{"id":428081,"date":"2025-12-06T05:14:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T05:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428081\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T05:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T05:14:12","slug":"the-scary-ways-cosmic-rays-disrupt-air-travel-planetary-defense-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428081\/","title":{"rendered":"The scary ways cosmic rays disrupt air travel: planetary defense expert"},"content":{"rendered":"

This redefined shooting star. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just spacecraft that are impacted by the horrors of deep space. In October, 15 people were hospitalized after a cosmic ray sent a New Jersey-bound JetBlue flight plunging thousands of feet \u2014 a phenomenon that could potentially pose a threat to air travel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have lots and lots of airplanes flying every day, so very occasionally these things will occur,\u201d Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy at The Planetary Society, told The Post. \u201cIf a particle strikes a critical circuit in a computer, it can corrupt the computer\u2019s memory, sensor data, or potentially cause other damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Abstract\u201cThis caused what\u2019s called a \u2018bit flip,\u2019 corrupting data in the flight computer and triggering sudden altitude loss,\u201d said Dreier while outlining what went wrong with the recent JetBlue flight. littlestocker \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

This was allegedly the case with the aforementioned aircraft, which had been flying from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark when it was struck by a stream of high-energy particles from a\u00a0distant supernova blast\u00a0that traveled millions of years<\/a>, UK space experts claimed.<\/p>\n

Pilots regained control and made an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida, but roughly 20 passengers sustained serious injuries, including bleeding head wounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis caused what\u2019s called a \u2018bit flip,\u2019 corrupting data in the flight computer and triggering sudden altitude loss,\u201d Dreier explained. \u201cThe pilots recovered quickly, but yes, it could have been worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Dreier emphasized that this is a \u201chypothesis\u201d and not an \u201cofficial conclusion of what caused the incident.\u201d <\/p>\n

That being said, the space expert did warn that planes could be impacted by \u201ccosmic rays,\u201d which are \u201ceverywhere\u201d and \u201cconstantly bombard Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Supernova.\"The JetBlue was disrupted by a particle beam that originated from a supernova (seen here in this artist\u2019s depiction) in deep space, experts claim. AP<\/p>\n

Thankfully, threats from interstellar salvos are \u201cnot common for air travel because of the protections of Earth\u2019s magnetic field and atmosphere,\u201d he said. \u201cIn space, it\u2019s much worse, which is why most spacecraft use specialized hardware designed to protect sensitive components from such events.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thankfully, while these particle strikes occur constantly, the \u201codds of one hitting a critical circuit at just the wrong moment are very low,\u201d according to Dreier. <\/p>\n

Although he noted that the risk was higher when the sun is active due to powerful particle bursts from solar flares. <\/p>\n

However, those interstellar particulate strikes aren\u2019t the only threats from the cosmos. Dreier also warned about solar storms that can disrupt GPS, impact radio communications and even torpedo the power grid. <\/p>\n

In May, a colossal solar storm<\/a>\u00a0just zapped the daylight side of the planet, causing global blackouts and knocking out radio signals across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, safeguarding ourselves against these deep-space radio disruptors is no mean feat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are both hardware and software improvements that can be made, particularly in error correction algorithms and possibly even deploying better radiation shielding on sensitive electronics,\u201d said Dreier. \u201cThat\u2019s expensive, though, and the relative rarity of these events may limit the amount of effort and money deployed to address it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This redefined shooting star. It\u2019s not just spacecraft that are impacted by the horrors of deep space. In…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":428082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[1166,2693,48396,1165,159,48717,783,1164,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-428081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-air-travel","9":"tag-disaster","10":"tag-freak-accidents","11":"tag-lifestyle","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-solar-storm","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-travel","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115670920323064731","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}