Prof. Yuri Sphrits: Space Weather and Radiation Belts

Mankind increasingly depends on satellites for telecommunications, television, radio, and military applications. Indeed, most cable television is not delivered by cable, but instead via satellite. Understanding and predicting space weather, or how the solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetosphere, is therefore of crucial importance since it can cause disruptions to communications satellites and other electrical systems both in space and on the ground. Perhaps this means you miss a vital scene in Game of Thrones, or maybe something more serious happens, such as the collapse of the Hydro-Québec grid in 1989, which left 9 million people without electrical power. Prof Yuri Shprits discusses how researchers are trying to understand the Earth’s radiation belts to improve our ability to predict space weather.