Bright light in Carribean during Starlink outtage

[Shen]

First post, but interested if anyone has an idea. Metabunk seems like the right place. Starlink appearently went down globally last night.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23871162/spacex-starlink-network-outage

According to some results this coincided with the Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/09/13/7419616/

Would have posted this in another subfoum, but then I saw the following twitter post (in Swedish):


Source: https://twitter.com/Piraten088/status/1701757152849707361


Translation: "We saw a bright light light up the whole sky here in the Caribbean and just then Starlink went down for all the boats in our area. Never seen anything like light. Someone said they saw a light with a tail moving southeast from where we are."

This together with Putins recent claim that Russia will deploy "weapons based on new physical principles" (https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023...xiled-elites-in-far-east-forum-address-a82431) makes me wonder.

So, my thoughts:
What could the lights have conceivably been? Simply a meteorite or Startlink-train flare by chance coniciding with the outtage? Could e.g. a meteorite have caused atmospheric interference? I think it's doubtful that it would have any global effect. If it was a Russian laser, would it have looked like that? Could it even have caused a global outage?

Any thoughts?

 

[JMartJr]

First impression is a coincidental fireball meteor. I'm not seeing any news report of a fireball over the Caribbean, in a cursory search, on the night in question, though. So maybe something more local.

Do you have any information that would narrow down where they were more precisely? I confess to being unfamiliar with Swedish!

 

[Ann K]

What could the lights have conceivably been? Simply a meteorite or Startlink-train flare by chance coniciding with the outtage? Could e.g. a meteorite have caused atmospheric interference? I think it's doubtful that it would have any global effect. If it was a Russian laser, would it have looked like that? Could it even have caused a global outage?

Elon Musk has previously turned off starlink coverage to Ukraine at a time when military events were underway:

SpaceX cut off Starlink satellite internet service to Ukrainian submarine drones last year just as they were launching an attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet, according to a new biography of SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

The new details of the previously reported incident underscore how dependent multiple governments have become on a man who controls both a dominant means of high-speed communication and a major platform for public discourse, X.

The armed submarine drones were poised to attack the Russian fleet, according to a CNN report that cited an excerpt of a forthcoming biography of Musk by Walter Isaacson, the former chief executive of CNN. Instead, according to the book, which goes on sale Tuesday, the drones “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.”

Content from External Source

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/07/ukraine-starlink-musk-biography/
Please note, the biographer has since expressed his disavowal of this claim, but Musk has apparently bragged about it openly. Musk has spoken to Putin, and previously expressed his support of Russia in the conflict.

This doesn't explain the bright light, of course.