Cosmic Computer Ram

[Solares]

I recently heard that cosmic rays can, very rarely, flip bits in ram.

 

The space shuttle had 158 bits flips during one mission. 

Space probes are radiation hardened and designed to reboot; and tested in a ray chamber.

A Mario speed run skipped a level because it was finally determined that it was most likely a single bit flip in memory (cosmic event) that advanced them and not a hidden shortcut.

A jet on auto-pilot went into a nose drive because of a single bit flip.

 

It does happen, very rarely.  A non-consistent blue screen of death can be cosmic; totally random.

 

What do you think? Pausable?

[Eigenvektor]

It's entirely possible, though rare, and one of the reasons servers use ECC RAM

[sub68]

the ones in space yes, the ground one could be so much, the jet could happen but there are so many fail safes I think are on auto pilot that IDK if its likely.

single bit flips happen with normal ram and doesnt effect that much. 

 

Did you know that MIM-104 patriot missle system had one miss in its first run due to clock drift.

 

[Eigenvektor]

6 minutes ago, sub68 said:

the jet could happen but there are so many fail safes I think are on auto pilot that IDK if its likely.

Yeah, I was about to edit to add that a plane crash due to a single bit flip would be an extremely unlikely event. Planes have redundant systems and a single incorrect input is unlikely to deflect control surfaces in a way that causes an unrecoverable situation resulting in a crash.