Space expert Clive Dyer is challenging what people thought before. He claims the packed JetBlue flight that suddenly dropped 100 feet in just seven seconds was likely hit by cosmic rays from a faraway exploding star. These are high-energy particles that traveled millions of light-years and struck the plane’s computer.
According to The Sun, the sudden drop happened when the jetBlu Airbus A320 was flying from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey. The plane was full of passengers, and the violent drop injured 20 people. Some had bloody head wounds.
The pilot quickly took back control of the plane. But the situation was serious enough that they made an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida. Fifteen people were sent to the hospital right away for treatment. Clive Dyer is a space and radiation expert from the University of Surrey. He completely rejected the earlier claims made by Airbus.
Airbus blamed solar radiation, but the expert says that’s wrong
The plane maker said “intense solar radiation” caused the incident. Dyer explained that these powerful rays come from massive stars when they reach the end of their lives and explode. This explosion is called a supernova. These stellar explosions shoot protons across the universe at the speed of light.
Dyer believes one of these high-energy particles hit the plane’s onboard computer. This caused a serious problem in the microelectronics. “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,” he said. “But they can cause hardware failures too, when they induce a current in an electronic device and burn it out.”
THIS JETBLUE A320 INCIDENT IS WHAT TRIGGERED AIRBUS’ EMERGENCY FLEET ACTION
— Turbine Traveller (@Turbinetraveler) November 28, 2025
A JetBlue A320 flying from Mexico to New Jersey on 30 October 2025 was forced to make an emergency landing in Tampa after a sudden flight control issue caused an unexpected altitude drop, injuring… https://t.co/Tmvi4D0Uj8 pic.twitter.com/J33775W1XE
While this incident was terrifying, air travel remains relatively safe with tightly packed flight operations running efficiently in modern airports.
Given the speed and severity of the drop, the system was badly affected for those seven seconds.The expert’s cosmic ray theory goes against what the plane maker first said.
Airbus released a statement suggesting that “intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.” After their own review, Airbus found that many A320 Family aircraft might have this problem. The company took the huge step of grounding 6,000 A320s worldwide to fix the issue. While passengers deal with serious technical issues, others experience lighter moments when cats roam freely during their flights.
However, Dyer argues that the radiation levels Airbus mentioned weren’t actually strong enough to affect the flight controls like they said. Dyer put the blame on the companies. He stated that “It’s down to manufacturers to produce hardy electronics, especially in safety critical units.” Manufacturers now have to build planes that can handle interference from stars that exploded millions of years ago.
