Comments on: Ep. 72: Cosmic Rays http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-72-cosmic-rays/ Take a weekly facts-based journey through the cosmos with Astronomy Cast. Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:54:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Daniel http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-72-cosmic-rays/comment-page-1/#comment-1647 Daniel Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:23:47 +0000 http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-72-cosmic-rays/#comment-1647 Well said, finally a good report on this stuff Well said, finally a good report on this stuff

]]> By: Jason Etheridge http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-72-cosmic-rays/comment-page-1/#comment-230 Jason Etheridge Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:16:17 +0000 http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-72-cosmic-rays/#comment-230 In the latest edition of Quirks and Quarks, the leading story was about the work of Dr Ruth Bamford, who has created a spacecraft shield that simulates the Earth's magnetic field, to thus protect the crew from the harmful effects of cosmic rays and the solar wind. It apparently utilises a magnetic field to hold a plasma (which does the actual deflecting), and can be generated using only 400W. This would seem to be an essential breakthrough for long-duration space travel between the planets. http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/feb02.html In the latest edition of Quirks and Quarks, the leading story was about the work of Dr Ruth Bamford, who has created a spacecraft shield that simulates the Earth's magnetic field, to thus protect the crew from the harmful effects of cosmic rays and the solar wind. It apparently utilises a magnetic field to hold a plasma (which does the actual deflecting), and can be generated using only 400W. This would seem to be an essential breakthrough for long-duration space travel between the planets.

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/feb02.html

]]> By: David Sidwell http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-72-cosmic-rays/comment-page-1/#comment-197 David Sidwell Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:40:14 +0000 http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-72-cosmic-rays/#comment-197 G'day Fraser and Pamela, Back in the mid-80s, when PCs were still fairly new, my one just went CRASH. All by itself. The Blue Screen of Death message implied a memory problem. Our IT support guy happened to be sitting with me when it happened. He, like me, has a science background. So when he said "bloody cosmic rays", I did a double take. He said that the memory was the 'older' style which didn't have error/parity checking and cosmic rays would randomly cause a 1 to become a 0 and kaboom... G'day Fraser and Pamela,

Back in the mid-80s, when PCs were still fairly new, my one just went CRASH. All by itself. The Blue Screen of Death message implied a memory problem.
Our IT support guy happened to be sitting with me when it happened. He, like me, has a science background. So when he said "bloody cosmic rays", I did a double take.

He said that the memory was the 'older' style which didn't have error/parity checking and cosmic rays would randomly cause a 1 to become a 0 and kaboom…

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