Pratica di Shadowing: Solar Storm Could Black Out Half of America - This Map Shows Where - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
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Scientists just spent nearly 20 years quietly building a map of the United States that most people never knew existed.
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Not a map of roads or rivers or mountains.
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A map of the electricity hidden inside the ground itself.
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And what it reveals is a little unsettling.
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When the next big solar storm hits Earth, this map may decide which parts of America go dark and which don't.
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Let me explain.
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Because this is genuinely strange, and most people have no idea about it.
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The rock beneath your feet isn't just dead stone.
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Depending on what it's made of, what minerals, what buried water, what ancient molten material is locked inside,
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the ground conducts electricity differently from place to place.
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Some regions let electric current flow through them easily, others block it and nobody had ever mapped which was which until now.
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To do it, researchers planted sensitive instruments at more than 1 ,800 locations across the country, one by one, over nearly two decades.
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These instruments listen to the natural electric and magnetic pulses that constantly ripple through the Earth,
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and from that, they can read the electrical personality of the rock far below, all the way down into the mantle.
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Stitch it all together and you get the first complete portrait of America's hidden electrical structure.
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So why does this matter?
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Two words, solar storms.
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Our sun regularly hurls enormous bursts of energy out into space.
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When one slams into earth, it doesn't just cause pretty auroras, it shoves electric currents down into the ground,
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and those currents surge into anything metal and connect it, like the power grid.
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If they get strong enough, they can overload transformers and knock out electricity for millions of people.
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This isn't hypothetical.
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In 1989, a single solar storm collapsed the entire power grid of Quebec in about 90 seconds,
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plunging millions into darkness in the middle of winter.
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And here's the key thing this new map reveals.
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Whether a solar storm fries your local grid or barely touches it depends heavily on the rock underneath you.
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In areas where the ground blocks electricity, that energy has nowhere to go, so it forces its way into the power lines instead, hitting dangerous levels.
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The map shows that this risk can change dramatically over surprisingly short distances,
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two cities close together could face wildly different fates in the same storm.
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One blacked out, one perfectly fine, purely because of the invisible geology beneath them.
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Which is exactly why this map is so valuable.
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For the first time, power companies can look at the ground itself and see where the weak spots are, which grids to protect before the sky lights up.
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So, under America lies a hidden electrical map, and someday it may be the thing that decides whether your lights stay on.
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A powerful solar storm can mess up life on Earth in a catastrophic way.
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It can leave huge regions of our planet without power, disrupt communication and navigation satellites, damaged power grids, and data centers.
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Scientists warn that the next major solar storm could become one of the most devastating natural disasters.
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And the question isn't if it happens.
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The correct question is when.
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And the scary part?
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This kind of weather doesn't happen in Earth's atmosphere at all.
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It starts 93 million miles away, on the Sun.
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When the sun becomes active, we can feel it on Earth.
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This activity can mess with satellites, GPS, radio signals, and even parts of the power grid.
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Scientists usually group space weather into three main types.
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Radio blackouts, geomagnetic storms, and radiation storms from the sun.
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Each one has a different effect on Earth.
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Radio blackouts happen when the sun sends a powerful burst of energy, aka a solar flare, our way.
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When that energy reaches Earth, it hits the upper atmosphere and disrupts the way radio signals travel.
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Geomagnetic storms are different.
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Sometimes the sun launches enormous clouds of superheated gas into space.
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These eruptions are called coronal mass ejections.
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Imagine billions of tons of solar material blasted away from the sun at a speed of millions of miles per hour.
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If one of those clouds comes across Earth, it slams into our planet's magnetic field at full speed.
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The result is a massive geomagnetic storm.
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We've already seen some serious space weather recently.
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For example, in May 2024, the strongest space weather event since 2003 hit earth gps systems
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went through massive disruptions the u .s agricultural industry was hit hard all
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because modern farming needs satellite navigation to work properly as for
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the infamous 2003 event it completely cut power in parts of sweden
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and south africa you might be wondering what will happen
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if we get something even bigger scientists decided to figure out what a true worst -case space weather event might look like.
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Now, worst -case doesn't mean a once -in -a -million -year disaster.
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Planning for something that rare isn't super useful.
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Instead, researchers focused on events that could realistically happen once every 100 to 200 years.
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Rare, but not impossible.
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When a strong geomagnetic storm hits Earth, it doesn't just affect space.
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It can actually generate electric currents in the ground, too.
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And since power lines are excellent conductors, those currents can get inside the electrical grid.
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It's like extra electricity getting suddenly injected into a system that wasn't designed to deal with it.
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If the currents are strong enough, they can overload parts of the grid.
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Safety systems may automatically shut sections down to prevent damage, potentially leading to massive blackouts.
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Whole regions might stay without electricity.
