University of Surrey space and radiation expert Clive Dyer has proposed an unexpected culprit for the malfunction: cosmic rays emanating not from our own Sun, but potentially from a supernova explosion elsewhere in the galaxy.1
This theory directly contradicts the initial explanation from Airbus officials, who had blamed the incident on “intense solar radiation” from the sun and subsequently grounded over 26,000 A3320 aircraft worldwide for a mandatory software update.4
The Core Disagreement
-
Airbus Theory: Intense solar radiation corrupted data critical to the functioning of the flight controls (specifically, the Elevator Aileron Computer or ELAC).5
-
Dyer’s Theory: Solar radiation levels on October 630 were unremarkable—not strong enough to cause this dramatic malfunction.7 Instead, a high-energy cosmic ray from a distant supernova likely struck the aircraft’s microelectronics.
The ‘Bit Flip’ Problem
What happens when a particle from an exploding star hits a modern aircraft computer?
Dyer explains that these high-energy protons—traveling near the speed of light—can interact with modern microelectronics and cause:
-
A Simple Bit Flip: This means changing the fundamental state of a circuit, like flipping a zero to a one or vice versa.8 This can mess up critical data and cause sudden, erroneous commands in the flight control system (the brain of the fly-by-wire system).9
-
Hardware Failure: If the particle is powerful enough, it can induce a current and burn out the electronic device entirely.10
The aircraft manufacturers, Dyer argues, have grown “complacent” because there haven’t been significant space weather events for a while. The JetBlue incident, which saw the pilots regain control and divert to Tampa, highlights the urgent need for aircraft systems to be built with hardy electronics that can withstand this kind of rare but catastrophic cosmic interference.11 This is now a fundamental safety concern in modern, highly computerized aviation.
End…
