we ve gone back in the past and recognised there s been enormous coronal mass ejections where huge pieces of the upper atmosphere of the sun have been blown off, hitting the earth in such a way that causes huge auroras. and the auroras go through canada, through the united states, through mexico, through central america. and if you were in colombia, you looked up and saw a beautiful red aurora. what s happening is these huge currents are arising in the ionosphere, producing additional currents in our power grid that cannot possibly keep them going. and therefore, they burn up transformers and you lose them. we don t have a few hours to turn everything off before it got blown out by such a solarflare, right? well, we re developing the processes now such that many companies are taking the alert system that the us is producing.
haven t seen the most intense sun in the space age that we could have. we ve gone back in the past and recognised there s been enormous coronal mass ejections where huge pieces of the upper atmosphere of the sun have been blown off, hitting the earth in such a way that causes huge auroras. and the auroras go through canada, through the united states, through mexico, through central america. and if you were in colombia, you looked up and saw a beautiful red aurora. what s happening is these huge currents are arising in the ionosphere, producing additional currents in our power grid that cannot possibly keep them going. and therefore, they burn up transformers and you lose them. we don t have a few hours to turn everything off before it got blown out by such a solarflare, right? well, we re developing the processes now such that
we re recognising that we haven t seen the most intense sun in the space age that we could have. we ve gone back in the past and recognised there s been enormous coronal mass ejections where huge pieces of the upper atmosphere of the sun have been blown off, hitting the earth in such a way that causes huge auroras. and the auroras go through canada, through the united states, through mexico, through central america. and if you were in colombia, you looked up and saw a beautiful red aurora. what s happening is these huge currents are arising in the ionosphere, producing additional currents in our power grid that cannot possibly keep them going. and therefore, they burn up transformers and you lose them. we don t have a few hours to turn everything off before it got blown out by such a solarflare, right?
to turn everything off before it got blown out by such a solarflare, right? well, we re developing the processes now such that many companies are taking the alert system that the us is producing. the noaa, the national oceanic and atmospheric administration, is responsible for space weather alerts. and so we do that fundamental research and noaa does the alert systems. so more companies are coming around to the idea. i mean, even airlines are using the noaa alert system so they don t fly over the poles where there s a lot of radiation going on. they ll take a lower latitude route. a final, final thought. you left your chief scientistjob at nasa before it was confirmed that there is indeed any form of life beyond our own planet. now, i don t want to be miserable about you and your fate, but do you believe confirmation of that life