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But losing power isn't even the worst part.
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The extra current can also damage transformers, those massive machines that help move electricity across the grid.
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Some of these transformers weigh hundreds of tons and can take months or even years to replace.
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This means that even after the storm is over, parts of the electrical network may still remain damaged for a long time.
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The power grid on Earth isn't the only thing at risk.
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A serious space weather event will first mess with satellites hundreds of miles above our heads.
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And we depend on satellites far more than most people realize.
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They help us navigate, forecast the weather, communicate with relatives and friends all over the world, and track ships and aircraft.
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During a bad solar storm, many of those satellites could run into serious trouble.
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One problem is radiation.
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When the sun throws large amounts of energetic particles into space, those particles can slam directly into spacecraft.
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Over time, they can damage electronics and slowly wear down solar panels, shortening a satellite's lifespan.
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During an especially powerful event, some satellites could fail completely.
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But there's another huge problem.
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A solar flare can actually heat Earth's upper atmosphere.
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When that happens, the atmosphere expands outward and becomes slightly thicker at altitudes where many satellites orbit.
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The change is tiny, but for satellites, it matters a lot.
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Imagine riding a bike on a smooth road, and then suddenly someone pours a thin layer of mud over it.
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You can still move forward, but you'll slow down faster than before.
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Something similar happens to satellites.
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The thicker atmosphere creates extra drag, and that drag slowly pulls satellites into lower orbits.
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If they lose too much altitude, some spacecraft can fall back into the atmosphere and burn up.
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And it's happened before.
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In 2022, solar activity caused Earth's atmosphere to expand right after a batch of Starlink satellites was launched.
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Around 40 of them couldn't maintain their orbits and eventually re -entered the atmosphere.
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But during a real worst -case solar storm, the situation could become way more dramatic.
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It could also prevent us from tracking satellites and increase the risk of their collisions with space debris.
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The next problem is radio signals.
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Right now, they're constantly passing through the air around you.
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Your phone, GPS, Wi -Fi, aircraft communications, ship navigation systems, emergency services, all of them depend on radio waves.
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And a bad solar storm can mess up many of those signals.
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Solar flares produce bursts of radio energy, and sometimes those bursts become so powerful that they drown out weaker signals on Earth.
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It's kind of like trying to hear someone whisper while a jet engine is running nearby.
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None of this means that a giant solar storm would send us back to the Stone Age.
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Even a worst -case event probably wouldn't be a Hollywood -style apocalypse.
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But it could create a chain reaction of problems.
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Satellites could fail.
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GPS could become unreliable.
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Flights could be cancelled.
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And parts of the power grid could be damaged.
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That's exactly why scientists spend so much time studying space weather.
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And now, they might have to come up with a pretty cool idea for protecting Earth from powerful solar storms.
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They proposed something called Stormwall.
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The idea is simple.
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What if we don't just wait for solar storms to hit and deal with the damage?
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What if we weaken the solar storm before it reaches Earth.
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The idea is based on Earth's magnetic field.
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Our planet is surrounded by a giant magnetic bubble called the magnetosphere.
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It's like an invisible shield that helps protect us from charged particles coming from the sun.
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Researchers noticed that Earth's atmosphere already helps strengthen this shield.
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Tiny particles escape from the atmosphere and interact with the outer edge of the magnetosphere.
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So scientists decided to try to boost that process on purpose.
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Their plan involves six spacecraft orbiting Earth.
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Each spacecraft would carry materials like barium or lithium.
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If you release them into space, sunlight would charge those materials, turning them into a cloud of plasma.
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Plasma is basically a gas whose particles carry electric charges.
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The sun itself is mostly made of plasma.
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The idea is that those artificial plasma clouds would form near the edge of Earth's magnetic shield, and when a solar storm arrived, the plasma would help absorb,
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redirect, and weaken some of the storm's energy before it reaches Earth.
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According to the team's simulations, the system could reduce the strength of a serious geomagnetic storm by 50%.
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That would be a really great result.
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A storm that's cut in half would mean less damage to satellites, fewer communication problems, fewer GPS disruptions,
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and less stress on power grids.
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Of course, this is still just a concept.
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Nobody has built the storm wall yet.
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Nobody even knows for sure whether it would work exactly as planned in the real world.
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But the researchers say that the physics behind it checks out.
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And apparently, modern rockets can indeed launch the equipment we'd need for such a mission.
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There's just one problem, and it's money.
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Building and launching six spacecraft wouldn't be cheap.
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Plus, once the material is released into space, it's gone.
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You can't collect it, refill it, or use it again.
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The researchers believe that the mission would use about as much material as a dozen large tanker trucks.
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That's why the price of a truly massive solar storm could be exorbitant.
