Cosmic Rays

“For months, Google had been experiencing an increasing number of hardware failures. The problem was that, as Google grew, its computing infrastructure also expanded. Computer hardware rarely failed, until you had enough of it—then it failed all the time.  … Strange environmental factors came into play. When a supernova explodes, the blast wave creates high-energy particles that scatter in every direction; scientists believe there is a minute chance that one of the errant particles, known as a cosmic ray, can hit a computer chip on Earth, flipping a 0 to a 1. The world’s most robust computer systems, at NASA, financial firms, and the like, used special hardware that could tolerate single bit-flips. But Google, which was still operating like a startup, bought cheaper computers that lacked that feature.” 

Wait, what? This is from a boring New Yorker article about “the friendship that made Google huge” between two programmers. But what about the cosmic rays that mess with computer chips? This point is never returned to. I want to read an article about cosmic rays! What else do they fuck with?

(The article:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge)

Image credit: A. Chantelauze, S. Staffi, and L. Bret. From https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/21/16335164/pierre-auger-observatory-cosmic-ray-galaxies-air-shower-particles