see you haven't heard from your son either, have you? >> no no letters, nothing phone i imagine you're worried about him oh, yeah. of course. >> we both are we get very little sleep because it's kinda hard to lay down sleep when you worry all in your mind, just keeps going yeah i can't even imagine i had a good night of. sleep and you know, we heard from paul whelan and an american who was saying that he was worried that he was worried about what this could mean. obviously, that's something we'll monitor very closely. and melody jones, if you here anything, please. please let us know i will do that at honey. thank you. thank you for coming on and for joining us tonight you know, i had something else

i wanted to touch on real quick. go ahead, but we just use seconds oh, okay. >> the army kept sending him there knowing this was going on. the violence and stuff and they kept sandi him back south korea so i just wanted jones outbreak will continue to stay in touch with you. thank you so much for joining us tonight. and thank you all so much for joining us. cnn's special coverage of that solar storm starts right now on newsnight historic event is underway tonight as a dazzling display of solar flares are right now painting the sky. >> welcome to a special edition of newsnight. i've abby phillip in new york alongside bill. we're and it is a first in nearly two decades, a warning from the government would and there, whether watchers, the solar storm that is now rated a g5 or extreme as of right now on the east coast is underway.

>> this is a blast of solar energy ricocheting across the united states. a rare moment where you can look up and see the northern lights visible from coast to coast. normally, you gotta go to northern alaska, iceland, but now you can see them as far south as alabama. tonight's, but it does have some potentially far-reaching disruptions to our infrastructure and our way of life. >> abby what you can see in places as the auroras of dipping into palettes and splashes of blue and green, their purple haze sort of on a black canvas. what you don't see, the real threat to the things that let us make phone calls or get directions from slamming into each other or letting each other connect for national security or shipping our supply chains let us beam this programming right into your living room. >> so over the next two hours, cnn will tell you everything you need to know as only cnn can we have a full roster of experts, weather forecasters, space meteorologists, the science guy, astrophysicists, aurora hunters, and all the best glimpses from cnn

affiliates around the world. and of course from you, we've also got bill where we are here for the entire two hours. but let's get started with cnn's chad myers and the weather center with more on what this storm is exactly. what we can expect chad, this is a little bit of a different assignment for you than usual. if you're up in space instead of giving us the weather. so what should we know? when we're looking at the sun about four or five days ago, we noticed the sunspot getting very, very active and it is 17 now 17 times the size of the diameter of the earth. so that's how big this thing is. and it started to get active and then all of a sudden, we got a coronal mass ejection in ejection of plasma that came right toward the earth. how do we know that it came toward the earth? because if it went this way, it'd be well off to our west. but we see a halo, of plasma and those that like a puff of smoke getting blown at you and you want to get out of the way, would you see it all around you, you know, it's headed in your direction so that's how we know that this is headed toward

earth. and now there are more than one of these cmes coronal mass ejections headed toward earth. in fact, probably even six more things have calmed down just a little bit. i was really looking at europe about an hour ago and things were purple everywhere. but another ejection will hit the earth likely around midnight tonight. so if you're not seeing what you thought you were going to see, just wait an hour or two, couple of things going on right now, we're still watching this. we're watching for the polarity or the north-south axis of this coronal mass ejection, which by the way is moving at 1.7 million miles per hour. >> keep that in mind when you're thinking about, wow, this is really headed our direction, but we're watching this little red dot here. >> this is the polarity of the coronal mass ejection when it's below the line, that's when we really get the coronas to light up. for awhile. today, it was above and things calm down. but now that we're going back down into polarities coming from the south, those northern lights are going to

get busy and very, very pretty chat. >> i think a lot of folks don't realize there is a rating system for solar storms. the way there is for tornadoes, you were worried about f3, f4, a five tornadoes last week. now, this is a g5 storm. explain this and put it in context. in recent history were five of five, and we talked about that even with the risk of severe weather, there's a level three of five risk or four or five, and we've had some fours this week and even a five for the high risk of severe weather while we have five of five they've now for this severe storm and the auroras are going to be farther to the south, but power outages are likely anything that's long and metal will begin to gather this plasma that's out there and start to even pipelines will begin to don't touch them kind of thing. we have lots of amperage in pipelines if there they're exposed to the air, satellite disruptions, i think are probably likely, without a doubt, the plasma, the power coming from the sun is more

