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A mysterious widespread cell outage has coincided with the eruption of two powerful " ten - class " solar flares from a " dangerous " sunspot . Yet scientist warn that the two events are probably unconnected .
The two intense flares burst from the macula AR3590 Wednesday ( Feb. 21 ) at 6:07 p.m. ET ( 23:07 GMT ) and Thursday ( Feb. 22 ) at 1:32 a.m. ET ( 06:32 GMT ) , according to theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA ) .
An X1.8-class solar flare spotted by NASA’s NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on Feb. 21
After traveling to Earth at the speed of light , the flares do serial shortwave radio frequency blackouts that lasted one or two 60 minutes . The first was over the westerly U.S. and Pacific Ocean , and the 2nd was over the Indian Ocean .
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Hours later at 11 a.m. ET ( 16:00 GMT ) , multiple cellular providers — includingAT&T , VerizonandT - Mobile — reported gap to their military service across the U.S. for over 70,000 users , harmonize to the disruption tracking website Downdetector.com . The lack of forthcoming official explanation caused some newsworthiness outlets to blame the outage on the flash .
But because many of the coverage drops were experience primarily by AT&T customer and came much later and further from when and where the flare strike , solar scientist say sublunary explanations are much more likely source of the interruption .
" Some people are ascribe cell connection outage ( AT&T , Verizon ) in the U.S to last Nox ’s ten - classSolar Flare,“Ryan French , a solar astrophysicist at the National Solar Observatory , write on X , formerly called Twitter . " However , flares only cause wireless degradation on the dayside of the Earth . As you’re able to see below , the U.S was not affected by the event . So it ’s just a coincidence ! "
" While solar flares can dissemble communicating systems , microwave radar , and the Global Positioning System , base on the intensity of the eruption and associated phenomena , it is highly unlikely that these solar flare contributed to the wide reported cellular web outage , " NOAA ’s space weather condition prediction centerwrote in a statement .
The sun is a gigantic ball of plasma whose charged ion purl over its open to create powerfulmagnetic battleground . As magnetised - field lines can not scotch each other , sometimes these battlefield knot before suddenly snap to set in motion bursts of radiation calledsolar flaresor enormous plumes of solar material calledcoronal mass ejectionsinto space .
NOAA classifies solar flares on a five - stage scale ( A , B , C , M and X ) based on the intensity level of theX - raysthey release , with each grade get 10 times the loudness of the last . The two flare were registered as X1.7 and X1.8 , making them very acute .
Once they go far atEarth , the 10 - rays and ultraviolet radiation get by the flares ionizedatomsin the upper atmosphere , making it impossible to bounce eminent - frequency radio waves from them and creating a radio blackout . Radio blackout occur over the areas lit by the sun during the time of the flare and last one or two hours .
While no prescribed statement has been made about what caused the outage , some have speculated it may have been stimulate by a problem with the cloud services in the main used by AT&T.
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" The most potential drive is a cloud misconfiguration,“Lee McKnight , an associate professor in the iSchool at Syracuse University , told TechRadar . " Which is a fancy word for saying human error . I was look back this accurate upshot in year yesterday . "
Solar bodily process , which rise and falls concord to a rough 11 - year cycle , has been especially high-pitched recently , with sunspot count well-nigh doubling those foretell byNOAA .
The increase activity has post wafture of high - Energy Department blood plasma and X - ray flare-up mosh into Earth’smagnetic champaign , downing satellites , triggering radio blackouts and causing auroras as far south asPennsylvania , Iowa and Oregon .
And the most intense activity may still consist ahead . The sunlight ’s activity is projected to mount steady , reaching an overall maximum in 2025 , before decreasing again . However , some scientists have propose that the intense wave of solar eruption could mean that themaximum is already here .
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