Back in 2003 Belgium was holding a national election. One of their first where the votes would be cast and counted on computers. Thousands of hours of preparation went into making it unhackable. And when the day of the vote came, everything seemed to have gone well. That was, until a cosmic chain of events caused a single bit to flip and called the outcome into question.
Today on Radiolab, we travel from a voting booth in Brussels to the driver's seat of a runaway car in the Carolinas, exploring the massive effects tiny bits of stardust can have on us unwitting humans.
This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler and Annie McEwen.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.
And check out our accompanying short video Bit Flip: the tale of a Belgian election and a cosmic ray that got in the way. This video was produced by Simon Adler with illustration from Kelly Gallagher.
Duration
59m
Broadcast on
08 May 2019
Audio Format
other
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Back in 2003 Belgium was holding a national election. One of their first where the votes would be cast and counted on computers. Thousands of hours of preparation went into making it unhackable. And when the day of the vote came, everything seemed to have gone well. That was, until a cosmic chain of events caused a single bit to flip and called the outcome into question.
Today on Radiolab, we travel from a voting booth in Brussels to the driver's seat of a runaway car in the Carolinas, exploring the massive effects tiny bits of stardust can have on us unwitting humans.
This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler and Annie McEwen.
And check out our accompanying short video Bit Flip: the tale of a Belgian election and a cosmic ray that got in the way. This video was produced by Simon Adler with illustration from Kelly Gallagher.
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RIDILEB is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trade-in. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. Anyhow, anyhow, anyhow, anyhow, anyhow, anyhow, anyhow, you need a microphone? I think we're going to share what else are we going to do, I think it's good, it's fine. And he's going to have to sort of strike like a viper. Hey, I'm Chad. I'm Robert Crowwich. This is RadioLab. I will go like this. Yes. And today, just a story about when things from far, far away. Come by in your head. Hit very close to home. Just put your hand on his forehead. Or over my mouth. That's fine. Comes to us from producers, Simon Adler, and Anime QA. Okay. Okay. So you're going to tell us something about something. Should I start us? Yeah, yeah. You start. Okay. So, we've been exploring what happened on May 18th, 2003, in the great city of Brussels, specifically in Skarbeck. Skarbeck. One of the municipalities in Brussels. Story starts with this guy. So it was around 11.30 p.m. And I was with one of my colleagues at a restaurant to have one of the good meals of the day. This is Emmanuel. Emmanuel Willems. I am the, the one everybody calls when shit hits the fan. Yeah, let's put it that way. And that evening, Emmanuel, along with much of the rest of the country, was waiting around for that day's national election results. The results for all the different parliamentary assemblies. But Emmanuel's mind was on something else. Because across the country that day, millions of people had just voted on computers. Belgium was in the early days of experimenting with electronic voting. And so instead of filling in a paper ballot, in the voting booth was a touchscreen computer
Transcription truncated.
Back in 2003 Belgium was holding a national election. One of their first where the votes would be cast and counted on computers. Thousands of hours of preparation went into making it unhackable. And when the day of the vote came, everything seemed to have gone well. That was, until a cosmic chain of events caused a single bit to flip and called the outcome into question.
Today on Radiolab, we travel from a voting booth in Brussels to the driver's seat of a runaway car in the Carolinas, exploring the massive effects tiny bits of stardust can have on us unwitting humans.
This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler and Annie McEwen.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.
And check out our accompanying short video Bit Flip: the tale of a Belgian election and a cosmic ray that got in the way. This video was produced by Simon Adler with illustration from Kelly Gallagher.
