Scientists at the University of California at Irvine predict that if a rare solar superstorm comes to pass, it could cause a months-long outage for key parts of the Internet. Particularly vulnerable are undersea cables – approximately 1.3 million miles’ worth, on which intercontinental Internet depends.
Solar storms are not new, but obviously disrupting the Earth’s magnetic field didn’t matter much in the 18th century. In our current day and age, with so much of human activity dependent on the Internet, disruptions to these vital links could be devastating particularly if they are long-lasting.
The odds of this happening are between 1.6% and 12% per decade. However, the last time there was a major solar superstorm was 1921 (exactly 100 years ago). If a similar storm took place today, up to 40 million people could be without electricity for up to two years. Under the ocean, Internet links are made up of millions of miles of cable, which transmit signals in the form of light. Every 30-90 miles there is a repeater to amplify the signals, and these repeaters are vulnerable to electrical disruptions.
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Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.
You do realise that probability isn’t cumulative, yes? So just because there’s a 1 in 10 chance of something happening in a decade does not mean that if you have ten decades without it happening you will be more likely to see it in the tenth…