The blackout may have been due to an "induced atmospheric vibration," according to the Portuguese operator REN.

Since the blackout that devastated our country and Portugal this afternoon, experts have been searching for possible explanations for the "system collapse" that has affected the Iberian Peninsula's electrical grid. Currently, hypotheses include a cyberattack or a natural event. However, no theory has been confirmed yet.

One of the latest conjectures has been put forward by the Portuguese operator REN in statements reported by Reuters, in which it points to the possibility of "extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain." "There were anomalous oscillations in very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as 'induced atmospheric vibration,'" it states in the brief statement, which provides no further details.

José María Madiedo, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), believes that an atmospheric vibration (which could be caused by lightning or a loud sound) seems "very strange." In fact, the expert rules out the possibility of it being a natural phenomenon: "The first thing I thought was that it could be something similar to the Carrinton event ," he explains to ABC, referring to an extreme solar storm that devastated the entire world in 1859.

The Sun is a huge ball of fire that sometimes produces impressive explosions near its surface, shooting out what look like "jets" of energetic particles into space. And sometimes, those particles travel toward Earth, and that's how we experience solar storms.

Although these solar storms don't directly affect our lives, we can feel their effects in space (they can literally "fry" satellites), and here on Earth, they can damage power grids, as happened this Monday. The problem with this explanation is that it was such a localized phenomenon that it doesn't fit with the solar storm hypothesis. "An event would have affected the entire planet, not just Spain and Portugal," Madiedo notes. "I also rule out the possibility that it was an atmospheric phenomenon."