Alien subatomic particles from outer space are wreaking havoc on Earth’s electronic devices – including your smartphones.

Many have felt the frustration of a frozen screen and cursed Apple, Microsoft or Google.

But it appears that these rays are to blame for some of the glitches.

Scientists found that millions cosmic particles are striking our bodies every second could have a devastating affect on critical infrastructure, too.

“This is a really big problem, but it is mostly invisible to the public,” said Bharat Bhuva, professor of electrical engineering at Vanderbilt University during a conference for the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Friday.

Bhuva and his colleagues have found that millions of energetic neutrons, muons, pions and alpha particles that are soaring through space could carry enough energy to affect the memory in our gadgets.

In some cases they can interfere with data stored in memory, which causes your phone to freeze.

“The semiconductor manufacturers [phone chip make] are very concerned about this problem because it is getting more serious as the size of the transistors in computer chips shrink and the power and capacity of our digital systems increase,” Bhuva said.

“In addition, microelectronic circuits are everywhere and our society is becoming increasingly dependent on them.”

Alien ray attacks have been found to attack plane and voting systems too.

In 2003, in the town of Schaerbeek, Belgium, suffered a “bit flip” causing an electronic voting machine to add 4,096 extra votes to one candidate.

The error was spotted after the glitch gave the candidate more votes than were possible and it was traced to a single bit flip in the machine’s register.

In 2008, the avionics system of a Qantus passenger jet flying from Singapore to Perth appeared to suffer from a single-event upset that caused the autopilot to disengage.

As a result, the aircraft dove 690 feet in only 23 seconds, injuring about a third of the passengers seriously enough to cause the aircraft to divert to the nearest airstrip.

Bhuva added that there has been a number of unexplained glitches in airline computers – some of which experts feel must have been caused by solar rays – which have resulted in cancellation of hundreds of flights.

Geomagnetic storms are behind the awe-inspiring natural phenomenon the Northern Lights.

But they can prove devastating to human civilization as we know it, experts have warned.

There is no evidence to suggest that they are playing havoc with our health.

But they could alter navigation systems, posing a serious safety risk.

This article originally appeared on The Sun.

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