not for the Sun but on Earth you can get through the whole Earth but Helio seismology is a helio seismology is the biggest thing so we see the Unseen did you come up with that word just that she just said that I didn’t I didn’t he used it himself no no we didn’t use that but I did successfully repeat all the syllables without messing them up and I think that I take some pride in that so so does if there is Helio seismology does that mean that it’s there are bad places on the sun to build a house like you cuz I live in California I know that’s a concern to yeah exactly that’s something I’m I wish you know that Earth would behave like sun then we would have more of the sensitive sounds you know I mean on Earth you have to have a massive earthquake to kind of generate these frequencies on sun it’s routine okay do not build any house they’ll be car you know card of house or House of Cards something like that coll do not collapse all right so let’s let’s look at the son’s um resume for this this past year so there was the total solar eclipse that went across the Americas Mexico up into Canada and where were you for the total solar eclipse first of all I wish I wasn’t there but I was because I didn’t get to see the corona why where were you the eclipse was eclipse for me by the cloud oh the eclipse got eclipse it happens and only Earth can do that Earth signs people I complain at them like manage your Cloud no no there’s that whole other Noah has the National Weather Service yeah like what are you doing don’t you get the message so where were you on Earth so I was in Bandera Texas not very far from San Antonio and you’re thinking that Mexico Texas should be clear even when New England isn’t and it was exactly the opposite completely I mean do you think this is global warming I’m I’m joking it’s messing with it’s messing with us you can’t have cloudy Mexico and clear Maine something’s wrong there very disappointing so you were plunged Into Darkness nonetheless yes but let me tell you some of the good stories of that so this was my 13th Eclipse humble brag yeah I just was it 13 or 12 I must count AZ plus or minus I’ve had one I’ve had one total s clipse and that was not the one just now that was in England the L 1999 I was in Turkey oh cool see e Cliffs people know yeah chapter and verse year and everything yeah so some can can recognize an eclipse on site a photo of an eclipse cu the corona is never the same you look at a picture of ecse like like that oh yeah 2004 you’re badass and we got a bad woman right here so so if you’ve seen 13 so what if you miss one I’ll be honest with you when you said recognizing eclipse on site I thought at first you meant like that’s an eclipse there oh no high talent to do that yes not that not that I’m a pretty high ranking in Nessa or anything but that there is definitely I’m telling you right now that’s an eclipse that is oh we are not that high ranking you can just be yourself you know before long you’re going to ask me questions to which else I don’t know so I’ve seen one of the longest eclipses on record cuz I’m that old back in 1973 you and oh 73 yes that was that happened here not in India I I hadn’t made you in India okay so this this crossed the Atlantic and went into Africa that Eclipse went across earth’s equator which put you deeper into Eclipse Shadow than you’d otherwise be because Earth is round okay all right just get used to that right okay dropping the bombs on there it’s not flat it it’s not flat and and the moon was at perige so closest it was to the Earth so it’s big and in June July we are farthest from the Sun so we had small Sun big moon equatorial so at Peak the clips was 7 minutes and 4 seconds but I was on a ship and we to pull away because there was a dust storm that kicked up so I got only 6 minutes and 38 seconds but that’s still that’s still cooking so my longest was 1991 I know that from uh actually Baja uh Mexico Oh on the beach I I started wait that one went over Mexico City uh no it went through mazat land did it also go through Mexico City I thought that was Mexico City so it was like 10 million people oh the yes it it went through is that the only Hawaii it went over our biggest telescope in Hawaii that’s right it was insane this is before I started actually even um using Eclipse as my source of observation and research I did Eclipse work that this is the this is like a whole Continuum for a bran of yourself uh yeah it it’s my life cycle my career life cycle it’s got to be like Christmas for a Helo physicist right that’s you know he started with that right like oh my God I mean what is the resume of the sun this last year had two eclipses we had annular eclipse in October a total solar eclipse anular eclipses so annular eclipse this I had never seen one before either yeah they have their beauty on their own but it’s still not a total eclipse but yeah and then so anular eclipse is when you covered the Photosphere such that and so he was talking about you know apogen Peres moon is further away it can cover the whole um Photosphere right so it’s hovering the central part and it leaves actually a little bit of Luminosity so it’s like a ring so you can’t see the corona if there is any any shed of photospheric light it drowns out everything DRS out the corona is very low low but it is gorgeous yeah and and it’s and it’s from the Latin anulus meaning ring so an not Nu that makes sense right right and so it’s a beauty Beauty unto itself but you still need filters to see it but look up at the sun it’s like what what happened in the middle of my son and if we were prone to Superstition we’ think something punched a hole through the sun you ever wanted one of your questions on the universe answered we all have