cosmic rays

cos·mic ray

C c

Transcription

- US Pronunciation
- US IPA
- [koz-mik rey]
- /ˈkɒz mɪk reɪ/

- US Pronunciation
- US IPA
- [koz-mik rey]
- /ˈkɒz mɪk reɪ/

Definitions of cosmic rays words

noun plural cosmic rays Cosmic rays are rays that reach Earth from outer space and consist of atomic nuclei. 3
noun plural cosmic rays radiation consisting of particles, esp protons, of very high energy that reach the earth from outer space 3
noun cosmic rays streams of high-energy charged particles from outer space, composed of protons, alpha particles, and a few heavier nuclei, which bombard the atoms in the upper atmosphere and produce various secondary nuclear particles which shower the earth 3
noun cosmic rays a radiation of high penetrating power that originates in outer space and consists partly of high-energy atomic nuclei. 1
noun Technical meaning of cosmic rays Notionally, the cause of bit rot. However, this is a semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to handwave away any minor randomness that doesn't seem worth the bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric - I just got a burst of garbage on my tube, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I guess." Compare sunspots, phase of the moon. The British seem to prefer the usage "cosmic showers"; "alpha particles" is also heard, because stray alpha particles passing through a memory chip can cause single bit errors (this becomes increasingly more likely as memory sizes and densities increase). Factual note: Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not explain random bit drops in their early chips, and one hypothesis was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe, using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis was that if cosmic rays were causing the bit drops, they should see a statistically significant difference between the error rates on the two boards. They did not observe such a difference. Further investigation demonstrated conclusively that the bit drops were due to alpha particle emissions from thorium (and to a much lesser degree uranium) in the encapsulation material. Since it is impossible to eliminate these radioactives (they are uniformly distributed through the earth's crust, with the statistically insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it became obvious that one has to design memories to withstand these hits. 1
noun cosmic rays plural of cosmic ray. 0

See all 6 definitions of cosmic rays

Information block about the term

Origin of cosmic rays

First appearance:

before 1920

One of the 12% newest English words

An Americanism dating back to 1920-25

Historical Comparancy

Parts of speech for Cosmic rays

noun

adjective

verb

adverb

pronoun

preposition

conjunction

determiner

exclamation

Full grammatical hierarchy of Cosmic rays

cosmic rays popularity

A pretty common term. Usually people know it’s meaning, but prefer to use a more spread out synonym. About 34% of English native speakers know the meaning and use word.

According to our data about 75% of words is more used. This is a rare but used term. It occurs in the pages of specialized literature and in the speech of educated people.

cosmic rays usage trend in Literature

This diagram is provided by Google Ngram Viewer