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  • [♪ INTRO]

  • When you think about highlights of the night sky,

  • youre probably not thinking about the Sun.

  • But depending on where you are in the world,

  • the Sun can create some of the most dramatic displays out there.

  • Near the poles, charged particles from the Sun create incredible light shows called auroras,

  • also known as the Northern and Southern lights.

  • These light shows get huge audiences, because theyre beautiful,

  • and also, theyre really useful for studying our planet and our solar system.

  • But even with locals, tourists, and scientists watching, back in 2015,

  • a group of citizen scientists in Finland saw a new kind of aurora

  • that had never been documented before.

  • And according to a paper published last week in the journal AGU Advances,

  • their discovery may be more than just a new spectacle in the night sky.

  • Scientists hypothesized that the unusual aurora

  • came from a feature in Earth’s atmosphere that we don’t actually know very much about,

  • but the aurora may give us a new chance to study it.

  • All auroras happen when Earth’s magnetic field funnels charged particles from the Sun,

  • or the solar wind, toward the poles,

  • where it hits nitrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere.

  • When they collide, the particles in the atmosphere get a boost of energy,

  • and when they relax back to their natural state, they let off that extra energy as light,

  • creating colorful bands or lines that stretch across the night sky.

  • And there are lots of kinds of auroras that have different shapes and colors,

  • depending on things like where they strike the atmosphere and how fast the particles collide.

  • So guidebooks help hobbyists tell apart the different types,

  • but the one discovered in 2015 wasn’t in the guidebooks.

  • It was green, like a lot of auroras,

  • but it looked almost like a bunch of fingers stretching parallel to the ground.

  • The group called the new aurorasthe dunes

  • because of the way they appear to ripple like sand dunes.

  • And their shape was a little surprising.

  • Since Earth’s magnetic field is mostly vertical near the poles,

  • most auroras look like they stretch upward, toward space.

  • But the dunes were horizontal.

  • So the group got in touch with a local physicist

  • who wrote one of the aurora guidebooks to learn more.

  • Except, she had never seen anything like it.

  • So in 2018, she organized a group of people

  • to photograph and document these auroras all over Finland and Sweden.

  • Once they’d collected the photos,

  • the hobbyists teamed up with the author of the guidebook and her colleagues

  • at the University of Helsinki to understand how the dunes were forming.

  • They worked out the altitude by comparing photos from multiple locations;

  • a lot like how your brain creates depth perception by comparing the view from each eye.

  • They showed that the dunes were about a hundred kilometers above the ground,

  • which is pretty typical for an aurora.

  • But they also noticed that you couldn’t see the dunes

  • if you were directly beneath them, which suggested that,

  • unlike other auroras, they were pretty thin vertically.

  • Also, since the light wasn't continuous,

  • it likely pointed to some unevenness in the atmosphere that was emitting the light.

  • So scientists inferred that the auroras

  • were coming from a bunch of thin ripples in the atmosphere.

  • Ripples like this, known as atmospheric waves, can form for different reasons,

  • but the team figured out that, in this case,

  • they might be a sign of a phenomenon called a “mesospheric bore.”

  • This feature seems to form when large-scale winds

  • that blow across our planet change direction or speed.

  • Bores are still a little mysterious, though.

  • Scientists are working on figuring out the details of how, why, and where they happen.

  • But the dunes could actually help with that.

  • In the past, scientists had seen bores near the equator,

  • but not so much at higher latitudes.

  • So the dunes give scientists a brand-new way of studying them up there.

  • They act as a sort of flashlight that highlights

  • what’s happening at higher layers of the atmosphere.

  • And these bores, along with other atmospheric phenomena,

  • can teach us how our own atmosphere responds to seasonal and solar changes.

  • While auroras can give us an indirect look at what’s happening on the Sun,

  • a new telescope has given us our most direct look at the Sun ever.

  • Last week, the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K.

  • Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawai’i released its first photos of the Sun’s surface.

  • And they look amazing.

  • Theyve let us see the Sun’s surface in the highest resolution yet.

  • By getting this close-up look, scientists are hoping to better understand

  • how the activity on the Sun is connected to its impacts back home.

  • Because radiation from the Sun can do a lot more than give us pretty light shows;

  • it can also knock out satellites or mess with our communication systems.

  • So it’s important to understand it,

  • but it’s also hard because the solar wind that causes auroras isn’t constant.

  • Sometimes it’s like a gentle breeze, and other times it can be pretty violent.

  • That variation is tied to the hot gas and plasma

  • that are constantly bubbling up from the Sun’s interior.

  • When they reach the surface, they cool off and they sink back down again.

  • Some of these individual bubbles are truly enormous:

  • about as wide as fifteen Earths.

  • But a lot of these bubbles are way smaller, like, just a few kilometers wide.

  • They were way too small for other telescopes to notice, so we’d never seen them.

  • But this new telescope uses a gigantic,

  • four-meter mirror to resolve bubbles that are just thirty kilometers across.

  • That’s about five times smaller than weve ever seen before.

  • And these bubbles are important!

  • Theyre key to understanding what’s happening on the Sun,

  • which can give us clues about when and why it acts up.

  • The telescope will also let us investigate the Sun’s corona,

  • the mysterious outer region that seems like it should be cooler than the solar surface,

  • but somehow, is millions of degrees hotter.

