Well-Known Computer Glitch May Have Been Caused By A Single Ionizing Particle From Space


In 2018 in, a speedrunner Super Mario is trying to hit the 64 as fast as possible which helped to increase the speed a bit. Twitch user DOTA_TeaBag jumped a few platforms when he suddenly raised a few platforms. You can see the mistake for yourself below.

You see, the mistake that can easily get your claim denied is to fail. Glitches happen all the time. The problem, however, was that Mario speedruns (a sentence that makes me feel incredibly old), offered a $1,000 grant to improve his own time, for those who could recreate this glitches.

Gamer reports that no one has been able to replicate this error despite having the correct input-frame-by-frame replication in any emulator, this mistake was not a reason for some replicators to suggest some wild theory, it known as the opposite of a single event caused by the collision of cosmic particles with particles in our atmosphere.

The theory – popular among gamers – is that the cartridge was hit by a single ionizing particle, reversing slightly from 0 to a 1, or a 1 to a 0.


According to the gamer, this left behind a byte responsible for Mario’s height from 11000101 to 11000100, which was the height Mario needed for latching higher platforms. By reversing this bit, another gamer was able (almost) replicate Warp. So, as wild as this word is, is it possible? Okay, if we are talking possible, the answer is yes.

NASA and other space agencies need to consider this when testing sensitive electronic equipment. Without protection from the atmosphere, equipment is more likely to injure by strong particles. Astronauts even see a glimmer of light as the illuminated cosmic rays pass through their eyeballs.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) wrote on its website “single event upsets have been observed in almost every low-Earth orbital satellite system, even like the 1958 Explorer 1, which discovered the presence of the Van Allen Belts.” (USGS) wrote on their website; add below an example of an incident taken from the satellite Landsat 7.

On Earth, it is rare – even rare that it should spot – but it can happen. In October 7, 2008, an Airbus A330-303 operated by Qantas Airways was en route to Singapore when a system error caused the plane to jump dramatically downwards, injuring more than 100 people. All causes of error proven to impossible or too impossible, except for a single event error, although there was not enough evidence specifically blame it.

In Belgium in 2003, a single voting machine could cast an additional 4,000 votes in favor of the winning candidate due to a single event error, which was simply because the local area had more votes than the candidate did, given the population did.

So concisely, it happened during the reign of Mario speedrun but it still highly (from an astronomical point of view) impossible. The bit may have reversed, as shown in the demonstration above, but this could be due to a warm console (some speedrunners deliberately placed their consoles on hotplates to trigger glitches) or how the cartridge to the console.

“Honestly, a gamma-ray seems a bit far-fetched to me to invent something specific,” commented Uncommon Pannen, who wrote in their video. “It’s completely possible that some in-game mechanic treats the height float like an integer and decrements it, thus decreasing that bit from a 1 to a 0.” “We know nothing for sure except a copy of the original error.”

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