Friday, July 30, 2010

Friday Freak File #2 - Space Rays

Have at it cotocrew ... especially you, PD ;) ~jg

Clara Moskowitz
LiveScience Senior Writer


Anarctica Experiment Discovers Puzzling Space Ray Pattern

A puzzling pattern in the cosmic rays bombarding Earth from space has been discovered by an experiment buried deep under the ice of Antarctica.

Cosmic rays are highly energetic particles streaming in from space that are thought to originate in the distant remnants of dead stars.



But it turns out these particles are not arriving uniformly from all directions. The new study detected an overabundance of cosmic rays coming from one part of the sky, and a lack of cosmic rays coming from another.

This odd pattern was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, an experiment still under construction that is actually intended to detect other exotic particles called neutrinos. In fact, scientists have gone out of their way to try to block out all signals from cosmic rays in order to search for the highly elusive neutrinos, which are much harder to find.

Yet in sifting through their cosmic-ray data to try to separate it from possible neutrino signals, the researchers noticed the intriguing pattern.

"IceCube was not built to look at cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are considered background," said University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Rasha Abbasi in a statement. "However, we have billions of events of background downward cosmic rays that ended up being very exciting."

Previous studies have found a similar lopsidedness (called anisotropy) in the sky over the Northern Hemisphere, but this was the first time scientists saw that the pattern extended to the southern sky visible from Antarctica.

"At the beginning, we didn't know what to expect," Abbasi said. "To see this anisotropy extending to the Southern Hemisphere sky is an additional piece of the puzzle around this enigmatic effect - whether it's due to the magnetic field surrounding us or to the effect of a nearby supernova remnant, we don't know."

One idea to explain the asymmetry is that a star may have recently died in a supernova explosion relatively nearby, and its remnant may be pouring out loads of cosmic rays that would dominate the signals we receive.

Whether or not the mystery gets solved, the observations could help scientists understand more about how cosmic rays are formed in the first place. Growing consensus favors the supernova remnant idea, though the details are not hammered out. Scientists think that the shells around dead stars, made of puffed-out layers of gas that were expelled by the star before it exploded, contain strong magnetic fields that may act as cosmic particle accelerators, speeding up particles to close to the speed of light.

"This is exciting because this effect could be the 'smoking gun' for our long-sought understanding of the source of high-energy cosmic rays," Abbasi said.

IceCube's findings on cosmic rays are detailed in a paper published Aug. 1 in the Astrophysical Journal





Then there is this:

Toyota Recall Might Be Caused by Cosmic Rays

It may not lessen Toyota's woes to hear that the problems the company has been having with faulty gas pedals could be blamed on cosmic rays from space. Sound unbelievable? The concept is actually a lot more plausible than you might think.

Toyota's sticky gas pedals caused sudden and unintended acceleration in several of the automaker's top-selling Toyota and Lexus-brand cars, which led to a massive recall of more than 9 million vehicles worldwide, beginning in November. While ongoing inquiries attempt to locate the source of the problem and figure out a fix, investigators might find it useful to examine a far-out culprit: cosmic ray radiation from deep in the cosmos, which has been known to plague vulnerable data and memory chips in electronics.

Cosmic rays could be at least partially to blame for Toyota's mechanical defects, scientists now say. And the problem could get worse in the future, as the increasing use of tiny computer chips — replacing mechanical parts — makes cars more and more vulnerable to space radiation

More sensitive electronics

Federal regulators were prompted to look into the possible role that cosmic rays played in Toyota's product recall fiasco after an anonymous tipster suggested the design of Toyota's microprocessors, software and memory chips could make them more vulnerable to interference from radiation compared with other automakers. This is because Toyota has led the auto industry in its widespread inclusion of electronic controls in the manufacture of their various car models.

As electronic devices are made to perform more and more functions on smaller circuit chips, the systems become more sensitive and vulnerable to corruption, and thus more prone to interference from radiation, said Ewart Blackmore, a senior researcher at TRIUMF, a cyclotron facility in Vancouver, Canada, that works with companies to test and analyze the effects of radiation on products.

"Radiation is certainly a potential cause of Toyota's problems," Blackmore told LiveScience. "What's not known is what direction Toyota and other automakers are taking in terms of finding and correcting these issues."

What are cosmic rays?

As a start, automakers and regulators need to understand the complex and sometimes mysterious ways cosmic rays affect electronics on Earth.

Cosmic rays are high-energy protons that originate in shock waves from the remnants of supernovas – the death heaves of giant exploded stars. Cosmic rays constantly rain down on Earth. And while the high-energy "primary" rays collide with atoms in the Earth's upper atmosphere and rarely make it through to the ground, "secondary" particles are ejected from these collisions and do reach ground level.

The effect is similar to a cue ball striking a rack of balls in the game of pool, said Robert Rauk, a consultant at Creative Power Resources, Inc., a Philadelphia-based electrical and mechanical engineering consulting company.