  • And given that it’s capable of recording so much detail,

  • the project’s scientists say that five years of data from this telescope

  • will contain more information than weve ever gotten

  • from all of our previous solar telescopes combined.

  • So stay tuned. Because the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope is just heating up.

  • Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Space, which is produced by Complexly.

  • If you want to keep imagining the world complexly with us,

  • check out Animal Wonders hosted by Jessi Knudsen Castañeda.

  • Animal Wonders is an animal rescue and education facility that cares for

  • nearly 100 exotic animals and wildlife that can’t survive in its natural habitat.

  • Every week on the Animal Wonders YouTube channel,

  • Jessi features different animals and shares what it’s like

  • to keep them happy and healthy.

  • Recently, Jessi and the Animal Wonders team took in Tigli the arctic fox.

  • If you’d like to learn all about Tigli’s story

  • and find out how he’s getting along with the other foxes at Animal Wonders,

  • you can follow the link in the description to a video all about that.

  • [♪ OUTRO]

[♪ INTRO]

Subtitles and vocabulary

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B1 sun solar telescope atmosphere aurora jessi

Astronomers Captured Our Sun in the Highest Resolution Ever | SciShow News

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    林宜悉 posted on 2020/03/08
Video vocabulary

Keywords

perception

US /pɚˈsɛpʃən/

UK /pəˈsepʃn/

  • noun
  • Way in which one sees or understands something
  • A way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a belief or opinion.
  • The ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.
  • other
  • A belief or opinion, often held by many people.
  • other
  • Intuitive understanding and insight.
  • The ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.
phenomenon

US /fɪˈnɑməˌnɑn, -nən/

UK /fə'nɒmɪnən/

  • noun
  • something that exists and can be seen, felt, tasted, etc., especially something unusual or interesting
  • Unusual event, fact that can be studied
  • A fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question.
  • Interesting or unusual person, group
  • A remarkable person, thing, or event.
  • A remarkable person, thing, or event.
bunch

US /bʌntʃ/

UK /bʌntʃ/

  • other
  • (of a fabric) gather or cause to gather into folds or wrinkles.
  • other
  • Collect or gather together.
  • noun
  • A group of things of the same kind
  • A group of people regarded as a unit; a company.
  • A group of people.
  • verb
  • To group people or things closely together
  • (Cloth) to gather/be gathered together in folds
figure

US /ˈfɪɡjɚ/

UK /ˈfiɡə/

  • verb
  • To appear in a game, play or event
  • To calculate how much something will cost
  • To understand or solve something.
  • To understand after thinking; work out
  • other
  • To consider, believe, or conclude.
  • To calculate or work out (a sum or amount).
  • noun
  • Your body shape
  • Numbers in a calculation
  • A diagram or illustrative drawing in a book or magazine.
  • Doll-like thing meant to represent a person
  • Picture or diagram giving information in a text
  • Person who is very important or famous
  • A set pattern of movements in ice skating.
  • Shape of a person seen indistinctly or in outline
  • Amount that is expressed in numbers
  • A person, especially one who is important or well-known.
  • A numerical amount or value expressed in numbers.
  • A statue or other representation of a person or animal.
  • An outline or shape, especially of a person or animal.
  • other
  • To conclude or expect; think.
stretch

US /strɛtʃ/

UK /stretʃ/

  • noun
  • Making arm, leg muscles longer to ease them
  • A consecutive row of things
  • A period of time
  • verb
  • To make your arm, leg muscles long to ease them
  • To make something bigger by pulling on it
atmosphere

US /ˈætməˌsfɪr/

UK /'ætməsfɪə(r)/

  • noun
  • Air around us
  • Feeling or mood of a place
imagine

US /ɪˈmædʒɪn/

UK /ɪ'mædʒɪn/

  • verb
  • To think creatively about; form mental picture of
  • Form a mental image or concept of something.
  • Suppose or assume something.
  • other
  • To form a mental image or concept of something.
  • To suppose or assume something.
exotic

US /ɪɡ'zɑ:tɪk/

UK /ɪɡ'zɒtɪk/

  • adjective
  • Being very different or unusual
  • Strange because from a different area of the world
feature

US /ˈfitʃɚ/

UK /'fi:tʃə(r)/

  • noun
  • Special report in a magazine or paper
  • A distinctive attribute or aspect of something.
  • Distinctive or important point of something
  • A part of the face, such as the eyes, nose, or mouth.
  • A full-length film intended as the main item in a movie program.
  • adjective
  • Main; important
  • verb
  • To highlight or give special importance to
  • other
  • To give prominence to; to present or promote as a special or important item.
field

US /fild/

UK /fi:ld/

  • noun
  • An area of open land, especially one planted with crops or pasture, typically bounded by hedges or fences.
  • Area of study, such as physics or biology
  • A battlefield.
  • A space in a form or record that is used to enter a particular item of information.
  • Piece of land used to grow crops/raise animals
  • Open area of land, especially without buildings
  • A region of space in which a force acts on a particular particle.
  • Grassed area where you play some sports
  • A piece of ground specially prepared and marked for sports.
  • other
  • To catch or stop (a ball) and prevent the batter or another runner from advancing.
  • To put (a team or player) into a game.
  • adjective
  • Used or done in the normal working environment rather than in a laboratory or office.
  • verb
  • To respond to something or answer a question
  • To catch or stop a ball during a game