techtronicz

Solar storms, also known as coronal mass ejections, are known to disrupt electrical grids and create blackouts, but experts believe they might also harm internet infrastructure, resulting in a global internet outage.

This was presented this week at the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference by Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine. Even though local and regional internet infrastructure would be at low risk of damage during extreme solar storms because they mostly use fibre optic cables and are not affected by geomagnetically induced currents, she revealed in her research that local and regional internet infrastructure would be at low risk of damage during extreme solar storms because they mostly use fibre optic cables and are not affected by geomagnetically induced currents. Even short cable spans that are vulnerable to violent storms are frequently grounded, reducing the risk of damage.

Undersea cables that connect continents, on the other hand, are a different storey. Even though most of these continents are connected by fibre optic cables, the repeaters that amplify the current at regular intervals are prone to failure, and if the majority of repeaters on a network fail, it could be enough to cause an internet blackout in a country that relies solely on internet from undersea cables.

The restricted amount of data we have at our disposal is one of the key causes for this anxiety. Severe solar storms have been documented in the past, including those that occurred in 1859, 1921, and 1989.