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The Universe is Hostile to Computers

Veritasium · Youtube · 46 HN points · 7 HN comments
HN Theater has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention Veritasium's video "The Universe is Hostile to Computers".
Youtube Summary
Tiny particles from distant galaxies have caused plane accidents, election interference and game glitches. This video is sponsored by Brilliant. The first 200 people to sign up via https://brilliant.org/veritasium get 20% off a yearly subscription.

This video was inspired by the RadioLab Podcast "Bit Flip" https://ve42.co/BF -- they're brilliant science storytellers.

A Huge thanks to Dr Leif Scheick, Calla Cofield and the JPL Media Relations Team.

Thanks to Col Chris Hadfield. Check out his book: https://chrishadfield.ca/books/

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References:
J. F. Ziegler, "Terrestrial cosmic rays," in IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 19-39, Jan. 1996, doi: 10.1147/rd.401.0019. -- https://ve42.co/Ziegler1996

D. Binder, E. C. Smith and A. B. Holman, "Satellite Anomalies from Galactic Cosmic Rays," in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 2675-2680, Dec. 1975, doi: 10.1109/TNS.1975.4328188 https://ve42.co/Binder1975

Ziegler, J. F., & Lanford, W. A. (1979). Effect of cosmic rays on computer memories. Science, 206(4420), 776-788 https://ve42.co/Ziegler1979

Drury, L. O. C. (2012). Origin of cosmic rays. Astroparticle Physics, 39, 52-60. https://ve42.co/Drury2012

Hess, V. (2018). On the observations of the penetrating radiation during seven balloon flights. arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.02927. --https://ve42.co/Hess2018

Carlson, P., & De Angelis, A. (2011). Nationalism and internationalism in science: the case of the discovery of cosmic rays. The European Physical Journal H, 35(4), 309-329. -- https://ve42.co/Carlson2011

Höeffgen, S. K., Metzger, S., & Steffens, M. (2020). Investigating the effects of cosmic rays on space electronics. Frontiers in Physics, 8, 318. -- https://ve42.co/Hoeffgen2020

Edmonds, L. D., Barnes, C. E., & Scheick, L. Z. (2000). An introduction to space radiation effects on microelectronics. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. -- https://ve42.co/Edmonds2000

NASA Mars 2020 website covering the specifications of the Perseverance Rover https://ve42.co/RoverBrains

Australian Government Australian Transport Safety Bureau report on QF72 -- https://ve42.co/ASTBQantas

Australian Government Australian Transport Safety Bureau summary on QF72 --https://ve42.co/ASTBQantas2

Great Blog post about QF72 -- https://ve42.co/DempseyQantas

Michael Barr's report on the Toyota acceleration issue --https://ve42.co/Barr2015

NASA's Report on Toyota -- https://ve42.co/NASAToyota

T. C. May and M. H. Woods, "A New Physical Mechanism for Soft Errors in Dynamic Memories," 16th International Reliability Physics Symposium, 1978, pp. 33-40, doi: 10.1109/IRPS.1978.362815. --https://ve42.co/May1978

P. M. O'Neill and G. D. Badhwar, "Single event upsets for Space Shuttle flights of new general purpose computer memory devices," in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 1755-1764, Oct. 1994, doi: 10.1109/23.317386. -- https://ve42.co/ONeill1994

Wikipedia about radiation hardening -- https://ve42.co/RadHardening

Toward Monitoring Fault-Tolerant Embedded
Systems (Extended Abstract) -- https://ve42.co/Goodloe2009

Article about speed run -- https://ve42.co/BurttSpeedrun

Article about speed run -- https://ve42.co/BountySpeedrun

Article about redundant systems in spaceflight -- https://ve42.co/NASAComputers

Article about the PowerPC750 -- https://ve42.co/Wener-FlignerNASA

Fuglesang C, Narici L, Picozza P, Sannita WG. Phosphenes in low earth orbit: survey responses from 59 astronauts. Aviat Space Environ Med. 2006 Apr;77(4):449-52. PMID: 16676658. -- https://ve42.co/Fuglesang2006

Good article about Cosmic Rays causing flashes -- https://ve42.co/AtkinsonEye

Good article about radiation resistance -- https://ve42.co/RoverResistance

Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Paul Peijzel, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Sam Lutfi, MJP, Gnare, Nick DiCandilo, Dave Kircher, Edward Larsen, Burt Humburg, Blake Byers, Dumky, Mike Tung, Evgeny Skvortsov, Meekay, Ismail Öncü Usta, Paul Peijzel, Crated Comments, Anna, Mac Malkawi, Michael Schneider, Oleksii Leonov, Jim Osmun, Tyson McDowell, Ludovic Robillard, Jim buckmaster, fanime96, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Vincent, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Alfred Wallace, Arjun Chakroborty, Joar Wandborg, Clayton Greenwell, Pindex, Michael Krugman, Cy 'kkm' K'Nelson, Sam Lutfi, Ron Neal

Written by Derek Muller and Petr Lebedev
Animation by Iván Tello, Mike Radjabov, Fabio Albertelli, Jakub Misiek and Charlie Davies
SFX by Shaun Clifford
Filmed by Derek Muller, Raquel Nuno, and Emily Zhang
Edited by Derek Muller and Petr Lebedev
SFX by Shaun Clifford
Additional video supplied by Getty Images
Rover Footage From NASA/JPL-Caltech
QF72 footage from the Smithsonian channel https://youtu.be/H3q5S9PCoJA
SM64 footage from https://ve42.co/pannenkoek2012
Music from Epidemic Sound
Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev and Emily Zhang
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Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.
A YouTube video on the subject : Veritasium - The Universe is Hostile to Computers https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8

Some of the same examples are in the article and the video.

