
The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation - scarhill
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2018/03/05/the-worsening-cosmic-ray-situation/
======
tyingq
To bring it a little closer to home for HN, there was, at one time, a big
controversy with Sun Microsystems and cosmic rays creating memory errors on
their servers.
[https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19095-01/sf4810.srvr/816-5053-10...](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19095-01/sf4810.srvr/816-5053-10/816-5053-10.pdf)

~~~
slededit
Sun cheaped out and didn't put ECC on the cache of their very expensive
UltraSparc servers. I suppose the outrage is pointless now that they are gone,
but it was a ridiculous cost cutting measure on a very expensive piece of
hardware.

~~~
murph-almighty
I skimmed through this comment and thought it was a sarcastic disparagement of
the Sun at first, not Sun Microsystems. I understood after second read.

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maccam94
I wonder if it'll get bad enough to spur consumer hardware to switch to ECC. I
can't believe the price difference is very significant, especially if it
starts being produced in even higher volumes.

~~~
mark-r
I used an Athlon in my latest PC build so that I could use ECC. And that was
just the kid's gaming computer! I'm a big believer in ECC.

~~~
Asooka
Correct me if I'm wrong, but last time I looked into it, AMD's CPUs support
_unbuffered_ ECC RAM, which is really hard to come by and much more expensive
than the usual buffered ECC RAM.

~~~
dmm
Newegg has plenty of unbuffered, ecc ddr4[0].

The cheapest registered 16gb ddr4-2133 module is $192.

The cheapest unbuffered 16gb ddr4-2133 module is $189.

So the price is about the same.

[0]
[https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007952%20601190338%20600006161%20600006164%20600082361&IsNodeId=1)

[1]
[https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIABYY5227...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIABYY5227067)

[2]
[https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6ZP6WX1...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6ZP6WX1150)

------
acidburnNSA
Tangentially related, taking a Geiger counter on a trans-Atlantic flight is a
pretty good time [1]. Some good low-dose radiation data we have comes from
flight crews.

[1] [https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2014-05-17-radiation-on-
fligh...](https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2014-05-17-radiation-on-flights.html)

------
geuis
> _The problem is, as the authors note in their new paper, the shield is
> weakening: “Over the last decade, the solar wind has exhibited low densities
> and magnetic ﬁeld strengths, representing anomalous states that have never
> been observed during the Space Age. As a result of this remarkably weak
> solar activity, we have also observed the highest fluxes of cosmic rays.”_

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eximius
Is the increase fully accounted for by weakening solar protection,
magnetosphere, and atmosphere?

What are the causes for reduced protection in the latter two?

~~~
i_am_nomad
The earth’s magnetic field has fluctuated and reversed throughout geological
history. Recently, the field has been decreasing in strength and may be poised
for a reversal. It’s bad timing insofar as it coincides with an impending
solar minimum.

~~~
ringshall
Magnetic field reversals happen on a completely different timescale than solar
minima/maxima. Reversals take a long time to happen: ~1 to 10 ky. Quick on a
geological timescale, though.

~~~
Steel_Phoenix
The most recent one is thought to have occurred more on the timescale of a
human lifetime.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunhes%E2%80%93Matuyama_rever...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunhes%E2%80%93Matuyama_reversal)

------
sq_
Tangential question, but does anyone have any idea why, based on the first
graph in the article [1], NASA's allowable radiation limits for women are so
much lower than for men?

[1]
[http://spaceweather.com/images2014/06dec14/missionduration.j...](http://spaceweather.com/images2014/06dec14/missionduration.jpg)

~~~
corndoge
Birth defects

~~~
mirimir
In vertebrate females, all oogonia mature to oocytes before birth. In males,
spermatogonia mature to spermatocytes continuously after puberty. I gather
that oocytes and spermatocytes are more sensitive than spermatogonia to
radiation damage. Damaged spermatocytes and sperm get replaced after a few
weeks. But there's no replacement for damaged oocytes.

So yes, birth defects.

~~~
teslabox
> But there's no replacement for damaged oocytes.

That was the old thinking, but now there's evidence that women can probably
generate 'new' eggs:

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/07/evidence-
sug...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/07/evidence-suggests-
womens-ovaries-can-grow-new-eggs)

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726180259.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726180259.htm)

~~~
mirimir
Wow, that's amazing. But on the other hand, using a chemotherapy drug to
ovulate seems a little iffy.

------
siavosh
I just had the horrific thought of what if some nearby interstellar event zaps
all of earth with a deadly blast of fatal radiation killing all life in a
matter of days. Is this possible and is there anything in the archaeological
record hinting this may have happened?

~~~
jlebrech
We need to start a colony on Mars as backup

~~~
cozzyd
Mars has no magnetic field and very little atmosphere, which makes it a
terrible place to avoid cosmic rays.

~~~
greglindahl
... and because of these first 2 facts will probably have living quarters
underground. Which is a good way to avoid cosmic rays.

~~~
gambiting
You know what's even better than dirt at stopping radiation? Water. And we
have lots of it. 10km of water at the bottom of the Mariana trench should stop
any amount of radiation that could hit Earth.

~~~
thaumasiotes
On the other hand, we can live underground, but we can't live underwater.

~~~
gambiting
Both require living in some sort of pressurized container, unless you assume
we could live in underground caves(but those can't be very deep so probably
not good enough). Obviously the underwater one would require more engineering,
but probably still less than one needed for Mars.

~~~
thaumasiotes
That depends on your perspective. We have the technology to go to Mars right
now; we do not have the technology to go to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
It is a much more hostile environment than Mars is.

However, if you assumed that we were able to go the bottom of the ocean,
transporting supplies there would be much easier than transporting supplies to
Mars.

~~~
jylam
_we do not have the technology to go to the bottom of the Marianas Trench._

Except we reached it four times since 1960 :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench#Descents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench#Descents)

------
ggm
Buy shares in ECC memory suppliers.

~~~
tyingq
Didn’t help Sun Microsystems much:
[https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19095-01/sf4810.srvr/816-5053-10...](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19095-01/sf4810.srvr/816-5053-10/816-5053-10.pdf)

Their ECC systems got hit too.

------
doinkdoink
Plugging one of my favorite podcasts that recently covered spaceweather!

[http://weatherbrains.com/weatherbrains/?p=6720](http://weatherbrains.com/weatherbrains/?p=6720)

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tzs
Do cosmic rays that reach the surface leave any traces or make any changes
that persist over geological timescales and can be dated, so that we can see
how they have changed over very long times?

~~~
_rpd
Yes, you can read about it here ...

[http://www.leif.org/EOS/McCracken10Be.pdf](http://www.leif.org/EOS/McCracken10Be.pdf)

tl;dr: Be-10 isotope levels in ice cores.

------
gigatexal
Wait so what does this mean for cancer rates? Are they related?

~~~
imglorp
Shockingly, there are some cardiac effects correlated to cosmic ray activity.
See four references in the article.

~~~
gigatexal
Whoa. I only skimmed it but I’ll have to re-read it.

------
EGreg
Cue the Republican jokes about this being manmade :)

