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I worked at Sonus Networks (now Ribbon[0]) in the early 2000's building VoIP solutions for telcos. We had a bunch of unexplained errors in a new installation in

I worked at Sonus Networks (now Ribbon[0]) in the early 2000's building VoIP solutions for telcos. We had a bunch of unexplained errors in a new installation in Denver. After much head scratching the engineers on the problem concluded that the higher altitude significantly increased the likelihood of impact by alpha particles and that that was the cause of the problem! (IIRC we increased the shielding on the devices.) https://ribboncommunications.com/ https://ribboncommunications.com/

jaytaylor 5y ago
Maybe it's a stupid question, but did the additional shielding completely resolve the discrepancy?
perihelions 5y ago
Minor clarification: alpha radiation doesn't come from cosmic rays, rather from U/Th contamination in the circuit materials. The altitude dependent component you'd be seeing is rather muons and neutrons.
- cozzyd 5y ago
  you can get alphas from spallation, but you wouldn't really call that alpha radiation.
simne 5y ago
> higher altitude significantly increased the likelihood... This idea looks promise, but Denver is not high enough to make much difference from sea level. From experience, radiation detector shows significant raise from ~6000m, and at standard civilian airplane echelon 10k m, it buzzes continuously :) Most probably, errors caused from electric surges or from some local radiation anomaly, or from something like radar equipment. - I hear, in few places in world exists old buildings, even churches, build from stone with high content of natural radionuclides, so there radiation is significantly higher than standard level, but not too high to cause fast people death, so nobody care, but it departments found unexplained errors ;) Btw, stone with high content is widely distributed. After Chernobyl, we pay this much attention, and know, for this first care in Sweden in 1940s, all other countries after 1950s. And one person even said me, that near our city there are two mines, stone from one used for industrial buildings, for roads, and from other for homes.

jaytaylor 5y ago

Maybe it's a stupid question, but did the additional shielding completely resolve the discrepancy?

perihelions 5y ago

Minor clarification: alpha radiation doesn't come from cosmic rays, rather from U/Th contamination in the circuit materials. The altitude dependent component you'd be seeing is rather muons and neutrons.

cozzyd 5y ago
you can get alphas from spallation, but you wouldn't really call that alpha radiation.

simne 5y ago

> higher altitude significantly increased the likelihood... This idea looks promise, but Denver is not high enough to make much difference from sea level. From experience, radiation detector shows significant raise from ~6000m, and at standard civilian airplane echelon 10k m, it buzzes continuously :) Most probably, errors caused from electric surges or from some local radiation anomaly, or from something like radar equipment. - I hear, in few places in world exists old buildings, even churches, build from stone with high content of natural radionuclides, so there radiation is significantly higher than standard level, but not too high to cause fast people death, so nobody care, but it departments found unexplained errors ;) Btw, stone with high content is widely distributed. After Chernobyl, we pay this much attention, and know, for this first care in Sweden in 1940s, all other countries after 1950s. And one person even said me, that near our city there are two mines, stone from one used for industrial buildings, for roads, and from other for homes.