questions about the universe black holes to quazars quantum entanglement wormholes there is no end to the depths of cosmic curiosity well the entry level of patreon membership with Star Talk gets you just that I think it starts at $5 a month you have access to the question line that reaches our Cosmic query programming and not only that we produce a special Cosmic queries installment just for patreon members if you weren’t the director of the Hayden planetarium what do you think you would be doing what okay but this had to be another Universe it wouldn’t happen in this universe okay I’d be I’d be a songwriter for Broadway musicals ooh so that’s the entry level and the perks ascend from there uh there’s a level in fact where we send you a an autographed copy of one of my latest books uh right now it’s Star Messenger Cosmic perspectives on civilization and it’s signed with my fancy fountain pen with purple ink so I invite you to just check the link below and all of that money goes to our ability to experiment with new ways of bringing the universe down to earth so thank you for those who have already joined and we welcome others to participate in this Grand Adventure of what it is to bring the universe down to earth as always keep looking up so now everyone said alert alert big explosion on the sun uh CME Category 5 please tell me about the sun burping up these gases so Sun’s always done this it’s always done this always done this but see that’s why heliophysics exists we adopted this name we made it up and we use it to talk about our connected sun earth sun solar system Sun interstellar medium science physics okay and and so now we are popularizing it and so we have more technology we have more satellites so what’s happening we’ve in studying this very well with living with the star initiative with Solar Dynamics Observatory with yes with stereo which was not part of lws but that was my first mission and that was in fact two two two yeah two and these are incredible so in the last I’ve been at NASA headquarters since 199 December right and the things I have got to do in my lifetime it’s like feels like it’s in saying so stereo sdo Parker solar prob we’re get to that we’re going to get to Parker solar Pro but but that’s part of this resume part the heloh physics big year is going to end with this big bang I’m going to get to the solar probe so you’re what did you do to the Sun so that half the world saw Aurora for the first time in their lives what did you do what knobs were you turning yeah this is definitely not something you should be seeing just outside of Watford no and I’m hoping series will continue no so people haven’t talked about it it’s been seen as far south as ladak India 34 degrees so that’s the same latitude as Los Angeles okay except you’re not going to see the aurora because H yeah lights Aurora is you if anybody’s in the way of the aora you ain’t seeing it well can I can I ask well well I’ve got two physicists with me a bunch of the people my friends and family back in England were saying it looked yeah like a bit of a glowing Sky when they were just looking at it with a bare eye and then they took pictures of their phones and that’s where they got the Crazy Light Show so why is that cameras have different sensitive remember we don’t hear we don’t see like the way we want to but our your eyes yeah okay period but there are people so I’ll tell you something about that so they there is a sequence to the light we see right so the stronger the storm and the coronal mass ejection the more uh energy sort of pumps into Earth’s um uh through into our osphere atmosphere and all these neutral molecules or atoms you know like nitrogen like um oxygen they start emitting they absorb this energy and they start emitting lights you know and so when that happens we see the light so if you’re seeing green blue it’s like Atomic nitrogen maybe 50 60 kilometers high when you see that red light and that doesn’t happen very well uh very often it is atomic oxygen you know and it’s not just the outter electrons kind of jumping to a lower state right it or disappear ing it’s the inner electrons closer to the nucleus of the atom so it requires a lot of energy to P them and eject them that’s when you see the red light so it’s very special and it tells you a lot of stuff where in that atmosphere you can back analyze the coronal mass ejection just from the Aurora that you know actually well I mean it’s it’s much more complicated because lots of things happen so coronal mass injection happens on the sun right It Go goes through the interplanetary medium solar wind solar wind shakes it up changes maybe a little bit of magnetic field all of that then it comes to 1 Au how how long does it take to get to earth distance so it’s 93 million miles it depends on the speed so the coronal mass ejection is say ejected with a certain speed say 400 kilm per hour or second I forget per second whatever yeah that’s that’s still a long way to the sun long so it can be but it could be you know thousand kilometers per second that’s why I’m saying this so it can be the fastest ones can come in about 24 hours and that you know is a big one when something is lofted with that energy others take 3 to 4 days so we have enough time and we have models and that’s how Noah is able to alert all of the people who are interested so tell me how you measure the strength of the CMEs the coronal mass ejections you know now that we have sort of basic rudimentary understanding and we are observing this from various angles we are able to actually from just the brightness map able to calculate its density its mass we are able to see uh the structure move from one frame to the next and you calculate it speed and acceleration