iPhones and helium don't mix

[porina]

Quote

I’ve seen a lot of strange glitches in my time, and I’ve never heard of something like this. Neither had Erik. “The behavior of the devices was pretty odd. Most of them were completely dead. I plugged them in to the wall and had no indication that the device was charging. The other devices that were powering on seemed to have issues with the cellular radio. The wifi connection was consistent and fast, but cellular was very hit or miss.”

 

That’s when he posted the issue to Reddit, where other sysadmins speculated that it might be caused by the liquid helium used to cool the MRI machine. So he investigated, and found there was a helium leak at the same time that vented into the building.

Source: https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/

 

It might not be something we consider normally, but some of the ever shrinking components in our phones can be adversely affected by helium or other gases uncommon in everyday life. Such as the case linked above, where it turns out a helium leak at a hospital caused some iPhones to malfunction. Although this only seemed to impact some Apple devices, unless it is a custom Apple component we shouldn't rule out the possibility Android or other devices could be similarly affected.

 

Fortunately there is a fix that should work, even if the wording makes it sound less than 100%...

 

Quote

“Exposing iPhone to environments having high concentrations of industrial chemicals, including near evaporating liquified gasses such as helium, may damage or impair iPhone functionality. … If your device has been affected and shows signs of not powering on, the device can typically be recovered.  Leave the unit unconnected from a charging cable and let it air out for approximately one week. The helium must fully dissipate from the device, and the device battery should fully discharge in the process.  After a week, plug your device directly into a power adapter and let it charge for up to one hour.  Then the device can be turned on again.”

It would seem prevention is better than cure. If you happen to be attending an extreme overclocking event with liquid helium, you might want to leave your phone elsewhere for that part... also you might want to take extra care around party balloons... 

[GOTSpectrum]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

Source: https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/

 

It might not be something we consider normally, but some of the ever shrinking components in our phones can be adversely affected by helium or other gases uncommon in everyday life. Such as the case linked above, where it turns out a helium leak at a hospital caused some iPhones to malfunction. Although this only seemed to impact some Apple devices, unless it is a custom Apple component we shouldn't rule out the possibility Android or other devices could be similarly affected.

 

Fortunately there is a fix that should work, even if the wording makes it sound less than 100%...

 

It would seem prevention is better than cure. If you happen to be attending an extreme overclocking event with liquid helium, you might want to leave your phone elsewhere for that part... also you might want to take extra care around party balloons... 

But the real question is, how high pitched does the ringer go when the Iphone is affected by said helium gas??? 

 

/s

[Dabombinable]

An inert gas causes iPhones to malfunction?

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

An inert gas causes iPhones to malfunction?

My first thought too,  I would have thought the intense Magnet field around the MRI machine would have fucked the phone long before helium.

 

 

EDIT: in fact helium gas rises very quickly, I can't see how it would stay in the building long enough to get to the average phone (on a desk or in a pocket) at concentrations high enough to cause an issue without being notices by heads breathing it in.

[GoldenLag]

17 minutes ago, mr moose said:

EDIT: in fact helium gas rises very quickly, I can't see how it would stay in the building long enough to get to the average phone (on a desk or in a pocket) at concentrations high enough to cause an issue without being notices by heads breathing it in.

Helium also likes to leak out of anything.

 

So a constant leak is somewhat expected (like minescule)

[mr moose]

13 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Helium also likes to leak out of anything.

 

So a constant leak is somewhat expected (like minescule)

And Unless if have had a whiskey fueled brain fart, 120littres of helium expanding by 750 times only works out to 90M³ not 90,000.  I think they might have fucked that entire article up. Nothing adds up.

 

EDIT: yep 90,000M³ of gas compressed 750 times works out to 120,000 liters, not 120L.

EDIT2: does anyone know the density of helium, I reckon it would have to be less than 30Kg in a 120 litres, that would dissipate way too fast to actually cause a problem for "iphones" only, let alone any phone.

