by Qev » Mon Aug 14, 2006 6:22 am
It's certainly quite possible that a cosmic ray shower triggered the smoke alarm. We get a fair bit of cosmic ray activity, even down at sea level, and it only increases as you get higher in altitude. The articles I've read quote varying intensities of cosmic rays at sea level, usually something on the order of one cosmic ray particle per square centimetre per minute.
They've been known to mess up aircraft instrumentation, and even cause spontaneous computer crashes when they manage to corrupt bits stored in RAM.
Cosmic rays also apparently make up about half of our normal background radiation levels here on Earth.
Astronauts in orbit are obviously more vulnerable to cosmic rays, being above the protection of the atmosphere. Apparently there've been reports of astronauts being woken from their sleep, by the bright flash of a cosmic ray particle triggering a particle shower inside their eyeball.
Possibly the most mind-bending thing I've heard about cosmic rays is the highest-energy cosmic ray particle ever detected. It was apparently a single proton, which was travelling so fast that it had a kinetic energy on the same order as that of a major-league fastball (the number quoted was 1x10^22 electron volts, or 1600 joules).
Here is a nice article from IBM discussing cosmic ray intensity on Earth.
It's certainly quite possible that a cosmic ray shower triggered the smoke alarm. We get a fair bit of cosmic ray activity, even down at sea level, and it only increases as you get higher in altitude. The articles I've read quote varying intensities of cosmic rays at sea level, usually something on the order of one cosmic ray particle per square centimetre per minute.
They've been known to mess up aircraft instrumentation, and even cause spontaneous computer crashes when they manage to corrupt bits stored in RAM. :lol: Cosmic rays also apparently make up about half of our normal background radiation levels here on Earth.
Astronauts in orbit are obviously more vulnerable to cosmic rays, being above the protection of the atmosphere. Apparently there've been reports of astronauts being woken from their sleep, by the bright flash of a cosmic ray particle triggering a particle shower inside their eyeball. :D
Possibly the most mind-bending thing I've heard about cosmic rays is the highest-energy cosmic ray particle ever detected. It was apparently a single proton, which was travelling so fast that it had a kinetic energy on the same order as that of a major-league fastball (the number quoted was 1x10^22 electron volts, or 1600 joules). :shock:
[url=http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/421/ziegler.html]Here[/url] is a nice article from IBM discussing cosmic ray intensity on Earth. :)