It is almost the end of the winter, and you've woken up to a cold house, which is weird, because you left the heater on all night. You turn on the light. It's not working. Actually, the coffee maker, the TV -- none of them are working. Life outside also seems to have stopped. There are no schools, most of the businesses are shut, and there are no working trains. This is not the opening scene of a zombie apocalypse movie.
冬天快要結束了, 你在一間很冷的房子裡醒來, 這很奇怪,因為你整晚都有開暖氣。 你把燈打開。 它卻沒反應。 其實,咖啡機、電視全都沒反應。 外面的生活似乎也停止下來了。 沒有學生上學, 大部份的商店都沒開, 也沒有火車在跑。 這並不是殭屍世界末日電影的開場。
This is what happened in March 1989 in the Canadian province of Quebec, when the power grid lost power. The culprit? A solar storm.
這是 1989 年 3 月在 加拿大魁北克省發生的事, 電力網失去了電力。 肇事者是誰? 太陽風暴。
Solar storms are giant clouds of particles escaping from the Sun from time to time, and a constant reminder that we live in the neighborhood of an active star. And I, as a solar physicist, I have a tremendous chance to study these solar storms. But you see, "solar storm chaser" is not just a cool title. My research helps to understand where they come from, how they behave and, in the long run, aims to mitigate their effects on human societies, which I'll get to in a second.
太陽風暴是種巨型雲, 由偶爾逃離太陽的粒子形成, 它常常提醒我們, 我們住在活躍天體的附近。 我是太陽物理學家, 我有很棒的機會可以 研究這些太陽風暴。 但,「太陽風暴追逐者」 實在不是個酷頭銜。 我的研究是在協助 了解它們從何而來、 它們的行為是什麼, 以及長期目標 是要減輕它們對人類社會的影響, 我等下就會談到這點。
At the beginning of the space exploration age 50 years ago only, the probes we sent in space revealed that the planets in our Solar System constantly bathe in a stream of particles that are coming from the Sun and that we call the solar wind. And in the same way that global wind patterns here on Earth can be affected by hurricanes, the solar wind is sometimes affected by solar storms that I like to call "space hurricanes." When they arrive at planets, they can perturb the space environment, which in turn creates the northern or southern lights, for example, here on Earth, but also Saturn and also Jupiter.
在太空探險時代剛開始時, 大約才五十年前, 我們送上太空的探測器 發現在我們太陽系中的星球 經常會沉浸在來自 太陽的粒子流當中, 這就是我們所稱的太陽風。 就像在地球上,全球的風模式會 受到颶風的影響一樣, 太陽風有時也會被太陽風暴影響, 我喜歡稱它為「太空颶風」。 當它們到達星球時, 可能會擾亂太空環境, 接著就會創造出北極光和南極光, 比如,在地球這裡, 在土星也有, 還有木星。
Luckily, here on Earth, we are protected by our planet's natural shield, a magnetic bubble that we call the magnetosphere and that you can see here on the right side. Nonetheless, solar storms can still be responsible for disrupting satellite telecommunications and operations, for disrupting navigation systems, such as GPS, as well as electric power transmission. All of these are technologies on which us humans rely more and more. I mean, imagine if you woke up tomorrow without a working cell phone -- no internet on it, which means no social media. I mean, to me that would be worse than the zombie apocalypse.
幸運的是,在地球上, 我們受到我們星球的 天然屏罩所保護, 也就是被稱為磁氣圈的磁場泡泡, 可以在畫面的右手邊看到。 但,太陽風暴仍然會造成 衛星通信和運作的中斷、 如 GPS 的導航系統中斷, 以及影響電力輸送。 上述這些科技都是人類 越來越仰賴的科技。 想像一下,如果你明天早上起床, 發現手機不能用了- 沒有網路連線, 也就是說,沒有社交媒體。 對我來說,那比殭屍世界末日還慘。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
By constantly monitoring the Sun, though, we now know where the solar storms come from. They come from regions of the Sun where a tremendous amount of energy is being stored. You have an example here, as a complex structure hanging above the solar surface, just on the verge of erupting. Unfortunately, we cannot send probes in the scorching hot atmosphere of the Sun, where temperatures can rise up to around 10 million degrees Kelvin. So what I do is I use computer simulations in order to analyze but also to predict the behavior of these storms when they're just born at the Sun.
不過,透過持續監控太陽, 我們現在知道太陽風暴從何而來。 它們來自太陽上 儲存大量能量的區域。 這裡有個例子, 有個複雜的結構掛在太陽表面上, 正在爆發邊緣。 不幸的是,我們無法把探測器送到 太陽的這種灼熱大氣當中, 在這裡可以達到 絕對溫度 1000 萬度 K。 所以,我的做法是用電腦模擬, 來分析和預測這些風暴的行為, 當它們剛在太陽上誕生就開始進行。
This is only one part of the story, though. When these solar storms are moving in space, some of them will inevitably encounter space probes that we humans have sent in order to explore other worlds. What I mean by other worlds is, for example, planets, such as Venus or Mercury, but also objects, such as comets. And while these space probes have been made for different scientific endeavors, they can also act like tiny cosmic meteorological stations and monitor the evolution of these space storms. So I, with a group of researchers, gather and analyze this data coming from different locations of the Solar System. And by doing so, my research shows that, actually, solar storms have a generic shape, and that this shape evolves as solar storms move away from the Sun. And you know what? This is key for building tools to predict space weather.
不過,這只是故事的一部份。 當這些太陽風暴在太空中移動時, 當中有些難免會遇到太空探測器, 我們人類送出去探索 其他世界的探測器。 我所謂的其他世界, 指的是比如其他星球, 像是金星或水星, 還有物體,像是慧星。 雖然這些太空探測器 是被設計來做不同的科學用途, 它們也可以被當作 小型的宇宙氣象站, 用來監控這些太空風暴的演化。 所以我和一群研究者一同分析 這些來自太陽系不同地點的資料。 這麼做之後,我的研究顯示,其實, 太陽風暴有個一般的形狀, 當太陽風暴遠離太陽之後, 形狀就會逐漸形成。 你們知道嗎? 這就是打造太空天氣 預測工具的關鍵。
I would like to leave you with this beautiful image. This is us here on Earth, this pale blue dot. And while I study the Sun and its storms every day, I will always have a deep love for this beautiful planet -- a pale blue dot indeed, but a pale blue dot with an invisible magnetic shield that helps to protect us.
我把這張美麗的影像留給各位。 這就是我們的地球, 這個淡藍色的圓點。 雖然我每天都在研究太陽和太陽風暴, 但我一直都深愛著這個美麗的星球, 的確,這是個淡藍色的圓點, 但這個淡藍色的圓點 有個隱形的磁場屏罩, 能協助保護我們。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)