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Scientists know that that this is extreme for decades solar storm, or elimination of coronal mass, can damage electrical networks and potentially cause long blackouts. The effects would be felt everywhere from global supply chains and transportation to the internet and GPS. So far, however, the impact of a solar flare on Internet infrastructure has been less studied. New research has shown that failures can be catastrophic, especially for submarine cables based on the global internet.
At SIGCOMM 2021 at a data communication conference on Thursday, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvin, presented “Solar Superstorms: Internet Apocalypse for Planning,” an analysis of the damage a fast cloud of magnetized solar particles can cause to the global world. Abdu Jyothi research highlights an additional nuance of the solar storm caused by the blackout: a scenario that continues with massive disruptions on the Internet, even if the energy returns in hours or days.
There is some good news ahead. Abdu Jyothi found that local and regional Internet infrastructure would be at low risk of damage even in a severe solar storm because the fiber itself is not caused by geomagnetically induced currents. Short cable intervals are also connected very regularly. But the risks to long submarine cables connecting continents are much greater. A solar storm that disrupted some of these cables around the world could cause a huge loss of connectivity by cutting off the country from its source, even leaving its infrastructure intact. It would be like cutting the flow to a residential building because of a water interruption.
“What really struck me was that we saw how prepared the world was for the pandemic. There was no protocol to deal with it effectively and it’s the same with Internet resilience,” Abdu Jyothik told WIRED before his speech. “Our infrastructure is not prepared for a large-scale solar event. We have very little understanding of the amount of damage. “
This information gap is mostly due to a lack of data. Severe solar storms are very rare, as there are only three main examples in recent history. The great events of 1859 and 1921 demonstrated that geomagnetic disturbances could disrupt communication lines such as electrical infrastructure and telegraph cables. In the massive “Carrington Event” of 1859, the needles of the compass rocked wildly and unexpectedly and the aurora borealis was visible. At the Colombian equator. But these geomagnetic disturbances occurred before the establishment of modern electrical networks. In 1989, a moderate-to-severe solar storm knocked down a network in the Hydro-Québec network that caused a nine-hour blackout in northeastern Canada, but that too happened before modern Internet infrastructure rose.
Abdu Jyothi said that although they do not happen often, expulsions of coronal mass are a real threat to internet resistance. After three decades of low solar storm, he and other researchers indicate that the probability of another event is increasing.
Underwater internet cables can be damaged by a solar storm for a number of reasons. To fully capture the ocean data, the cables are equipped with repeaters, ranging in distance from approximately 50 to 150 kilometers, depending on the cable. These devices amplify the optical signal, ensuring that nothing is lost during transport, as when throwing a relay on baseball. Although fiber optic cables are not directly interrupted by geomagnetically induced currents, they are electronic internal to repeaters, and a complete submarine cable will be impossible due to sufficient repetition failure. Moreover, submarine cables are only based on long stretches of hundreds or thousands of miles, which leaves vulnerable components such as geomagnetically induced repeater currents. The composition of the seabed also varies, and perhaps some points on the ground are more effective than others.
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