Question: how could your work to understand how the sun works help us in the future?

Nicolas Labrosse answered on 12 Jun 2017:

My research work is contributing to understand phenomena in the solar atmosphere that affect the space between the Sun and the planets. What happens there can have an impact on the environment of the Earth, in particular, big powerful explosions in the Sun’s atmosphere can create ‘geomagnetic storms’ that will perturb our satellites, be a hazard for astronauts, or damage power grids. We hope that in the future, we will be able to understand better these solar events so that we can better forecast their impact on Earth and on other planets (think about astronauts on their way to Mars for instance).