Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
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.
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.
Katabella Roberts is a reporter currently based in Turkey. She covers news and business for The Epoch Times, focusing primarily on the United States.
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This does not sound like a planted story to cover for when they pull the plug on the Internet, at all.
In unrelated news-
I expect the storm to hit right about the time that pictures or video of high level political types with young children begin to hit the web.
My first thought exactly. We lose communications and production and power while they go door to door slaughtering everyone.
“They” don’t have the willing man power for that. Every move they make now is an act of desperation. We are in the end game.
Exactly the sentiment of most comments for the same story on zerohedge.
I know it’s too much for the burdened mind to consider, but solar cycles are 11 years long; this means that the modern Internet has endured this !SEVERE THREAT! at least 3 times since its widespread usage.
The Internet did not go down, did it?
Perhaps it’s just me and my burdened mind, but having a solar peak does not mean having a coronal mass ejection hit the earth. It’s a 93 million mile 3 dimensional dart board played blind. In 1859 there was a direct hit of massive cme. In 1989 there was glancing blow. Near misses occered in 2012 and 2018 that i know of, but there might have been many others. Cme is a major threat. Much more common than large asteroids, super volcanoes or catastrophic earthquakes. Your reasoning is entirely specious.
However, this article only mentions the dangers to the internet…not the much larger danger to the grid itself. A clear tell that it is indeed a trial baloon to get everyone ready for the internet going dark.
Remember when Obama said if anything bad happens the first thing the government will do is shut down the internet for “the safety of the people”…not sure at the time if that was a “stick-a-finger-in-the-eye-just-to-be-a-prick” statement from him or more of a “throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks” statement to see how much fear they could generate so they would know how much to push their agenda when they were ready to, which apparently is now, with this pathetic pandemic powerplay…
He’s certainly a prick and he would stick to a wall too.
Haha there are always problems at NBN. The joys of living in a spread out Country. Many “NBN” connections are actually fiber to the node so you might have 3 miles of 1960’s era copper phone cable before your packets even hit a fiber cable.
HAHA ! when it happens, it won’t be their fault…….
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum <—====
Well if it does happen there are going to be a whole lot of Candy Crush players that will be, well, crushed.
Worse than crack addicts.
Ready to be cut off from the internet, goys.
The author, Katabella Roberts, must be related to that Snyder porn star of doom.
Bullshit article.
BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, HIDE YOUR CHILDREN, … THE SUN IS GONNA EJACULATE!!!!
That bullcrap started not so long after the internet went live.
NOT saying it won’t happen. Given enough time, such an event is a GUARANTEE.
I’m saying this new “report” is like every other such report … a rather useless pile of crapola. Unless, of course, it is a tool used for nefarious purposes, such as suggested by HF.
I remember when they used the same story about CB radios and nobody knew about such things as the internet.
Ham radio ops doing SSB and packet in the HF range will be kings.
Yes, HAMS. My brothers are HAM radio bugs, it think it important to have one at certain times IYKWIM.
Keep it in a Faraday Cage when not in use.
That’s right Warren.
Coronal Mass Ejaculation. I like it.
sounds like its coming. They always let you know ahead of time what is coming. What are the odds in Vegas?
They always give you a heads up warning before it happens.
Riiight, a rare solar superstorm. How convenient, right when the revolution is nearing its infancy.
It also points out gas pipes and electrical system failure. The internet would be least of your worries. If you get Aurora at tropical latitudes then you know it’s legit. Internet alone going down it runs on fiber way more important utilities will go from the sun blast a “surge” at us.
So this is what Anal Schwab and his WEF buddies have been practicing lately. I guess it’s time put up that tower and connect my HAM…
Just more fear porn… How did man survive before the internet of all things… Can’t expect to get funding if you don’t have something to fear…
Doomed I tell ya we’re all doomed… unless of course you pay me for the ‘solution’ I’m researching for the last 30 years…
The same way man survived before the cell phone, just fine. How much of a control grid would the owners have without the internet and cell phones? Not as much for sure so if it goes it goes….but when it goes rest assured there will be some nasty shit going on in the blackout.
But..utility plants are not analog anymore. If they go down they need black start capability as well as analog operating systems. The one I worked at did not have that. So yes, we would be in deep kimchi it the CME happened big time.
The danger of the internet being shut down is real…but the beleif that the shutdown is coming from outer space is a non-issue. Go look to the GREAT RESET to understand what is happening globally and to follow the sequence of events. Once the covid ‘pandemic’ is well established and folks start getting really pissed and ready to kill the mofo’s the next phase will commence. The next phase will be a Cyber Pandemic…that shuts off the internet.
It will be a selective shutting down, control of information, complete. The US handed, thx to the muslim in chief, ICANN control to non-US players, ie globalists. Plus with the 5G (internet of all things) they can track and control everything. This is why the meshnet is concerning because they can’t control it…. yet. The internet is crucial to the globalists as well, its their main comms as much as anyone else.
But aside from all this… the article is just more fear porn for money. A new ‘shiny’ tossed against the wall to see if it will be effective enough to distract an attention deficit populist from the real issues, creeping communism no longer creeping.
“The danger of the internet
being shut down is real…”
Perhaps. Hard to tell. But, at THIS point I would have to disagree.
Billions of zombies have their eyes and two neurons glued to the web virtually around the clock … Farce book, Twatty, googs, etc
The www is perhaps THE greatest and most efficient tool to control the plebes EVAH in history.
Why shut it down? Because of a handful of sites like TBP?
Best tool evah for control? Yes.
Best tool for citizens to band together, spread good info, and fight back? Also yes.
Double-edged sword.
You do know the grid runs off the internet, don’t you? How much of everything is run off of computers? They gave the east coast a taste when the pipeline was shutdown, that was a tiny taste…wait til they get all systems online and pull the plug. The shit hitting the fan will be heard round the world.
The thing is the PTB are equally dependent on the internet, grid, computers… everything, just as you and I are. They won’t shut it down completely otherwise it’d be shooting themselves as well.
Their goal is to have complete control over the flow of information. Use false flags to not only justify their tyrannical authoritarian reach but to use these attacks on those that don’t fall in line or pay their dues.
They’ll shut down the peons ability to freely communicate because they know that if allowed people might organize against them. This is why the ‘meshnet’ is concerning because its not dependent on the grid. That plug they want to pull is the system that You and I have current access to… nothing else.
Yeah and a rare planet killer asteroid can wreak havoc on the internet too.
Any excuse to control narrative.
I always root for the asteroid, comet, etc.
Liberty,please remember to keep Cthulhu in your mind while rooting.
No lives matter. Cthulhu 2024 eternity.
lol… My grandsons 6th birthday, we celebrated here and I’m always bringing up the planet killing asteroid. Just yesterday it came up again and he had the definitive solution, save everyone.
When I tossed out the asteriod thang… he reply was he’d just run to the top of the mountain, across the lake from us. So totally SOLVED… mike drop and walked away…
“According to Jyothi’s research, power grids, oil and gas pipelines, and networking cables are the most vulnerable to the impacts of GIC’s,”
Copper networking cables disappeared more than 20 years ago if not closer to 30. Everything is done via fiber now at the transport level and that is moving more and more into local and individual as well.
Finally a feel good story. ;0
Damn what a tragedy I might have to leave the basement! Actually it would be a very bad thing as human society would disintegrate back to monkey very quickly. Hate to be in a big city if it were to happen.