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Could physicists and astronomers use all this distributed particle detection for research? Like a app in a phone or desktop that sends reports back with locat

Could physicists and astronomers use all this distributed particle detection for research? Like a app in a phone or desktop that sends reports back with location and time information.

ajb 8y ago
Most bit flip events are apparently due to alpha particles from radioactive decay in the package (source - worked for a company which used 'low alpha compound' in some of our ICs to put off having to implement HW error correction) , which would be a big confounding signal. I imaging physics experiments work hard to avoid this, or at least correct for it.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Thus the demand for low-background steel, mostly recovered from pre-atomic-age ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
evanb 8y ago
You may be interested to learn of arXiv:1510.07655, "Detecting particles with cell phones: the Distributed Electronic Cosmic-ray Observatory" by Vandenbroucke et al. I don't know if any novel results have come out of this kind of thing. https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.07665 https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.07665
- privong 8y ago
  There was also this one, a bit earlier, "Observing Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with Smartphones". https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.2895 https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.2895 I (thought I) signed up to be informed of beta releases, but never heard anything. I just checked their website[0] and it mentions a beta app, but that seems to just go to a signup page. [0] https://crayfis.io https://crayfis.io
Create 8y ago
To me, this seems like AstroTurf PR for the quoted manufacturer's Movidius™ Myriad™ 2, just tested at [hope to be trendy HEP institution]. Pity the photo with friendly smiles from the press package was left out, but the curious will find it with a brief search.
biggerfisch 8y ago
Probably not, due to the low fidelity of any data from this. "real" particle detectors can trace the decay chain, momentum changes, precise energy levels, etc. Processor cache flips etc can only say "a particle with energy >= X was here", which isn't super useful given the relative frequency of occurrence.

Could physicists and astronomers use all this distributed particle detection for research? Like a app in a phone or desktop that sends reports back with location and time information.

ajb 8y ago

Most bit flip events are apparently due to alpha particles from radioactive decay in the package (source - worked for a company which used 'low alpha compound' in some of our ICs to put off having to implement HW error correction) , which would be a big confounding signal. I imaging physics experiments work hard to avoid this, or at least correct for it.

mikeash 8y ago
Thus the demand for low-background steel, mostly recovered from pre-atomic-age ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

evanb 8y ago

You may be interested to learn of arXiv:1510.07655, "Detecting particles with cell phones: the Distributed Electronic Cosmic-ray Observatory" by Vandenbroucke et al. I don't know if any novel results have come out of this kind of thing. https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.07665 https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.07665

privong 8y ago
There was also this one, a bit earlier, "Observing Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with Smartphones". https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.2895 https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.2895 I (thought I) signed up to be informed of beta releases, but never heard anything. I just checked their website[0] and it mentions a beta app, but that seems to just go to a signup page. [0] https://crayfis.io https://crayfis.io

Create 8y ago

To me, this seems like AstroTurf PR for the quoted manufacturer's Movidius™ Myriad™ 2, just tested at [hope to be trendy HEP institution]. Pity the photo with friendly smiles from the press package was left out, but the curious will find it with a brief search.

biggerfisch 8y ago

Probably not, due to the low fidelity of any data from this. "real" particle detectors can trace the decay chain, momentum changes, precise energy levels, etc. Processor cache flips etc can only say "a particle with energy >= X was here", which isn't super useful given the relative frequency of occurrence.