Day-to-day life in the 21st century is a pretty pleasantly predictable affair; chief among the most predictable things is that the Internet will exist, and work, and be readily accessible all day long. But scientists are warning that that may not always be the case:

Imagine if one day the internet was down not just in your neighbourhood, but across the globe, knocked out by a threat from space: an enormous solar superstorm.

It sounds like science fiction, but a new study says it could become our reality earlier than we think if we don't prepare properly for the next time the sun spits a wave of magnetized plasma at us.

"Astrophysicists estimate the likelihood of a solar storm of sufficient strength to cause catastrophic disruption occurring within the next decade to be 1.6 — 12 per cent," the study states.

Just in case you weren't alarmed at this threat, here's what a solar flare looks like—basically a big, angry scream by the giant searing ball of plasma that is the Sun:

The lesson here—aside from the fact that we are utterly powerless before the terrible might of Sol—is that you need to start buffering all of those YouTube videos pronto to make sure you have enough stuff to watch during the inevitable blackout.

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