De Universiteit van Vlaanderen Podcast · Universiteit van Vlaanderen

Weetikveel Academy | Zonnestormen

·42 min·3 clips

During the 1859 Carrington event, telegraph operators burned their batteries — then discovered the storm's induced current let them send messages without batteries at all.

1. Solar physicist Dr. Christine Verbeek joins Kobe Ilsen on Weetikveel Academy to explain solar storms, solar wind, and space weather. 2. Dr. Verbeek works at the University of Leuven, where her group develops space weather prediction models used in operational forecasting. 3. The episode uses the 2007 film Sunshine by Danny Boyle as an entry point before turning to the real science of solar phenomena. 4. The sun is 150 million kilometers from Earth; scaled down, if Earth is a sheet of paper, the sun is a one-meter beach ball 100 meters away. 5. The sun consists mainly of hydrogen and helium undergoing nuclear fusion at its core, where temperatures reach millions of degrees Kelvin, while the surface is comparatively cooler at around 5,800-6,800 Kelvin. 6. The sun is made of plasma — a fourth state of matter where heat strips electrons from atoms, creating freely floating charged particles that are strongly influenced by magnetic fields. 7. Because the sun is plasma rather than a solid mass, its equator rotates faster than its poles, causing the sun's magnetic field lines to become tangled over time. 8. When magnetic field lines restructure, they can eject clouds of charged plasma — called solar storms or coronal mass ejections — at speeds between 300 and 3,000 kilometers per second. 9. The sun follows an 11-year cycle during which its magnetic north and south poles swap; the period of highest activity (solar maximum) produces the most solar storms, and Dr. Verbeek says we are currently just past a solar maximum. 10. The aurora borealis — visible in Belgium in early 2024 — is caused by solar particles entering Earth's atmosphere at the poles and exciting oxygen and nitrogen atoms, which emit green, pink, blue, or purple light as they return to their ground state. 11. Solar storms can strip atmospheric drag on low-orbit satellites such as Starlink, slowing them and threatening their operational altitude. 12. Pilots flying polar routes are exposed to solar particle radiation at levels that require annual dose monitoring, analogous to hospital X-ray tracking, because cumulative exposure increases cancer risk. 13. A solar storm's induced electrical current can overload transformers in power grids; in 1989, this knocked out Quebec's electricity for approximately half a day. 14. The 1859 Carrington event — the most extreme solar storm on record — induced currents so strong that telegraph operators could send messages after disconnecting their batteries, using only atmospheric electricity generated by the storm. 15. Scientists do not know how modern electrical infrastructure would respond to a Carrington-level event because such a storm has not occurred since the electrical grid was built. 16. Belgium's Royal Star Observatory in Ukkel operates a 24-hour space weather warning center that alerts relevant parties — satellite operators, aviation authorities — when significant storms are detected. 17. The University of Leuven team works to improve numerical models that predict solar storm arrival time and intensity to give more lead time before impact. 18. The episode is conducted in an accessible question-and-answer format, with Kobe Ilsen asking lay questions and Dr. Verbeek correcting misunderstandings while affirming creative analogies. 19. People curious about space, astronomy, climate risk, or infrastructure resilience will find the episode directly informative. 20. Listeners who want technical depth on plasma physics, magnetohydrodynamics, or engineering solutions will find the level of detail insufficient.

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