Late last month, India’s newly launched Aditya-L1 sun-studying mission captured a glimpse of a solar flare. With a recent increase in solar activity, scientists are concerned about what it might mean for the internet.
“The internet has come of age during a time when the sun has been relatively quiet, and now it’s entering a more active time,” said Professor Peter Becker of George Mason University, per a FOX Weather report. “It’s the first time in human history that there’s been an intersection of increased solar activity with our dependence on the internet and our global economic dependence on the internet.”
Becker is working with GMU and the Naval Research Laboratory to create an early warning system for solar flares.
According to CBS News, the sun is currently in Solar Cycle 25. These 11-year cycles have been recorded since 1755.
“At the beginning of the current cycle, the National Weather Service predicted that peak sunspot activity would happen in 2025, with the overall activity of the cycle being ‘fairly weak,’” said CBS. “But earlier this month, researchers determined that the cycle has ‘ramped up much faster’ than what was originally predicted.”
For example, a severe geomagnetic storm emerged in April, “the third geomagnetic storm of that magnitude since the solar cycle began,” the outlet said. Still, researchers expect that this cycle will have average activity compared to others over the past century.
Solar flares occur when magnetic energy built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released and radiation is emitted across “virtually the entire electromagnetic spectrum,” NASA explained.
“The amount of energy released is the equivalent of millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding at the same time,” said the space agency. “The first solar flare recorded in astronomical literature was on September 1, 1859. Two scientists, Richard C. Carrington and Richard Hodgson, were independently observing sunspots at the time, when they viewed a large flare in white light.”
That flare, known as the Carrington Event, caused electric spikes that knocked out the telegraph system. Back then, that was the main method for long-distance communication. Today, solar flares also pose a risk for our modern modes of communication.
In fact, the wires of the telegraph system were strong compared to today’s electronics according to Becker.
“So you lay that on top of the internet with its very delicate electronics, you’re talking about something that could really fry the system for a period of several weeks to months in terms of the time it would take to repair all the infrastructure – all of the electronic switches, all of these closets of electronics in all these office buildings,” he said.
In 2021, researchers from the University of California, Irvine, warned that a solar superstorm could result in an “internet apocalypse” that they said we’re only partly prepared for.
“A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), popularly known as solar storm, is a directional ejection of a large mass of highly magnetized particles from the sun. When the earth is in the direct path of a CME, these magnetized and charged solar particles will interact with the earth’s magnetic field and produce several effects,” the researchers explained. “In addition to spectacular auroral displays, they produce Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GIC) on the earth’s surface through electromagnetic induction. Based on the strength of the CME, in extreme cases, GIC has the potential to enter and damage long-distance cables that constitute the backbone of the Internet.”
This year, NASA announced that a new computer model that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and NASA satellite data could help sound the alarm for dangerous space weather.
At this point, most corporations don’t have the economic incentive to harden their systems, Becker said. However, he said his team is watching the sun and modeling flares – surveillance that could help protect technology.
“If we have a warning, every minute counts because you can put satellites in safe mode. You can take transformers off-line from the grid, so they don’t fry," Becker said. “So there’s things you can do to mitigate the problem. And then, more long term, you’re talking about hardening the internet. And that’s of course, an economic challenge because it's sort of like an insurance policy. You may never need it, and it would cost trillions to really harden the system.”