A JetBlue Airbus A320, en route from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, experienced a sudden and dramatic loss of altitude, plummeting thousands of feet and injuring at least 15 passengers. The incident, which occurred on October 30, has now led experts to suggest that the cause could be linked to cosmic rays.
The flight, which was cruising above Florida, lost altitude unexpectedly. While the pilots were able to regain control, they were forced to make an emergency landing at Tampa International Airport due to the injuries sustained by several passengers. Initially, Airbus attributed the event to intense solar radiation, grounding 6,000 A320s for software updates.
However, recent findings have shown that the solar radiation levels on the day of the incident were unremarkable and not high enough to impact aircraft electronics. Clive Dyer, a space weather and radiation expert at the University of Surrey in the UK, proposed a different explanation: a cosmic ray from a distant star explosion may have hit the plane’s computer systems.
Cosmic Rays Can Disrupt Electronics
Cosmic rays are particles that originate from supernovas—massive star explosions. These explosions accelerate protons at near-light speed across the universe. According to Dyer, cosmic rays can interact with microelectronics, potentially causing errors in digital circuits. “Cosmic rays can cause a simple bit flip, changing a 0 to a 1 or vice versa, which can disrupt information and cause malfunctions. They can even cause hardware failures by inducing a current that can burn out electronic components,” Dyer explained.
Dyer added that solar radiation peaked two weeks after the JetBlue incident, which makes sense as to why the airline opted for software updates, but emphasized that the altitude loss incident itself likely wasn’t caused by solar radiation alone. Instead, a cosmic ray from a distant star explosion could have been responsible for the malfunction.
