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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."
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
We know this because we can look for these...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmogenic_isotope#Natural
in the geological record.
Unless of course they were planted there by [insert diety] in which case - ha ha you've been punk'd(TM)!
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.
How do we know this?
We understand the theory of what influence cosmic rays numbers. It's the solar cycles and the earth's magnetic field. The magnetic field we have geologic evidence of it's strength. Sunspot numbers have sporadic data going back 400 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png).
There's plenty of phenomenon we predict using indirect observations and theory.
AccountKiller
Or vice versa: The screwy solar cycle is messing with the heliopheric current sheet and thus allowing more cosmic rays to enter the system. We know that even minor solar fluctuations can manipulate the termination shock, so the idea is not -entirely- implausible. Dress it up in some Star Trek language and it'll sound more convincing.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Why didn't you provide any citations? Perhaps because it was disproved in 2007.
Thirty seconds with google and the keywords "cosmic rays global warming" brought a wealth of stories describing research which found no correlation of any kind between cosmic ray flux and cloud cover. Sure, you'll find articles describing this theory, but it's called a "hypothesis," and "controversial" at best. And all those stories are older than the 2008 analysis of MODIS data.
I can see the fnords!
According to Crucial and other sites that benchmark, going ECC is only 2% slower than non-ECC memory. That's a very good trade off for reliability IMHO.
As for Intel. Yes, ECC support is restricted to their Xeon line now. You will also need a workstation motherboard. Even though Intel's latest "high-end" desktop gaming board (X58 chipset) supports the Xeon CPU, ECC support is not available. At least, no reference was mentioned in the manual.
I think my next workstation build will be AMD based.
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
Actually, Solar flares correlate with solar activity and, at least in theory, increased solar activity shields Earth from Cosmic Rays. i.e: more solar flares implies more solar activity which implies less cosmic rays reaching earth which implies fewer clouds which implies more sunlight which implies hotter temperatures on the planet which implies global warming.