FILE -NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare – as seen in the bright flash on the lower right – on Feb. 9, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares, and which is colorized in teal. Credit: © NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory / USA TODAY NETWORK
UNDATED –Cell phone service was cut off early Thursday morning to millions of AT&T customers nationwide –however service was eventually restored to all customers by late afternoon. So the question is–was this a cyber attack or or so-called sunspots or solar flares.?
Space.com says a major solar flare jammed AT&T’s service in 1972–with long-distance phone service knocked out across parts of the U.S.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration–three flares erupted from the sun in the afternoon on February 21 into the overnight hours.
The strongest of the three flares happened at 6:07 p.m. on February 21 and the second peak happened at 1:32 a.m. on February 22.
Flares are explosive areas on the sun which can last for a short as a few minutes to as long as a few hours or more.
The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating if it was possibly a cyber attack.
