An Oklahoma news station reported a “strong solar flare event” took place just after midnight on Thursday morning and claimed that could be the reason several cellular service companies experienced outages across the country.
“Sadly, we’re entering a solar maximum where we’re going to see more solar storms, solar flares and it’s never happened in this time of human history where we’re relying on technology more than we ever have before,” the KFOR.com meteorologist said.
British Solar Astrophysicist at the National Solar Observatory Dr. Ryan French countered the theory that the solar flare contributed to the cell network outages, pointing out the flares only cause radio degradation on the “dayside” of Earth.
The U.S. was not in the flare zone at the time of the event, so Dr. French concluded, “it’s just a coincidence.”
See a map of the areas impacted by the outages:
Many people are also speculating the cell outages could have been the result of some type of cyberattack.