[HN Gopher] The hunt for Marie Curie's radioactive fingerprints ...
___________________________________________________________________
The hunt for Marie Curie's radioactive fingerprints in Paris
Author : rmason
Score : 100 points
Date : 2025-06-10 01:02 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| baxtr wrote:
| _> Marie Curie worked here from 1914 until 1934, the year of her
| death, handling radioactive elements including radium, which she
| and her husband Pierre Curie had discovered in 1898. For most of
| her life, she did this with bare, increasingly radium-scarred
| hands._
|
| This almost sounds medieval to my ears. It's kinda freighting how
| far we've gotten in merely 100 years.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Nearly everything you find in nature has such low levels of
| radioactivity that handling them isn't dangerous.
|
| It's only when you start refining and enriching natural things
| that they become really risky. Unfortunately thats what Curie
| did.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Inhaling/ingesting concentrated radioactive substances is a
| big danger with that kind of thing. There are so many
| variables and it's hard to measure. Health effects depend on
| where it ends up within the body.
| kergonath wrote:
| > It's only when you start refining and enriching natural
| things that they become really risky.
|
| It's a big factor, but not only. You don't need to refine or
| enrich anything to have radon poisoning, for example.
| Retric wrote:
| It's still similar. Radon concentrations in medieval
| dwellings would never reach the kind of concentrations you
| can see in modern homes because they leaked far more air. I
| wouldn't necessarily call a tight home refining or
| enriching but it's still dramatically increasing the
| concentration.
|
| Tunnels and caves could still be problematic though there's
| a lot of gasses that can cause problems in such
| environments.
| signalToNose wrote:
| Xkcd radiatorn chart:
|
| https://xkcd.com/radiation/
| tgv wrote:
| Someone has to find out the hard way. It was a time when people
| to Rontgen pictures for fun.
|
| Medieval? The 19th century was not a good place.
| tobylane wrote:
| My dad had childhood shoe shopping helped by xrays on the
| high street.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I wish we still had this. It could be done using far less
| power today, and besides, it's not like baby boomers are
| all getting foot cancer.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I wonder if it's more of an issue for the person giving
| the x-rays.
| lupusreal wrote:
| No doubt, but now with CCDs they don't need to be near
| the operating machine. The machine could be in a lead
| lined booth with a video display outside it for the shoe
| store employee to watch.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think the x-ray machines can now be made much more
| sensitive so the dose could be vastly smaller. That said,
| it's a bit unnerving when someone tells you something is
| save and then goes and hides behind a lead lined booth -
| even for me as someone who understands the stats around
| it.
|
| I do think it's in general a good idea to use such tools
| for better fits, shoes tend to focused more on narrow
| feet which is possibly a side effect of the shoes
| themselves. I have to stick to certain brands that cater
| towards wide feet. Perhaps in the future 3D printed shoes
| will be good enough that I can swap out my regular shoes
| for hyper-customized ones.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| A possibly better solution would be to establish a
| standard for shoe measurements in 3D space, that could
| then be compared to a 3D image of the foot (taken with
| visible light). Cameras and computers are cheap these
| days.
|
| Solves the fit problem quickly and avoids any X-Ray
| exposure.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Maybe.. but feet deform when standing in shoes and being
| able to see that effect seems very helpful.
| red75prime wrote:
| Limbs are much less sensitive to ionizing radiation,
| though. It's not good to play with in any case, of course.
| xattt wrote:
| A shoe-fitting fluoroscope! I'm only half-joking, but one
| using terahertz radiation would be _very_ handy to have
| while shoe-shopping with children.
|
| Kids can't reliably tell you the fit of their shoes, and
| some footwear doesn't yield to the "thumb-at-toe" test.
|
| (1) https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/when-xrays-were-all-the-
| rage-a...
