In a startling revelation, a space weather expert has pinpointed a cosmic ray from a distant star explosion as the probable culprit behind a JetBlue Airbus A320's sudden, terrifying altitude loss last month. The incident, which injured at least 15 passengers, had initially been attributed to solar activity.
The Terrifying Mid-Air Plunge Over Florida
The event unfolded on October 30, aboard a JetBlue flight from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey. While cruising above Florida, the aircraft abruptly lost thousands of feet of altitude. The pilots managed to regain control but were forced to divert, executing an emergency landing at Tampa International Airport to attend to the injured.
In the immediate aftermath, Airbus pointed to intense solar radiation as the cause. The manufacturer grounded approximately 6,000 A320 aircraft globally to implement critical software updates designed to shield their systems from such space weather events.
Solar Radiation Ruled Out, Cosmic Ray Suspected
However, a scientific review of the data has cast doubt on that initial theory. Researchers found that solar radiation levels on the day of the incident were unremarkable and nowhere near the intensity required to disrupt aircraft electronics.
This discrepancy led experts to explore alternative explanations. Clive Dyer, a renowned space weather and radiation expert at the University of Surrey in the UK, presented a compelling new theory to Space.com. He suggested that a single, high-energy cosmic ray—a particle accelerated to near light-speed by a massive star exploding in a supernova—could have struck the plane's computer system.
How a Tiny Particle Can Cripple an Aircraft
"[Cosmic rays] can interact with modern microelectronics and change the state of a circuit," Dyer explained. The impact can cause a bit flip, where a digital 0 becomes a 1 or vice-versa, corrupting data and causing system malfunctions. In more severe cases, they can induce currents strong enough to cause permanent hardware damage.
Dyer clarified that while a major solar radiation peak occurred about two weeks after the JetBlue event—making Airbus's precautionary software update a sensible move—the incident itself likely had a more exotic origin. "The JetBlue incident could not take place only because of solar radiation," he concluded, pointing the finger at a deep-space particle.
This incident highlights the hidden vulnerabilities in our advanced technology to forces beyond our planet, turning a routine flight into a dramatic encounter with the remnants of a dying star.