powerful than the power coming from the satellite itself. >> here's a little something though that disturbs me just a second. >> we are supposed to be today down here in this active category. that's not where we are. we are way up here, then the forecast for tomorrow was to be where we are right now. what happens tomorrow doesn't even go hired as do we get to the nine, do we get to that nine k index still going to be a g5 but if you're all the way down to the south, you are going to see this. you have cloud cover today don't worry about it because this is not like an eclipse. this is a multi day event wow, if for those of us who want to see a little something here in new york that might be good news. >> we've got a cloudy day here. so for those of you waiting, we've got a whole weekend ahead, chad. thanks very much. we'll check in with you shortly. again, this extreme five out of five, as you heard chad say geomagnetic storm, it is the strongest and more than 20 years joining us now is sean dahl. he's the senior forecaster at noah's space weather prediction center

shawn this storm is at the highest level of the scale that we have to measure these things. so based on what you've seen so far of the activity in the skies or other metrics that you might have that i'm sure are much more sophisticated what do you rate this storm as in terms of its intensity high, but thanks for having and so i'm glad to share information with all your viewers this here is one of quite notable proportions. we haven't seen this level of activity since 2003 with the famous halloween storms we last hit this type of category. >> and when we get to these g5 levels is chad so explained quite well. >> you can have a g5 level that's just at my head and you can have a g5 that several stories up over my head. we are not at that super nasty g5 level. these are low g5 extreme storms, still quite significant and that's why we do hit the space weather prediction center in colorado is to inform all

the operators of our technologies that chad talked about. so they can take the proper measures to make sure things still function as much as possible. >> sean, i don't know if if you're a baseball fan, abeer baseball famine, use that metaphor. >> i'll take your word for we know that the odds of getting hit in the nose with a foul ball, sitting at a game or pretty, pretty rare. >> but if you do, it's going to hurt a lot and it feels like the sun is this power hit are on steroids, just blasting energy out into the galaxy into our milky way stadium. >> and whether or not it hits our seat section, right now is what we're paying attention to. how are you able to predict with precision where it'll have the most effect? we know which grids might be the most vulnerable, which side of the earth, like how precise can you get? >> it's very difficult to get precision forecasting for something that's global in nature some areas of the world

may have more of an effect than other areas, even at similar intensities just because of the variances in earth's protective magnetic barrier that magnetosphere, which is what's connecting with the sun and by the way, with this piece that flung out towards earth is giant magnetic connection which can be explained very well what the direction of them. so yes, it's very difficult to forecast space weather storms. i mean, we're dealing with something 93 million miles away, an extraordinarily difficult to time these. we did a great job knowing that these were getting i can earth. but our timing was off a bit and that's no surprise for that vast amount of distance. >> yeah. one of the things we've been hearing everybody talk about is how active the sun has been in this part of the cycle how do we know when it's going to be really, really bad? i mean, this tie you said it's up to your head but how do we know when two or three story level that you just described we might be talking about a g5 that is completely different from the one that we're talking about today.

>> abby well, seven, that's correct. >> we don't really know until the stormy merges, so we can forecast and see them emerged from the sun. >> but then we have to wait. we have to wait until it gets only a million miles from earth. that's where our first small fleet of satellites are. that detect the changes. in what we call solar wind, which chad was alluding to what the magnetic field. then we have very little warning time at that point, but we have to wait until n. so once we sought arrived in, arrived like the baseball bill described hitting him a face, it struck with force and it immediately started to light up because it was the favorable direction that opposite earth. and it connected and we rapidly rose all the way up through g54. and then we hit g5 here later today. and then once again, i think afterwards as well. >> so yes, it works that way and it's not a cycle in 11 years cycle on average. >> and right now, we are the year where we expect the peak to be of this solar maximum for solar cycle 25 is this year or early next year. but sorry, it