then we have solar wind uh instruments at L1 where you are which is like 93 million miles and you’re actually physically measuring the magnetic field the density and the velocity at that okay leaving no stone unturned right as much as much so I’m told this was the most powerful you have a measure for like it was it five G G5 g g stands for what um geomagnetic storm so a solar storm that creates a geomagnetic storm not all solar storms create geomagnetic storm did not know that so so there’s no six this was a five but is there a six no there could be a six there just haven’t been I guess well I mean if you had something like that who would be measuring it it’s like RoR scale gone up wait so the sun blew off the side I think we need a bigger number than five for that so is is it cuz again this is just people talking on the internet but is it some are these things something we need need to worry about with it Knocking out Communications or Electronics or totally that’s going to totally so so it’s both people talking on the internet and it’s true or people soon be talking internet if this happens actually that’s a bigger problem for people it’ll be silence radio blackout wow the fact that they can still talk on the internet means it was not as bad as they’re saying it is yeah how about that if the Sun is bursting forth these gases often presumably some of them are facing the other way on the other side of the Sun or off to the side so the only ones that we really care about are the ones that are pointed towards us is that Affair that we on Earth care about no no I mean we live on Earth but we have assets everywhere excuse me I mean what is NASA doing okay so so this last one you know last active region actually right now went The Far Side of the Sun and Venus is getting blasted and Venus people will care about that yeah you don’t have to have people do we do we still have something we have satellites we have satellites right at Mars satellites are so robotic and human exploration okay so we are on some level electrochemical uh robots are electrochemical these are charge particles that what will they do they’ll Short Circuit the yes so Electronics of in any kind can get short circuited you know bombarded saturated I mean so why do we want to predict this so that everyone can take mitigating steps and they are all different if you’re a satellite in space you turn off your electronic uh sensitive instruments you kind of turn your solar panel if you can they’ll degrade if you’re an astronaut you know doing robotic uh Excursion you bring them in no we have good spots in space station where we know how to yes exactly in the space station duck behind the desk right if you’re inos spere you know your GPS satellites can be host the ionosphere gets very active and energized so they it’s called scintillation all communication navigation is affected you know your phone your internet everything that’s what I was talking about you can have blackout it just doesn’t end there it goes further down the the electric current that is produced as a phenomenon of this geomagnetic storm penetrates Earth’s crust goes deep into the soil and it can create electromagnetic fluctuation voltage fluctuation for our Transformers and that can lead to bigger short circuit and black out so the Transformers that get get taken out it’s not because anything hit them directly from above oh it’s because the ground picked up charges and it’s it’s electric current flowing down it’s all we only work in the realm of mysterious you can’t see them you can’t touch them you touch them you get burn we have on record is it from the 1860s something9 185 see she knows where I’m going here yeah know it’s called the Carrington event where I from what I’ve read back then we had railroads and the most Electronics we mastered was the T teletype and and Morse code I’m told that there were like Sparks coming out of these these electronic instruments very true and uh it’s not that you read also I read right I mean that’s that’s how we just my corner of the Internet objectively true information I didn’t read it so didn’t read it we a three yes yes what you have to read it so okay so was that a five a G5 what was that that’s the thing we didn’t have anything to measure that I think it was beyond G5 so you are absolutely On Target I don’t think we know enough about the scale all right so but so if that happened today what do you think would would occur it’s very difficult to say so the whole point is when when a big solar storm happens there are several things that goes on there’s the solar energetic particles there’s the electromagnetic radiation which is the flare and then there is this expulsion of mass and momentum of charg particles called coronal mass ejection three different things and they interact with different aspects of our technology so it is the coronal mass ejections that really impact that’s why it’s called geomagnetic storm it actually affects us deep inside if we are outside the atmosphere then there are other things happening right Like Satellites like uh radiation poisoning for astronauts Etc inside is a geomagnetic storm and unless you know you know what the Earth’s magnetic field conditions are and what the sun’s magnetic field is and what is that disturbance coefficient it’s called DST uh parameter we came up with that sort of measures the index planetary index for magnetic field that determines how devastating this would be and we have never overall so you you know for Carrington event the only station that could measure Earth’s magnetic field was in Mumbai India oh it’s fascinating just one station so we don’t have data Bombay back then oh that’s right it was right the Brits were still running Ram all