Posted on 11/24/2023 1:45:08 PM PST by spirited irish
Tiny cosmic particles can have serious impacts on Earth, causing election votes to be miscounted, planes to free-fall and computers to reboot, scientists say.
These cosmic particles can hit electronic devices on Earth, which can cause components to burn out and cause malfunctions.
Cosmic particles come from cosmic rays from outside our solar system. They crash into the Earth's atmosphere creating a range of particles, including protons, electrons, X-rays and gamma-rays that can penetrate aircraft.
These cosmic particles constantly hit Earth, and can cause bits of information in electronics to change.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
ok - while I’m not claiming to be an expert on comic particles I am a software engineer that wrote the device drivers and Board Support Package (base software for an operating system) for a Boeing flight management computer.
These computers are required to have two processors running in ‘lock-step’ - they run the same software, have the same clock, same interrupts, etc. - which means the memory reads/writes should be identical. If something happens, like one processor has some cache memory bit flipped because of a cosmic ray, then they’ll stop behaving identically, this can be detected as memory read/writes will cease to be identical. This type of ‘lock-step- processing is required by functional safety standards like DO-178C, IEC61508, and ISO26262. They address a level of paranoia about systems failing when lives are at stake and how the design should eliminate all ‘unreasonable risk’.
That said, not only does cosmic ray causing failure not happen very often (I don’t have data but this is my understanding), but the chances are higher when at 35,000ft in the air - not at sea level....where the odds are greatly reduce.
How many compute devices run 24/7, at sea level, and *rarely* crash/reboot? There’s billions of them. How often does your PC crash because of a cosmic ray? ...because of a bad device driver or a Windows bug sure...but a cosmic ray?
...and suggesting that this could ‘overturn an election’???? Ok...I want what he’s smoking.
You mean it can be as catastrophic as the Y2K bug? We’re all doomed!
“Tiny Cosmic Particles” - sounds like a great title for a B-52s reunion album.
Oh well then. We can’t risk it! Get rid of computers for ballots.
I like the voting machines with the curtain and little levers.
Tiny cosmic particles can cause election votes to be miscounted.
But the particles only land on Democrats, one scientist noted.
But it only affects Republicans.
Men only.
But why do the cosmic rays always vote democrat?
New variation on “ my dog ate my homework.” For todays school kids.
Yes, these things can happen, but unless you had something that detects them I do not know how you could blame it on cosmic rays. (I guess the event in Belgium means that they had something in the counting room that detected cosmic rays! Um Hum.)
The author:
"Cécile Borkhataria is a freelance multimedia storyteller with expertise in science and healthcare. She has worked for global media companies such as CNN New York, DailyMail.com, and McCann Health. She produced Becoming Cyborg, a short documentary published with Scientific American that addresses a sub-culture of people who obtain mechanical implants, giving them abilities that go beyond the human norm. She speaks English, French, and Spanish, which allows her to work in a wide range of media and newsroom environments. She is an alumna of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, as well as Imperial College London’s Faculty of Natural Sciences and Imperial College Business School, equipping her with broad educational expertise."
The correct response is to thank these scientists for their hard work and require that all future voting be done with votes marked with pen on paper which are then counted the same night!
“The Biden Sniff.”
And planes don’t just “fall out of the sky.”
I’ve been bit by these tiny cosmic particles.
It’s no picnic.
Cosmic Rays is he name of the vote manufacturing group in the Democrat Party.
The name of the song is: cosmic debris
4096? That is 2^12. So it is a single bit error in a binary counter. A really good reason to have automatic checksums to catch this type of error.
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