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Layman question: Is it possible to shield electronics against cosmic rays? Or is it like a neutrino thing, where they just go through everything? (But neutrino

Layman question: Is it possible to shield electronics against cosmic rays? Or is it like a neutrino thing, where they just go through everything? (But neutrinos barely interact, correct?)

obedm 5y ago
It should be possible, but not practical. It's easier to just code checks and balances to fix those errors instead. There's a famous story about a Google search bug caused by a comic ray and they implemented such error checking on their servers after that
noduerme 5y ago
That's not what actually happened here (probably), but think of relatively heavy atoms like iron, ejected from a supernova at close to the speed of light. They're not really "rays". They're solid particles that punch holes in everything. The good news is, mostly they're ionized and they get repelled away from hitting the planet's surface by our magnetic field (generated by the big hot iron magnet that's churning under our crust). But in the rest of space where there's no field like that, getting lots of tiny puncture wounds from high-velocity iron particles is pretty normal. It does a lot of damage to cells and DNA in a cumulative way pretty quickly. To answer your question, shielding is possible but it is much harder in space than it is under the magnetosphere. Even so, a stray particle can wreak havoc. Shielding for the purposes of data protection on earth is essentially a risk/reward analysis. Anyone could get hit by a cosmic bullet, but the chances are pretty low. The odds of an SSD flipping bits on its own are significantly higher.
- Leparamour 5y ago
  > That's not what actually happened here (probably), but think of relatively heavy atoms like iron, ejected from a supernova at close to the speed of light. They're not really "rays". Wow, I have to admit I always assumed cosmic rays to be gamma radiation but alpha particle radiation sounds a lot more scary. Does anyone happen to know if computers engineered for the space station or shuttles have already some built-in (memory)redundancy or magnetic shielding to account for damage by cosmic rays? I imagine a system crash of the life support systems in space would be devastating.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Radiation hardening is basically everything you can manage with the weight limit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening IIRC nobody is currently using magnetic fields for shielding, I don’t know if that’s due to insufficient effectiveness, power consumption, or unwanted interactions e.g. with Earth’s magnetosphere.
    - myself248 5y ago
      I've always wondered about that. Seems to me that if you can shield one side from the sun's heat and expose the other side to the cold of space, an MRI magnet's superconductors should be quite happy with the temperature. A big ol' magnet would be a pain to charge up once, and then provide long-term shielding.
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      - deleted 5y ago
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      - verall 5y ago
        MRIs are big electromagnets and they use big power and produce big heat. In space you have no convection so you must radiate away all of your heat which is challenging. Maybe you can make something better with superconductors that doesn't use much power, but I don't think it exists yet.
        ben_w 5y ago
        Superconductors famously don’t produce heat. Putting a superconducting magnet in shade (though that includes from the Earth not just from Sol) will keep it cool once it gets cool. This is what the James Webb is going to be doing, though for non-superconducting reasons.
        myself248 5y ago
- joshspankit 5y ago
  I had thought that Starlink would become extremely compelling when the servers were in orbit as well, but maybe that’s naive. Cubesats with massive arrays of active storage might be far too difficult (aka costly) to protect properly.