right all right we talk about the 1850 no bristling here we are all friends an event that strong today could take out a thousand satellites I think that uh Carrington event and I’m giving you Lea view okay Le of view yes is is no longer it it it it is a touchstone of Helio physics but given where we are today and our understanding we don’t need a carington event to bring all of this technology to knes we much more Su much more susceptible so we have had you know smaller storms that have caused Devastation so we have to be always prepared and most important thing is it’s not good to be prepared if you’re not ready to take uh mitigating steps how often do you think can uh an electrical system turn off its power it’s not a joke right so you have to be absolutely sure that something horrific is happening and with what Fidelity can we give that information that’s what we are that’s why we try to understand it so high so the information that comes out from Noah comes out with this science um knowledge and we get better and better hello Star Talk averse Neil degrass Tyson here your host of the Stark Talk podcast I’m here to announce that we just opened a brand new channel on YouTube called Star Talk Plus and that’s where we’re going to bring all kinds of innovative content that doesn’t quite fit on our Flagship Channel but they will involve experiments in what we create what what your reaction might be to what we create and it’s going to be our Skunk Works as it were to borrow a term from Aerospace so I look forward to sharing all of this new content with you and check it out if you have a chance another part of the sun’s resume this past year has been to host the Parker solar probe and if I remember correctly it sets some speed records because if you’re Falling Towards the Sun but not going to hit the sun you’re going to accelerate like there’s nobody’s business you got to get I’d imagine you got to get up a fair lick to stay in soda B that close exactly so I all I remembered was that it set a a speed record uh which was something like 0.0% the speed of light one one one10 the velocity of light if I strap your ass to it it still take you 20,000 years to get to Alpha Centurion how heavy would I be if that was happening no too nothing you’re too it’s too no no yeah all happens you’re just going to vaporize before you feel the heaviness all right I won’t go on it then said you just vaporize that’s that’s a that’s a you’d rather that than other fate that could await you all right I’ll cancel I’ll go skiing instead so um plus I saw a headline that said Parker probe touches the Sun what that can’t be right you this whole concept about seeing hearing touching you know we generalize it with our human perception so touching the the sun in this context is really we have gone into an environment of the sun where there’s a discriminator basically right so this is where uh you know we talk about the corona the solar wind that’s coming out of the Sun and there’s like this boundary called alphan boundary and and so inside the boundary it’s really the magnetic field that dictates everything it’s it’s like a magnetic boundary is it’s a magnetic boundary it’s it’s like it’s calling the show so particles are really kind of paying attention how much energy or momentum you have nothing happen you come outside of that boundary and then it is the electrons the protons with their energy they are dictating the show they’re still coupled to the magnetic field but who controls whom it’s it’s a power struggle and we cross that boundary and go and that was really the goal right what happens inside it’s like an event horizon for black hole and we have gone inside that to us that is equivalent to touching because we are measuring everything with our spacecraft is it kind of like the solar version of deciding where space starts when you’re leaving the uh Earth yeah kind of you know it’s a boundary right and we thought it was just kind of a spherical boundary and all if you don’t have dat what are you going to do you can make up as many theories as you want but it makes no sense nobody will believe and so now we are it the idea is just floating yeah yeah and and and and we are beginning to see the structure in this Zone in this elepant boundary and we are inside it and we are going to go a little bit closer in December and what wa so in December it gets closer than ever before the Parker probe in December December 20244 that is the end of heliophysics big year with a big bang where Parker reaches its closest distance to the Sun about 10 solar radi from the Sun Sun Center so this is where we see the eclipse right you see the eclipse the white light Corona and it is in that environment so how does it not melt we we carefully you know look to it that we cannot have any embarrassment our spacecraft melting but we have practiced for a long time truth be told we’ve sent um you know spacecraft to Mercury messenger so we we messenger name of theace the spacecraft right and so we know how to build heat shield and these These are pretty amazing you know carbon carbon composite it’s about 4 and 1/2 in thick and so so that’s the shield it’s a hexagonal piece of something and half in that’s thi and then inside you know 10 solar radi away from the Sun Well you you know one of the interesting thing is the Corona is damn hot we know that already right but the heat content is not very high because Corona it’s it’s very tenuous very few particles so if you put your hand out you know it’s it’s not going to you not going to be bum started by even though it’s 2 million degrees right but it’s like it’s just hitting you right so it’s high temperature but the amount of actual energy energy is very low yeah okay yes okay so there