Washington DC, United States

Two powerful solar flares from the sun on in the past two days occurred at the same time when widespread cell phone outages took place across the United States, raising questions if the two events were connected.

An X1.8-class flare erupted at 6:07 p.m. ET (2307 GMT) on Wednesday (Feb 21), and another X1.7-class flare was released from the sun at 1:32 a.m. ET (0632 GMT) on Thursday (Feb 22).

In a statement, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that the solar flares erupted from a particular region of the sun that "continues to exhibit strong magnetic complexity”.

"No apparent CMEs [Coronal mass ejections] resulting from these events have been observed as of the time of this writing, but can not be ruled out," the agency said.

However, an alert was issued by NOAA for a solar radio emission which occurred at 6:58 a.m. ET (1158 GMT) and sometimes such eruptions are joined by solar radiation storms and strong coronal mass ejections.

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Interestingly, the solar emissions coincided with widespread cellular phone outages.

As reported by The Associated Press, tens of thousands of outages took place across the country, which affected phones operated AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.

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Also Read: Massive solar flare causes radio blackouts across Australia and Southeast Asia

The occurrence of the two events raised questions about its connection, however, solar scientists cast doubt over the theory.

"Flares only cause radio degradation on the *dayside* of the Earth. As you can see below, the U.S. was not affected by the event. So it's just a coincidence!," said solar astrophysicist Ryan French at the National Solar Observatory, in a post on X.

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NOAA says no relation between recent flares and outages

NOAA's Space Weather Prediction further confirmed that the recent flares and outages are unrelated.

"While solar flares can affect communication systems, radar, and the Global Positioning System, based on the intensity of the eruption and associated phenomena, it is highly unlikely that these flares contributed to the widely reported cellular network outages," they claimed.

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The effects of the solar flares may continue to be felt for days.

NOAA, in its forecast discussion posted at 7:30 a.m. ET (1230 GMT) on Feb 22, wrote that an "eruptive filament" had exploded from the northwest quadrant of the visible disk of the sun on February 21.

Watch: Brightest and hungriest black hole ever detected; It eats one sun a a day

NOAA said that since most of the energetic material which erupted from the sun is expected to move ahead of Earth in its orbit around the sun, a "glancing influence" is likely to be possible on February 25.

(With inputs from agencies)