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| I think you could use visible light and photogrammetry
| for the same purpose. You might need to take your socks
| off, though. Or put on a pair of the disposable thin "try
| on" socks the stores have for people who don't wear socks
| of their own.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Radiation was treated different back then, look at these
| choice anecdotes.
|
| > [A patent radioactive medicine]'s most loyal customer was
| Eben Byers, well known in Pittsburgh society as a wealthy
| manufacturer, sportsman, and playboy, approaching fifty
| years of age. Byers continued to take Radithor more
| desperately each year as his health failed, until in 1931
| he entered a hospital, feeble and emaciated, his very
| breath radioactive. He did not have time to develop cancer
| but died of direct radiation injury within a few months.
|
| > This was the first proven case of death from a patent
| radioactive medicine ... The public was not easily
| convinced that radioactivity could be dangerous at all
| [...] Doctors of sound reputation continued to use heavy
| doses of radiation to treat not only serious ailments but
| also cosmetic problems like warts or excess facial hair.
| Some even offered men temporary birth control through X-ray
| sterilization. As late as 1940 many hospital and laboratory
| workers were casually exposing themselves to radiation at
| levels far above the official guidelines.
|
| [...]
|
| > During the 1950s X-rays were often used to kill unwanted
| body hair, thousands of fluoroscopes in shoe Stores across
| the United States and Europe showed people the bones in
| their children's feet; some hospitals routinely X-rayed
| infants simply to please parents with an inside view of
| their offspring.
|
| From "Nuclear Fear; a history of images"
| pmcjones wrote:
| An X-ray machine was in the shoe store when I was little,
| but my father told us not to let it be used on us.
| fhsm wrote:
| The ~15% infant mortality at the time was spectacular progress
| and yet by modern standards unbearable. Medieval would have
| been closer to 50%. So on this measure about a third of the way
| back to the Middle Ages.
|
| https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/demograph...
| js2 wrote:
| Modern rates range from 0.15% (Slovenia) to 10%
| (Afghanistan):
|
| https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/infant-
| mortalit...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an.
| ..
| gmerc wrote:
| Oh, we're going back there baby.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Louis Pasteur's work establishing germ theory happened in the
| 1860's, and germ theory as the cause of disease wasn't really
| widely accepted until roughly this time period.
|
| Blood letting (and its foundation the four humors) was still a
| thing when the Curies discovered radium.
|
| We have come a long way indeed.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I've recently come around on bloodletting. It seems
| barbarous, but there are some ailments that it really does
| help with. It wasn't a wild extrapolation for our ancestors
| to think it helped with other things. For example, gout: I
| recently had an appointment to give blood during a pretty bad
| gout flare, but I didn't want to reschedule so I hobbled over
| there, cane and all. By the time I was done, I felt better
| than I had in days. Looked it up, and turns out there's a
| not-insignificant amount of research on the subject.
|
| I can totally imagine one of my gout-ridden relatives
| incidentally discovering that after losing a good chunk of
| blood (maybe a hunting accident, or a fuckup in a pottery
| workshop) that their foot stopped stabbing in pain. And then
| going "what else can I cure this way?".
|
| And there's some new things that bloodletting is the only
| known treatment for. Like PFAS accumulation.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > And then going "what else can I cure this way?"
|
| That's the difference. Bloodletting seems barbarous because
| it definitely didn't cure most things it was used for.
| imzadi wrote:
| I just read The Radium Girls, about the women children who were
| hired to paint clock faces and military instruments with radium
| paint. 100s of young girls who died in their 20s and 30s
| because they were carelessly exposed to the radiation. It
| struck me that they were born around the same time as my own
| grandmother. We really have come a long way in a fairly short
| amount of time.
| rtkwe wrote:
| You're leaving out the horrific part where they weren't told
| about the known dangers and we routinely licking/shaping
| their brushes to get finer points which was a big source of
| the radium exposure.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I agree with your point, but describing women in their 20s &
| 30s as "children" is rather demeaning.
| sfn42 wrote:
| The way understood it they worked as children then died in
| their 20s and 30s.
| imzadi wrote:
| Most of the workers were 13 and 14 year old girls. They
| didn't die until their 20s and 30s.
| neo-tac wrote:
| They would also paint their faces with it, so when they went
| out at night they would glow. Crazy
| odiroot wrote:
| *Maria Sklodowska-Curie, as she herself insisted on being called.
| BBC should know better.
| misiek08 wrote:
| She even wanted to be Sklodowska, but then she wouldn't be able
| to work as scientist and be respected. Curie is her husband's
| and that was the only way to be someone back then.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| This sounds false.
