Chris Baraniuk wrote an article for BBC Future last month called "The computer errors from outer space." It starts with a story about a security researcher named Marie Moe whose pacemaker suffered a glitch because of corrupted data, that she believed was probably corrupted by cosmic rays.
That may sound far out. But particles from the sun and elsewhere in the universe constantly rain down on earth. Some of them, like neutrinos, pass right through everything without incident. Some, like photons, provide life-giving energy to plants and animals. And some, like stray protons or neutrons, may in rare cases cause what's called a "single-even upset." These are "radiation-induced soft errors caused by the impact of energetic particles on circuits." One example would be an errant neutron passes through a chip and disrupts the electrical charge to flip a one to a zero. Flipped bits were diagnosed as the cause of Moe's pacemaker issue, though whether they were flipped by cosmic rays or not is impossible to tell.
"Single-event upsets" are exceedingly rare and leave no trace. An error caused by an errant cosmic ray is indistinguishable from a software glitch, memory bug or normal wear and tear. And even if you could distinguish particle-induced effects, they are so rare that it would be hard to get a representative sample size. One of the largest samples is from Mozilla, whose engineer Travis Long noted in April that they routinely see unexplained errors in telemetry data that correspond to flipped bits. And Long noted that a recent bug associated with such errors, correlated with a geomagnetic storm. There was also a study of satellites published in 2020, that showed that data errors in orbiting satellites happened in much larger numbers when satellites passed through the South Atlantic Anomaly, where there is increased cosmic radiation.
These are correlative though, not causative. While it's hard to prove if it happened, you can prove that it's possible. Paolo Rech at Trento University in Italy has conducted lab experiments where they fired neutrons at electronics and induced errors. They are using the data to develop improved autonomous car algorithms to be able to detect and adapt to such errors.
So what can you do with this information? On the one hand, be aware, because the occurrence may be increasing. There are so many more chips being used at any given moment that there are just more chances for it to happen. And as chips get smaller, it's easier for subatomic particles to affect them. You also might check the space weather. Periods of increased solar activity raise the amount of particles hitting the Earth. For instance, spaceweather.com reported a solar flare on November 7th that interrupted shortwave radio temporarily over Australia and New Zealand.
But the number of incidents is still exceedingly rare and almost always compensated for by error-checking in software. Data centers can protect themselves by being geographically diverse, and critical equipment like computers in air and spacecraft are hardened against interference.
Here are some other stories I covered this week
Zuckerberg Takes Responsibility for Mistakes That led to 11,000 Layoffs
Microsoft Adds Feature Promotions to Sign-out Menu
Netflix Will make Gears of War Movies and TV Shows
TikTok Hypnotizes You, But Only on Phones
Twitter Blue
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