How A Mario Speedrun Got Ruined By (Actual) Cosmic Rays

This wouldn’t stop DOTAteabag’s quest for an explanation, and six years later, he returned … seemingly with his sanity bar depleted, claiming that cosmic rays had caused the glitch.

But he was actually right.

In practice, the glitch was caused by something as simple as a 1 flipping to a 0 inside the game’s code without the player’s input. This changed Mario’s position, but to explain why it happened, DOTAteabag found Intel’s documentation of a similar glitch in their old hardware that happened when an accumulation of electrons in the semiconductor well caused the flip. Intel ran subsequent tests which proved the theory. Though still rare, the likelihood of this taking place in the future is only going to get higher, as the constant size reduction of hardware components only contributes to the chances of further bit flips:

Turns out cosmic rays can even cause a plane to take a nosedive, but let’s ignore that and focus on what really matters: research also concluded there’s no amount of radiation exposure that justifies casting Chris Pratt to play Mario.

Top Image: Nintendo