“Internet Armageddon”: Decoding the Science Behind Solar Storms
It appears to be a scenario straight out of a science fiction story. The release of magnetic fields caused by an intense solar storm disrupts the protective magnetic field surrounding the Earth, causing electric currents to surge through human-made infrastructure. The normally northern phenomenon of the aurora borealis fills the southern skies with captivating shades of blue and green. We tear our gaze away from our screens to witness this extraordinary sight, only to realise that the familiar internet we rely on has temporarily ceased to function.
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Although our physical well-being remains intact, within a few hours, we are thrust back into a time reminiscent of the analog era. During this time, the only tweets we hear come from the birds outside our windows.
Referred to as the “internet apocalypse,” this concept has recently gained attention on social media, leading to the rapid spread of misinformation regarding fabricated NASA warnings and speculation about how individuals heavily reliant on the online world would cope without it. Various groups, including apocalypse preppers, religious doomsday enthusiasts on Reddit, and writers, have all, at some stage, embraced and explored this notion.
The fascination surrounding this topic is easily understandable. Virtually every aspect of human life is intertwined with the internet, and its absence could result in disastrous consequences. Moreover, many of us have become so reliant on constant connectivity that even a brief 30-second elevator ride without WiFi can be unbearable.
However, beyond the dramatic speculation, these concerns are not purely fictional. Experts affirm that a widespread internet outage could indeed occur due to a powerful solar storm striking the Earth — a rare yet genuinely possible occurrence that has not happened in the digital age so far. Historical events support this notion, such as the Carrington Event in 1859, when telegraph lines sparked, operators suffered electrocution, and the northern lights were visible as far south as Jamaica. In 1989, a solar storm caused a prolonged power outage in the Quebec grid, while in 2012, the Earth narrowly avoided a similar event.
As the sun, which operates on approximately an 11-year cycle, enters a particularly active phase called the “solar maximum” in 2025, there is growing concern that our interconnected world may not be adequately prepared for potential consequences.
Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Irvine, gained recognition for her paper titled “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” which contributed to the popularisation of the term. Her interest in internet resilience emerged during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic when she realised the lack of preparedness for dealing with such a global crisis. At that time, there was a notable scarcity of research focused on the potential consequences of widespread internet failure.
“We have never experienced one of these extreme events, so we don’t know how our infrastructure would respond,” explained Jyothi. “Even our failure testing does not encompass such scenarios.”
Jyothi points out that a severe solar storm could impact critical infrastructure, such as submarine communication cables, leading to disruptions in long-distance connectivity. In such a scenario, while local government websites might still be accessible if there is no power outage, accessing larger websites with distributed data storage could become impossible.
Northern latitudes, where much of the internet infrastructure is concentrated, are particularly vulnerable to solar storms. However, this vulnerability is not currently taken into account in infrastructure deployment, according to Jyothi.
The duration of such outages could last for months, depending on the scale and time required for repairs. The economic impact of just a single day of lost connectivity in the United States is estimated to exceed $11 billion, as reported by NetBlocks, an organization that monitors the internet.
Nevertheless, Jyothi expresses some regret about using the term “internet apocalypse” in her paper. She acknowledges that there is little ordinary people can do to prepare for such an event, as the responsibility falls on governments and companies. She also feels that the paper received an excessive amount of attention.
Jyothi notes that researchers have long discussed the potential impact of such events on the power grid, but people seem to be less frightened by that prospect. However, losing power would inevitably result in losing internet connectivity as well.
The recent online panic seems to have been sparked by discoveries from the Parker Solar Probe, launched by NASA in 2018 to study the sun and solar atmosphere, rather than any intentional effort to disrupt WiFi, as suggested by TikTok videos.
Recently, scientists published new findings from the probe regarding the origin of solar winds, which they attribute to a phenomenon called “magnetic reconnection.” Although the research does not specifically focus on solar storms, it has broader implications. According to Stuart D. Bale, a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a principal investigator for NASA on the probe, rapid magnetic changes in the sun are likely due to reconnection. Coronal mass ejections, which are powerful expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields that can drive damaging solar storms, may also be linked to this mechanism.
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