How do computers deal with getting hit by radiation?

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Earth gets hit by cosmic rays all the time. Wouldn’t this, or other radiation affect the electrons carrying information within a computer? How do computers deal with this?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It can happen, and depending on the intensity of the scrambling of data, either nothing will happen, or you crash the system, with other random bugs happening in between those extremes.

In the case where nothing happens, which is what you’re mainly asking about, it’s because software designers were clever, and made redundancies. [Hamming Codes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_code) are used to show when only one bit has been flipped, as would happen in a cosmic ray.

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