cosmic rays
Notionally, the cause of bit rot. However, this is a semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to handwave away any minor randomness that doesn' t seem worth the bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric - I just got a burst of garbage on my tube, where did that come from?" "C OSmic rays, I guess." Compare sunspots, {phase of the moon}. The British seem to prefer the usage "c OSmic showers" "alpha particles" is also heard, because stray alpha particles passing through a memory chip can cause single bit errors (this becomes increasingly more likely as memory sizes and densities increase). Factual note: Alpha particles cause bit rot, c OSmic rays do not (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not explain random bit drops in their early chips, and one hypothesis was c OSmic rays. So they created the World' s Largest Lead Safe, using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis was that if c OSmic rays were causing the bit drops, they should see a statistically significant difference between the error rates on the two boards. They did not observe such a difference. Further investigation demonstrated conclusively that the bit drops were due to alpha particle emissions from thorium (and to a much lesser degree uranium) in the encapsulation material. Since it is imp OSsible to eliminate these radioactives (they are uniformly distributed through the earth' s crust, with the statistically insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it became obvious that one has to design memories to withstand these hits. [ Jargon File] In addition suitable contents: [ 2 ] [ = ] [ ad ] [ af ] [ ag ] [ ai ] [ al ] [ Alpha ] [ alpha particle ] [ am ] [ an ] [ ar ] [ arc ] [ arg ] [ as ] [ at ] [ au ] [ av ] [ aw ] [ B ] [ b ] [ ba ] [ be ] [ bi ] [ bit ] [ bit rot ] [ bo ] [ boa ] [ board ] [ bot ] [ bs ] [ bv ] [ C ] [ ca ] [ cc ] [ ch ] [ chip ] [ cl ] [ co ] [ com ] [ computer ] [ con ] [ cr ] [ de ] [ degree ] [ demo ] [ demon ] [ design ] [ diff ] [ do ] [ du ] [ E ] [ ec ] [ ed ] [ ee ] [ eg ] [ encapsulation ] [ er ] [ error ] [ es ] [ et ] [ exception ] [ fi ] [ file ] [ fo ] [ for ] [ fr ] [ ga ] [ ge ] [ gh ] [ gl ] [ gn ] [ gr ] [ gu ] [ h ] [ handwave ] [ hat ] [ hit ] [ hr ] [ hs ] [ hu ] [ humor ] [ id ] [ ie ] [ iff ] [ il ] [ in ] [ inc ] [ io ] [ ir ] [ is ] [ it ] [ J ] [ Jargon File ] [ ke ] [ la ] [ ld ] [ Lex ] [ li ] [ ls ] [ lu ] [ ly ] [ ma ] [ memory ] [ ml ] [ mn ] [ mo ] [ mod ] [ module ] [ mp ] [ mu ] [ my ] [ N ] [ na ] [ nc ] [ ne ] [ ng ] [ ni ] [ no ] [ ns ] [ O ] [ om ] [ op ] [ pa ] [ pe ] [ ph ] [ phase ] [ phase of the moon ] [ pl ] [ pr ] [ pt ] [ query ] [ random ] [ randomness ] [ rc ] [ re ] [ rl ] [ ro ] [ ru ] [ S ] [ sa ] [ safe ] [ se ] [ semi ] [ serve ] [ sh ] [ si ] [ sig ] [ sit ] [ sm ] [ sn ] [ so ] [ space ] [ st ] [ su ] [ sunspots ] [ T ] [ test ] [ testing ] [ th ] [ to ] [ tr ] [ tube ] [ tw ] [ ua ] [ ug ] [ um ] [ us ] [ ve ] [ vi ] [ wav ]
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