Talk Nerdy To Me: Solar Storms

My friend Cara Santa Maria is a scientific researcher and educator. She's also Senior Science Editor with The Huffington Post, where she does a video show called "Talk Nerdy To Me". She contacted me recently because she wanted to do an episode on solar storms - how they work, and how they can affect us here on Earth. She interviewed me about them, and the episode is online at HuffPo:

[Note: If the video doesn't appear directly above this sentence, refresh your screen.] The Sun has been a bit feisty lately, spitting out some decent flares

and coronal mass ejections

. So far, none has been both strong enough and aimed at us to do any damage (there was a fairly powerful CME in July

, but it was on the other side of the Sun, directed away from us). And while they can't hurt us directly due to our ...