Solar storm could plunge the world into ‘online apocalypse’

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A new study says that an intense solar storm, which occurs approximately once every 100 years, could disastrously affect many human technologies on Earth, plunging the world into an “online apocalypse”.

Earth’s magnetic field protects its inhabitants from the solar wind – which is made up of charged particles flowing from the sun – by diverting electric winds toward the planet’s poles and creating scenic auroras.

However, once in about 80-100 years, due to the sun’s natural life cycle, these winds escalate into giant solar storms that can cause catastrophic outages that cover the entire Earth and last several months, says the study, presented at the SIGCOMM 2021 annual conference. ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communications.

In the research, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine and VMware Research evaluated the robustness of existing internet infrastructure against such extreme space weather.

It found that long-range optical fiber lines and submarine cables that are a vital part of the global Internet infrastructure are vulnerable to currents produced by giant solar storms on the Earth’s crust, also known as coronal mass ejections (CME).

Coronal mass ejection (CME) involves the emission of electrically charged matter and an associated magnetic field into space. When it hits the Earth, it interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field and produces magnetically induced currents (GIC) on the crust,” Dr. Jyothi explained in a tweet.

The study indicated that the current generated by these solar storms can enter and damage long conductors such as power lines.

“In today’s long-range internet cables, optical fibers are immune to GIC. But these cables also contain electrically powered repeaters with intervals of about 100 km and are susceptible to damage.”

While the probability of such events ranges from a 1.6 percent to 12 percent probability per decade, Jyothi says the chances increase during the sun’s maximum activity period in the waxing and waning cycle.

Fortunately, says Jyothi, recent technological advances have coincided with a period of weak solar activity.

However, with the sun expected to become more active in the near future, she says that the current internet infrastructure has not been tested by strong solar events.

“In short, we have no idea how resilient the current Internet infrastructure will be in the face of the corporate threat of continuing education!” She noted in a tweet.

Citing an example of how disastrous the CME could be for communications systems on Earth, Jyothi said the last great solar storms occurred in 1859 (the Carrington event) and 1921.

Studies have documented the significant damage these solar storms caused to the communications network of that time – the telegraph network.

The study says the current solar cycle has the potential to be one of the most powerful ever.

Compared to the previous cycle ending in 2019, in which the number of sunspots was as high as 116, the number of sunspots at the peak of the current cycle, says Jyoti, is “very high” between 210 and 260.

Since ejected coronal masses often originate in magnetically active regions near sunspots, a greater number of sunspots would increase the likelihood of a strong CME. If this estimate proves accurate, I wrote in the study, it would greatly increase the likelihood of a large-scale event occurring in this decade.

However, the study indicated that the actual strength of this cycle will not become clear until later in the decade as the solar cycle progresses.

The research also indicates that the impact of giant solar storms will not be uniform across the world.

It says that Internet infrastructure at higher latitudes, above the equator, faces higher risks, and the United States has a high risk of separating from Europe, while Asia is more likely to maintain connectivity.

“Think of the more vulnerable long-distance submarine cables for example. They are concentrated in higher latitudes, particularly between the United States and Europe, Jyothi explained.

The study emphasizes the need to consider solar storm risks while designing and deploying Internet application infrastructure, and calls for better resilience analysis on the World Wide Web.

“The paper scratches the surface of an important problem. Jyoti noted that much more needs to be done to understand the risks and strengthen our infrastructure.

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