NASA is warning that the Sun is entering a period of high volatility as it nears the peak of its 11-year solar maximum cycle. During this time, sunspots have the potential to generate intense solar storms, which — if directed at the Earth — could cause widespread outages to electronics and radio communications.
The last several months have seen a spike in solar activity, with sunspots causing several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — phenomena responsible for solar storms. NASA, which has been monitoring our Sun’s activity using the Parker Solar Probe (PSP), warns the potential for a solar storm-caused “internet apocalypse” remains a cause for concern through 2025. Such an event could surge currents through our planet’s infrastructure, disrupting navigation, communications systems, and the GPS-enabled time synchronization critical to the functioning of the internet.
Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, a computer science professor at the University of California at Irvine who coined the term “internet apocalypse,” suggests that the Sun’s “solar maximum” phase in 2025 could trigger a particularly disruptive solar storm. In her research paper titled “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” Jyothi posits that an extreme case event could interfere with submarine communication cables and disrupt long-distance connectivity. The economic cost of such an event is staggering — a single day without internet due to a solar storm could cost the US more than $11 billion, according to internet monitoring organization NetBlocks.