doesn't shut off right away. >> it takes a little while. 2025 and 2026 will still be at risk for these types of storms that's really, really interesting. sean doll, you've got a really interesting job. i ended up just a little bit. we'll check in with you again. thank you for joining us. >> thank you, sean. lot of people don't know that we're space weatherman. you're just not one right? there. >> are these extraordinary images coming in through social media? from around the world as people try to get their first glimpse in many cases of the northern lights, even if they're not that far north, but there are potential hazards associated with this, not to you physically, but our way of life, power grid communication, cnn, kristin fisher joins us now with more on that. kristen thanks for being here. what are the biggest concerns that were worried about tonight? >> yeah. so as you said, built the biggest concerns don't have anything to do with threats to our actual human bodies, right? i mean, the earth's magnetosphere acts is kind of an iron dome of sorts you know, kind of deflecting all of those a highly charged particles

coming from the sun. the biggest dangers have to do with threats to the power grid or threats to the satellites that contribute so much to our daily lives. and so the biggest threat probably that folks have been saying specifically with this solar storm is with the power grid because when all of those highly charged particles interact with our magnetosphere and the earth's magnetosphere, what it does is it can cause surges in voltage. >> and so the fix for it is kind of like how you would imagine a surge protector to work the power operators, the critical infrastructure operators have been notified about this. >> there are theoretically fixes in place, surge protections in place to keep this from really impacting us too much. but the last time in 2003 when there was a really big storm, sweden face some pretty big power outages voted south africa. so that's certainly something to watch

for. and then the other big thing is of course, the threat to satellites, disturbances to satellites, particularly in low-earth orbit bill and the one good thing though, is they do not anticipate a big disturbance to our cell phones because even if there's an issue with the satellite connectivity, you can still connect with cell phone towers here on earth and then things like atms. that's not expected to be impacted either unless there's a secondary impact with a power outage associated to that specific atm machine. >> so kristen, normally you are covering what's happening as people are going up into space or what's happening in space, what's going on with nasa right now, you talked about the satellites are thousands of them up there, but they're also astronauts up there right now to how are they preparing for this? how are they dealing with it as it's now underway? >> yes. so you see on your screen right there they're seven astronauts. there's nasa astronauts and russian cosmonauts up at the international space station and

while they do get some protection from the earth's atmosphere, it's certainly not as much as we get here on earth. and so there are scenarios where are these astronauts they trained for this? they go into certain parts of the international space station that are more protected. nasa describes it as having more mass where they can kind of go to and they're not right by a window, they get a bit more protection in from this really harmful radiation particles. but this time nasa says they're not going to take any precautionary measures. they've just put out a statement. i want to read it to you, abby. it says nasa completed a thorough analysis of recent space weather activity and determined it posed no threat to the crew aboard the international space station and no additional precautionary measures are needed. so some good news there. but guys, if you all have ever seen the show for all mankind, you may remember there's a scene where a big

solar storm hits the astronauts up in a futuristic lunar base and they all have to run it to take cover that would happen if nasa is artemis program goes through, they build a lunar base and then a big solar storm like this comes because the moon doesn't have an atmosphere to protect astronauts on a lunar base there, like the iss astronauts do right now yet another one of the hazards we have to think about how an ising other planets. one more thing to think about that line, kristen thank you so much for that one. keep an eye on what things happened tonight and in the coming hours as this happens yeah. >> i want to bring it out. cnn's paula newton, she is in don robin on tarriela. that's about 15 miles from the canadian capital of ottawa paula, you're further north of here what are you seeing now that you're a little bit a ways from the light pollution in the city yeah.

