Cosmic Rays Can Crash Your Computer

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Has your computer ever crashed for no reason? No warning, overheating, faulty software, just randomly shuts down out of nowhere? You might be able to blame the stars.

Cosmic rays, high-energy particles from exploding stars, are constantly bombarding Earth. When they hit your computer’s hardware, they can flip a bit in memory from a 0 to a 1, or vice versa. It’s called a Single Event Upset (SEU), and while rare, it can cause anything from minor glitches to full system crashes.

This is why critical systems like satellites, airplanes, and even data centers use error-correcting memory to guard against these invisible invaders from space.

Cosmic lesson: Even the stars can mess with your files.

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Written by Guy Baroan 
By: Guy Baroan