What is the Universe expanding into..

[system7]

After the Chernobyl disaster on 26 April 1986, a plume of radioactive material was carried more than 1,300 miles to the UK by the prevailing winds.

I remember my Geiger counter registering 36 counts/min - twice the normal background rate.

Because radioactive fallout landed on the upland pastures on which they grazed, sheep became radioactive.

Consequently, lamb had to be scanned by government officials before it was allowed to enter the food chain

The last restrictions on the movement and sale of sheep in the UK weren't lifted until 2012 - 26 years after the meltdown.

I think you must expect a tap on the shoulder from PC Plod with such nefarious activities as measuring radiation independently, Galu.

Legend has it that a Cumbrian farmer near Windscale notified the authorities that his cabbages were giving off a lot of clicks from his GEIGER COUNTER in the 1950s. Reputedly Windscale was burning nuclear waste and sending it up a chimney whilst making weapon's grade Plutonium for bombs.

The Authorities cured the problem by confiscating his geiger counter. And rebranding Windscale as Sellafield.

 

[sofaspud]

Unfortunately, the energy required to fire all our nuclear waste into the Sun would be enormous.

The Earth is traveling at around 67,000 miles per hour sideways relative to the Sun. The only way to get to the Sun is to cancel that sideways motion.

It actually takes 55 times more energy to go to the Sun than it does to go to Mars.

Go at night.

 

[Galu]

 

[sofaspud]

I recycled that funny, but the comment made me pause. Can you elaborate?
I don't question the physics, but how strict are we talking? When the rocket leaves Earth, that 67k mph IS cancelled, is it not? "To the Sun" isn't necessarily the target goal, only "close enough"?

 

[Terry Demol]

I did not read the link because the site asks me for permissions.
I guess it is at nausea the ecologists brain washing jazz and telling that the propellers are driven by electric motors.

Batteries are damn heavy for aviation.
I cannot imagine a serious plane driven on batteries.
Are they calculations and results about range and payload.

I believe energy density /kg of current best Li-ion batteries needs to roughly
double to start to make things feasible but I'm no expert on this by any
stretch.

That will happen but it will take some time, *possibly less than we think.
Theoretical potential energy density of Lithium batteries is actually many
times of what is being achieved now but a lot of obstacles to overcome not
the least being actually manufacturing them at scale.

Back in the auto world there is a significant move to *less energy dense
chemistries such as LFP that are more cost effective (and longer lasting).

TCD

 

[benb]

(Which begs the question from me, what kind of earth bound fusion process are scientists working on for energy production because the one in the sun doesn't look all that promising :confised: )

Yes, as mentioned in another post there's different types of fusion ... how they know this I'm not sure, apparently they have very good models of what happens to hydrogen atoms at very high temperatures. They can't reproduce the high pressure at the center of the Sun, but another type of fusion can be done at lower pressure and higher temperature, thus the figure I've heard of 100 million degrees for the plasma in a fusion reactor, much higher than the center of the Sun. Thus fusion "using the same power as the Sun" is a bit misleading.

How do you have an enclosure that's even several feet from something at 100 million degrees? So many questions, and it'll cost so many billions to answer them ...

 

[benb]

I think you must expect a tap on the shoulder from PC Plod with such nefarious activities as measuring radiation independently, Galu.

Legend has it that a Cumbrian farmer near Windscale notified the authorities that his cabbages were giving off a lot of clicks from his GEIGER COUNTER in the 1950s. Reputedly Windscale was burning nuclear waste and sending it up a chimney whilst making weapon's grade Plutonium for bombs.

The Authorities cured the problem by confiscating his geiger counter. And rebranding Windscale as Sellafield.

I'm reminded of this.
How Kodak Exposed The Atomic Bomb - YouTube

 

[system7]

Galu explained that temperature is really just average velocity per particle according to Mr. Boltzmann. I suppose the Large Hadron Collider could recreate Fusion by whacking Deuterium H(2) nuclei together to make He(4).

It is a fact that the reason Nuclear Reactors are popular with governments is they make weapon's grade fissile materials like Plutonium 239, whilst the consumer pays for it by buying expensive Nuclear Energy. Win-Win!

Enjoyed the Video benb. Everything I like in an expose. Two-headed rabbits, graphs of excess Cancer deaths from Strontium 90 and Iodine 131 and Cesium 137 fallout...

Uranium 235 and 238 are harmless in the wild. Half-lives of millions and billions of years. Just sits there doing nothing really. But once you fission them, you get everything that is toxic and nasty.

I was reminded of this play and film by Paul Zindel "The Effect of Gamma Radiation on Man-in-the Moon Marigolds". An unforgettable title for a Physicist like me, I wondered what the effect might be:

Not very much happens in the course of the movie. The family takes in a boarder, a senile old woman they name Fanny Annie; a pet rabbit is murdered, and the mother, Beatrice, spends a drunken night with a lecherous antique dealer, then has a run-in the next morning with a local cop who used to be in her high-school home room.

Meanwhile, Matilda is preparing her exhibit for the finals of the high school science fair. Her big competition is a horrid girl who has assembled the skeleton of a cat after boiling off its skin. “No matter what anyone says,” the little sadist explains, “the cat was dead when I got it from the animal shelter.”

Matilda’s project has to do, as the title suggests, with an experiment to determine how small amounts of radium affect marigolds, Sometimes the flowers die, alas; but sometimes the radiation causes strange and beautiful mutations, totally unlike the original plants.

That is what has happened of course, to Matilda. Living in a grim world, she has somehow remained uncorrupted.

And the performance by Nell Potts (Newman and Woodward’s daughter) is extraordinary. She glows.