>> and that's what i can control for right. abby control for the fact that i get away from the city where at least here, where if we see it, we've got a good eye on it and bury our photo journalist has an excellent lens, so we're at the ready. the issue is though i have to break it to you guys in canada, the northern lights, right? i'm not going to say it's common, but look, we do see it you know, whether you're at 60 degrees, 58, 62 cuts a swath through most of canada. and so we are kind of used to seeing it even when the solar storm isn't that strong. so we controlled for the light pollution the problem here is still cloud. we are told that in western canada, in fact, there should be less cloud cover tonight. i'm still hopeful right where i am right now that we should have a gorgeous display interesting here. normally we get that green color here. it's actually more of a milky green, so those gorgeous colors, you've seen from england, essentially actually, usually you don't see here. but we are

ready and waiting in a lot of people will be out on the porches the way i am right now. i would on their front and back porches and people waking other people up usually, it would be around midnight 1:00 a.m. eastern. that's what they're telling us. this is the most likely time as i said, if you talk to many people in canada, especially outdoorsy people, they'll say that they have seen it, you know, a handful of times in their lives, sometimes many more times in that very good yeah. >> the old hat to canadians, but folks and maybe alabama could get a glimpse of this thing if things go well, paula, thank you so much. i will check back later more on our special coverage as we await the peak of the solar storm tonight. bill nye, the science guy joins us next every weekday morning, cnn's five things has what you need to get going with your day and here a five reasons to stream it on maps it's the five essential stories of the

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perfect fit. >> now, comfort looks good. >> i hanako montgomery and tokyo and this is cnn welcome back to our special coverage of the extreme solar storm crossing north america with the strongest forecast to hit the earth since 2003. >> so let's break it down with bill nye, the science guy, bill, welcome in. it's good to have you with us now a lot of folks here, it's great to be here. >> yeah. >> a lot of folks, myself included. it wasn't until the recent total eclipse that i really tried to understand space weather a lot of folks don't think about every, every day is sunny in space. there's no thunderstorms. but explain what is happening in the significance of what we're experiencing at this moment well, we might think of this sun as a solid object or a disk, but it's spinning about every month. >> the northern and southern parts of the sun, but humans

scroll the north and south person's son spin a little faster than the middle this friction and this interaction with all the gases that make up the outer layers of the sun create these crazy strong magnetic fields and from time to time, these charged particles get tossed into space and so we have both these solar flares where these zaps of electromagnetic energy photons that you can see. and i in the x-ray region jan very high frequency and these charged particles both come shooting out away from the surface of the sun and if the orbit of the earth is in the place where those things are shooting, we get zapped. if i may. and of course, who could forget? the carrington event and 18, 59, where this sort of thing went on for a week and it ruined a lot of telegraph systems. yes.

which was the state of the art of that time. and so the deal is everybody the key thing that we have going on here on earth, which is really good for us living things it's this magnetic field inside the earth? is this churning molten iron and nickel and it creates this magnetic field that enables your compass to work what have you and so this is what causes the charged particles to come down at the north and south pole down toward the middle of the earth and it's the speed of those particles passing through the atmosphere that creates the aurorae, the aurora borealis and aurora australis. it's fantastic and you guys have been talking about it and i'm out west here and when it gets dark, i'm going to be looking i'm going to be you're watching where we have clear skies tonight. but the other thing everybody that is a real danger to our technological society is different from 18, 59 is how much we depend on

electricity and our electronics and so on. and you know, it was a pretty straightforward bunch of things that went wrong in texas back in february of 2021 where the power went out and it affected an enormous number of people. >> well we probably have systems in place to manage this interaction of these charged particles with earth's magnetic field but stuff might go wrong the way it did in 2003 and south africa, for example. >> and this is another thing where we need to evaluate our electrical grid and prepare for this sort of deal because the sun doesn't take a meeting about when it's going to produce one of these things. >> yeah, i mean, do you think that as we are becoming i mean, it seems to me we're just becoming much more reliant on these things devices and whatnot everything is electric, and this is not the days of the

