Scientist predicts that the internet could fail from 2024 to 2028 due to solar interference
We've long known that solar storms can wreak havoc on satellite communications and even affect the power grid on the ground.
Charged particles ejected from the Sun, from intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation known as solar flares to the more powerful but slower ejections of plasma and magnetic radiation known as coronal mass ejections, can distort our planet's magnetic field.
And if a particularly massive storm were to occur one day – most likely when the Sun enters one of its most active periods – it could unleash what George Mason University physics and astronomy professor Peter Becke r calls the “internet apocalypse.”
“The Internet got big during a time when the Sun was relatively quiet, and now it's entering a more active period,” he told Fox Weather, referring to the Sun reaching the fiercest period of its 11-year cycle .
“This is the first time in human history that there has been an intersection between increased solar activity and our dependence on the internet and our global economic dependence on the internet,” he added.
An easy target
A solar flare-induced internet blackout isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Just think of the Carrington event, which occurred in 1859 and “knocked out the telegraph system,” Becker told Fox News , with operators being “shocked.” It was not as strong as the one from 14,300 years ago that remained recorded in the fossil record.
To prevent the Internet and other communications systems from going haywire, Becker and his colleagues have been working on an early warning system that could give scientists enough time to "put satellites into fail-safe mode" or "take transformers off the grid , so that they don't fry."
In August he and his team received a federal grant of about $13 million, in collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory, to build such a system.
But predicting when these storms will hit Earth's orbit and atmosphere is still extremely difficult, and Becker likens it to the challenge of predicting earthquakes.
As for "hardening the Internet" to protect it for the long term, Becker confirmed to Fox Weather that companies don't have enough incentive — a worrying accusation, considering the next big storm could be just around the corner.
“The Internet was not designed to handle this level of communications interference and, as a result, is considered a very 'soft' type of infrastructure,” Becker said in an August statement announcing the federal grant. “ Therefore, the period between 2024 and 2028 is a period where the entire internet could be knocked out for a period of weeks or months in the event of a truly extreme solar flare.”
The risks are palpable. Beyond our precious browsers shutting down overnight, this blackout could have severe ripple effects across the world, plunging it into a “global recession,” Becker added.
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The article Scientist predicts that the internet could fail from 2024 to 2028 due to solar interference comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/scienziato-prevede-che-la-rete-internet-potrebbe-saltare-dal-2024-al-2028-per-uninterfernza-solare/ on Sun, 12 Nov 2023 09:00:02 +0000.