Unraveling the Solar Storm Internet Apocalypse: Insights and Solutions
What is the solar storm internet apocalypse? The Sun bombards Earth with electromagnetic particles known as solar wind. These usually dance their way harmlessly to the poles, but occasionally a solar event can be destructive.
Those events, like the Carrington Event in 1859 or the Quebec blackout in 1989, damage power grids and cause lengthy blackouts. A solar storm that disrupts long undersea cables could keep large swaths of the world offline for months.
Solar Storms:
Solar storms, or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), can cause geomagnetic disturbances that disrupt satellites and power grids. These phenomena are also responsible for the dazzling northern lights. But what many people don’t realize is that such solar events could knock out the Internet for months, even years.
The sun’s magnetic field usually deflects solar wind, but every 11 years as it reaches its active peak, holes appear across the Sun and expel bursts of high-speed solar wind directly toward Earth. These solar wind bursts can damage long conductors, like power lines and undersea cables, causing an Internet blackout.
While the likelihood of a major solar event that directly impacts the Earth is low (between 1.6% and 12% per decade), Jyothi warns that our current infrastructure hasn’t been stress-tested by strong solar events. Her research suggests shorter and more resilient cables, as well as the use of repeaters to boost optical signals over longer distances. These measures are particularly important for submarine cables.
Undersea Cables:
Your internet data is ferried across the world via a criss-crossing network of hundreds of submarine cables. Some are short, connecting nearby islands, while others stretch thousands of miles. There are enough of them to encircle the globe 52 times.
A solar storm could damage these undersea cables, disrupting the flow of information that connects us online. It would also interfere with satellite-based communications and power lines, potentially causing outages on a global scale.
Fortunately, undersea cables are typically protected from solar storms by their metal casings. However, they are vulnerable to other natural disasters. For instance, shark bites are a major source of cable faults, while they can also be damaged by boats and anchors. In addition, icy international relations can make it difficult for companies to secure land rights or financing to lay new cables.
Power Grids:
The Sun constantly bombards Earth with electromagnetic radiation in the form of solar wind. Most of these particles dance harmlessly towards the planet’s poles leaving behind shimmering auroras. However, every one hundred years or so the solar wind transforms into a solar storm that could have profound consequences for our technology.
Power grids are at risk of being dragged into the storm’s path, which can cause blackouts around the world and disrupt communications. This would be worse than the effects of a hurricane or earthquake and could lead to chaos across cities.
Scientists have recently warned that a solar storm could leave people on Earth disconnected from the internet for months. The US space agency NASA recently launched a groundbreaking mission that aims to prevent this from happening. Its Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has achieved a milestone by navigating through solar wind. The probe had to venture close to the sun’s surface, which entailed it to endure an immense stream of charged particles from the star’s outermost atmosphere, known as the corona.
Internet Infrastructure:
A solar superstorm may keep large swaths of the world’s population offline for months. It’s a serious threat because the global internet depends on underwater cables, which are especially vulnerable to solar storms. A solar superstorm can also damage satellites, which are critical to internet connectivity. According to University of California Irvine assistant professor Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, there is a 1.6% to 12% chance of an extreme solar event directly hitting Earth within the next decade.
The last such solar event, known as the Carrington event, took place in 1859 and caused significant damage to telegraph networks. This was before the invention of the Internet, but researchers are worried that such a storm could cause major problems with modern technology. The Parker Solar Probe recently achieved a milestone, navigating through solar winds for the first time. The Sun’s magnetic field deflects these winds, but a CME coming in a direct path to Earth can be a real problem for communications and power grids.