EDIT3: the picture they claim is an MRI machine is actually a CT scanner, I know this because they are wearing rings which that close to an Actual MRI machine would likely tear their fingers off , let alone the metal tags on the nurses neck cards and the fact the patient has a radiation apron on (MRI's are not radioactive).

[GoldenLag]

9 minutes ago, mr moose said:

EDIT2: does anyone know the density of helium, I reckon it would have to be less than 30Kg in a 120 litres, that would dissipate way too fast to actually cause a problem for "iphones" only, let alone any phone.

Well considering the laughable density of hydrogen as a rocket fuel. Helium is probably not much better.

[Trixanity]

8 minutes ago, mr moose said:

And Unless if have had a whiskey fueled brain fart, 120littres of helium expanding by 750 times only works out to 90M³ not 90,000.  I think they might have fucked that entire article up. Nothing adds up.

 

EDIT: yep 90,000M³ of gas compressed 750 times works out to 120,000 liters, not 120L.

EDIT2: does anyone know the density of helium, I reckon it would have to be less than 30Kg in a 120 litres, that would dissipate way too fast to actually cause a problem for "iphones" only, let alone any phone.

Well, Ian Cutress tweeted about it and he has a PhD in PhysChem according to his Twitter profile. Point being I feel like he would be qualified to determine whether it's plausible or not. He didn't seem to dismiss it. Quite the contrary. Of course the information given is quite limited.

[mr moose]

5 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

Well, Ian Cutress tweeted about it and he has a PhD in PhysChem according to his Twitter profile. Point being I feel like he would be qualified to determine whether it's plausible or not. He didn't seem to dismiss it. Quite the contrary. Of course the information given is quite limited.

Maybe he should read the article before putting his name to it.  I would have thought someone with a phd in physchem would know 120L x 750 does not equal 90,000M³

[Nup]

I don’t see what the helium would be doing. Maybe just cooling the battery enough for it to shut down? But then it’d have to be a pretty direct "leak".  Pretty interesting altogether though. 

 

Also @mr moose, at 1atm and 25*C the density of helium is 163.5g/m^3

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Nup said:

I don’t see what the helium would be doing. Maybe just cooling the battery enough for it to shut down? But then it’d have to be a pretty direct « leak ».  

Also @mr moose, at 1atm and 25*C the density of helium is 163.5g/m^3

So lighter than a sparrows fart in the winter.

[leadeater]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Maybe he should read the article before putting his name to it.  I would have thought someone with a phd in physchem would know 120L x 750 does not equal 90,000M³

http://www.airproducts.com/Products/Gases/gas-facts/conversion-formulas/weight-and-volume-equivalents/helium.aspx

 

90,000m3 of helium is 15236.103Kg in liquid form or 121928.35L

[Tristerin]

*waits for Rossmanngroup to post Youtube video*

[TechyBen]

Helium and not the stupid large magnetic field? (This one does not have radiological material as well? That can also have high energy particles that could in theory damage stuff, even if below safe levels for people to work around)

 

1 hour ago, Dabombinable said:

An inert gas causes iPhones to malfunction?

 

If these things are small, could a single atom get stuck in the silicone?

[S w a t s o n]

So I suspect it's actually something to do with speed of light through helium.

 

I watched some videos from this guy explaining how Helium has a fast speed of sound due to physics and how that can be manipulated for audio purposes. Now he's talking about sound but cellular signals (and wifi) are radio waves which are photons (light). Not sure exactly why the Wifi could function but not the cellular, could be due wavelength/frequency or just how the technologies differ.

 

 

 

[rcmaehl]

Well darn. I knew I should have posted this last night. 1 sec. I'll link the reddit thread

 

TL;DR: Apple uses a tiny non-quartz clock signal (Hz) generator. This generator is susceptible to interference by helium or other small gasses and essentially makes your iOS CPU have no frequency at all because it can't generate a clock (Hz)

 

EDIT: 

 

 

[S w a t s o n]

11 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Well darn. I knew I should have posted this last night. 1 sec. I'll link the reddit thread

 

EDIT: 

 

 

Oh so the helium actually causes them to be unable to power on, huh. RIP my theory or at least part of it.

