A powerful solar storm could shut down the internet for weeks

On our Earth, a solar wind is constantly blowing, made up of charged particles. Most of the time, these are fortunately blocked by the magnetic field that surrounds our planet. But sometimes the solar wind becomes storm. And manages to slip up to our atmosphere through the poles, threatening our navigation systems and our power grids. And even our communication networks.

From University of California Irvine researchers (United States) argue today that the consequences of such solar storm could be worse than expected. A weather report unfavorable spatial — a large enough coronal mass ejection — could cause a blackout of the network Internet. A failure that could last several weeks. Even several months.

Luckily, such solar storms are rare. At least, the ones that manage to touch the Earth. The researchers estimate — in a study not yet peer-reviewed — that the likelihood of one occurring is between 1.6 and 12 percent per decade. In our recent history, scientists especially remember one of them, the famous Carrington eventwhich occurred in 1859. He had put the fire to telegraph wires.

Don’t be surprised

Since then, our society’s dependence on technology and in particular onInternet, has steadily increased. The managers of electrical network include the risk associated with solar storms. But few studies have been done on the potential impacts that such an event could have on the global internet network. Their verdict: the infrastructure is unprepared.

To connect the continents, in fact, long cables meander at the bottom of the seas. They are equipped with repeaters, to amplify the signals. However, these are particularly sensitive to geomagnetic currents induced by charged particles coming from the Sun. A single repeater failure and the operation of an entire cable can be called into question. Fortunately, the network was built to be resilient. And take other routes if the most direct one is cut off. Yet if enough repeaters fail simultaneously, it is feared that entire continents will find themselves cut off from each other. With repairs in the middle submarine always tricky.

Already, researchers estimate that a one-day internet outage in the United States would cost more than $7 billion. So imagine a blackout that could last for weeks or months… Researchers warn that when the next solar storm is detected at our star, we will have approximately 13 hours to react. It would therefore be better to prepare beforehand by multiplying the cables to the basses latitudes — because the high latitudes are more exposed and it is there in particular that the cables which connect Europe and the United States are located, above 40° north latitude –, by better isolating the cables under sailors and developing resilience tests, for example. Especially since the satellites also used to provide connections could also be affected. Good news nonetheless. The researchers say local connections should hold up better. The fiber optic cables are not affected by geomagnetic currents.