Global Internet Outage - 2022

She says fiber optic is immune to solar flare. It's the repeaters which may get affected.

Now, on land these repeaters are housed inside building and in sea, they are beneath kilometers of water. Both provides good enough blanket from the solarflare.

Not likely. Paper doesn't discuss about fiber optic. Most of the internet is transferred through fiber optic today and solarstorm doesn't affect fiber optic.

The paper on the whole covers the susceptibility of the entire Internet infrastructure to CME, so not sure how you feel it is unlikely to have any impact on Internet access. The article below summarizes the paper and in short submarine cables at the bottom of the sea floor are especially susceptible due to the larger distances between repeaters. The solar storm of 1859 is often quoted as having 20 times the energy of the asteroid that wiped the dinosaurs off the surface of the earth, so it isn't altogether impossible for the infrastructure to be impacted.

We have seen Internet access in nations being knocked off with submarine cable damages, so that is where the risk lies.

 
Old news and such are common since decades now..we are well prepared for this.
The paper was published last month and is considering the current infrastructure. In most cases, the intensity of the solar flare will not be enough to have a lasting impact but the risk remains, especially for all electrically exposed infrastructure. More likely, the power will go down first anyway, so Internet access is a moot point.
 
I severely dislike clickbaity/misleading titles like these. Why not something like "potential high intensity solarstorm impact discussion", that's not sensationalist and doesn't imply that this is something that's planned and definitely will happen.
 
at the local level this may happen. normal wireless(4g etc) towers may be taken out,normal cable may have damage due to esd. Example half of mumbai surburbs wired internet was down when couple of lightning strikes hit bunch of switches during the recent cyclone and the current went from one switch to another. Thing fired about 2200 routers in thane alone as per the isp tech. fried my routers wan port too luckily i had a usb to wan nic which was easy to replace. Surge protectors can protect such damage. https://www.amazon.in/Tupavco-Ether...805VUD8/ref=pd_lpo_1?pd_rd_i=B00805VUD8&psc=1 although switches equipment on ground exposed to esd would be toast. Same reason why nuke attacks can takeout electronic equipment
 
In the past, I have had my modem fried because of some lightning. It's actually very common where Internet is still carried over copper. I'd still recommend not grounding your modem as most aging homes don't have good earthing (Earthing does expire). If your earthing isn't good then you'll fry electronic stuff in your home or in your building. Your ISP will give you new modem so it's not worth the risk.

The solar storm of 1859 is often quoted as having 20 times the energy of the asteroid that wiped the dinosaurs off the surface of the earth
It's a very misleading statement. We don't live on the surface of the sun so the comparison isn't fair. That "20 times more energetic storm" would have gone totally unnoticed if it wasn't for some telegram handler who got shocked.

Does the article explain how are charged particles able to travel to the bottom of the sea when photons themselves can't reach there? Also does it explain how can charged particles affect fibre optic something that is non-metallic?

CME will affect mostly the satellites so you better stop watching those boring tv series. It may affect electricity grid if some govt forget to turn it off for a few minutes. I have full faith in my local electricity supplier. These guys are very prompt to turn it off at the first sight of a small distant grey cloud.
 
I believe it's naive to think the whole of internet will go down due to a solar storm. This is simply an exaggeration of "The solar storm will affect a few internet users in some countries".
Far too much of the world relies on internet from economy to defense security. It wouldn't be coming from some infamous researcher. NASA would be losing their shit and world governments would start pissing their pants about how it will put a hole in their defense.

Love the debate going on here, if the internet does go down then some of you won't be able to say I told you so to the ones who are saying it won't go down.
 
In the past, I have had my modem fried because of some lightning. It's actually very common where Internet is still carried over copper. I'd still recommend not grounding your modem as most aging homes don't have good earthing (Earthing does expire). If your earthing isn't good then you'll fry electronic stuff in your home or in your building. Your ISP will give you new modem so it's not worth the risk.


It's a very misleading statement. We don't live on the surface of the sun so the comparison isn't fair. That "20 times more energetic storm" would have gone totally unnoticed if it wasn't for some telegram handler who got shocked.

Does the article explain how are charged particles able to travel to the bottom of the sea when photons themselves can't reach there? Also does it explain how can charged particles affect fibre optic something that is non-metallic?

CME will affect mostly the satellites so you better stop watching those boring tv series. It may affect electricity grid if some govt forget to turn it off for a few minutes. I have full faith in my local electricity supplier. These guys are very prompt to turn it off at the first sight of a small distant grey cloud.

Since you asked for the science of it.

Seems the opinion is rather biased based on this paper than a general understanding of what may happen in an admittedly worst case scenario.
 
Seems the opinion is rather biased based on this paper than a general understanding of what may happen in an admittedly worst case scenario.
Thanks for the link, it seems underwater fiber optic cables do carry the metallic line which carries power for the repeaters. And because of global scale disturbances in magnetic field, some current may induced into power lines (like how generator work but at earth scale).

Let's hope these repeaters are more reliable than mobile chargers. These bastards work on any random voltage.
 
Sun broke some wind today.

Screenshot_1.jpg


 
just hope that earth magnetic field is strong enough to brazen it out with minimal effects and hopefully we are farthest away from the sun when such CME happens.
 
says Indian Researcher in her Research Paper
no disrespect, but when i see "Indian" - i am, almost confident its had be some superficial shit. The Indian who believe in science and logic, 99% dont stay in india or don't liked to be called Indian anymore.
"scientist" of this country are busy in deriving oxygen from nitrogen, citizens of this country attempted to kill a deadly virus by light/sound frequency within the visible wavelength.
 
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I came across this articles 2 years back, wasn't really serious about same.
This was bound to happen in 2021..
Entire world will stop if this happens even for a day or 2..
 
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