Measuring fluctuations of earth's magnetic fields inside a pc ?

Hello,

I am wondering if there is anything inside a PC that could be used to measure fluctuations in earth's magnetic field ?

For now only thing I could come up with is "bit errors" caused in ram memory maybe caused by transister flips ? Question is can earth magnetic fields cause any transister or other component to suddenly flip ? For example if the magnetic field would be very strong ? I kinda doubt it because if this was the case then this would happen more often... but then again maybe error correction takes care of this.

Maybe file systems on harddisks might show some form of corruption... but these could be caused by simply software errors or hardware crashes.

Another idea might be to observe the speed of the cpu or gpu... for example doing massive ammounts of calculations... if the earth magnetic field changes... then maybe this would slow down electrons or maybe even speed them up... and thus the cpu might start to slow down or speed up momentarily... even if this would work and be detectable doing massive ammount of calculations all the time would not be desirable... maybe just running something that measures the reaction speed of the cpu when it's idle might do...

However with computers always on the internet and receiving packets now and then this might be very difficult to do since the cpu will fluctuate a lot ;) maybe gpu might be more stable but I doubt that too...

Would be funny if it was possible to detect though... maybe under ideal circumstances/laboratorium circumstances...

I wonder if cpu or gpu speed will change when put into a strong magnetic field ?!?

(Maybe a fluctuating field is required ?)

Who is going to do this experiment ? ;) Or has it be done already and what are the results ?! ;) :)

Bye, Skybuck.

Reply to
Skybuck Flying
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Also if true... how do they make an atomic clock ?

I would guess it would be shielded from earth magnetic fields ?! ;)

So my theory of cpu speed fluctuations because of magnetic fields might be already confirmed by the shielding for the atomic clock ;)

Or alternatively the atomic clock is not shielded from magnetic fields and therefore "they" are being fooled into believing it runs on time ! ;) :)

Bye, Skybuck :)

Reply to
Skybuck Flying

I also wonder if it's possible at all to "shield" anything from magnetic fields or earth's (electro(?)) magnetic fields ?!

It seems to go through the earth just fine... so why would it be stopped by anything on earth ?!?

Seems kinda contradictionatory to me ! ;) :)

Bye, Skybuck.

Reply to
Skybuck Flying

One last explanation is that the atomic clock builders are aware of this and know that the atomic clock does run inprecise now and then ;)

What would happen if the atomic clock is hit by electromagnetic fields from an earth quake ? ;)

Hmm...

Bye, Skybuck.

Reply to
Skybuck Flying

This link explains an atomic clock a little bit:

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It does mention "shielding".

No further explanation of this concept is given...

Me go lookup magnetic shielding ! ;)

Bye, Skybuck.

Reply to
Skybuck Flying

hmm.. it seems it has something to do with "waves" and/or "particles"...

I guess it's particles after all since they mention "light photons"... so light could be a wave of photons...

So maybe magnetic fields stuff is waves of electrons or whatever...

Shielding seems to be about to somehow "extract" these electrons from the air and guide them over metals or so.

This could mean that maybe simple sticking a wire into a soundblaster's mic input might be able to capture some of these magnetic fields/particles ?!

Maybe this is what causes the "noise" ;)

Me not sure about that.

But suppose it's true... suppose that the "snow" on a television or the "noise" on a soundblaster is earth's magnetic fields/particles interaction with the device then at least this is a way to visualize the earth's magnetic field...

Next time there is an earthquake observe the "snow" on a television to see what happens ! ;)

The snow does look somewhat regular during normal days so maybe this offers some kind of statistical analysis possibility...

As long as the snow looks "normal" then everything is ok...

During an earthquake build up the snow might start to look weird... or develop certain statistical properties... maybe more clustering or so...

This could be detectable and offer an early earthquake warning system ?! ;)

Bye, Skybuck.

Reply to
Skybuck Flying

Yes, of course there is! It's the fuse in the power supply. If the ambient field goes high enough to bring the switchmode inductor into saturation, the result is a short circuit, and the fuse blows.

It's only a one-bit measurement, of course.

