According to Space.com by way of Yahoo! News, solar storms are about to increase drastically.  Rumour has it that solar activity goes in eleven-year cycles of lulls followed by heavier activity, and one of those periods of heavier activity is imminent.

In the past eleven years without heavy solar storms, we've made a lot of advances in technology which haven't accounted for periods during which it would be an issue.  Scientists with a focus in sun-related topics are discussing how to deal with potential problems.

Solar storms could cause tons of damage, on par with other better-known natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes.  Everything from emergency radio communications to smart power grids could be disabled by severe solar activity.  Scientists are working hard to be able to predict storms so we can prepare for them, which should help a lot with potential damage.

The article from Yahoo doesn't mention anything specific about data centers, although obviously something that's intense enough to take out power grids could cause downtime... anyone have any ideas about what kind of effects solar storms could have on the data center industry and how to prepare?

-Elizabeth English

photo by fdecomite under flickr creative commons license

---

Share this with your network!