telegraph. i mean, do you think we are becoming more susceptible to the effects of a really powerful solar storm, or are we becoming more resilient where are we in that answer the answer is absolutely without question. it depends it depends on the strength of the event in a depends how much infrastructure, how much of our infrastructure we have prepared, the sort of thing you've probably heard somebody remind each other that the safest place to be in a lightening storm is in a car because the metal of the car makes the energy from the lightening go around. >> the passengers inside and then its own rubber tires as not irrelevant effect, but we don't have infrastructure on all of our transformers. this is, i say this because on a competitive network, i did a tv show. the end is nigh where we did six world ending scenarios

are the one that really worries me is this very one. this one show episode number three where we get these coronal mass ejection cmes back-to-back. so if you have really big ones, like he was talking about third story, g5. >> wow substance space. >> there's no salvage, just be and these things, if they happen 12 hours apart hypothetically, you could turn off the electricity in the whole world, which would be catastrophic we could, none of us really in the developed world could go very long. without electricity or you can, there's survival is and so on. but just objectively, if nothing else, the refrigeration goes bad, right? and we spoil it. enormous amounts of food. but all this is, this is all solvable. you and medication. >> this is all something we understand, but some first magnetic field interacting with

the charged particles. but worth worrying about bill, even though rare chances are rare. one study looked back, there was, in addition to the carrington event that was another big one and 1921 that started fires and telegraph stations because they electricity was so powerful, they did a study that said if that happened now given our grid, it would cause one to $2 trillion in damage could take four to ten years to come back from 160 million americans could be affected. and the geology of the east coast actually makes it more conducive to the he sorts of things. so we're thinking about for contingencies, not to worry about, i suppose tonight, but this is as close as we'll get. >> well you know, we say bill, abby, everything happens for a reason and that reason anyone is usually physics. so we do understand this well enough. we can prepare for this my personal hero michael faraday coined the noun electromagnetis m he understood that it's a

moving magnetic field that creates electricity. electricity creates a magnetic field that's wonderful interaction. so we can prepare for this. >> you guys. thank you. have been celebrating the beauty of it. now these particles will come into the atmosphere and zap up electrons on molecules. and as they fall down, they release light photons. and it will be lovely. and those of you who have kept your eclipse glasses, and i hope you have look at the sun tomorrow. you can see here where i am in about 34 degrees latitude and california you can see the sunspot write about what you'd might call three, 30 on the disk of the sun, the position about the three or 4:00 position in sun it's exciting. so everybody, let's celebrate this humankind understands how cool bill nye. thank you so much for always an infecting us with some wonder. we appreciate

it. happy solar storm watching. >> thank you happy. >> so or store we've got more coverage of this extreme solar storm event after this break, including reports of an aurora as far as south as far south as the state of georgia, stay with us and we'll have more southern moscow pistorius was at the absolute peak of his celebrity in olympic heroes, xhaka murder trial we learned of a much darker individual. how would really happen with jesse l. martin sandi nine on yeah, with armor all a little bit of this protects you from a lot of that armor all west work more kliger by $20, get five back through may 31st from meat free monday to sunday so many

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can measure you right now. i'm taylor on ios or android this is cnn news, we have more now on our special coverage of this extreme solar storm over north america. we are starting to get pictures tours as far south as georgia, joining us now to help explain what is happening tonight and all across the

planet is brian greene. he's a professor of physics and mathematics onnx, a columbia university. he's also the director of columbia center for theoretical physics, brian we were talking a little bit earlier and i bill nye earlier as we were just talking to him, alluded to this but there's a reason that were freaking out about what this might do to all of us. >> how can we be so sure that really massive one of these things isn't going to start to affect us for humans on the planet earth, look, you can never be sure when it comes to anything in science is always a possibility. >> so do you have some weird anomalous, huge solar flare that is the kind of thing you see in a disaster movie that will wipe things out. but our understanding of the physics of the sun, our understanding of the processes gives us confidence that that's not going to happen. we're well aware that the earth is protected by this magnetic field. so when charged particles from the sun come toward us, this field tends to direct them to the north pole, to the south pole. and so is it