Roger Ebert was a stunningly good film critic, won a Pullitzer. He was later hugely disfigured by operations on his Thyroid Cancer which eventually killed him. By some sad and strange synchronicity, the usual suspect in Thyroid cancer is radioactive Iodine 131.

 

[Galu]

I think you must expect a tap on the shoulder from PC Plod with such nefarious activities as measuring radiation independently, Galu.

At one time, PC Plod would have had to question a whole generation of budding nuclear scientists!

Didn't you have one of the attached to go along with your chemistry set and abacus, Steve?

 

[Galu]

"Matilda’s project has to do, as the title suggests, with an experiment to determine how small amounts of radium affect marigolds."

What made my Geiger counter go crazy was a vintage wrist watch with radioluminescent paint on its hands and dial!

Radioluminescent paint contains radium, the element which was first discovered by, and which eventually killed, Marie Curie.
Radium emits mostly alpha particles, but it's also a gamma emitter and some of its decay products emit beta particles.
When combined with a phosphor (usually zinc sulphide) the emissions make the phosphor glow, producing radioluminescent paint.
Even when the glow of a vintage luminous watch has stopped, the radium remains radioactive, taking thousands of years to completely decay.

This takes us back to the pollution of our environment:

Dalgety Bay in Fife remains radioactive to this day because of the radioluminescent paint applied to dials of Second World War aircraft that were broken up and burned at Donibristle airbase.
Some particles found on the foreshore have been so highly radioactive they could be deadly if they got inside the body and “hot” enough to cause radiation burns on bare skin.
Proper clean up operations have finally started 30 years after the radioactive contamination was first detected.

30 years on, Scotland'''s radioactive beach clean-up begins at last | The Scotsman

 

[Galu]

When the rocket leaves Earth, that 67k mph IS cancelled, is it not?

Consider throwing a rubber ball sideways out of the window of an express train. This action does not cancel the forward motion of the ball, does it?

To send a spacecraft to the Sun, you have to completely slow down its orbital velocity.

This means the spacecraft must be accelerated to equal the Earth’s orbital velocity, but in the opposite direction.

With the orbital velocity cancelled out, the spacecraft can then surrender to the Sun's gravity and begin to fall towards it.

Currently, rocket technology isn't capable of cancelling out the Earth's orbital velocity without 'gravity assists' from other planets such as Venus.

The reason Mars is an easier destination is that you only need to slightly increase your orbital speed to get there.

 

[Bonsai]

Parker probe

Parker Solar Probe clocks 330,000 mph as the fastest object ever made

 

[Galu]

Parker probe

Parker Solar Probe clocks 330,000 mph as the fastest object ever made

The Parker Probe was last mentioned on page 639.

The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018, and by the end of its 7 year mission it will reach a distance of roughly 3.8 million miles from the Sun and fly through its corona.

Assisted by a series of gravitational slingshots with Venus, the probe will reach a speed of roughly 430,000 mph, which will set the record for the fastest-moving spacecraft in history.

It has some way to go yet in velocity terms, with about another 16 laps of the Sun to go!

 

[system7]

My antipathy to Atomic Energy is well known...

How can that "Atomic Energy Lab" be remotely safe for a kid?

Cloud chamber, presumably some source of Alpha-particles...

Anywhoo, spent part of today watching "The Effect of Gamma Ray Radiation on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds."

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds / 1972 - YouTube

Excellent if stagey film. The family lives in a tip with a slightly crazy mother played by Oscar-winning Joanne Woodward. The two little girls try to make sense of it all. Matilda is bought a Rabbit and three packets of variously irradiated Marigold seeds by her teacher.

Apparently Cobalt 60 was the irradiating weapon of choice. High energy Gammas. There was even a national Atomic Gardening effort going into this project. You could get seeds mail order.

Atomic gardening - Wikipedia

It seems that some vaguely useful mutant plants arose from this bizarre project. Intensely Red grapefruits being one of them. Mystery of the film was really "Who killed Matilda's rabbit?" She loved that Rabbit. I was moved.

Marigolds may be going to the Moon. They thrive in Moon soil with a few microbes to help them absorb Potassium. Other Boffins think growing Marigolds on the Moon is just Science Fiction.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Plants 'thrive' on Moon rock diet

 

[Bonsai]

I thought you could get trails in a cold chamber just from energetic atmospheric gas molecules ?

 

[Galu]

Early cloud chambers were filled with air saturated with water vapour. The air molecules become ionised by the passage of positive alpha particles or negative beta particles. The ionised molecules act as centres of condensation for the water vapour, forming a trail of clouds which reveal the paths taken by the radioactive particles.

Energetic atmospheric gas molecules, unless they are positive or negative ions and can be introduced into the cloud chamber, would not produce trails in a cloud chamber.

Have you any more information, Bonsai?

 

[Galu]

It seems that some vaguely useful mutant plants arose from this bizarre project.

That's why I never kept my radioluminescent wrist watch in my trouser pocket!

 

[Galu]

The popularity of atomic gardening coincided with a postwar society seeking to put newly discovered atomic energy to use.

That reminds me of what followed the discovery of radium.

Would you believe radium was incorporated into health drinks, hair preparations and cosmetics?

 

[system7]

My current exploration of Life, the Universe and everything is about STEPHEN HAWKING.

Does a Man who is frequently disproved have anything to say? Lenny Susskind and Gerard Van 'Thooft picked holes in his notions. Well, I liked his vague theory that TIME is orthogonal to SPACE. But, as ever, he leaves you wanting more. Like fleshing it out a bit.

Anywhoo, I have invested 20p in his Hollywood Biopic. Doubtless I will be falling off my cinematic seat at his sheer vagueness. Selling a lot of Christmas books is one thing. Proving Maths for all time, much more challenging.

Look forwards to my critique.

 

[Galu]

It's a 'wheely' good film!