Cars VS Cosmic Rays

Sounding like a Hollywood movie title right???

Its no wonder how certain things in nature have the effect on each other...but, being a normal human being, its our turn just to wait and watch..wat is it all about...

Yes, can you believe this, At high altitudes, Cosmic rays could bring an airplane to the brink of disaster. And on the ground, they can crash computers and reset routers.

NASA engineering team has been called in to assist in a federal investigation. The reason being to find out whether Are Cosmic rays be what's causing the mysterious accelerator problems in Toyota cars? Maybe.


The team - drawn from the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, or NESC - serves as the space agency's rapid-response unit for engineering expertise. It was set up in the wake of the 2003 Columbia tragedy, in response to investigators' concerns that NASA didn't have an independent safety watchdog.

Since its formation seven years ago, NESC has taken on more than 100 engineering and safety assessments, said Keith Henry, a spokesman at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. "They range all the way from the shuttle and the International Space Station to interplanetary missions, Hubble, earth satellites and aviation questions," he told me.

However, the Toyota investigation apparently represents a new frontier: "This is the first time the NESC has done anything related to automobiles,"

Nowadays, that's not as big a leap as you might think. Automobiles are relying more heavily on electronics for control systems. Just as the aviation industry adopted fly-by-wire systems, the automotive industry is moving toward drive-by-wire. "There isn't that much difference anymore between spacecraft, aircraft and modern automobiles,"

Some suspect Toyota's troubles are the result of electronic glitches, and those are issues that will get close attention from the NASA engineers. Glitches could be caused by electromagnetic incompatibilities, or corrosion, or metal stress effects such as "tin whiskers," or elusive single-event effects such as cosmic-ray hits.

The cosmic-ray connection

Cosmic rays? Hitting cars? The connection made headlines last month when the Detroit Free Press reported that subatomic particles from outer space were being considered as a potential cause of the accelerator glitches. The report cited an anonymous memo sent to the National Highway Transportation Safety Board, complaining that "the automotive industry has yet to truly anticipate" the effects of cosmic radiation.

Earth's atmosphere stops most of the dangerous cosmic rays that zoom in from outer space, but some particles get through nevertheless. If those particles hit electronic chips, they can spark unpredictable little jolts of energy in the circuitry, potentially flipping bits out of their proper state. In space, cosmic rays can scramble the brains of a Mars orbiter. At high altitudes, they could bring an airplane to the brink of disaster. And on the ground, they can crash computers and reset routers.

Engineers try to make sure that the circuits they design are robust enough to weather cosmic rays, and Toyota insists its electronics are not at fault. But experts say that as the circuitry in our cars gets more sophisticated, cosmic rays become more of a concern.

"Modern electronics are more and more susceptible to the phenomenon," The smaller and more integrated the circuits are, the more likely you are to find it, unless you design around it."

Two years ago, Intel senior scientist Eric Hannah said it was just a matter of time before the cosmic-ray problem started affecting cars. "It's strange, but this is the reality we're moving into as we get smaller and smaller circuits,"

Has that time now arrived? It's too early to say for sure, but NASA's engineers may well help provide an answer. "Right now what they're doing, besides getting the team together, is designing the testing program and getting parts from Toyota,". The testing program will almost surely include blasting electronic components in a particle accelerator. That's a standard method for measuring vulnerability to cosmic rays.

NASA behind the wheel

This may well be NESC's first foray into automotive engineering, but NASA has delved into the field before. The space agency's wind tunnels have been used to improve the aerodynamics of race cars and semitrailer-trucks.

NASA engineers also have played supporting roles in developing technologies to clear the air in automobiles, produce better batteries for electric vehicles and build cars more efficiently with robots.