are lots of things you know me and the fact is that we know all these things right so we can actually come up with this kind of engineering design it’s it’s amazing so so what so imagine if you were a free like you brought this up right what what if you went into the corona if you were a free flyer on the Parker solar probe what would you have seen it’s pretty insane you know what you see when the spacecraft is moving and going through the jungle of magnetic field and everything else right is very different from what we see through remote sensing telescopes it it’s amazing so tell me why the Sun goes through cycles and where are we in the current cycle sun goes through a cycle because it’s Moody okay having said that we really don’t have a good answer you know we don’t know uh we have seen enough pattern to kind of make these predictions we are looking at everything we have at our disposal to get more physics based but we are not there and we don’t have all the information but it is basically the Dynamo right it has to go it’s got to do with the rotational velocity of the sun it’s got to do with its size the convection cells you know the little magnetic bubbles we call Super granules that surface all of these things together create the Dynamo and it is again not a perfect Le year just 11e cycle generally speaking so where are we now when you say not perfect it can fluctuate 10 years 12 years no no not yeah yes like 9 to 12 that kind of thing yeah so so that means it seems to me that if we’re headed for an early Peak some people might think we’re headed for a high peak it’s it’s a fascinating dialogue going on on the internet right right right so if we’re if we’re hitting high points sooner and it’s a normal length cycle it’ll keep getting higher until it gets mid mid mid peak but if it’s just an slightly early if cycle then it’s just slightly early so I’m going to share some truth you know we don’t know everything we are like everybody else we take data we try to interpret we meaning the entire academic world and so it is something to note that we never know when we reach solar maximum when it’s happening we have to go down a little bit to know that we had achieved that because sometimes we have double Peaks so you can go down Bo and you go up again that’s crazy the sun has been around for 4 and a half billion years seems to me it would have settled into a routine by now well what did they say it’s like a whatever teenager so so this Parker solar probe what are you going to learn when it’s that close 10 solar radi we already have collected data oh this five son whole Sons yes this sounds very dangerously close it is it is dangerously close it’s beautifully close for us to gather the data yes it’s a perspective here it is beautifully close I should have said and and once Parker solar Pro crossed the Alin boundary somewhere in 2021 before that I wondered I have devoted a big stock of my life into this Mission and I I wondered you know and I I was seeing the same thing you know it’s going to uh Venus and then further in board towards Mercury and I wasn’t seeing things that I thought is like unbelievable once it cross that alphan boundary it has been insane in terms of the observations we are getting there are so many new ideas that are coming up and I Hazard to say that any one of them is right or wrong at the end it’s going to be a lot of these things in the end I want you to be able to predict one of these storms otherwise like we’re good are you I I I think I’m not going to tell you that because my community wouldn’t like me but what are we going to do we need an next mission we need to measure the magnetic field on the sun we don’t still have enough data you think we have seen it all so do you believe that if you had enough dat data you would be able to predict storms I I I would get closer to saying that with maybe 80% sort of fidelity yeah okay I mean is it chaotic we don’t know we don’t know what we don’t know so in your efforts however scattered they are to predict what the Sun is going to do uh I understand you’re bringing AI into help yes and by the way there is a method in our Madness and if I is actually lending some Focus so you know our routine practice has been sort of an approach to signs where we give money to a single um individual to collect data and you know create models Magneto hydrodynamic or or theories all that with artificial intelligence what we are finding is that you can bring data from all sorts of data bins you know space based data from everywhere in the world groundbased data groundbased data collected over uh many decades before the you know space era and we can actually cross calibrate them and then we can interrogate them and in patterns I’m telling you that sounds ideal for AI it is I’m telling you that uh um 78 years ago if you brought me here I wouldn’t have a word to say about Ai and now I’m a protier MH and we it it’s and I’m not prosti out of ignorance because I have supported this activity over the last seven years what we are finding is incredible so people are afraid of the word artificial and I say there’s nothing artificial about artificial intelligence we should reward boed leave the AI acronym but it is augmented intelligence okay so how how do we see stars with telescope of course isn’t haven’t we augmented our eyesight microscope every tool so what are we afraid of scientist Arsenal yeah can I say another of our overlords oh well we should always be afraid of that whether it’s AI or it’s highend Computing or anything or a civilization that some wants to discover your country for itself but can I say something else about Ai and this is not my thinking I’ll tell you who thought this but what what would 21st century