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Voice off Screen: Scientists around the world have their eyes turned

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to the sun this week as it reveals a massive active region that could affect

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us here on Earth. And here joining us from NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

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in Greenbelt, Maryland is Dr. Alex Young. Thank you for joining us.

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Dr.Young: Thank you. Voice off Screen: So what is a sunspot and why

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is this one so special? Dr.Young: Well sunspots are these regions

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of really, really intense magnetic field, they're massive areas they're

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slightly cooler than the surrounding sun so they appear dark.

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This one is of great interest for us because it's the largest one we've

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seen in almost 24 years. It's more than ten times

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the size of the Earth.

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Voice off Screen: Why do we want to learn more from this sunspot ? Dr.Young: Well,

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this one is really intersting because generally sunspots of this size

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produce a lot of activity that can have direct impact

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on us here on Earth. This particular one

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though its produced some activity, has not produced the kind of activity we

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expected. So this has been a very intresting puzzle for

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scientists to study, so that we can better understand sunspots in general.

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Voice off Screen: Will it affect us here in Earth?

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Dr.Young: The sunspots can throw out huge blasts of

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light, we call solar flares, sometimes big blobs of material.

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It doesn't impact us directly but all of this is

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electromagnetic in nature and therefore it impacts our technology.

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Sometimes it can disrupt communications, it can cause

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problems with GPS and even impact our power grids

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if the storms are strong enough. Voice off Screen: What is NASA doing

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to understand sunspots better? Dr.Young: Well in particular we have

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several spacecrafts such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory

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which is looking at the sun twenty four hours a day providing

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great amounts of data for us to study it. We also have this huge

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fleet of spacecraft that is studying not just the sun,

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but also the suns interaction with the Earth, the other planets

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and throughout the solar system. Now, next year we're launching

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a new mission called MMS, which is four spacecraft,

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that is going to circle the Earth and study;

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using the Earth's magnetic field study this particular

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phenomenon that happens both at the Earth,

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on the Sun and sunspots and also through the entire solar system.

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Voice off Screen: Where can we learn more? Dr.Young: If you go to

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nasa.gov/sunearth you can learn more about this

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other missions and you can also find a lot of great imagery videos

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and all sorts of articles about the kind of research we do

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here at NASA. Voice off Screen: Dr. Alex Young thank you so much.

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Dr.Young: Thank you.