Tldr; Not aliens
Instead, corrupted onboard memory. Not too surprising, considering the conditions this thing has been traveling through for longer than I have been alive.
Booooo
Not ghosts either.
No ghosts? Man, space is so lame now.
Space ghost? Next you’ll tell me it’s coast to coast!
Eldritch abominations still not ruled out though.
goddammit
I’ve seen this before. It’s humpback whales. We need to find the nuclear wessels.
Oooh I don’t think I know the answer to that. I think it’s across the Bay, in Alameda.
Cosmic ray particle. Same thing happened during a Mario64 speed run years ago. The particle just happened to be flying through space and the earth and just happened to hit a spot on one of the computer chips. It made Mario warp upwards slipping a crucial section of the clockwork level. They couldn’t figure it out for years.
Pretty neat. They wreck havoc in computers when it happens.
That’s actually probably not true, it was suggested as one possible reason and games media outlets ran with it. https://youtu.be/vj8DzA9y8ls As far as Voyager goes, it’s equally if not more likely that the memory is starting to fail after nearly 5 decades in constant use.
I don’t give the slightest shit about speedrunning or bit flips, but I sat through that entire video and found it fascinating.
Haha well that’s good at least! There are some great YouTube speed run analysis / history videos in this same style. You should check them out even if you don’t really care about speed running.
Memory fails because of cosmic rays, this is why computer server systems use ECC memory
TIL
correction code (ECC) memory is a type of RAM memory found in workstations and servers. It’s valued by professionals and businesses with critical data for its ability to automatically detect and correct memory errors, thus fighting data corruption. It’s also supposed to lead to less crashes of a server / workstation over non-ECC memory, making it really appealing to IT professionals and businesses, including financial institutions and public cloud service companies, where data corruption and outages are catastrophes.
From Tom’s Hardware
ETA: thank you!
Memory fails for lots of reasons, more than just cosmic rays.
Same thing happened during a Mario64 speed run years ago. The particle just happened to be flying through space and the earth and just happened to hit a spot on one of the computer chips. It made Mario warp upwards slipping a crucial section of the clockwork level. They couldn’t figure it out for years.
You cannot seriously believe this bullshit. There are so many other potential possibilities with actually a fair likelihood, than such a stupidly rare cosmic event to be the cause of it.
Veratisium did a good video about it. https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8?si=mR7B5V4qIlhTF0Gc
if you think it’s unbelievable, then the video is probably worth a watch
If you think is belivable this one is worth a watch https://youtu.be/vj8DzA9y8ls?si=JmHztJMxA_JqXJqC
You’re missing the point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_razor
No I get what you are saying, the thing is that the cosmic ray bit flip fits the razor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray
Studies by IBM in the 1990s suggest that computers typically experience about one cosmic-ray-induced error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month.
It isn’t unlikely for it to have happened on non-ECC hardware. I think they even replicated what happened in the video in an emulator with a single bit flip, so it really just boils down to “what are the chances someone recorded while a bit flip did something noteworthy”, and the odds are… pretty big actually, over so mamy years.
To be honest I kinda suspect you’ve done no effort to fact check this but are just going with your gut feeling? I don’t mind discussing this further, but if so I’d really like to hear what your point is, because if it is that: a) cosmic bit flips doesn’t happen or b) a bit flip couldn’t have impacted the game like that then I think you’re better off watching that video I linked or actually read up on the subject because my impression is that if you apply occam’s razor to that mario64 incident… a bit flip is all that’s on the table.
No I get what you are saying, the thing is that the cosmic ray bit flip fits the razor.
It does not, because there’s plenty of simpler and much more likely explanations than that.
I think they even replicated what happened in the video in an emulator with a single bit flip
You think. But they didn’t. They replicated something that fairly looked close, but not the same. If it was a bit flip, it would have been reproducible in the exact same way. You can see this very example being done in the other video someone linked here, disproving your entire argument.
To be honest I kinda suspect you’ve done no effort to fact check this but are just going with your gut feeling?
And I suspect you’re projecting. You watched a video that was spreading the myth and are now hell bent on believing it to be the cause, because you want to, rejecting any other explanation.
I don’t mind discussing this further, but if so I’d really like to hear what your point is, because if it is that: a) cosmic bit flips doesn’t happen or b) a bit flip couldn’t have impacted the game like that then I think you’re better off watching that video I linked or actually read up on the subject because my impression is that if you apply occam’s razor to that mario64 incident… a bit flip is all that’s on the table.
You clearly still miss the point, making me personally not wanting to discuss this further. I know that cosmic bit flips happen, but I also know that the example you’re talking about isn’t caused by a cosmic ray bit flip. It is way more likely that it is caused by some faulty hardware issue than a cosmic ray hitting it exactly at that moment causing exactly this outcome.
lmao this sounds like the sort of shit my uncle would come up with instead of accepting that “xQtipx” is not a valid word in Scrabble
I wonder if they can remote fix it, like block of the damaged ram, via code injection.
FWIW, the voyager probes have 69.63 kB of ram to work with.
64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE
Or just send a ship out to retrieve, repair, and release it.
I’d like to see some math on how long it would take a fully orbit refilled Starship to reach it and return.
Someone send Elon… I’m sure it will be a quick trip so no need for extensive rations😉
This could be the 2050 X Prize.
This is a slightly different question (retrieving Voyager I) but an interesting read nonetheless.
for the cost of doing that, it’d probably be better to invest the time and resources in a new satellite all together. it’s kinda the same dilemma as the Wait Calculation
Lets hope it’s possible but the thing is basically a Artifact by nowadays standards, so the probability is low, if its physically damaged its basically dead.
The First Artifact. I like it.
Answered in the article.
“Although it may take several months, the engineers say they can find a workaround to run the FDS without the fried chip — restoring the spacecraft’s messaging output and enabling it to continue to send readable information from outside our solar system.”
Nah they’re gonna have to send somebody out there
Maybe there is already somebody out there, who is manipulating the signal. 👽