be known for it is not going to be the century of physics like 1920th Century where in know Century of biology maybe but it it appears that we have learned pretty much all the basic laws of matter so what remains to be done is really it’s the complexity of how do you fit these laws together to create something different especially under extreme conditions and I think in Helio physics we are really experimenting in that space and that was Steven Hawkins by the way not me there’s a physicist at The Institute for ant study John Ball who was famous for saying the universe can be described by simple equations and simple ideas but it never promises to be easy to calculate you can’t invoke the Elegance of a theory on as the measure of whether something is true because to calculate something using your your formulas can be very taxing it can be but where we are getting with AI I have to tell you it it fascinates me we human beings sitting on this planet you know sent probes everywhere we have figured out you know the Stellar structure we’ve done all this and we have created the tools of AI and we have taken the next step of Chad GPT Chad GP o it is getting faster and faster where you know we are used to thinking in threedimensional World maybe four dimension at a stretch AI has no bounds you you give it compute resources and and there is this spark and it’s going to figure out things in a way we can’t I don’t know how we are going to know whether this is true or not it it’s a fascinating word you know it’s it’s where we are entering what do you think you be queuing off the sun before you predict whether there’s an exp explosion can you foresee what that would be yes we we really uh look for magnetic field signature okay and and so with greater resolution is better why is Parker better than anything else we have done because it’s going so close even with our ordinary instruments the resolution has improved hugely so you’re seeing structures layers that you didn’t see before and so your models were simple and now they are complicated so that’s what we are looking for details magnetic field is the key signature and we do not know what the magnetic field of the sun is at the poles for example that’s what punching out the side of the star it’s the generation of magnetic field that is getting so twisted and erupted from the differential rotation every rotation differential rotation you know the convection bubbles going up and down uh there are all kind kinds of motions right that it is Tethered to sounds terrifying it is I I also want to know how does the uh how is Parker protected from that we’ve talked about the heat shields but like how do you you don’t have you know you’ve got maybe you said like a days notice uh or sometimes several days notice before it hits the Earth but Parker’s right there no par Parker is bracing it as it comes as we wanted it to okay and and so again remember so yes a nasty coronal mass ejection if it’s directed right at Parker could be it could be it not a good moment could be not a good moment so another reason for me to not want to travel on it well you’ll be behind the shield I take it back yes all right look the tickets do they take a miles cuz I got a few miles but I don’t know how many how many do you need to get to the sun you need solar miles I think we have to create cre a new thing for that so Le I saw a plot where the activity on the sun measured by sunspots just simple sunspots and that’s the teenage acne that’s on the sun I think okay you didn’t get that from before I uh you so it’s just caused a little bit of embarrassment but fundamentally everyone has exactly so that if I heard sunlight’s good frag the UV I think maybe yeah yeah so I’ve seen a couple of plots where the activities preceding the model prediction so either it’ll continue to go high or it’ll go high sooner than the prediction so if you’re a betting person what would you bet on uh this activity has actually been very different from where the community of scientists predicted and there were people and there were very few people betting on the higher side okay but um it is definitely on the higher side but you know if you squish everything down it’s not that extraordinary but still we are paying you know looking at the Sun every second right and paying attention so it’s definitely um uh Gone higher up than we had expected um the prediction was that it will reach solar Max somewhere in 2025 2025 and and so let’s watch that active region is going to come back so if it doesn’t hit peak in 2025 it’s going to get higher before it hits Peak that’s right that’s is and I I think it will happen before that it it just kind of gives that indication you know it’s like that grand finale thing for fireworks in Fourth of July you just know it’s happening because everything is kind of going up in space right and it just seems like sun is crackling with that going to have a corminal mass ejection G5 on the way up you’re going to have at the peak so you’re saying the sun sort of has a sense of occasion I you know why not it creates its own occasion yeah and this could have happened actually during the middle of the cycle M mhm so that is the whole point it’s not just during solar maximum that these things happen it’s the complexity of magnetic field that can happen anytime anywhere on the sun all right one little fact quick little fact if I remember correctly you don’t find sunspots near the equator or near the pole there only in the northern and southern bands of the sun is there any good reason for that or is it what is that a mystery I I think you do find sunspots emerging from very low latitude equatorial region but not at the PO they get diffused actually that’s that’s why I was saying