Attack of the Cosmic Rays

[S485122]

Just tumbled over this article : Attack of the Cosmic Rays ! about memory faults...

As an aside induced by the comments. The quality of the members of the Mersenne forum is above average : most of the time we are reading the the posts we reply to ;-)

Jacob

[Oddball]

This news isn't directly related to cosmic rays, but a large coronal mass ejection from the sun is headed our way:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...hit-earth.html

"The earth could be hit by a wave of violent space weather as early as Tuesday after a massive explosion of the sun, scientists have warned.
...
Scientists have warned that a really big solar eruption could destroy satellites and wreck power and communications grids around the globe if it happened today."

[patrik]

And we were just hit... Around 1740 UT. The magnetic disturbance seems not to be so large (at least yet), probably K index 4 or 5 at Uppsala, on a scale from 0 to 9.

[Oddball]

Originally Posted by Oddball

This news isn't directly related to cosmic rays, but a large coronal mass ejection from the sun is headed our way:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...hit-earth.html

"The earth could be hit by a wave of violent space weather as early as Tuesday after a massive explosion of the sun, scientists have warned.
...
Scientists have warned that a really big solar eruption could destroy satellites and wreck power and communications grids around the globe if it happened today."

The increase in solar activity ended a few days ago on August 20th. Since then, the sun has remained spotless. Before that, there were 55 days in a row with a sunspot, which was the longest stretch for solar cycle 24:

http://www.solarcycle24.com/

Now for some interesting news. From:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news.../07oct_afraid/

"cosmic ray doses dropped when solar activity was high."
When solar activity is low, cosmic rays may cause problems in non ECC RAM. But when solar activity is high, computers may be affected too. Pick your poison