<p>Alien subatomic particles raining down from outer space are wreaking havoc on your smartphones, computers and other personal electronic devices, scientists including one of Indian origin say.<br /><br /></p>.<p>When your computer crashes and you get the dreaded blue screen or your smartphone freezes and you have to go through the time-consuming process of a reset, most likely you blame the manufacturer, researchers said.<br /><br />In many instances, however, these operational failures may be caused by the impact of electrically charged particles generated by cosmic rays that originate outside the solar system, they said.<br /><br />"This is a really big problem, but it is mostly invisible to the public," said Bharat Bhuva, professor of electrical engineering at Vanderbilt University in the US.<br /><br />When cosmic rays travelling at fractions of the speed of light strike the Earth's atmosphere they create cascades of secondary particles including energetic neutrons, muons, pions and alpha particles.<br /><br />Millions of these particles strike your body each second. Despite their numbers, this subatomic torrent is imperceptible and has no known harmful effects on living organisms.<br /><br />However, a fraction of these particles carry enough energy to interfere with the operation of microelectronic circuitry.<br /><br />When they interact with integrated circuits, they may alter individual bits of data stored in memory. This is called a single-event upset or SEU.<br /><br />Since it is difficult to know when and where these particles will strike and they do not do any physical damage, the malfunctions they cause are very difficult to characterise.<br /><br />As a result, determining the prevalence of SEUs is not easy or straightforward.<br /><br />"When you have a single bit flip, it could have any number of causes. It could be a software bug or a hardware flaw, for example. The only way you can determine that it is a single-event upset is by eliminating all the other possible causes," Bhuva said.<br /><br />There have been a number of incidents that illustrate how serious the problem can be, Bhuva said. For example, in 2003 in the town of Schaerbeek, Belgium a bit flip in an electronic voting machine added 4,096 extra votes to one candidate.<br /><br />The error was only detected because it gave the candidate more votes than were possible and it was traced to a single bit flip in the machine's register, researchers said.<br /><br />In 2008, the avionics system of a Qantus passenger jet flying from Singapore to Perth appeared to suffer from a single-event upset that caused the autopilot to disengage.<br /><br />As a result, the aircraft dove 690 feet in only 23 seconds, injuring about a third of the passengers seriously enough to cause the aircraft to divert to the nearest airstrip.<br /><br />In addition, there have been a number of unexplained glitches in airline computers - some of which experts feel must have been caused by SEUs - that have resulted in cancellation of hundreds of flights resulting in significant economic losses.</p>
<p>Alien subatomic particles raining down from outer space are wreaking havoc on your smartphones, computers and other personal electronic devices, scientists including one of Indian origin say.<br /><br /></p>.<p>When your computer crashes and you get the dreaded blue screen or your smartphone freezes and you have to go through the time-consuming process of a reset, most likely you blame the manufacturer, researchers said.<br /><br />In many instances, however, these operational failures may be caused by the impact of electrically charged particles generated by cosmic rays that originate outside the solar system, they said.<br /><br />"This is a really big problem, but it is mostly invisible to the public," said Bharat Bhuva, professor of electrical engineering at Vanderbilt University in the US.<br /><br />When cosmic rays travelling at fractions of the speed of light strike the Earth's atmosphere they create cascades of secondary particles including energetic neutrons, muons, pions and alpha particles.<br /><br />Millions of these particles strike your body each second. Despite their numbers, this subatomic torrent is imperceptible and has no known harmful effects on living organisms.<br /><br />However, a fraction of these particles carry enough energy to interfere with the operation of microelectronic circuitry.<br /><br />When they interact with integrated circuits, they may alter individual bits of data stored in memory. This is called a single-event upset or SEU.<br /><br />Since it is difficult to know when and where these particles will strike and they do not do any physical damage, the malfunctions they cause are very difficult to characterise.<br /><br />As a result, determining the prevalence of SEUs is not easy or straightforward.<br /><br />"When you have a single bit flip, it could have any number of causes. It could be a software bug or a hardware flaw, for example. The only way you can determine that it is a single-event upset is by eliminating all the other possible causes," Bhuva said.<br /><br />There have been a number of incidents that illustrate how serious the problem can be, Bhuva said. For example, in 2003 in the town of Schaerbeek, Belgium a bit flip in an electronic voting machine added 4,096 extra votes to one candidate.<br /><br />The error was only detected because it gave the candidate more votes than were possible and it was traced to a single bit flip in the machine's register, researchers said.<br /><br />In 2008, the avionics system of a Qantus passenger jet flying from Singapore to Perth appeared to suffer from a single-event upset that caused the autopilot to disengage.<br /><br />As a result, the aircraft dove 690 feet in only 23 seconds, injuring about a third of the passengers seriously enough to cause the aircraft to divert to the nearest airstrip.<br /><br />In addition, there have been a number of unexplained glitches in airline computers - some of which experts feel must have been caused by SEUs - that have resulted in cancellation of hundreds of flights resulting in significant economic losses.</p>