Rumors have spread on social media about a complete internet blackout affecting the world by October 10, 2023. These rumors warn that this outage could last several months, as the undersea internet cables connecting continents and oceans could be susceptible to damage if a severe solar storm occurs. This prediction coincides with NASA's warning of a potential solar storm, suggesting that this outage might be due to the effects of solar winds on Earth, which could cause various problems and malfunctions impacting all wireless communication networks, in addition to satellites and power grids. Severe solar storms are massive explosions of solar winds and other plasma isotopes, alongside magnetic fields that rise above the solar corona, and can damage electrical networks, potentially leading to prolonged power outages.
The idea of a global internet outage is merely a rumor that has been raised several times in the past years. Severe solar storms of such intensity occur rarely, with only a few of this sort recorded in recent history, such as in 1859 and 1921, which caused communication issues and sparked some fires, according to the scientific journal "Live Science." To this day, the impact of these storms on modern technology remains unknown, given that the last storm of such severity happened a very long time ago, before technology reached its current state.
The scientific journal stated that predicting the timing of solar storms is not possible, emphasizing that the latest methods are not 100% accurate. Additionally, the prediction process takes long hours of modeling and satellite data and has not yet been implemented. Furthermore, the research paper that the worldwide internet outage rumor is based on did not confirm the occurrence of a solar storm nor predict it; it merely examined Earth's readiness for such an event and identified vulnerabilities in the global internet infrastructure.
At the "Sigcomm 2021" data communications conference, Sangitha Jyoti from the University of California presented research titled "Super Solar Storms: Planning for the End of the Internet as We Know It," which aimed to investigate the damage that could result from a rapidly moving cloud of magnetized solar particles on the global internet network. The research concluded that the infrastructure of local and regional internet networks would be at low risk even in the event of a massive solar storm.
