INTRODUCTION
Solar storms are probably one of the most amazing phenomenon. However now a new research has said that solar superstorms which can hit earth next potentially destroy the infrastructure and cause an "Internet Apocalypse". The outage of the Internet will stay for some days even for some months.
The research was done by Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi assistant professor of the University of California, Irvine and VMware Research. She presented her paper at the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference.
The probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events that directly impact the earth is estimated to be 1.6%-12% per decade.
*What will happen if there is a global Internet collapse?
:- A disruption lasting even a few minutes can lead to huge losses for service providers and damages in many tech fields. If there is any Internet disruption for a day in United States then economic impact for it is estimated to be over $7 billion. This is only for US think about all over the world.
*What if the network remains non-functional for some days even for some months?
:- This is the worst-case scenario which fortunately we have never encountered this situation in previous history. Threats to the Internet range from man-made cyber attacks to natural disasters such as earthquakes. The Internet is also affected by black sawn events such as the Covid-19 which profoundly after human lives and in turn internet usage. One of the greatest dangers facing the Internet with the potential for global impact is a powerful solar superstorms. 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 design of the network topology and geo-distributed systems such as DNS and data centers.
Long distance fiber cables and communication satellites are susceptible to damage from solar storms through induced currents and direct exposure respectively. In cables the optical fiber itself is immune to GIC. Long-haul cables have repeaters to boost the optical signals spaced at intervals of 50-150 km which are powered using a conductor. These repeaters are vulnerable to GIC-induced failures which can lead to the cable being unusable. GPS & communication satellites which are directly exposed to solar will suffer from lost connectivity during the event potential damage to electronic components and in the worst case orbital decay & reentry to earth particularly in low earth orbit satellites such as Starlink.
IMPACT ON PEOPLE & ECONOMY FOR SOLAR SUPERSTORMS
Approximately 59.5% of the people over the world use Internet and also nowadays everything is depends on the Internet like banking sector, traveling sector, medical healthcare, satellites, railway sector, e-payments and also many fields are use Internet connectivity foe work and if there is no internet connectivity then work of all of those fields will stopped. Also there is economical problem will happen as mentioned above if there is any Internet disruption for one day in US then economic impact is estimated $7 billion and as mentioned above it not only for some days it might be for some months. Basically most of the people depends on the Internet. Nowadays Internet is part of life and if there in any Internet problem then a big problem comes up.
IMPACT ON SATELLITES
Communication satellites are among the severely affected systems. The damages are not caused by GIC but due to direct exposure to highly charged particles in CMEs. These particles don't reach the earth's surface since they are mostly blocked by the atmosphere. Threats to communication satellites include damage to electronic components and extra drag on the satellite particularly in low earth orbit systems that can cause orbital decay and uncontrolled reentry to earth. Thus both surface based and satellite based communication systems are under high risk of collapse if a Carrington scale event occurs again.