|
| "Contrary to the practice of some other countries, French
| women do not legally change names when they marry; however,
| it is customary that they adopt their husband's name as a
| "usage name" for daily life." [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_name
| closewith wrote:
| The BBC are quite poor at this kind of thing, preferring their
| style guide to official names. The still use Czech Republic for
| Czechia, Republic of Ireland for Ireland, and Turkey for
| Turkiye.
| Galanwe wrote:
| > The still use Czech Republic for Czechia
|
| Naive question but is Czechia a new name? The UN lists "Czech
| Republic" as official name and "Czechia" as the short name.
|
| > Republic of Ireland for Ireland
|
| To be fair, I don't think this is partisan, but rather just a
| way to differentiate the state from the island.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If an article would use "Islamic Republic of Iran" then it
| should use "Czech Republic". If they would just write
| "Iran" then they should use "Czechia".
| davkan wrote:
| I don't know about the UK but, In America I never hear
| Czechia, just Czech Republic. To my ears it sounds no
| more formal than "United States". I understand that's not
| the case in the EU though.
| basisword wrote:
| To be fair Czechia has been official for less than a
| decade. Unless people are dealing with it on a regular
| basis they're going to use what they know which, for most
| is still Czech Republic.
| closewith wrote:
| Czechia has been the official name in English since
| independence in 1993. It's only since 2016 that the
| Government of the Czech Republic has been making a
| concerted effort to change usage abroad.
| closewith wrote:
| No, that's not the case, as even in contexts where the
| long name is normally used, such as UN nameplates and
| resolutions, Czechia is now used in preparation for the
| removal of the long name.
| theelous3 wrote:
| As an Irish person, yes. Just calling Ireland Ireland when
| you are specifically being asked what country you are from
| for official purposes is a bit too orbital a view. Same
| goes for discussions from within a country holding
| contested ground sharing the name of a country with an
| island, blah blah.
|
| It's a complicated subject, and nobody begrudges them the
| clarity.
| closewith wrote:
| I think if you ask around, you'll find yourself very much
| in the minority of Irish people. Republic of Ireland is
| almost never used outside of the football team, as it's
| simply not the name of the country.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| While I. The context of the BBC, the distinction to
| Northern Ireland is relevant.
| theelous3 wrote:
| You're not understanding my comment at all. I'm not
| talking about the internal use of ROI within Ireland.
|
| Not once have I heard anyone even broach this as a topic.
| Nobody cares. If someone asks you where you are from, and
| you tell them Ireland, and they inquire the north or the
| republic - what are you going to do? Just repeat
| "Ireland" at them like some kind of contrarian idiot?
| Tell them you are "not from northern Ireland" so as to
| rule out all of the places you are not from?
|
| ROI is a perfectly serviceable term for helping people
| understand what you mean, if the context isn't clear
| enough already.
| closewith wrote:
| > Not once have I heard anyone even broach this as a
| topic.
|
| I have a feeling you just don't pay attention or, from
| previous experience with you, are incapable of
| determining how other people feel about this topic.
|
| > ROI is a perfectly serviceable term for helping people
| understand what you mean, if the context isn't clear
| enough already.
|
| It's a specifically politically charged term used by
| people who either don't know better or have a bone to
| pick. It's not commonly used in Ireland and it's not used
| to differentiate innocently between Northern Ireland and
| Ireland.
| GJim wrote:
| > It's a specifically politically charged term used by
| people who either don't know better or have a bone to
| pick.
|
| And _you_ , quite clearly, appear to be the one who has a
| bone to pick! Everybody else is (thankfully!) now moving
| on with their lives.
| closewith wrote:
| > Everybody else is (thankfully!) now moving on with
| their lives.
|
| Or you're just blind to the issues. Your comments here
| and lack of familiarity with Irish politics and culture
| suggests you may be a non-Irish person making assumptions
| about the country? Or maybe you are Irish and oblivious.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Just say what town of Ireland you're from?
| dehugger wrote:
| How's this help when speaking to someone who hasn't
| memorized a map of Ireland and does not know which town
| is in which country?
| closewith wrote:
| > Naive question but is Czechia a new name?
|
| Not a new name, but Czechia has made a concerted effort
| since 2016 to have it used in place of the Czech Republic.
| Almost all international body and most media style guides
| have since acceded. The BBC lags.
