[ET] The "black swan" event of a solar superstorm directed at earth could prompt an "internet apocalypse" across the entire globe that could last for several months, new research (pdf) has warned.University of California Irvine assistant professor Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi presented the new research, titled "Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse," last month during the Association for Computing Machinery’s annual conference for their Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM).
"One of the greatest dangers facing the internet with the potential for global impact is a powerful solar superstorm," Jyothi wrote in the new research paper.
"Although humans are protected from these storms by the earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere, they can cause significant damage to man-made infrastructure. The scientific community is generally aware of this threat with modeling efforts and precautionary measures being taken, particularly in the context of power grids. However, the networking community has largely overlooked this risk during the design of the network topology and geo-distributed systems such as DNS and data centers," he continued.