Extreme turbulence on a flight from Mexico to New Jersey which left at least 15 passengers injured could have been caused by a strange space phenomenon. The incident happened on October 30 and saw a JetBlue Airbus A320 aircraft drop suddenly as it flew over Florida.
The plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Tampa International Airport, with Airbus attributing the incident to “intense solar radiation” which may have corrupted “data critical to the functioning of flight controls.” 6,000 A320s were downed as a result of the incident as the company rolled out software updates to protect itself from the vulnerability. However, according to Clive Dyer, a space weather and radiation expert at the University of Surrey, the solar radiation levels on the date in question were “unremarkable”, casting doubt on the official explanation.
He told Space.com that he believes the reason for the incident could be the onboard computer of the affected jet being struck by a cosmic ray.
A cosmic ray is a stream of high-energy particles from a distant star explosion that may have traveled millions of years before reaching Earth.
Dyer, who has studied the effects of solar radiation on aircraft electronics for decades, said: “Cosmic rays can interact with modern microelectronics and change the state of a circuit.
“They can cause a simple bit flip, like a 0 to 1 or 1 to 0. They can mess up information and make things go wrong.
“But they can cause hardware failures too, when they induce a current in an electronic device and burn it out.”
According to the University of Chicago, cosmic rays are particles from outer space that travel across the universe.
They can be made by the sun, by other stars exploding, and even black holes.
They move extremely fast, almost the speed of light, but when they hit the Earth they are generally blocked by our atmosphere and made harmless to humans.
Scientists are fascinated by cosmic rays because they can tell us about space—where they came from and what they encountered along the way—as well as the makeup of the galaxy and the universe.
Dyer added: “It's down to manufacturers to produce hardy electronics, especially in safety critical units.
“A slight problem is that over 20 years, they've become complacent, because there haven't been any significant solar weather events.”