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Cosmic Ray Intensity Reaches Highest Levels In 50 years
An anonymous reader writes "A NASA probe found that cosmic ray intensities in 2009 had increased by almost 20 percent beyond anything seen in the past 50 years. Such cosmic rays arise from distant supernova explosions and consist mostly of protons and heavier subatomic particles — just one cosmic ray could disable unlucky satellites or even put a mission to Mars in jeopardy."
Clearly we need more energy-efficient stars.
Hello superpowers! I hope I get flight!
"It's Cosmic Rays mutating the electrons."
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Bush did the best he could with the hand he was dealt.
In this Brian de Palma film, a mission to rescue astronauts stranded on the titular planet finds a hill shaped like a giant face, with alien technology inside.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Will the legacy of environmental disaster that was George W. Bush's presidency never end?
#DeleteChrome
The increased cosmic ray flux will undoubtably cause global cooling. The high energy rays and penetrate deep into the atmosphere where they create nucleation points which increase cloud over. The inreased cloud cover reflects more energy into space and the planet will cool.
This is likely the mechanizm behind the little ice age which occurred during the Maunder minimum between 1645 and 1715.
At this point solar cycle #24 is more than 2 years late. Solar cycle #25 was predicted to be very weak but #24 was predicted to be more or less normal. The predictions for #24 are proving to be in error.
A cooling trend can go on for decades.
A NASA probe found that cosmic ray intensities in 2009 had increased by almost 20 percent beyond anything seen in the past 50 years.
Well, crap, then. Maybe we actually SHOULD all get out our tinfoil hats.
Actually, lead foil might be a better bet...
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
Cosmic rays damaging electronic equipment? I've been using this computer for years and my RAM is doing just fi
I was wondering, "Why are cosmic rays so dangerous, It's just protons and electrons, just like the solar wind".
However, there's a huge energy difference between the two.
The particles in cosmic radiation have 1x10^20eV and the solar wind is 1x10^3eV
So, while it's the same "stuff", the cosmic particles are moving a lot faster relative to us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_radiation
Prepare for a new wave of Earth destruction movies. On a serious note, anyone know a good page, paper, or interesting sites concerning the heliosphere?
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
I guess now would be a good time to use ECC RAM in consumer PCs and not just servers anymore. In fact, I've always been in favor of ECC in every workstation. At least nVidia is talking it seriously.
FYI. Cosmic rays have been known to cause bit-flips in RAM. That's why using ECC is important in preventing data corruption committed back to disk.
Life is not for the lazy.
Centuries ago, cosmic-ray concentrations grew to be as much as 200 percent more intense than they are now, yet humankind survived.
How do we know this? Who was measuring cosmic-ray concentrations centuries ago, and how did they measure them? How accurate were the measurements, and how certain are we of that accuracy?
According to wikipedia, "In 1910 Theodor Wulf developed an electrometer (a device to measure the rate of ion production inside a hermetically sealed container) and used it to show higher levels of radiation at the top of the Eiffel Tower than at its base." That sounds like a bit less than "centuries ago".
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
FYI. Cosmic rays have been known to cause bit-flips in RAM.
But the odds are astronomical.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"...or even put a mission to Mars in jeopardy." If you are talking about a human mission to Mars, even the lightest of cosmic radiation would only allow for a one way trip for any human. A round trip would provide fatal doses (just a side note).
Yes, I know it's the height of transhumanist hubris. But news like this make me wonder if now is the time to start thinking about causing rather than preventing climate change. I mean, whether we like it or not, with or without us, the climate will change. We have proof of this from Ant/arctic core samples and other sources that point to prehistoric changes in the Earth's atmosphere. It was warmer during the time of the dinosaurs and colder during the reign of the mammoths. Maybe it's time to start testing those orbital solar reflectors or beefing up our Near Earth Asteroid Tracking efforts?
The Sun has been very quiet recently, so this is not surprising. Now that the Sunspots are back and the Sun is getting more active, I would expect things to go back to normal.
Even trolls need feeding from time to time...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/taking-cosmic-rays-for-a-spin/
Let's hear it for cosmic rays. We need something to kick evolution into gear. Things seem to have been at a standstill lately.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
SUV's are responsible for global warming. Damn them!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Aside from being able create a Mr. Fantasic or a Human Torch or any other character from the Fantastic 4 series is there any way that the energy from these intensified cosmic rays can be harvested. If so who knows that could be the fuel alternative that we have been looking for....
Don't be so hard on yourself.
I wouldn't raise alarm too much, cosmic rays affect a space craft in mainly three ways: Single Even Upset (SEU), Single Event Latchup (SEL), and Total Ionization Dose (TID) measured in kRad. The higher cosmic rays increase the TID, but all these satellites are built for it and it shouldn't raise an alarm except for very long term missions. SEUs and SELs are what the phrase "just one cosmic ray could disable unlucky satellites or even put a mission to Mars in jeopardy." is mentioning. SEUs aren't too much too worry about, usually nothing too harmful, just a few errors and at worst a reset of some subsystems. The bad one is the SELs. These can cause a temporary short and potentially cause damage. The key thing with SEUs and SELs is that they're typically temporary and the spacecraft's power systems nowadays can easily handle them. The solid state switches/fuses they started with Cassini (and are now typical for NASA missions) are very effective (accidently proven so during integration) and can cut off a shorted subsystem quite fast and prevent damage.