 

Edit: Actually.... iirc eletrical signals travel near speed of light. So filling the entire phone with helium could impact signalling speed????

[Trixanity]

53 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Maybe he should read the article before putting his name to it.  I would have thought someone with a phd in physchem would know 120L x 750 does not equal 90,000M³

Maybe you should tweet him that he's got the dum-dums.

[rcmaehl]

38 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

Oh so the helium actually causes them to be unable to power on, huh. RIP my theory or at least part of it

Also @porina

Yeah, I updated my comment. iOS devices are trying to miniaturize components and miniaturized their clock signal generator. This is the part of the device that generates the signal that most of the ICs including CPU use to be able to to function and operate at specific Hz/KHz/MHz/GHz. Old clock signal generators were quartz and didn't really have any downsides other than size and shock rating, these new ones are like 80% smaller but are subject to gaseous changes, smaller than oxygen, in large quantities that completely kill the signal generation.

 

As far as I'm aware only Apple has switched to MEMS based clock generators, however I wouldn't be surprised if there's at least one android phone also using it.

 

@DrMacintosh Your thoughts?

[DocSwag]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Maybe he should read the article before putting his name to it.  I would have thought someone with a phd in physchem would know 120L x 750 does not equal 90,000M³

Was it originally m^3? Atm it says 90,000 L which is accurate.

[bowrilla]

2 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

Oh so the helium actually causes them to be unable to power on, huh. RIP my theory or at least part of it.

 

Edit: Actually.... iirc eletrical signals travel near speed of light. So filling the entire phone with helium could impact signalling speed????

No. This has nothing to do with the speed of light in certain media. Nothing has change concerning singal paths, electrons still travel via the pcb and metal traces. Helium does nothing to that signal. 

 

The Helium penetrates the non-quartz based clock generator and causes it to stop. Since the new and smaller clock generators used by Apple are that small, a few atoms are enough to cause havoc. And since helium atoms are so incredibly small it's hard to almost impossible to fully seal against it. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 hours ago, bowrilla said:

No. This has nothing to do with the speed of light in certain media. Nothing has change concerning singal paths, electrons still travel via the pcb and metal traces. Helium does nothing to that signal. 

 

The Helium penetrates the non-quartz based clock generator and causes it to stop. Since the new and smaller clock generators used by Apple are that small, a few atoms are enough to cause havoc. And since helium atoms are so incredibly small it's hard to almost impossible to fully seal against it. 

That has to literally be the dumbest design I've ever heard. Helium concentrations in the air may be very low, but if the dissipation rate is so terrible that it can't degas a few helium atoms, expect many of these devices to self-brick eventually. A week to offgas the concentration?

 

Do we know how small these need to be? Smaller than oxygen is a lot of things (like nitrogen... and CO, and water....).

 

Also yes. sealing helium is hard, but isn't that hard (think all the helium hard-drives on the market today). It just would completely void the whole space savings from using the smaller clock generators in the first place.

[lewdicrous]

5 hours ago, Tristerin said:

*waits for Rossmanngroup to post Youtube video*

"Apple doesn't support extreme temperatures"

Follow up video:

"Will a drop of liquid helium ruin a macbook pro"

Follow up to the follow up:

"Fixing a macbook pro that was damaged by liquid helium"

[mr moose]

7 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Was it originally m^3? Atm it says 90,000 L which is accurate.

Yes it definitely was M^3.

 

 

 

[mr moose]

 

8 hours ago, Trixanity said:

Maybe you should tweet him that he's got the dum-dums.

Maybe he'll work it out, or maybe they'll just keep updating the article until it's not wrong.  

 

Have they changed the picture to an actual MRI machine yet?