#cosmic rays

#cosmic rays

Dyer told Space.com that solar radiation on the day of the flight was within normal levels and far too low to affect the aircraft. '[Cosmic rays] can interact with modern microelectronics and change the state of a circuit,' Dyer said. 'They can cause a simple bit flip, like a 0 to 1 or 1 to 0, messing up information and making things go wrong. 'They can even induce hardware failures when they generate a current in an electronic device and burn it out.'

The traditional astrophysical recipe for life as we know it involves getting a rocky, gas-shrouded world in a habitable zone where liquid water exists.