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In May 2024, stunning auroras adorning the night sky demonstrated all the power that solar storms emit as radiation.
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But sometimes, our sun does things that are far more destructive.
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I'm talking about solar particle events.
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During these events, blasts of protons coming directly from the surface of the sun
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can shoot out like giant cosmic searchlights according to records an extreme particle event hits earth every thousand years
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or so it often causes bad damage to the ozone layer
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and increases levels of ultraviolet radiation closer to the surface of
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our planet luckily earth's magnetic field acts as a powerful protective
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cocoon for our planet fending off electrically charged radiation from the sun.
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In its normal state, this field functions like a ginormous bar magnet, with field lines rising from one pole, looping around the planet, and dropping at the other pole.
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This pattern is sometimes called an inverted grapefruit.
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This vertical orientation of the magnetic field at the poles allows
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some ionizing cosmic radiation to get through the field as far down as the upper atmosphere.
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There, it interacts with gas molecules and produces the glow we know as auroras.
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But over time, Earth's protective bubble changes.
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In the past century, the North Magnetic Pole moved across northern Canada at a speed of about 25 miles per year.
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Plus, it weakened by more than six percent even more shockingly
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according to geological records there have been periods of time as long as centuries
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and millennia when our planet's magnetic field was super weak
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or entirely absent
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but we'll talk about those tragic times later it's easy to
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imagine what our planet would look like without its protective bubble
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if you look at mars the red planet lost its global magnetic field long, long ago.
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And once this field disappeared, most of Mars's atmosphere vanished too.
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In May 2024, a strong solar particle event hit the planet.
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It disrupted the operation of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft
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and made radiation levels at the surface of the red planet
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rise around 30 times higher than what a person receives during a chest x -ray.
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The sun's outer atmosphere constantly emits a changing stream of electrons and protons, the solar wind.
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At the same time, the surface of the star also produces bursts of energy, mostly protons, during solar particle events.
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These bursts of energy have a connection to solar flares, extremely powerful bursts of electromagnetic radiation that can last from minutes to hours.
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Protons are way heavier than electrons
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and carry more energy that's why they can reach lower levels
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of earth's atmosphere exciting gas molecules in the air these excited molecules emit x -rays invisible to the unaided eye
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dozens and hundreds of relatively weak solar particle events happen during every solar cycle
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now let's speak about solar cycles for a minute you see from a distance the sun seems to be calm
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and steady but if you zoom in you'll see
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that its surface is constantly seething
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and churning it keeps transforming from a uniform ocean of fire to a chaos of warped plasma
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and back again in repeating cycle every 11 years or
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so the magnetic field of our star gets tangled up imagine
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a ball of tightly wound rubber bands that's what it looks like at such moments
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and then at one point it It snaps and flips completely, turning the North Pole into the South Pole and vice versa.
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Right before this event, the Sun steps up its activity.
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It starts to spit out giant blobs of fiery plasma, emit powerful streams of radiation, and grow planet -sized spots.
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This period has the name of solar maximum.
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It's a rather dangerous time for Earth since it gets regularly hit by solar storms.
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Such storms have the potential to disrupt communications and damage power infrastructure.
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Even worse, solar storms can harm astronauts working in space and even make satellites crash into the planet.
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As the cycle ends, it fades back to the solar minimum, and then a new cycle begins.
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Anyway, back to our solar particle events.
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researchers have found traces of extremely strong solar events happening throughout the history of earth
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and some of them were thousands of times stronger than anything
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our modern instruments have ever recorded such extreme solar particle events
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happen approximately every few millennia the most recent one occurred around
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993 ce beyond the immediate effect they have solar particle events
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can kickstart a chain of chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere
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and these processes often lead to depletion of ozone
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which isn't a good thing ozone absorbs harmful solar uv radiation
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which can damage not only our eyesight
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but also the dna of living beings plus changing the amounts
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of ozone in the atmosphere can impact the climate in a
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recent study researchers used large computer models to examine how extreme solar particle events affect Earth.
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They found out that if a solar proton event arrives during a period of time
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when our planet's magnetic field is very weak, then ozone damage can last for six years,
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and the level of UV radiation might increase by 25%, boosting solar -induced DNA damage by around 50%.
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And apparently, this dramatic combination of a weak magnetic field and extreme solar proton events happens quite often.
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And some researchers believe that it may even explain a few mysterious occurrences in the past of our planet.
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For example, the most recent period of weak magnetic field started 42 ,000 years ago and lasted for around 1 ,000 years.
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This period included a temporary switch in the North and South Poles.
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Several major evolutionary events happened during that time.
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For example, the last Neanderthals disappeared in Europe, along with the extinction of marsupial megafauna in Australia.
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Yeah, sadly, we won't see any giant wombats and giant kangaroos anymore.