that we have to understand the polls that that’s the source of what’s happening to the magnetic field which might help us predict solar cycle so these you know active regions the sunspots they come up with a certain kind of polarity and move right uh away from the equator but then they blend into the polarity of the poles they funny kind of switches going on over there that we really because we don’t get to observe them very well so part of the problem is it’s not a problem the reality is we’re a wash in data right now not all of the right kind of data not the right kind of data well they are all right kind of data but we don’t have all the other right kind of data okay I mean son is a humongous B you could be coming up with a hypothesis that fits your data but it’s woful incomplete because there’s a whole other set of data that would directly impact those ideas it stated beautifully I mean that’s the whole problem and that’s why you know every time we have a new Mission it’s it sheds light on what we didn’t understand and how simple our model was right last question when is the song going to die well I mean it’s an ordinary star so what in like another 4 and a half billion years it’s going to be old like a red giant and then slowly expel whatever it has left and I think it’s going to become a red dwarf or a white dwarf red dwarf it’s what are we doing with all of the I mean in the meantime we just here on Earth we’re traveling to other planets do we control reach into the Sun and turn knobs in the Sun and control it I don’t think we will ever get there to control the Sun but if you could control our species and and the environment around us right like climate and things like that and we could do that I think but sun is needed it’s it’s it’s our ultimate source of energy I mean why why can’t we figure out how to tap into that energy to solve our power problem a lot of our greenhouse gas problem goes away mhm right the sun is just free and available yes and our species is evolving we’ll be something else can we mind the sun will you mind the Sun for energy y yep natur natural ingredients right I mean you you you could put big you know science fiction is really awesome right I mean they make yesterday’s magic into today’s signs and there are all kinds of ideas but you know I think technologically we are at a point where we might try these things don’t be afraid we’ll be here for a little while and I can’t believe you’ve seen 13 eclipses that’s out of control I didn’t see them I went to them okay how many of those did succeeded I saw eight see that’s still and Matt you’ve seen one I’ve seen one one total and I’ve seen some partials but partial you know and the total one was cloudy cuz it say this many times if 99 99% of the sun is covered the remaining light equals 10,000 full moons yes yes because I was so if you’re not in totality you’re not in totality I was in LA uh for this last one where obviously it wasn’t totality and I was in New York a few years ago when they had the partial one here you see you see through the the lenses you see that the sun is missing and you see the cool shadows but other than that it’s just a little colder than you might expect but a little dimmer you can’t really tell difference between a total solar eclipse and anything else is just night and day yeah I see what you did there was that the joke you were ready to no not it’s just just there it’s locked unloaded you’re you’re a comedian that’s a good joke it’s a solid joke it also just also just took a beat where I was like oh God you have to say this like live because my children think I have no funny bones that’s the job of children though isn’t it the job of children is to never think that your parents that’s true have anything going on very very true well all right uh Leica thank you and tell me Leica is short for a much longer first name madula madhulika madhulika very good you really do the soft uh tones like the French and the Italians they pronounce my name the best the best they and and I and you well thanks for coming through town I know you’re based in Washington and you’re in for a couple of days so thanks for sharing some of your time with Star Talk catching up on this son cuz it had it had a busy year for it has a busy year and I’d say I don’t know why this is the first time you ask uh heloh physicist to talk about the sun because it seems like sun as a star is demoted like Pluto as a [Music] planet well Leica thanks for coming back thank you we count you as we count you as a friend of the podcast absolutely because because our our Common Thread lights up when you appear That’s because of the we talk about the sun it it becomes luminous the sun gets involved the sun yeah she Taps the all right and Matt good to see you man it’s great to be here all right keep going with the probably science podcast thank you any science that’s on a podcast it’s okay by me appreciate it all right you got it the sun is our nearest star and think of how many Millennia it was worshiped for its value to civilization to agriculture to light heat to anything that mattered in this world I don’t know any culture any pre-scientific culture that didn’t have a sun god if you didn’t have a sun god were you living in a cave the whole time and so we tend to worship the things that we need and respect the most and in the era of science scientific inquiry of our world no there isn’t a god pulling the sun across the sky with its Chariot but there are other Mysteries that remain before us that make the sun no less interesting today as an object of scientific interest than it has ever ever been as an object of religious reverence that is a cosmic perspective until next time this is D talk keep looking up [Music]