In a nutshell, don't get your panties in a bunch.
I went to school with Cosmic Ray and I know for a fact that he died in some ugly drowning incident involving a bong. Ray Dead = No more Cosmic Ray.
Galactic Warming, a green-blooded commie Vulcan myth!
Table-ized A.I.
Parent is a Bush hater and obviously an environmentalist! This is incompatible with the political fashion around here--he must be modded down for being offensive! Why do you hate Bush? Why do you hate our freedoms?
If any trolls are still hungry, try some of my home made troll food
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The solar activity is decreasing we are in a sunspot minimum temps will decrease on the earth and more cosmic rays will mean more rainfall due to the "cloud chamber effect" in the upper atmosphere.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Mostly clear with scattered cosmic rays, some heavy. Temperature near steady at 3K. Stellar winds light and variable except near stars.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
another good reason for my tinfoil hat.
weak solar wind -> more cosmic rays reaching us
any effects on climate are subject to debate/further research. We'll find out. Solar wind's been super low for the last year.
Has anyone thought to run the supercolliders a couple times? I'd really like to know the spread on the superbowl.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Could someone clarify if you can have "...just one cosmic ray...". I know that high energy particles of this sort are simultaneously considered both a particle stream and a wave-front but that sentence stuck out for me. Not being nit-picky, just curious. thanks.
I'm totally going to clear out my Bugzilla queue tomorrow:
Bug 13272: Memory leak in widget_process_task()
RESOLVED/INVALID: cosmic rays
Bug 11207: Database corrupted by invalid user input
RESOLVED/INVALID: cosmic rays
Bug 12304: "if (A = B)" in the code where clearly "if (A == B)" was intended
RESOLVED/INVALID: cosmic rays
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
I attempted to read the comments for this article. I do believe that this is the most troll-filled article ever to hit /.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Core_(story)
Apparently these cosmic rays are a natural phenomenon. Nevertheless, G Dub is at his ranch right now calling it the work of Al Queda, The Taliban and Hurricane Katrina. Well done Sir.
"Chance favors only the prepared mind." -Archimedes
Whoever was stupid enough to tag this " globalwarming " isn't doing the whole "Green" movement much good.
That tag on this story just screams IGNORANCE.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
What is the nature of these "rays"? Duration, frequency, intensity and width would be of interest.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Oh! I see, the cosmic rays are the reason of all this Earthquakes.
This is just leading up to the climax in 2012, muhahahaha!
Sue can fade from sight.
Johnny is the Human Torch.
The Thing just likes to fight.
Just call for 4.
Fantastic Four.
Now I don't need to go to space to become a super-hero!
Any direct correlation between the activitity and the current natural earthquakes/typhoons etc?
Apparently, you have never heard of a Cloud Chamber. This is not "a hypothesis" nor "controversial". They work. The same process happens naturally. You should take some Syrup of Ipecac for all that Kool-Aid you've been drinking.
OK, so the voyager probes punch holes in the termination shock and now we are seeing a increase in cosmic rays.
Coincidence??? or something more? ???
You decide.
Original Cosmic Ray's or Cosmic Original Ray's?
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
It's obvious that we're starting to hit the Photon Belt
With the scary discovery of Steve McIntyre, last weekend, that one of the Global Warming foundation papers (from 2000) resulted from Briffa et al. cherry-picking data, you can declare Global Warming dead. It was never quite alive, though... Check it out at climateaudit.org Ecotretas
Solar system magnetic field is weaker and more cosmic energy is getting through. This predicts a return to normal as the next solar cycle revs up.
GLOBAL WARMING!
I'm greatly ensaddened.
"Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare -- a pumpkin with a gun."
Not so much because there are more cosmics lately, but that they are more variable.
Most advanced radiation detectors allow the collection of a count with no sample, which is then subtracted from a count with one. The net is the count produced by the sample, simple.
Lately the variability of the background is really messing with that approach, and we here are having to go with a large area cosmic detector and use that to veto counts as well, it's a real pain.
We used to able to more or less use the same background count for at least all day, if not a week, but now it's invalid during one measurement of an hour or so.
See Taking Cosmic Rays for a Spin (2006). Also a very informative section in Spencer Weart's Discovery of Global Warming.
like the difference between being hit by a car going 1mph and one going 300'000'000mph?
That square root sure makes all the difference. A difference of 17 orders of magnitude was just difficult to handle.
But now, the difference between a car going 1mph and ~1.5x the speed of light isn't so bad at all.
I feel much better!
I posted this to Slashdot but it appears that the editors are more interested in Cosmic rays.
To quote from Theregister:
The world's source for global temperature record admits it's lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia - permitting it to snub FoIA requests to see the data.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/cru_missing/
let's just blame it on Obama and call it a day