@silver-bolt: Yeah, something vaguely Doom-ish! Who's to say the Devil ain't some weird space monster. Wasn't there a Dr. Who episode about something like that?
Really NASA, a "cosmic ray"? That's the best you can give us? That's the explanation that the community college sci fi writing night course class would give.
@Pope John Peeps II: When they accidentally hit the record off button at NASA HQ during one of their wild drunken orgies and no one realized it for a week, they prolly thought it'd be better, PR-wise, to go with the cosmic ray cover story.
And on a lighter note. I love our plucky Martian robot rovers but don't the names Spirit and Opportunity sound incredibly lame? They sound like school glee club names or ad copy from an investment bank. Yech!
Viking. Now that was a proper name for a robot explorer! We need to get back to names like that!
@crashedpc: Well before we go overboard on the testosterone, to be fair, they should start naming probes after famous dead women explorers, pioneers and scientists. They could go with:
Amelia or maybe Earhart Jane Goodall or just Goodall. Cannary-Burke Sacajawea Louise Arner Boyd Julia Tuttle
Well, I suppose it would be pretty cool if it was a prelude to alien invasion (Or just simple alien sneaking around and hiding their tracks.) at least until the horror of that set in but, cosmic ray damage is not as rare as all that.
As the logic gates on chips get smaller and smaller it becomes easier for a charged cosmic ray particle to flip a one to a zero or vice versa and thereby damage the arithmetic or logic of a computer. This is usually temporary and most chips have error checking procedures and redundancy to protect against that. Usually such occurrences only lead to nanosecond delays in calculations, nothing we staggeringly slow humans would ever notice.
But things have gotten so tiny now that cosmic rays can occasionally leave lasting damage to circuit elements and in some cases this can render a chip useless. Which may have happened here.
@corpore-metal: If static electricity can destroy my sister's motherboard when I volunteered to look at it, imagine what kind of fun a cosmic ray can do to a multimillion dollar piece of equipment!
@crashedpc: Actually your static is many millions of times worse. Cosmic ray damage is rare and often tiny.
The way to think about it is to compare it to cosmic ray induced changes to DNA strands in an organism. This is very rare and in most cases nothing comes of it.
Every day septillions of cosmic rays plunge through meters of rock and other solid matter without affecting anything at all. On that scale and at those energies matter is mostly empty space. The chances of an individual, charged cosmic ray striking an atomic nucleus are exceedingly remote. But then there are lots of nuclei and lots of cosmic rays, eventually it happens.
Sounds like old Spirit saw something it shouldn't have seen, and its memory conveniently "malfunctioned." The Martians only want us to learn about their planet in small increments, don't ya know. If we saw too much all at once, there would be chaos on planet Earth.
@sega8800: Given that it's a gov'ment project I'm guessing that it has its own version of a Linux-based OS. Over here we're using a variation of LynxOS.
The Linux kernal is way too bulky and feature ridden for a mission critical use like this. They need something tiny, highly optimized and with as few failure modes as possible. Simple and easy to diagnose yet rock solid.
I'm thinking it's an entirely proprietary unix-like that the NASA's wrote and compiled themselves.
Anyway, defragmentation is entirely a Windows mistake. Real operating systems don't write data to a disk in such a sloppy way.
I'm assuming that right now Spirit is setting up the foundations for the first Mars colony? Like, literally paving the ground and raising up barns, Amish style.
02/04/09
And cosmic rays eh? Are Decepticons around Mars these days? Or is it Michael Bay's elaborate movie campaign?
02/04/09
I'm just a mean green mother from outer space and I'm bad
I'm just a mean green mother from outer space
And it looks like you been had
I'm just a mean green mother from outer space,
So get off my back 'n get out my face,
'Cause I'm mean and green and I am bad
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
//selecting 8 nos (1-100)without repeating
randomize();
a[0]=random(100);
while(i!=8)
{
I AM BEBO. FROM MARS. I WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND.
redo:
temp=random(100);
flag=1;
for(k=0;k<=i;k++)
if(a[k]==temp){flag=5;break;}
if (flag==5) goto redo;
HELLO? THIS IS BEBO. CAN YOU HEAR ME?
else
{
a[i++]=temp;
soil[z++]=temp;
}
int r=0;
while(r!=8)
I THINK WE CORRUPTED THE LITTLE BUGGER'S MEMORY CORE.
{
label:
temp=a[random(8)];
flag=1;
for(k=0;k<=r;k++)
if(soil[k]==temp){flag=5;break;}
if (flag==5) goto label;
else
soil[r++]=temp;
}
WE BETTER GET OUT OF HERE. MOM WILL BE MAD IF WE BROKE THEIR TOY.
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
The rovers have done incredibly well in this respect.
Here's hoping they can get things running.
It's got to be incredibly interesting to diagnose a probe on another planet, if not maddening. (depending on your proximity to the project)
02/04/09
Viking. Now that was a proper name for a robot explorer! We need to get back to names like that!
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
"The Pillager"
"Lock Up Your Martian Women"
"Peepers"
Naturally they all come accessorized with RoverNutz.
02/04/09
Amelia or maybe Earhart
Jane Goodall or just Goodall.
Cannary-Burke
Sacajawea
Louise Arner Boyd
Julia Tuttle
Stuff like that.
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
As the logic gates on chips get smaller and smaller it becomes easier for a charged cosmic ray particle to flip a one to a zero or vice versa and thereby damage the arithmetic or logic of a computer. This is usually temporary and most chips have error checking procedures and redundancy to protect against that. Usually such occurrences only lead to nanosecond delays in calculations, nothing we staggeringly slow humans would ever notice.
But things have gotten so tiny now that cosmic rays can occasionally leave lasting damage to circuit elements and in some cases this can render a chip useless. Which may have happened here.
02/04/09
02/04/09
The way to think about it is to compare it to cosmic ray induced changes to DNA strands in an organism. This is very rare and in most cases nothing comes of it.
Every day septillions of cosmic rays plunge through meters of rock and other solid matter without affecting anything at all. On that scale and at those energies matter is mostly empty space. The chances of an individual, charged cosmic ray striking an atomic nucleus are exceedingly remote. But then there are lots of nuclei and lots of cosmic rays, eventually it happens.
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
The Linux kernal is way too bulky and feature ridden for a mission critical use like this. They need something tiny, highly optimized and with as few failure modes as possible. Simple and easy to diagnose yet rock solid.
I'm thinking it's an entirely proprietary unix-like that the NASA's wrote and compiled themselves.
Anyway, defragmentation is entirely a Windows mistake. Real operating systems don't write data to a disk in such a sloppy way.
02/04/09
02/04/09
12/16/08
12/16/08
12/16/08
12/16/08
It will look cool when I'm still hungover and/or drunk when I see it the day after Xmas.
12/16/08
@crashedpc: This is what 52" TVs, BluRay, and Manhattans were made for.