"These secondary particles bathe the Earth in energetic showers that can disrupt electronics," Rauk said in an e-mail interview. "The effect depends on how sensitive the spot is that was struck."

High-energy particles and electronics

Electronic chips record, store and process information in the form of "bits." High-energy particles that pass through these chips can alter or "flip" a bit, resulting in a Single Event Upset (SEU).

This event can be anything from data loss or altered programming, to much more serious corruptions of circuitry functions.

The risks are especially high for circuits that are "field programmable," explained Lloyd W. Massengill, director of engineering at the Vanderbilt Institute for Space and Defense Electronics at Vanderbilt University. Field-programmable circuits are systems in which the circuit's function can be electrically altered while it is still in use.

"These circuit families store not just data, but their basic function electrically," Massengill said. "In the unfortunate event of a particle flipping just the right bit, a circuit configured to carry out a benign action may be reprogrammed to carry out some unintended action."

Testing cosmic-ray effects

Massengill and his colleagues have been studying Single Event Upsets in commercial, space and military systems since 1987. SEUs were first observed in the late 1970s, and since then, extensive research and testing has been done in the military, space and avionics industries. But the effects of radiation have received very little attention among automakers and their regulatory bodies, Massengill said.

Given the rapid pace of technological innovation, and the nature of our increasingly pervasive digital world, researchers like Blackmore and Massengill believe it is becoming even more important for manufacturers to test their products and develop software and microelectronics that are impervious to such cosmic corruption.

"Mechanical controls are disappearing," Massengill said. "Most everything we do is becoming reliant on digital information processing. We are approaching the case where a single bit of critical information may be stored with just a thousand electrons; a single particle can easily overcome such small charge quantities, leading to a bit corruption.

He added that "control by wire" systems in which electronic circuits replace cables and gears, are becoming commonplace in automobiles, aircrafts and defense systems.

To conduct radiation tests, facilities like TRIUMF shoot proton and neutron beams at the circuits and microelectronic components in order to observe any errors. The beams can simulate years of operation in a matter of minutes and are used to interrogate the systems to ensure they function properly in spite of exposure to radiation.

Still, it is difficult to know exactly how much radiation testing is already being done within the auto industry. According to Blackmore, none of the companies that utilize the TRIUMF facility are building components specifically for automobiles, although TRIUMF does conduct testing on software and memory chips that are manufactured and sold to a variety of clients, which could include automakers.

In the wake of Toyota's recall, Blackmore recommends that radiation testing be far more widespread in the auto industry, in order to continue to protect vehicle software against the potential negative effects of radiation.

"There is enough processing power in the memory devices in automobiles to attract errors," Blackmore said. "What is still unclear is whether the industry has put in place the right mitigation techniques to prevent errors in their systems."

4 comments:

  1. I reckon the mob looking into the odd patterns of radiatiom go to
    www.iceagenow.com and see the interesting item on spacequakes!
    and the movement of the Magnetic pole nth.
    its now at least?> 40km in Russian space.

    as the second item, anyone here remember VW beetles? they were the worst radios for em interference I remember of all of them, go under power lines and loose the station, it happens now on my much newer Holden:-) even their own motors emission used to howl into the radio under stress. ie over 40 miles an hour:-)
    so the hivoltage power lines people live under DO have a serious effect.
    bees will be very Bitey near them, wont breed and will leave the hive.
    that ought to be a clear warning.
    I refuse to buy any chipped vehicle at all, this one suckered me, it has EFI,
    next car will NOT.
    a vehicle you cannot push or jump start is a heap of crap.

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  2. What year and model Holden do You have ? Didnt Mad Max drive a Holden ?

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  3. Hi Korn, yeah I have a wagon 98? I think? commodore, basically ugly. none of the style the older ones had:-(
    It has its uses. 4 bales of hay just fit,
    6 big dogs, 5 in rear and one in the front:-)
    3 bags of chaff,
    firewood and dump trophies.
    needless to say the interior is a wreck, furry smelly and hay and mud and , and, everywhere:-)
    yup MM drove the nations car.
    Nice to hear it referenced correctly.
    road warrior is sooo ugh.
    I have 2 mates who worked ON the MM sets one was the stunt coordinator and the other the cars and props stuff man.
    car n props man went on to work on the other series, as well as MI aus version.
    If I could have any car I wanted it would be a dropped and chopped and hotted up 1963/4 Wolseley Mk 1.
    or an FJ Holden! they both had fine fins and a sleek look to them, Aussie Blue Streak motors in the Woolies simply dont die. great bush bashers really solid metal bodies and chassis.I(accidentally) drove places in my Woolie that scared me witless- but the car was fine.

    I managed to get Bogged at my own back door last week in this one..its auto, and gutless, anything over 2ft high to ramp over ie a pile of wet dirt and the suspension throws the weight onto the rear wheel arch and kiss your ass goodbye.:-( and get the shovel out.

    ReplyDelete