Many cables in that region are also shorter, because they branch in many directions from that hub rather than being set up as one continuous span. She found, for example, that Asia faces less risk, because Singapore acts as a hub for many undersea cables in the region and is at the equator. That's why Abdu Jyothi worries more about cables in some regions than others. In the ocean it's even more difficult to predict.”Ĭoronal mass ejections tend to have more impact at higher latitudes, closer to the Earth's magnetic poles. “We have more understanding of how these storms would impact power systems, but that's all on land. “There are no models currently available of how this could play out,” Abdu Jyothi says. A moderate-severity solar storm in 1989 knocked out Hydro-Québec's grid and caused a nine-hour blackout in northeast Canada, but that too occurred before the rise of modern internet infrastructure.
But those geomagnetic disturbances occurred before modern electric grids were established. During the massive 1859 “Carrington Event,” compass needles swung wildly and unpredictably, and the aurora borealis was visible at the equator in Colombia. Large events in 18 demonstrated that geomagnetic disturbances can disrupt electrical infrastructure and communication lines like telegraph wires. Severe solar storms are so rare that there are only three main examples to go off of in recent history. That information gap mostly comes from lack of data. We have very limited understanding of what the extent of the damage would be.” “Our infrastructure is not prepared for a large-scale solar event. There was no protocol to deal with it effectively, and it’s the same with internet resilience,” Abdu Jyothi told WIRED ahead of her talk. “What really got me thinking about this is that with the pandemic we saw how unprepared the world was. Abdu Jyothi's research points out an additional nuance to a blackout-causing solar storm: the scenario where even if power returns in hours or days, mass internet outages persist.
New research shows that the failures could be catastrophic, particularly for the undersea cables that underpin the global internet.Īt the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference on Thursday, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine presented “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” an examination of the damage a fast-moving cloud of magnetized solar particles could cause the global internet. Less examined until now, though, is the impact such a solar emission could have on internet infrastructure specifically. The repercussions would be felt everywhere from global supply chains and transportation to internet and GPS access. Scientists have known for decades that an extreme solar storm, or coronal mass ejection, could damage electrical grids and potentially cause prolonged blackouts.
0 kommentar(er)
