The Threat of Solar Storms By Brian Simpson

Unlike climate change, solar storms are a threat to modern electric civilisation. As noted at American Thinker.com, on March 12, 2023, a powerful solar eruption, a coronal mass ejection or CME occurred on the far side of the sun, but it still impacted upon the Earth. This event was like the Carrington Event of 1859, which saw telegraph lines catching on fire; only if the impact on March 12, 2023 was a direct hit, it would be much worse: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/dodging_the_apocalypse.html

"Early estimates suggest that this explosion was ten to a hundred times more powerful than the one of 1859. Such events – if not quite so extreme -- are not uncommon. One serious difference from 1859 was that explosion took place on the side of the sun facing away from earth. If it had been facing in our direction, if the earth had borne the full brunt of that blast, we can scarcely imagine the results. It's likely that all operating electrical systems would have been immediately destroyed, the same as the telegraph systems in 1859. Any active electronic instruments – and possibly even those that happened to be shut down – would have been fried, transformed into useless hunks of plastic, metal, and silicon. The electrical and electronic networks (e.g., the Net) that form the framework of Third Millennial civilization would have been annihilated. Once they were destroyed, all power would vanish. Industry would grind to a halt. Massive amounts of data, including almost all financial data, would simply disappear. All methods of communication beyond voice range would no longer exist. It wouldn't be a matter of waiting to be rescued by a government of any sort. Government would have shrunk to little more than a notion. The very tools on which relief, and even recovery, depend would simply have vanished. The consequences beggar the imagination. A new Dark Age would have been the best option to expect."

NASA has warned that the sun is entering a phase of intense activity, in its 11-year solar maximum cycle, and coronal mass ejections occur, to varying intensity each week. Predictions are that a CME, capable of bringing down the internet, the "internet apocalypse," could happen from now throughout 2025. This is mind-numbing stuff, the public policy implications have not been discussed by anyone much in Australia, although scientists are concerned: https://www.ga.gov.au/news/geoscience-australias-role-in-space-weather-monitoring

https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-04-03-solar-storm-could-cause-internet-apocalypse-2025.html

"The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has warned that the Sun is entering a time of high volatility as it approaches the peak of its 11-year solar maximum cycle.

During this period, sunspots can produce intense solar storms, which if directed toward the Earth could create widespread outages to electronics and radio communications. The first two months of 2024 alone have witnessed a surge in solar activity, with sunspots producing numerous coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are phenomena responsible for solar storms.

NASA, which has been watching the Sun's activity using the Parker Solar Probe (PSP), warns the probability of a solar storm-caused "internet apocalypse" remains a cause for alarm through 2025.

Such an event could increase currents through the Earth's infrastructure, destroying navigation, communications systems and the GPS-enabled time synchronization crucial to the operation of the internet.

Solar storms are an aspect of the solar system like any other, although they arrive with a severe amount of danger.

They can be attractive and harmless, with images showing awesome displays of auroral beacons. But they can also be destructive, as NASA has time and time again warned.

The PSP has successfully journeyed through solar winds in space to understand the phenomenon better. Scientists have long warned about the likely negative results of such storms, possibly the largest being what has been conceived as an "internet apocalypse" that could occur in 2025.

In simple terms, when a solar storm happens, magnetic fields tear through the Earth's atmosphere and send current soaring through manmade infrastructure.

Sun launches CMEs toward Earth at least 20 times a week

The Sun launches CMEs toward Earth at least 20 times per week, based on where it currently is in its 11-year activity cycle. Nobody in living memory has experienced a burst that has seriously harmed human society.

The only recorded incident that caused some damage occurred in 1859, well before humans became dependent on electricity. The solar storm of that year was three times more powerful than the one that turned off power to a whole Canadian province in 1989.

If a CME on a comparable scale hit the Earth today as it did back then, electronics in orbiting satellites would be severely damaged, ruining navigation and communications systems, as well as the the GPS time synchronization that the internet depends on to work. Without power and the internet, society would come to a standstill.

Some prediction models suggest that such an event could arrive as soon as 2025 when the Sun enters a specifically active period called the "solar maximum."

Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, a computer science professor at the University of California at Irvine, invented the term "internet apocalypse."

"We've never experienced one of the extreme case events, and we don't know how our infrastructure would respond to it. Our failure testing doesn't even include such scenarios," Abdu Jyothi said. He added that a solar storm could even interrupt things like submarine communication cables, which might obstruct long-distance connectivity.

The northern latitudes of the planet are especially vulnerable to such solar activity. There is no way to forecast how long the interruptions might last, but experts said they could go on for months."

Or, years, perhaps decades.