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By Alexandra Mae Jones
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TORONTO (CTV Network) – Imagine if one day the Internet was down not only in your neighborhood, but all over the world, stunned by a threat from outer space: a huge solar storm.
It sounds like science fiction, but a new study says it could become our reality sooner than we think if we don’t prepare properly for the next time the sun spits out a wave of magnetized plasma at us.
“Astrophysicists estimate that the probability of a solar storm of sufficient strength to cause catastrophic disturbances over the next decade is 1.6 to 12 percent,” the study said.
“By paying attention to this threat and planning defenses against it, […] is essential for the long-term resilience of the Internet.
The article, written by University of California Assistant Professor Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, is titled “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse.”
It paints a frightening picture of what could happen if a huge solar storm hits us: submarine cables between closed countries, offline power grids, data centers of web giants in danger of extinction.
But how can we even begin to protect ourselves from it?
Solar activity is not easy to predict. While we know that the sun has an 11-year cycle that lets us know when solar activity will be highest, it is not easy to determine whether these highlights will have harmless solar flares or solar weather events at large scale.
The sun also has a longer cycle that takes around 80 to 100 years, called the Gleissberg cycle, in which large-scale solar events during solar maxima (the culmination of the 11-year cycle) become four times more likely to occur. produce.
The two most recent solar cycles, 1996-2008 and 2008-2020, were part of a period of minimum activity during the Gleissberg cycle.
“In other words, modern technological advancements have coincided with a period of low solar activity and the sun is expected to become more active in the near future,” the study said.
This means that the modern internet infrastructure that we have developed over the past decades has never been tested by strong solar activity. WHAT IS A SUPER SOLAR STORM?
Also known as a geomagnetic storm, a solar super storm is what happens when what is called a coronal mass ejection (CME) escapes from the sun and hits the Earth.
Large parts of the sun’s outer layer, the corona, can be thrown into space due to changes in the sun’s magnetic fields. These clouds of magnetized particles and superheated gas can reach Earth in one to four or five days.
If Earth is in the path of a CME, solar plasma will crash into Earth’s magnetic field and cause a geomagnetic storm. While this does not directly harm any humans on the planet below, it can impact our magnetic field and cause “strong electrical currents on the Earth’s surface that can disrupt and even destroy various human technologies.”
We know this because it has happened before, but never in the Internet age.
The first recorded CME to have a significant impact on Earth was in 1859. Known as the Carrington event, it caused large-scale telegraph failures in North America and Europe, with fires in equipment and electric shocks for telegram operators reported across the world.
The CME that caused it was traveling so fast that it reached Earth in just 17.6 hours, and scientists have speculated in the past that if such an event hit us today, it could cut l electricity for 20 to 40 million people in the United States alone for up to two years.
The most powerful CME of the last century was in 1921. But smaller CMEs have touched us since, including one that cut Quebec’s power grid in 1989, plunging the entire province into darkness.
Just when the next big CME might be is not certain. The study said this next solar cycle is on track to have between 210 and 260 sunspots at the height of the solar cycle, double the amount that occurred at the peak of the last cycle. CMEs come from near sunspots, so this can be a predictor of the strength and likelihood of a CME.
The new study pointed out that in Gleissberg’s last cycle, its minimum was in 1910, and a huge CME occurred just over a decade later. Since we are emerging from a period of minimal solar activity, we should be on the alert.
“Since a strong solar cycle that can produce a Carrington-scale event may occur within the next two decades, we need to prepare our infrastructure now for a potential catastrophic event,” the study said. WHAT IS AT RISK?
The study looked at the physical infrastructure that could be at risk, from wired networks to data centers, to the location of more than 46,000,000 Internet routers.
Geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) that pass through grids and electrical systems on the ground, endangering them, as well as oil and gas pipelines and grid cables pose a great threat during solar super storms.
The real concern is how this would affect long distance cables.
While long distance cables that carry signals in optical fibers are not threatened by GICs because they do not contain real electrical current, the conductors that accompany them to the power repeaters, called power lines, are at risk.
Submarine cables, which are laid in the sea to carry telecommunication signals, have never been stress tested by a strong solar event. These submarine cables maintain our global Internet, carrying almost all of our communications.
“In catastrophic events with a high probability of repeater failure, at an inter-transponder distance of 150 km, nearly 80% of the submarine cables will be affected, leaving an equal fraction of end points inaccessible, while 52% of cables and 17% of the nodes of the US terrestrial network are affected, ”the study predicted.
Satellites are also threatened during solar super storms, not because of the electric currents caused by the interfaced magnetic fields, but because of contact with the supercharged particles themselves.
“Surface and satellite communication systems are at high risk of collapsing if a Carrington-scale event recurs,” the study noted.
The study looked at weak spots in physical infrastructure around the world to estimate what could happen in best and worst case scenarios in different countries.
Assuming there was only a small failure of long distance cables, in the United States most cables connected to Oregon would fail, and connectivity to Canada and Europe would fail altogether.
In China, while more than half of their connections would not be affected, Shanghai would lose all of its long-distance connectivity.
Assuming high failure levels, all long-haul connectivity would be lost on the west coast of the United States, except for a cable from Southern California to Hawaii. The UK would lose most of its long distance cables and its connection to North America. New Zealand would lose all of its connections except with Australia.
“The United States is one of the most vulnerable places with a high risk of being disconnected from Europe during extreme solar events,” the study said. “Intra-continental connections in Europe are less risky due to the presence of a large number of shorter land and submarine cables interconnecting the continent. “
The study also looked at which regions would be vulnerable to a geomagnetic storm, and then how many ISPs were in those regions, and found that 57% of ISPs would be at risk.
When it comes to data centers run by web giants like Google and Facebook, the study found that Google’s data centers are more dispersed and mostly located in countries where cables are less likely to fall in. blackout, while Facebook’s data centers are mostly located in the northern part of the northern hemisphere.
“Due to the limited geographic distribution of the data centers, Facebook will have less resilience in the event of a solar super storm,” the study said. HOW TO PLAN
But while it all sounds scary, we have time to begin the process of strengthening our infrastructure.
The study recommended that we strengthen our infrastructure by doing things like laying more cables to minimize the risk of being cut completely.
“Since links from the United States and Canada to Europe and Asia are very vulnerable, adding additional links to Central and South America can help maintain global connectivity.” , suggests the study.
Planning for future data centers that are more dispersed across the world instead of clustered across northern Europe and North America will also help keep the world connected during a solar super storm.
The spacecraft will currently only be able to give us a 13-hour warning if a huge CME is heading our way, according to the study. Hopefully we would have predicted it before, but this is the window where we could be sure we were on our way.
The study suggested that in anticipation of this, we could design a shutdown strategy to be adopted globally, which would allow us to minimize the loss of connectivity after the geomagnetic storm. Power grids are expected to be downsized or shut down completely during the storm.
In terms of internet infrastructure, we need to figure out how to protect the equipment during the solar storm and how to maintain the service in the event of damage afterwards. Part of this is designing things that have been tested to determine how well they will perform in the event of large-scale failures, which is not currently part of the resilience assessment.
“We need to rethink the network environment in the event of partial or total disconnection,” the study said.
Designing a backup system that could consolidate available modes of communication, using cables, satellites and wireless networks, could help get things done.
It might take a lot of rethinking the way we keep the world connected. But if we want the internet age to continue to run smoothly, it might be necessary to start shielding it from the future wrath of the sun.
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Sonja [email protected]
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