Well-known computer failures can be caused by a single ionized particle from space
A computer failure. Image credit: THE7DEW/SHUTTERSTOCK .COM
In 2016, a game user was trying to quickly complete Super Mario 64 when he encountered a glitch that sped up the game.
Users of Twitch gaming platforms "DOTA_TeaBag" jump on some platforms when playing, and will suddenly be lifted up several platforms.
As you can see, there's nothing to fuss about this glitch. Failures are always there. However, this glitch caught the attention of a "big man" in the Mario Run game, and the user "pannenkoek2012" offered a reward of $1,000, hoping that anyone would be able to reproduce the glitch to improve their playtime.
According to Gamer, although the exact input has been copied frame by frame in the emulator, no one has been able to replicate the glitch. The fact that this failure cannot be replicated has led to the development of crazy theories, such as the so-called single-event disorder, which is caused by the collision of cosmic particles with particles in our atmosphere.
This popular theory among players is that a computer's memory is hit by a single ionized particle that can flip bits from 0 to 1, or from 1 to 0.
According to Gamer, the Single Event Disorder flips a byte responsible for Mario's height from 11000101 to 11000100, which is the height Mario needs to grab a higher platform. By flipping this section, another player is almost able to replicate the action.
It sounds crazy, is it really possible? If we're talking about possibilities, then the answer is yes.
NASA and other space agencies must take this into account when testing sensitive electronic equipment. Without atmospheric protection, devices are more likely to be hit by high-energy particles. When high-energy cosmic rays pass through the eyeball, astronauts can even see flashes of light.
"Single-event disorders have occurred in almost every low-orbit satellite system. Even as early as 1958, Explorer 1 discovered the existence of the Van Allen radiation belt. The U.S. Geological Survey (SGS) published on its website photos taken from the satellite Landsat 7.
Can you see pixels? It's dramatic. Image source: USGS
On Earth, this is much rarer — what's even rarer is that it can be discovered — but it can happen. On 7 October 2008, an Airbus A330-303 aircraft operated by Qantas suffered a system failure en route to Singapore, causing the plane to crash sharply, injuring more than 100 people on board. All the reasons that can be found are unlikely to occur and can only be attributed to a single event disorder, but there is not enough evidence to blame it.
In 2003, in Belgium, a single event disorder could have led to a voting machine casting an additional 4,000 votes in favor of the winning candidate. This means that candidates in the region have more votes than the population.
So in short, a single event disorder is likely to occur in a Mario Run game. But the odds are extremely low. The position may flip, but this may be due to overheating of the console (some gamers deliberately put the console in a hot place to trigger a malfunction) or related to the angle of the memory in the console.
"Frankly, gamma rays happen to flip a certain point, which seems a bit far-fetched to me," game user "Uncommentated Pannen" wrote in the video, which recreates the glitch. "Some in-game mechanics may treat high floats as an integer and decrement it, thereby reducing bits from 1 to 0."
"If there is no replication of any (exact) original failure, we cannot determine anything."
Related knowledge
Outer space, also known as outer space, cosmic space, referred to as space, outer space or space, refers to the empty area outside the Earth's atmosphere and other celestial bodies. Unlike a vacuum, outer space contains substances of very low density, dominated by hydrogen in a plasma state. Among them, there are electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields and so on. Theoretically, outer space may also contain dark matter and dark energy. There is no clear boundary between outer space and the Earth's atmosphere, as the atmosphere gradually thins as altitude increases.
The Van Allen Radiation Belt is a tire-like radiation layer formed by the aggregation of a large number of charged particles surrounding the Earth in the near-layer space near the Earth, discovered by the American physicist James Van Allen and named after him. The main source of the Van Allen belt particles is solar wind particles captured by the Earth's magnetic field, and these charged particles move back and forth between the two turns of the Van Allen belt.
BY: James Felton
FY: Dong Meihui
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