Will the Sun break the internet?

The Sun might hit hard on our internet!

You might have seen in on your social media that the internet might be under attack by the Sun. That it may be unavailable for the world to use for months, perhaps even years. But is this really the case?

NASA has, and is, always interested in looking into our own Star’s activity.

Recently, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was one of the first telescopes that flew close to the Sun’s orbit. This is very amazingly progressive as the Sun’s heat is around 15 million degrees Celsius, making this travel a very big accomplishment to withstand such an extreme thermal energy. Its design has been to withstand the extreme heat of the star to explore its activity and relay it back to scientists.

On NASA’s official website, they say that “Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA’s living with a star program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system and directly affect life and society”.

With the telescope, they have managed to witness and analyse the Sun’s solar storms that regularly happen. What they also found was that the Sun can produce a very severe solar storms that can disable the Internet for weeks and months, if not, years.

It’s interesting to also highlight that this isn’t the first time a solar storm has caused the internet to go down. In 1989, Quebec (Canada) left the public in the dark for 12 hours, unable to use the Internet. It stopped schools and business to function normally for the hours, inciting confusion for all residents as to what was happening. Issues have begun to arise as to what a sudden solar storm could affect the world, as the economy could be in danger with billions of dollars lost from the Internet.

However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t solutions for this type of thing. The chances of such a severe solar storm happening soon are very low. However, there have been predications that it could happen within the next decade. Not to worry! NASA has developed an AI (named DAGGER) that predicts geomagnetic disturbances worldwide. It updates very fast with accurate predictions coming in second and constant updates coming in minutes.

This means NASA is always on the constant lookout for any changes to the sun, planets and our Earth.

There is no real concern, as NASA continues to develop their understanding of the Sun. But they have suggested for upgrades and developments into current technologies to be able to withstand the sun’s storms.