'Internet apocalypse': How NASA's solar-storm studies could help save the web

The emergence of an impending solar storm has brought with it the remote possibility that within the next decade, the people of Earth could be left without internet access for months.

If the internet fails on a scale that large, the consequences could be devastating — causing billions of dollars of losses per day to the U.S. economy and impeding the production and supply chains for essential materials like food and medicine. But scientists at NASA are seeking to prevent such a catastrophe with the launch years ago of a probe that will allow them to study and prepare for how a solar storm could effect the planet's infrastructure.

So, how likely is it that humankind could face what many have deemed the "internet apocalypse?"

Here's what we know:

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Solar flares lead to threatening solar storms

Solar wind is created by the outward expansion of charged particles from the Sun's corona on the outermost atmosphere, according to NASA. Though much less dense than wind on Earth, it is much faster — typically blowing at speeds of one to two million miles per hour.

Due to the winds that solar storms generate near the sun, the atmospheric impacts can potentially be felt on Earth. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections drive the storms, which release solar particles and electromagnetic radiation toward our planet, according to NASA.

As the frequency of coronal mass ejections increases at the height of its 11-year cycle, which NASA said is expected to be in 2025, electromagnetic activity on the sun peaks. What that so-called "solar maxiumum" means for us earthlings is that the risk for disruption on our planet increases.

The activity has the potential to cause geometric storms, which could hinder satellite signals, radio communications, internet and electrical power grids — resulting in a technological collapse.

A small chance exists that the solar storm could trigger an outage

The chances of a storm triggering a cataclysmic internet outage are minimal, according to one study from two years ago. But the threat is still nothing to scoff at.

A 2021 study — published by Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, a computer science expert at the University of California, Irvine — concluded that a 1.6% to 12% chance exists that an extended disruption to the internet could occur within the next decade due to a solar storm.

The study goes on to estimate that a failure of that magnitude could cost the U.S. economy — where the risk of internet disruption is higher than in Asia — as much as $7 billion per day.

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This sort of disruption is not unprecedented

A destructive solar storm in 1989 caused electrical blackouts across Quebec for 12 hours, according to NASA, plunging millions of Canadians into the dark and closing schools and businesses.

But it was in 1859 when the most intense solar storm on record, the Carrington Event, wreaked its havoc. The storm sparked fires at telegraph stations and prevented messages from being sent.

A NASA probe could be key to staving off internet failure

Years ago, the space agency released the Parker Solar Probe in an effort to avert what the Weather Channel referred to in a June report as the "internet apocalypse."

The spacecraft launched in 2018 on a journey that in 2021 brought it close to the sun's surface, entering its upper atmosphere, the corona, where the solar wind is generated, according to NASA. It was there where the probe endured harsh conditions to gather vital information about the sun, which NASA researchers said lead to new insights about how solar winds reach supersonic speeds and impact the larger space weather system.

"Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system," the agency said in a statement at the time.

Because of the probe mission, NASA also earlier this year learned that the solar wind could be largely fueled by small-scale jets of energy, known as “jetlets,” at the base of the corona.

“The findings make it much easier to explain how the solar wind is accelerated and heated,” Craig DeForest, a solar physicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in NASA's report. “We’re not finished with the puzzle yet, but this is a major step forward for understanding a central mystery of solar physics.”

More recently, NASA created a new computer model that combines artificial intelligence and satellite data that "could sound the alarm for dangerous space weather" like a cosmic tornado siren. The new technology can predict where an impending solar storm will strike Earth with a 30-minute warning, vital minutes that could be the time needed to prepare and prevent severe impacts on power grids and other critical infrastructure.

An international team of researchers at the Frontier Development Lab — a public-private partnership that includes NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Department of Energy — have been using artificial intelligence to look for connections between the solar wind and geomagnetic disruptions that wreak havoc on technology. An AI method called “deep learning,” allows researchers to trains computers to recognize patterns based on previous examples.

"There could one day be solar storm sirens that sound an alarm in power stations and satellite control centers around the world," NASA researchers predict, "just as tornado sirens wail in advance of threatening terrestrial weather in towns and cities across America."

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @EricLagatta.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Internet apocalypse:' Can NASA's solar storm studies save the web?