Destination: Alaska

[Applause] I'm just packing my bag for Alaska, and if you want to know why I'm going to Alaska, well, you're not the only one. It seems I've become the why guy on a new Morning Show on Channel 10 called Breakfast.

Now, have you ever found yourself just saying "why"? You've seen something, you thought something, you just gone "why"? Well, that's why we have our why guide, Dr. Derek Mal. He's here to answer all the questions. So, I'm going to play you a clip of the live interview I did this morning talking about why I'm going up to Alaska.

The one that I have for him right now is: What is a solar burp? Is the sun got indigestion? What's going on with this?

Yeah, well, it's actually not really called a solar burp but a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection. But you can basically think of it as the sun giving out a burp, which just belches pieces of itself into space. These are the images that we're seeing because this only happens every now and then, doesn't it?

Well, basically every 11 years, a bit like clockwork, the sun will break out in spots and start spewing out these hot gases, fast-moving charged particles, and it just sprays it out into space.

Why, Derek, why?

Well, the sun is made of plasma, and it has these big magnetic fields within it. They get all bunched up, coiled up every 11 years, and they sort of spring outwards to a lower energy state. When they do that, they send all this matter out into space.

But why, Derek? I'm just kid. The other question I have is: What effects does this have on us here on Earth? Do we have any kind of impact on us?

Well, there are some beautiful effects. If we get just a bit of it, it'll create the Aurora, the beautiful Northern or Southern light, so you can see those over Tasmania or even over the North Pole around there. But there can also be some negative impacts; it can knock out our satellites, it can destroy satellites, it can cause problems with our power grids.

How long's this expected to last for?

Well, a few years. So, every 11 years, there's a peak for about a year or two, but there's nothing for us to worry about from the whole, you know, that concept of a solar flare being big enough just doing GOLF in that second kind either?

No, we're far enough away from the Sun that by the time it reaches us, the solar flare is basically spread out.

You're now on the record of saying that no one can hold you?

That's right. Well, the UK has actually added the sort of solar activity to their list of national security threats. So, you know, if the storm is big enough? So the sun is now a terrorist in a way?

Yeah, in 1989, all of power was knocked out to Quebec because of one of these solar storms.

Now, I'm very jealous you're heading up to Alaska. You're talking about the Aurora. What are you going to do when you get there?

Well, what we're going to go do is launch HD cameras on weather balloons, and we're going to send them up into the atmosphere. So, we're the first team ever to do this, and we're going to look at the Aurora from inside, film it in HD and color.

So, how are you going to find these little things? You're sticking them in weather balloons or something? How are you going to track them down?

'Cause they got— they're not going to come down where you want them.

Yeah, so we're going to have to put some sort of homing beacons on them, and then we're going to have to trek out through the wilderness on dog sleds and choppers and stuff and try to find this stuff.

So what are you going to do when you get that vision? Do we get a chance to have a look at it up on the big screen?

Absolutely! I'll come and I'll bring it back, and we can have a look at what we see.

Why, Derek?

Well, I think everyone wants to know, and if we know more about it, hopefully we can, you know, predict these solar events in the future, and we can be better prepared. You know, it can expose a lot of people to radiation, so if you're flying over the poles, you might actually have to have your flight rerouted if you're going to get hit by this burst of particles coming from the Sun. So it does actually have some kind of impact. It has major impacts on us.

You know, it's a significant threat. I have one more question for you here. It says here that the total energy radiated by the sun averages 383 billion trillion. That sounds like my billion billion trillion watt kilowatts.

There you go! Okay, yeah, it's still a ridiculous number. It's a huge ridiculous number. If we wrote it up here, it would take the whole board to write it up. I mean, the sun emits a crazy amount of energy, but most of it doesn't hit the Earth, of course, because all of that energy spreads out in space. So we just get a tiny fraction of it.

I could sit here and say "why" all day. Derek, thank you so much. It's a pleasure! If you want to see more of the show, you may want to check out the link in the description, and if you want to see more of me on the show, you may want to comment or write them an email. Let them know! Other than that, I guess I'll see you guys on the flip side. See you in Alaska!