  - MayeulC 5y ago
    One of the issues with putting servers in orbit is cooling; you can't just use fans in space. On the other hand, real estate is pretty cheap. Servicing is hard, though, and micrometeorites are another risk. Plus launch costs being high, and radiation an issue, I don't see it happening any time soon outside of very specific areas.
    - fennecfoxen 5y ago
      Forget cooling for a minute. Cooling dissipates energy but you need to collect the energy first and worry about powering the server. It’s going to be a solar-plus-battery system, which is heavy and expensive, with substantial launch costs.
      - MayeulC 5y ago
        Not sure you need a big battery when you have almost 24/7 sunlight, depending on the altitude. Of course, latency is another issue.
    - willis936 5y ago
      Radiation cooling is pretty dramatic in space. With an isolated radiation shield/mirror from the sun and a decent sized heatsink, you can have a lot of cooling power on hand. A server isn't going to be pumping out nearly as much heat as a rocket engine, and launch vehicles don't tend to overheat.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    You can’t just put an SSD or whatever in orbit and expect reasonable read latencies at all times. It’s in orbit. It moves. Half the time it’s on the wrong side of the planet.
numpad0 5y ago
Not trivially; if it was viable the Chernobyl reactor would be gone already. Also, IC packagings and chassis materials can be sources of stray electron beams, and other modes of glitching like power failure exists.
dricornelius 5y ago
The cosmic ray induced radiation at sea level is a mix of neutrons, gamma rays, electrons, and highly penetrating high energy muons (heavier cousins of electrons). They are caused by the cascade of reactions when the CRs collide with nuclei in the atmosphere. You're right, neutrinos barely interact (hence the name "little neutral ones") so they're no problem. You could put infrastructure underground to escape muons, but that wouldn't be practical. Moreover, any shielding (and the materials in the electronics) needs to be carefully chosen to minimise naturally occurring radioactive materials that could lead to upsets themselves. It's a tricky one. There are other ways to mitigate the risk, error checking, redundant systems, etc.
- dricornelius 5y ago
  My favourite story is this one https://www.thegamer.com/how-ionizing-particle-outer-space-helped-super-mario-64-speedrunner-save-time/ https://www.thegamer.com/how-ionizing-particle-outer-space-h...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dricornelius 5y ago
    More serious examples here https://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2012/story4full.shtml https://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2012/story4full.shtm...
Tomte 5y ago
No, because bit flips from radioactive decay are not typically cosmic rays, but originating in the chip's packaging.
nicoburns 5y ago
Yes, the easiest way is to place the computer underground (or underwater).
frumiousirc 5y ago
Yes, by placing them underground.
dredmorbius 5y ago
The problem isn't cosmic rays, per se, it's the issues created by any single-instance modification of a record. The general solution here is to store multiple redundant copies of data and checksums of those data, in order that lack-of-consistency can be determined and the specific records which are considered suspect can be clearly identified. In general, a record is a persistence of a pattern through time subject to entropic forces.[1] Given that modifications to records are typically random events, keeping (and continuously integrity-checking) multiple copies of those records is the best general defence, not guarding against one specific variety of modification in a single instance of a record. ________________________________ Notes: 1. The symmetric statement of signals is that they are persistence of a pattern through space subject to noise. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27604073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27604073