Reply to
whit3rd

No. Nothing.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

I think I now understand why cellphones trigger CRT monitors when they are "called".

CRT monitors have a deguassing coil... I think the energy from the mobile phone enters into the coil... triggering a degaussing !

Magnetic fields were also used by the germans to make mines that detect metal ships ?! Hmm :)

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Bye, Skybuck ! ;) :)

Reply to
Skybuck Flying

It's kinda interesting... CRT televisions seem to do this when they switch on... next time I stand back a bit just in case ;) I usually do that anyway...

Maybe the deguassing of a CRT monitor could be used to whipe the contents of a harddisk...

Hold the harddisk against the CRT monitor and switch it on... and see what happens.

I better not do that with my own harddisks ?! ;) This also means a repair man that doesn't know about this might be screwed ;)

Maybe I try this with a floppy disk to see if the floppy disk gets "deguassed" by the CRT monitor/television ! ;)

Bye, Skybuck.

Reply to
Skybuck Flying

It can even make "modern harddisks" totally unusuable so be warned ! ;)

This does prove cellphones can be dangerous...

Anybody carrieing a cellphone and standing next to a coil or some kind of deguassing thingy could trigger wipeout of data... for example somebody else standing next to him and holding a harddisk.

Cellphones seem to have some kind of protection from magnetic fields and such... it's kinda remarkable that they can hold data at all ? but maybe the lack of a strong degaussing coil explains that... I have yet to see a picture of a such a degaussing coil ?!?

I wonder if cellphones are disallowed in data centers ? Probably yes ?! ;) :)

Airplanes probably too for good reason...

It's also kinda remarkable that IBM choose a magnetic medium for storage... magnetic fields everywhere... kinda surprising that it works at all...

I have been lucky too... my crt television is only 1 meter away from my harddisks... any closer and I might have had a problem ?!

This could be a good reason to replace it with something else... a lcd based television to get rid of the deguassing coils to make sure my harddisks last longer ?!

I am not sure what the range of the deguassing coil/field is ?!?

I did have some file system related corruption lately... but I guessed it was from crashes in the past ?!?

Also sometimes the flash chip inside the digital camera... and the digital camera says: "unable to read flash chip..." then I try again and then it does read it... maybe dirt or is it some magnetic interference going on ? There are some wifi things here and there from neighbours and such...

Hmm...

Well so far so good ! ;)

Bye, Skybuck.

Reply to
Skybuck Flying

Your CRT. You orient it horizontal instead of vertical, and as you rotate it, you will see the colors change, because of the Earth's magnetic flux.

You are an absolute retard. Stay OUT of the electronics industry. We do not need another dope like you.

Reply to
CellShocked

Yeah, I meant to say that.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

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Absolutely NOT! The earth's magnetic field is four or five orders of magnitude to small to affect transistors or anything else in a computer. If there are random errors as you postulate, they likely would be caused by cosmic rays or high energy particles from deep space. However, all circuits that are vulnerable use error correction routines to keep the actual error rate vanishingly small. You could never detect errors in this manner.

Reply to
Bob Eld

Don't forget the Skybuck Effect, which causes expensive computer components to self-destruct frequently with no apparent cause.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

He said "inside a pc [sic]". So that only works if he's got an iMac. Anything else and he's SOL.

Tim

Reply to
Tim Williams

Quantum Components

Generally describe as so when no logical explanation came be found!

Reply to
Jamie

The earth's magnetic field is FAR too weak to affect anything in a standard computer. Memory bit-flips are caused by cosmic rays or other ionizing radiation, not magnetic fields.

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Reply to
David Kerber

Magnetic shielding is done with magnetic materials, typically iron alloys. They prevent external magnetic fields from getting inside, or internal ones from getting out.

The earth's iron core is what generates the fields. The main body of the earth isn't made of magnetic materials, so the field goes through them just fine.

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Reply to
David Kerber

If we all started running in one (rotational) direction at once, it would cause the earth to spin faster, and so might increase the field. That idea is no sillier than some of the others in this thread.

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

Reply to
nmm1

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