Preview: Attack Of The Sun

Watch in 1080p. The full version is coming soon. This is an expanded and reworked version of our previous program released in 2009. The sun sinks below the horizon. The serenity of night draws near. Soon, the Earth will turn in harmony with the cosmos. But not necessarily in harmony with our star.

The sun is sending us ominous warnings... that we ignore at our peril. A roiling deep within... energy building in its outer zones... an eruption gathering force.

We are getting better and better at reading the flare-ups... the waves... and the spots that emerge on the Sun's surface. But our increasingly technological society has exposed us as never before to its angry moods. Where will you be during the next attack of the Sun?

The wake-up call arrived in the year 2003. With Halloween approaching... a truly scary chain of events overtook our solar system. 93 million miles away... the sun began to vent its rage.

On its surface, dark regions, called sunspots, appeared unexpectedly... a sign of rising tension within. It had been three and a half years since the sun last erupted in fury...at the peak of an 11-year cycle of solar flare-ups.

Back then, we got ready for it... by shutting down satellites that were vulnerable to high levels of radiation. No one expected this. The sun erupted in a series of massive explosions, called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs.

Vast electrified gas clouds raced outward. Solar telescopes recorded the action...The largest emission of solar x-rays ever seen. Flares reaching tens of thousands of miles into space.

And a wave of charged particles traveling at 8 million kilometers per hour. The sun became a giant plasma weapon... more potent than any in science fiction... and pointed right at our home planet. On Earth... the Halloween storms produced some of the most spectacular auroras ever seen at the north and south poles.

They occur when a wave of charged particles from the Sun interacts with Earth's magnetic field in the outer regions of the atmosphere. Beautiful and awe inspiring, they were once identified as the dancing of spirits... or as signs from God.

But as lovely a lightshow as this is, it means there are kilovolts of electricity in the air, looking for places to get down to the Earth. The Halloween solar storms brought jolts of electricity that impacted power grids around the world.

In space, they damaged 28 communications satellites, and destroyed two. A newly installed GPS-based air navigation system went down for 30 hours. This energetic surge did not stop there.

Sweeping past Mars, it was so strong that it burned out the radiation monitor aboard the spacecraft, Mars Global Surveyor. Ironically, this instrument was designed to study radiation that human explorers might encounter on future missions beyond Earth. Months later, the same rush of solar energy washed over the two Voyager spacecraft, on their way to the far reaches of the solar system.

Coronal Mass Ejections like this have been known to blast their way out to the far edges of the solar system, where the solar wind meets the flow of particles around the galaxy itself.

Category:

• Science & Tech
• Documentary
• Nature

Produced by:

• Thomas Lucas
• Dave Brody

Tags:

• Cosmic
• Journeys
• SUN
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• cme
• coronal
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[violaskin]

I can almost see the headline :

"The US made a preventive attack with 7 nukes on the Sun after Intelligence Agencies inside the government got a tip from YouTube about an imminent solar flare attack"

President Obama declared :

" We will not negociate with terrorists"

[TheLeadStriker]

i want to find vanessa hudgons naked photos... god damn it

[kludgeon]

In all seriousness, though, I hope they finish the "Metalocalypse" series before I am atomized.

[kludgeon]

When the ships stop shipping, our phones/inferweb/telegraph & electronic banking systems crash, we'll see how far from the cave we've actually come. Think about how much of our most basic survival intelligence, passed down through millenia, has been eroded in the last century, owing to technological "progress." It's not a bad idea to learn how to grow, hunt or otherwise procure food, and do things "the old-fashioned way" just in case it hits the fan and we're in front of it.

Arm yourself, too.

[TheRikardc]

cool

[Siegfried9028]

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[nukeusa911x2]

@dutchbhproduction the sun is 90million miles away, even if a strong solar flare is launched in our direction it will mostly fade into space and reach us like any other normal flare would. think of it as shooting a shotgun to a target a mile away, the shots will dispurse in different directions more and more as they gain distance. Even if im wrong space is huge, what are the chances of the sun shooting a flare directly at our location in space?

[dutchbhproduction]

@ogan227 dude, nasa suspects 2012 to be the year when the sun is most active in its 11 year period.

[AlienUFOEncounters]

@ogan227 you watch too much tv

[Guy9998]

@ogan227 According to NASA, 2012 is nothing to worry about. I don't where you're getting your information.