Posted on 09/24/2021 11:22:56 AM PDT by MNJohnnie
The “black swan” event of a solar superstorm directed at earth could prompt an “internet apocalypse” across the entire globe that could last for several months, new research (pdf) has warned.
University of California Irvine assistant professor Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi presented the new research, titled “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” last month during the Association for Computing Machinery’s annual conference for their Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM).
“One of the greatest dangers facing the internet with the potential for global impact is a powerful solar superstorm,” Jyothi wrote in the new research paper.
“Although humans are protected from these storms by the earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere, they can cause significant damage to man-made infrastructure. The scientific community is generally aware of this threat with modeling efforts and precautionary measures being taken, particularly in the context of power grids. However, the networking community has largely overlooked this risk during the design of the network topology and geo-distributed systems such as DNS and data centers,” he continued.
Read More Earth’s Magnetic Field Weakens, Impacting Satellites and Spacecraft: Space Agency A solar storm, also known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), occurs when a large mass of plasma and highly magnetized particles violently eject from the sun. Large CME’s can contain up to a billion tons of matter and can get accelerated to large fractions of the speed of light.
When the earth is in the direct path of a CME, these magnetized and charged solar particles interact with the earth’s magnetic field, producing geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) that can potentially disrupt communication satellites and long-distance cables that provide the world with the internet.
According to Jyothi’s research, power grids, oil and gas pipelines, and networking cables are the most vulnerable to the impacts of GIC’s, while submarine cables, which span hundreds or thousands of kilometres, are even more vulnerable than land cables, due to their larger lengths.
Owing to a lack of real world data on the impacts of GIC’s on these submarine cables, scientists still don’t know how long it would take to repair them if such an event were to occur, and—just like natural disasters such as earthquakes—CME’s are extremely difficult for scientists to predict.
The research noted that the “distribution of internet infrastructure is skewed when compared to the distribution of internet users,” and high-latitude climates are more at risk if a solar storm were to occur.
“The U.S. is one of the most vulnerable locations with a high risk of disconnection from Europe during extreme solar events. Intra-continental connections in Europe are at a lower risk due to the presence of a large number of shorter land and submarine cables interconnecting the continent,” the report notes.
Meanwhile, if a severe solar superstorm were to occur, Singapore would maintain good connectivity to neighboring countries, while cities in China would be more likely to lose connectivity than India because China connects to much longer cables.
Australia, New Zealand, and other island countries in the region would be at high risk of losing most of their long-distance connections.
The research warns that a collapse of the internet—even one lasting a few minutes—could cause devastating losses to service providers and damage cyber-physical systems. The economic impact of an internet disruption for a day in the United States is estimated to be over $7 billion.
While the likelihood of a solar superstorm hitting earth is rare—with astrophysicists noting that the probability of extreme space weather events that directly impact earth occurring are between 1.6 percent to 12 percent per decade—they can still happen.
In 1921, a solar storm, driven by a series of coronal mass ejections, triggered extensive power outages and caused damage to telephone and telegraph systems associated with railroad systems in New York City and across the state.
Years later, in 1989, a solar storm bought an electrical power blackout to the entire province of Quebec, Canada.
“Although we have sentinel spacecraft that can issue early warnings of CMEs providing at least 13 hours of lead time, our defenses against GIC are limited. Hence, we need to prepare the infrastructure for an eventual catastrophe to facilitate efficient disaster management,” Jyothi said.
The research pointed to “increasing capacity in lower latitudes for improved resiliency during solar storms,” and having “mechanisms for electrically isolating cables connecting to higher latitudes from the rest” at submarine cable landing points to prevent large-scale failures.
The paper has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.
So what happens to the crypto-currencies if the internet goes down for an extended period?
Part of their plan. Can’t have people communicating with each other during the end of freedom.
Rare Solar Superstorm
It would not be the first one neither will it be the last one. One of the more severe one was the Carrington event in 1859. Luckily at the time humanity was not that heavily dependent on electricity along with all the wiring as well as computer chips what goes along with it, otherwise I have a hunch we would have seen wide spread mayhem.
Since then we had several more minor episodes over time. Should we get a direct hit all bets are off, in comparison an EMP event would not even come close. One of these episodes is very well described on a very interesting website VIEWZONE.COM you may find the article there under ‘Petroglyph discovery suggests Clovis culture witnessing such a cosmic event’ dating back about 13 K years.
You are starting to sound like me. ;-D
The Carrington Effect will revisit us.
When it does civilization is over as we know it.
nothing else can eliminate 50% of the worlds population in 6 months. and another 50% the next 6 months.
It’s not joke and we’re not remotely prepared for it. We barely missed it in 2014 so don’t laugh it off...
Speaking of apocalypses, someone told me that a new Arizona recount run by Republicans has just been released. So I Googled and found this is indeed true. There were a lot of articles from all the major media and also 2 British news sources, so I picked this link which was the local paper. Their article was written a few hours before the official release, but like the other articles says the recount indicated a slight increase in Biden’s overall vote count in Maricopa Co. Sighhhhh!. This article probably has local political details that the major media might not grasp.
Getting us ready for the upcoming communication blackout.
Is this going to be the excuse for the government doing it or another we’re all going to die scenario?
The current internet is controlled by the Deep State, and is setup to facilitate lots of censorship, even vote flipping.
I’m expecting a switch to a Starlink-based internet, with some blackout transition period.
How does Starlink limit browser and social media censorship?
What am I missing here?
There is NO indication that fiber optics would be affected; the problem is that with undersea cables there are repeaters which are powered via wire links to the shores. Shorter runs of fiber don't need repeaters, so only the power connections at the end stations would be affected.
Most likely Skylink would survive. If there was a global blackout, Skylink would still be available to anyone with a ground terminal and backup power. Most websites would be gone of course, but I imagine there would be enough services available to get some comms through, and get whatever news was available.
Starlink, not Skylink
We’re getting close to the end of the fiscal year. Scientists need money to continue their work, and the best way for them to stimulate cash flow is to create an illusion of impending doom.
The switch to starlink is part of a much broader plan.
Twatter/FB/google/Inst/etc will be dealt with at their highest levels, separately AFAIK, from the satellite switch.
We will all be too busy trying to survive to worry about the internet.💥
A nuke set off just outside the atmosphere would be very noticeable.🤔
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