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One more even bigger evolutionary event might also be linked to Earth's geomagnetic field.
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Multicellular animals appeared at the end of the Edeokaran period, which started around 635 million years ago,
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and it occurred after a 26 -million -year period of extremely weak or even absent magnetic field.
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The rapid evolution of different groups of animals in the Cambrian
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Explosion about 539 million years ago might have also been related to high UV levels and geomagnetism.
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The simultaneous evolution of hard body shells
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and eyes in multiple unrelated groups could have been necessary to detect and avoid harmful incoming UV rays.
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A complete reversal of Earth's geomagnetic poles might have a serious
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impact on the climate of our planet luckily such flips don't
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happen overnight the entire process stretches over thousands of years plus
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even though the magnetic pole weakens during a pole reversal it
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doesn't disappear completely that's why the magnetosphere continues protecting the planet from cosmic rays
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and charged solar particles even though there might be some amount of particulate radiation
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that will make it to earth's surface our planet's magnetic fields are generated by moving electric charges.
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If some material allows these charges to easily move in it, it's called a conductor.
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Metal is a great conductor, and we often use it to transfer electric currents from one place to another.
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In this case, the electric current's negative charge, called electrons, move through the metal.
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The current is what generates a magnetic field.
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Earth's outer core is made of liquid iron and nickel.
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In other words, there are layers and layers of conducting material inside our planet.
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Currents of charges are constantly moving throughout the core, and the liquid metal is also moving and circulating there, generating the magnetic field.
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This magnetic field, in turn, produces something resembling a bubble around the planet.
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It's called the magnetosphere, and it's located above the uppermost part of the atmosphere.
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This layer shields and deflects high -energy cosmic ray radiation, which otherwise would be extremely hazardous to people and other forms of life on Earth.
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The magnetosphere also interacts with the ionosphere,
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the layer of our planet's atmosphere containing loads of ions and free electrons and capable of reflecting radio waves.
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The interaction between these two layers and magnetized solar winds is what scientists call space weather.
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The solar wind is normally mild, and there's no space weather whatsoever.
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That's it for today.
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So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
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Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
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Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questo video contiene 250 frasi e 3226 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 22:50. Chi parla mantiene un ritmo costante di circa 141 parole al minuto, comodo per lo shadowing. Solo il 78% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese, quindi il lessico è impegnativo.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
15 parole del video che vale la pena imparare, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| magnetic aggettivo | /mæɡˈnɛtɪk/ | magnetico |
| atmosphere sostantivo | /ˈætməsˌfɪɹ/ | atmosfera |
| satellite sostantivo | /ˈsætəlaɪ̯t/ | satellite |
| particle sostantivo | /ˈpɑɹtək(ə)l/ | granello, pezzetto |
| radiation sostantivo | /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/ | radiazione |
| pole sostantivo | /pəʊl/ | polo |
| grid sostantivo | /ɡɹɪd/ | griglia, grata |
| researcher sostantivo | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | ricercatore, ricercatrice |
| layer sostantivo | /ˈleɪ̯ɚ/ | strato |
| burst verbo | /bɜːst/ | scoppiare, esplodere |
| plasma sostantivo | /ˈplæzmə/ | plasma |
| spacecraft sostantivo | /ˈspeɪsˌkɹæft/ | spazionave |
| cloud sostantivo | /ˈklaʊ̯d/ | nuvola, nube |
| shield sostantivo | /ˈʃild/ | scudo |
| bubble sostantivo | /ˈbʌbəl/ | bolla |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| mess up verbo | incasinare | |
| check out verbo | investigare | |
| come across verbo | dare l'impressione, avere l'aria | |
| come up with verbo | ideare, escogitare | |
| figure out verbo | scoprire, rendersi conto | |
| find out verbo | scoprire | |
| get through verbo | /ɡɛt ˈθɹu/ | superare, farcela |
| go through verbo | attraversare |
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Frasi condizionali if + frase, will/would + verbo — una condizione e il suo risultato | if you zoom in you'll see |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | is locked · are called · was hit |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | We've already seen · has built · have been |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 28 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come isn't, doesn't, don't. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “th”: thick /θɪk/, beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, thin /ˈθɪn/, smooth /smuːð/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: radiation /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/, shield /ˈʃild/, navigation /nævɪˈɡeɪʃən/, evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: radiation /ˌɹeɪ.diˈeɪ.ʃən/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, electrical /ɪˈlɛktɹɪkəl/, invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/, navigation /nævɪˈɡeɪʃən/
Come esercitarsi con questo video
- Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
- Fai shadowing frase per frase a velocità normale, ripetendo ognuna finché il tuo ritmo coincide con quello di chi parla.
- Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come magnetic, atmosphere, satellite.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.