possible that some crazy thing could happen? yes, but incredibly unlikely? >> let's talk about what's happening on the sun. >> yes, we love it, worship it in many ways, keeps us alive and forget that it's this thermonuclear bomb going off for 4 billion years, sustained by a sustained bomb and the force of this i was reading, if we could catch just the force of one solar flare could power humanity for 20th thousand years or something like that but in 89, i was reading one of these coronal mass ejections was i want you to describe shut off the power in canada like a quarter of canada. what is that like? what's the difference between that and the solar flares? >> yes. so the coronal mass ejection the analogy that you used before from baseball well, it's actually pretty good. it's like you've got juan soto or aaron judge, up there in the forum of these bundles of magnetic field lines that get twisted up through the tumultuous activity that takes

place on the surface of the sun, yielding these dark spots that's what sunspots are with the magnetic field is so so strong that it actually suppresses the convection that ordinarily heats the arena. and that's why it's darker. it's cooler. but these magnetic field leinz, they act kind of like a slingshot. and so this slingshot, when it is released, can pull these particles and fire them out into space. and that's how these particles are propelled with substantial energy toward planet earth. and when these charged particles hit planet earth well, things happen. bad things can happen as we heard in terms of potentially having an impact on communications or the electrical grid but the beautiful sayyed, when these charged particles hit the atmosphere, some of them will do, they can excite the nitrogen and the oxygen in the atmosphere. and when those atoms fall back to their less excited state to give off light in the form of the aurora borealis, the, the borealis

that we've been saying. and so that's what happening. so you've got the beauty sayyed, you've got the dangerous sayyed, but it all come to the fundamental physics of these magnetic fields on the sun. >> and at the moment, i mean it is a little bit more on the beauty sayyed, the dangerous sayyed. we haven't seen a whole lot of reports of anything super negative happening in this particular one. >> but what are we observing? >> about the activity of the sun in general over time? is it becoming more active? is it's still, is it just very unpredictable. we don't know whatever we're going to get. >> look, the sun is very complicated physical system. it's as big ball of gas which has bill says, has these nuclear processes nuclear fusion happening deep in the core powering in the sun, giving rise to energy that ripples through layer by layer of the sun, ultimate gain to the surface. a surface has temperatures ranging from tens of thousands of greece to millions of degrees near the corona. so it's a very active environment, but you've got to bear in mind. it's been around for 5 billion years so in some

sense, it's relatively stable on the timescales that matter to us. and we're well aware that there are these 11 year cycles that the sun's activity goes through and we're heading toward a maximum of one of those periods right now. and that's what we're seeing, the effects of so it's not unexpected. it's not anomalous, but it's hard to predict with precision exactly how powerful it will be in any given moment. >> it's crazy to think bill that this is, i mean, this is a blip yeah, in the universe time scale of with a universe. >> if that's not comforting for you, it's like total, total eclipse. it gives us a sense of humble perspective. run this little blue and green marble hurdling through space at the mercy of physics. >> this is what it all is. we are nothing but collections of particles governed by the laws of physics, the same laws that govern the sun govern the earth and governed the things that make up our bodies. so we are nothing but playing out the

equations that come down to us from faraday and from maxwell and from stein, because that's all that's happening right now, anywhere in the universe, including here. >> well, you are among my favorite collection of particles well, thank you guys collection, of particles, well put together thank you so much all right, we come back. >> we're going to speak with a retired astronaut about what nasa is doing in space at this moment, as the storm from here to stay with us nothing like it was ever documented. i thought this is all controlled and save better ali came miki to shoot me when you have chronic kidney disease there are places you'd like to be my here and here not

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scale, abby, i was just reading a couple of years ago spacex, elon musk's company launched about 49 new satellites during a he to storm 38 of them failed. wow, as a result of the change in the energy. >> and this is so much more powerful than the show, much more powerful. so not just the infrastructure orbiting earth at risk potentially might even be power grids on earth. >> let's bring and cnn technology reporter brian fall what is the likelihood of communication breakdown or anything, right now, brian like our cell phones, for example, with this been affected. >> yeah. bill and abby, that's a great question. the good news is, if you're an average cell phone user, this solar activity may not affect your devices very much. the exact reasons for that are really interesting. and it gives you a really fascinating glimpse into how our everyday technology really works. not to mention the science behind this so as you've been hearing all evening, the sun's been sending these charged particles toward earth. that interact with our

