Meanwhile today's latest;

MONSTER SUNSPOT: Sunspot AR2860 is big, and it's ready to flare. Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau photographed the active region yesterday from Rafaela, Argentina:

https://spaceweather.com/

MAJOR FLARE WARNING: Sunspot AR2860 is big, angry, and it's directly facing Earth. The active region just unleashed a significant M4.7-class solar flare (Aug. 28 @ 0611 UT), probably hurling a CME toward Earth: movie. If current trends continue, a major X-flare could be in the offing, so stay tuned. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.

https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=28&month=08&year=2021

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Scientists have known for decades that an extreme solar storm, or coronal mass ejection, could damage electrical grids and potentially cause prolonged blackouts. The repercussions would be felt everywhere from global supply chains and transportation to internet and GPS access.

Less examined until now, though, is the impact such a solar emission could have on internet infrastructure specifically.

New research entitled ‘Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse’ shows that the failures could be catastrophic, particularly for the undersea cables that underpin the global internet.

Abdu Jyothi’s research points out an additional nuance to a blackout-causing solar storm: the scenario where even if power returns in hours or days, mass internet outages persist.

Local vs International internet infrastructure
There’s some good news up front. Abdu Jyothi found that local and regional internet infrastructure would be at low risk of damage even in a massive solar storm, because optical fiber itself isn’t affected by geomagnetically induced currents. Short cable spans are also grounded very regularly.

But for long undersea cables that connect continents, the risks are much greater. A solar storm that disrupted a number of these cables around the world could cause a massive loss of connectivity by cutting countries off at the source, even while leaving local infrastructure intact. It would be like cutting flow to an apartment building because of a water main break.

We are unprepared for large-scale solar events
“What really got me thinking about this is that with the pandemic we saw how unprepared the world was. There was no protocol to deal with it effectively, and it’s the same with internet resilience,”

Abdu Jyothi said: “Our infrastructure is not prepared for a large-scale solar event. We have very limited understanding of what the extent of the damage would be.”

That information gap mostly comes from lack of data. Severe solar storms are so rare that there are only three main examples to go off of in recent history.

Large events in 1859 and 1921 demonstrated that geomagnetic disturbances can disrupt electrical infrastructure and communication lines like telegraph wires.

During the massive 1859 “Carrington Event,” compass needles swung wildly and unpredictably, and the aurora borealis was visible at the equator in Colombia.

But those geomagnetic disturbances occurred before modern electric grids were established.

A moderate-severity solar storm in 1989 knocked out Hydro-Québec’s grid and caused a nine-hour blackout in northeast Canada, but that too occurred before the rise of modern internet infrastructure.

https://strangesounds.org/2021/08/internet-apocalypse-solar-storm-space-science.html

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Fox.