Layman question: Is it possible to shield electronics against cosmic rays? Or is it like a neutrino thing, where they just go through everything? (But neutrinos barely interact, correct?)

obedm 5y ago

It should be possible, but not practical. It's easier to just code checks and balances to fix those errors instead. There's a famous story about a Google search bug caused by a comic ray and they implemented such error checking on their servers after that

noduerme 5y ago

That's not what actually happened here (probably), but think of relatively heavy atoms like iron, ejected from a supernova at close to the speed of light. They're not really "rays". They're solid particles that punch holes in everything. The good news is, mostly they're ionized and they get repelled away from hitting the planet's surface by our magnetic field (generated by the big hot iron magnet that's churning under our crust). But in the rest of space where there's no field like that, getting lots of tiny puncture wounds from high-velocity iron particles is pretty normal. It does a lot of damage to cells and DNA in a cumulative way pretty quickly. To answer your question, shielding is possible but it is much harder in space than it is under the magnetosphere. Even so, a stray particle can wreak havoc. Shielding for the purposes of data protection on earth is essentially a risk/reward analysis. Anyone could get hit by a cosmic bullet, but the chances are pretty low. The odds of an SSD flipping bits on its own are significantly higher.

Leparamour 5y ago
> That's not what actually happened here (probably), but think of relatively heavy atoms like iron, ejected from a supernova at close to the speed of light. They're not really "rays". Wow, I have to admit I always assumed cosmic rays to be gamma radiation but alpha particle radiation sounds a lot more scary. Does anyone happen to know if computers engineered for the space station or shuttles have already some built-in (memory)redundancy or magnetic shielding to account for damage by cosmic rays? I imagine a system crash of the life support systems in space would be devastating.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Radiation hardening is basically everything you can manage with the weight limit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening IIRC nobody is currently using magnetic fields for shielding, I don’t know if that’s due to insufficient effectiveness, power consumption, or unwanted interactions e.g. with Earth’s magnetosphere.
  - myself248 5y ago
    I've always wondered about that. Seems to me that if you can shield one side from the sun's heat and expose the other side to the cold of space, an MRI magnet's superconductors should be quite happy with the temperature. A big ol' magnet would be a pain to charge up once, and then provide long-term shielding.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - verall 5y ago
      MRIs are big electromagnets and they use big power and produce big heat. In space you have no convection so you must radiate away all of your heat which is challenging. Maybe you can make something better with superconductors that doesn't use much power, but I don't think it exists yet.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        Superconductors famously don’t produce heat. Putting a superconducting magnet in shade (though that includes from the Earth not just from Sol) will keep it cool once it gets cool. This is what the James Webb is going to be doing, though for non-superconducting reasons.
      - myself248 5y ago
joshspankit 5y ago
I had thought that Starlink would become extremely compelling when the servers were in orbit as well, but maybe that’s naive. Cubesats with massive arrays of active storage might be far too difficult (aka costly) to protect properly.
- MayeulC 5y ago
  One of the issues with putting servers in orbit is cooling; you can't just use fans in space. On the other hand, real estate is pretty cheap. Servicing is hard, though, and micrometeorites are another risk. Plus launch costs being high, and radiation an issue, I don't see it happening any time soon outside of very specific areas.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    Forget cooling for a minute. Cooling dissipates energy but you need to collect the energy first and worry about powering the server. It’s going to be a solar-plus-battery system, which is heavy and expensive, with substantial launch costs.
    - MayeulC 5y ago
      Not sure you need a big battery when you have almost 24/7 sunlight, depending on the altitude. Of course, latency is another issue.
  - willis936 5y ago
    Radiation cooling is pretty dramatic in space. With an isolated radiation shield/mirror from the sun and a decent sized heatsink, you can have a lot of cooling power on hand. A server isn't going to be pumping out nearly as much heat as a rocket engine, and launch vehicles don't tend to overheat.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  You can’t just put an SSD or whatever in orbit and expect reasonable read latencies at all times. It’s in orbit. It moves. Half the time it’s on the wrong side of the planet.

numpad0 5y ago

Not trivially; if it was viable the Chernobyl reactor would be gone already. Also, IC packagings and chassis materials can be sources of stray electron beams, and other modes of glitching like power failure exists.

dricornelius 5y ago

The cosmic ray induced radiation at sea level is a mix of neutrons, gamma rays, electrons, and highly penetrating high energy muons (heavier cousins of electrons). They are caused by the cascade of reactions when the CRs collide with nuclei in the atmosphere. You're right, neutrinos barely interact (hence the name "little neutral ones") so they're no problem. You could put infrastructure underground to escape muons, but that wouldn't be practical. Moreover, any shielding (and the materials in the electronics) needs to be carefully chosen to minimise naturally occurring radioactive materials that could lead to upsets themselves. It's a tricky one. There are other ways to mitigate the risk, error checking, redundant systems, etc.

dricornelius 5y ago
My favourite story is this one https://www.thegamer.com/how-ionizing-particle-outer-space-helped-super-mario-64-speedrunner-save-time/ https://www.thegamer.com/how-ionizing-particle-outer-space-h...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dricornelius 5y ago
  More serious examples here https://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2012/story4full.shtml https://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2012/story4full.shtm...

Tomte 5y ago

No, because bit flips from radioactive decay are not typically cosmic rays, but originating in the chip's packaging.

nicoburns 5y ago

Yes, the easiest way is to place the computer underground (or underwater).

frumiousirc 5y ago

Yes, by placing them underground.

dredmorbius 5y ago

The problem isn't cosmic rays, per se, it's the issues created by any single-instance modification of a record. The general solution here is to store multiple redundant copies of data and checksums of those data, in order that lack-of-consistency can be determined and the specific records which are considered suspect can be clearly identified. In general, a record is a persistence of a pattern through time subject to entropic forces.[1] Given that modifications to records are typically random events, keeping (and continuously integrity-checking) multiple copies of those records is the best general defence, not guarding against one specific variety of modification in a single instance of a record. ________________________________ Notes: 1. The symmetric statement of signals is that they are persistence of a pattern through space subject to noise. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27604073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27604073