magnetic sphere. and that's what's causing these auroras everywhere. and a byproduct of all of that can be fluctuations in the upper atmosphere that scatter or even block radio transmissions in certain specific frequencies. now, the shouldn't interfere with cellular signals because those run on different frequencies than the ones we're talking about here. so your calls and your mobile data should still go through. but what can these storms effect while the list includes satellites in orbit that aren't shielded by that magnetic ics fear as well as any signal trying to make a punch through that ionosphere, that upper layer of the atmosphere we were just talking about. so that could mean glitchy or less accurate gps readings on ships or airplanes. but again, cell phone gps might be less affected because phones usually rely on cell towers in addition to satellites to get a location fix now, shortwave radio signals, those likely will have issues. that's because in order to increase their range, people typically try to bounce them off the underside of the ionosphere. these storms that obviously gets a lot harder, lots of

commercial businesses and government agencies use this type of communication. and so do amateur ham radio operators all of these users could be effected. there is one way in which the storm could indirectly affect your electronic devices. and that's if the disruptions caused widespread power grid issues and utility companies say they're monitoring the situation and are prepared. but storm watches again, as you said, have upgraded this to the most intense level that exists in the government's classification system. so if transformers over get overloaded and the grid is disrupted, that could cut power to cell towers and of course wireless companies do have backup generators on hand in case that becomes a problem, bill in ebi all right. >> sounds like we're getting a little better preparing for these things. brian fung. thank you very much i take a look at this. >> you're looking at this video here. this is out of michigan tonight. you can see a little bit of a purple haze and some parts green haze and other parts that is the aurora reaching down well into the

united states where perhaps normally we wouldn't be seeing anything like this on a friday night joining us now to talk about all of this is astrophysicist hakeem illu shea, according to his bio on twitter he is sciences sciences greatest hype man. we've talked before us, i believe it what's got you hyped up about this solar storm? >> well, thank you for having me tonight. and the first thing i'm hyped up about is our following. bill nye at brian greene that makes me to headliner that's true there. you're openers icky well for me is just like the april 8 total solar eclipse. it really brings the fact that we live on a planet that's orbiting a star that's in a galaxy to our front door, right? it brings it down to earth. so when you think about astronomical phenomena that are naked eye

aurorae are right up there, right there, right behind. if you asked me, i'd see a total solar eclipse is clearly number one. but next to a bright comet aurorae are pretty amazing to see if you're near the northern extremes are the southern extremes. we cannot just get the car huller's in the sky, but the actual undulating curtains of nebula prosity, that's pretty awesome. and so the fact that that's going to extend to more people around the world that's pretty cool. >> cartons of nebula city. >> have you lost me? that's a good album title your enthusiasm, you're wondering for this isn't it? is infectious. and, but, you know, we're news folk and we have to be the debbie downer every now and, and to think about the cost of this potential risk of this sort of thing from the gps that have these atomic my clocks that are synchronized down to the billion to the second, that our financial and national security information depends on those to the grids how worried are you on a scale

of one to ten about this doing damage to our way of life. some within our lifetimes or within the next few years well, it really does depend. and so i have not been very nervous about it because, you know, we talk about the fact that the sun has an 11 year cycle between maxima and minima. but all maximum are not the same. and in recent decades, the maximal have been decreasing in intensity. and so it was predicted previously. that we might not even have a maximum this time around, but it turns out that we do so things could get much more energetic on the surface of the sun there, what we're dealing with right now the other thing is, is that it's not just what the sun's magnetic field, the earth's magnetic field is doing. it's also how we design our technology to mediate the effects of geomagnetic storms. so just like the astronauts can go into a safe room if there's a high radiation event,