People interested in knowing more about Bitflip. "The Universe is Hostile to Computers" by Veritasium is good video.

https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8

Veritasium has a video explaining cases of bit flip that maybe you find interesting:

https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8

It’s not about efficiency, think how many years a hard drive will last? 3 years. How many years a gold plate will last? thousands of years. Least reactive metal not for a reason lol

Plus if there is a ion blast from a nearby supernova, it’ll erase all electronic storage devices on earth

https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8

ravel-bar-foo
If there is an ion blast sufficient to wipe all electronic storage devices on earth, won't the associated radiation also be fatal to a large percentage of the population?
valyagolev
even if not, if all the electronics suddenly stopped a sizeable chunk of the population will die immediately or in a bit… i wonder how many safety protocols for objects with huge blast radius are dependent on electronics running continuously
throwawaytemp27
No. People are more resilient than electronic storage media.
krisoft
> How many years a gold plate will last?

A gold plate lasts until whoever holds it decides to remelt it. Or it gets destroyed in a fire. If you want durability I would recommend sturdy slabs of fired terracotta, preferably stored at a stable lagrange point.

kamray23
It isn't a gold plate. It advertises itself as solid gold. It is in fact solid nickel, with 200-400 mg of gold peppered in. It's also at most 6.4 x 12.8 cm plate, which is tiny. If it were solid gold at 19.3 g/cm^3, it would have a thickness of 2.6 µm which is thin compared to your approx. 50 µm human hair. It is not, and therefore it is not solid gold.
That's actually testable and determinable from several perspetives.

- Isolate any other sources of ionising radiation.

- Check to see if prevalence increases or decreases with increased or decreased cosmic ray exposure (atitude, shielding, detected cosmic ray storms).

- Are the characteristics those of single-bit flips? (E.g., power-of-two changes to values, or similar.)

- Are the errors nott repeated for the same hardware component. (E.g., under increased cosmic-ray influence, bits flip at an increased rate, as predicted, but which bits flip is random and has no detectable pattern, as predicted.)

You end up with very strong circumstantial evidence of altered bits due to cosmic ray influence.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bit-f...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AaZ_RSt0KP8

Sep 22, 2021 · bryan0 on Cosmic Rays Flipping Bits
Veritasium recently did a good video on this topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZ_RSt0KP8
I did some looking into this subject after Veritassium posted a video regarding cosmic rays changing the election result in Belgium some time ago[1]. But looking further into the issue, it seemed that there was (and is) scepticism regarding cosmic rays being the actual reason for the miscount. [2][3]

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZ_RSt0KP8 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20070927185155/http://wiki.ael.b... 3. https://blog.paco.to/2017/cosmic-rays-did-not-change-electio...

Sep 07, 2021 · 24 points, 6 comments · submitted by david927
goldenkey
HN is hostile to long videos that reiterate common knowledge in our field ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening

harpiaharpyja
It is pretty well known among anyone with an interest in computers. I first heard about cosmic radiation flipping bits in memory from high school.
david927
20 upvotes isn't hostile, but your gray comment history indicates that HN is hostile to you. You might want to stop and think about what about your personality might cause that.
goldenkey
Hm, that's strange, your comment is the s/gray/grey one ;-)
david927
Very strange. One person down-voted it. Who could have done that?
goldenkey
So strange. No idea ;-)
Sep 04, 2021 · 1 points, 2 comments · submitted by random_walker
Tomte
Fun fact: bit-flips in microcontrollers usually don't originate with cosmic radiation, but with chip packaging which is (or can be) very slightly radioactive.
geoah
A pretty bad edge case with an old intel cpu was mentioned in the linked video as well.

An interesting case of bitflips also came up a couple of months back having to do with google’s certificate transparency log. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27728287

Sep 03, 2021 · 3 points, 0 comments · submitted by jonbaer
Sep 02, 2021 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by ZeljkoS
Sep 02, 2021 · 1 points, 1 comments · submitted by dmoreno
dmoreno
I loved how it had precise examples of bit flipping because of cosmic rays, and its consecuences.
Sep 02, 2021 · 4 points, 0 comments · submitted by f154hfds
codevark
The universe is hostile to computers as we design them. It's not the universe's fault. Come on people.
Sep 01, 2021 · 6 points, 0 comments · submitted by sharno
Aug 31, 2021 · 3 points, 0 comments · submitted by kristianpaul
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