satellites can be put into safety mode. and i'm hoping that are ground-based surface electrical infrastructure also have safe if modes, so that we don't have events like we had in the early 20th century or late 19th century, where things caught on fire because of big currents surging through our electric infrastructure yeah we're looking as you're talking, they're hakeem at some pictures out of indicator alabama. i mean, that's actually furthers much further south. i think that we were really expecting for this one. it just goes to show that the expectation we started this night at a g4. now we're at a g5. the intensity is, getting more extreme but the pictures for the rest of the country are really spectacular for people who might otherwise never see this i've been asking people this in terms of the risk of it getting much worse, much more

intense in the future and what what do you think about that? what do you think? is going to be the likelihood that we might see a really, really big one like one of those once in a lifetime, kind of storms yeah so two things. >> first thing is seeing these things very far away. >> if you look at photographs of aurorae from space, they're going from the top of the atmosphere up. >> so air and very high altitudes. so just like everywhere on the night, sayyed of the earth can see the moon because it's at a super high altitude in a manner of speaking, you don't have to be right under the award to see them. you can feed them like 600 miles away because you're looking at something that's very far away. now, as far as the big one goes, we do predict what's happening on the surface of the sun. we have a science called helio seismology, just like we have seismology here on earth. helio seismology has the ability to not just see what's going on

subsurface on the sun, but what's coming around on the other side. so there is a signature it needs so-called active regions where sunspots are, where you see this sigmoidal thing is shaped like an s and that lets us noted that thing is about to blow. now, here's the other thing know about the sun geological data shows us that in the past the sun was way more active than it is today. it has cycles where it goes very quiet, like what was called the maunder minimum, a few hundred years ago and was associated with the little ice age and the potato famine in ireland. and you have event they show that the solar activity was much, much greater. so there's no evidence that we're going to see those big maxima, vicious cycle. but it is even though it's predictable or short terms, we still don't quite understand what creates the magnetic fields in the sun. the so-called solar magneto sphere and we don't understand all of the ways that energy gets

injected via magnetic reconnection and waves or magnetic fields. so there's a lot more than learn, right? that's why nasa has so many satellites looking at the sun, space weather is important. >> there are some scientists who think that there's a 12% chance of a g5 plus solar storm hitting earth within the next ten years came not among those obviously the 12% if you look at the error bar on that prediction has got to be pretty bernie vague. >> yeah, if to the point of speculation, right? yeah. so sure. you know what you could say if something like every century or so. yeah, we get something that size, so maybe we're now overdue, right? >> well, i came we appreciate your time and enthusiasm tonight. thank you so much. enjoy the light show tonight. we'll check back with coming days and it warrants your pictures i really starting to come in now and we'll show them on the air from all quarters. stay with us on an exciting night for change has presented

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the gaza border. it's context and curiosity. so you can be out front two. >> let's go out front. >> erin burnett, outfront week nights. it's seven on cnn close captioning brought to you by feel away, optimum enhanced calming for cats. >> have your cats sprays outside the litter box, fights with other cats were scratches the furniture, they could be telling you they're stressed to help them feel more calm, try feel away. >> optimum i'm here with me phillips, her show. >> as we cover this good visitor and hand side hey, if we're having massive solar storm more on that in a second. >> but let's talk about champions for change. >> this is a franchise we do every year here at cnn where we celebrate sort of positive stories of ordinary folks stepping up. >> and i'm back, i get to tell a champion story this year and i chose a woman, an nfl mom named a net ruben who married a seattle seahawks i can then retired in the florida gulf coast just in time for first hurricane and it shook her up

so much. >> she imported a new way to build hurricane proof construction, a technology from italy. she's bringing to the gulf coast to try to spare other mothers from the fright of a category five storm coming in their way. it's a fascinating, a disruptive idea and construction can't wait to share the whole thing with you. and here's a sample of some of our other champions this year a lot of the people that we worked with our dean nonviable citizens, which just blows my mind there's this quote that said that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety the opposite of addiction is human connection decided, i would create a business to empower people with autism and related disability through gainful employment in the car wash industry mr. brian, with the intention to really do is the first of all, good one inch fee. >> instead of looking at things, glass half empty, wicked things, glass h