|
| > To be fair, I don't think this is partisan, but rather
| just a way to differentiate the state from the island.
|
| No, like the British Isles, this is very much a
| controversial name and one to which the Irish Government
| formally objects. This is even the source of a diplomatic
| disagreement between the Irish Government and Wikipedia due
| to their style guide.
| damidekronik wrote:
| Maybe we can at least fix the headline here, on hacker news
| unstablediffusi wrote:
| >Czech Republic for Czechia
|
| why single it out? even the countries that use (mostly) latin
| alphabet don't necessary have the same name in english -
| Poland is Polska, Lithuania is Lietuva, Estonia is Eesti,
| Finland is Suomi, etc. And latinizations/romanizations are
| often wildly inaccurate - Ukraine is actually Ukraina, Russia
| is actually Rossia, and the english pronunciations are
| completely wrong. Japan is Nihon. etc etc.
|
| >Republic of Ireland for Ireland
|
| there are two irelands, fyi
|
| >Turkiye
|
| no one can type that u on a keyboard without googling and
| copypasting it. you might as well insist on using hieroglyphs
| for CJK things
| closewith wrote:
| > Czechia
|
| > why single it out?
|
| Because the country of Czechia has asked the English-
| speaking world to refer to it that way.
|
| > there are two irelands, fyi
|
| There is Ireland, the island of Ireland, and Northern
| Ireland. Republic of Ireland refers to the soccer team and
| nothing else, FYI.
|
| The country of Ireland has also requested that the English
| speaking world use its name, Ireland and specifically not
| the Republic of Ireland.
|
| > no one can type that u on a keyboard without googling and
| copypasting it. you might as well insist on using
| hieroglyphs for CJK things
|
| Ah, so we'll just decide to rename countries with
| inconvenient letters. How very colonial of you.
| GJim wrote:
| > soccer team
|
| I don't think anybody plays "soccer" in Ireland! (Not in
| NI or the Republic!)
| closewith wrote:
| Do you mean it's not popular or people don't use the
| name?
|
| If the former, you're wrong: soccer is the most played
| sport in Ireland.
|
| If the latter, you're wrong: football is Gaelic football
| almost universally outside Dublin and soccer is soccer.
| In Dublin, it's 50/50 depending on area, but no-one will
| blink if you say soccer.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Accusations of colonialism are preposterous. _Every_
| language has its own names for other countries and
| cities. These range from adaptations to the phonetic
| patterns of the language (pl: Warszawa - > de: Warschau;
| fr: Paris -> nl: Parijs) or completely different (pl:
| Polska -> hu: Lengyelorszag; cy: Cymru -> en: Wales).
|
| This is just how language works.
| closewith wrote:
| No, you're completely wrong. We - as an international
| society - generally accept the name that countries would
| like to be called, even in our own languages.
|
| In English, we say: Sri Lanka, not Ceylon, Burkina Faso,
| not the Republic of Upper Volta, Botswana, not the
| Bechuanaland Protectorate, Bangladesh, not East Pakistan,
| The Netherlands, not Holland, Thailamd, not Siam, Etc
|
| Colonialism perfectly sums up the arrogant attitude that
| you can decide for them what another country will be
| called.
| GJim wrote:
| So Americans/Irish/English/Scots/Welsh/Australians are
| all being "colonialist" when they refer to Wien as
| 'Vienna', Cechy as 'Bohemia', Abertawe as 'Swansea' and
| La Manche as 'The English Channel'?
|
| Do you know how ridiculous you sound?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Sadly, this kind of illogical and undiscerning paranoia
| has invaded school curricula and universities as an
| overreaction to imperialism. It's part of the
| "hermeneutic of suspicion"; behind everything lurks an
| insidious evil intent, whether it is self-serving power
| and a will to dominate others, racism, colonialism,
| misogyny, or whatever. Those things exist, absolutely,
| but minds steeped in the hermeneutic of suspicion have
| one track minds. They read this threat into nearly
| everything.
|
| Curiously, they don't seem to notice it in the workings
| of the very hermeneutic itself.
| closewith wrote:
| > Do you know how ridiculous you sound?
|
| Do you? Has Vienna or Swansea asked you to change how you
| refer to them? If they did, would you? If not, why not?
| hollerith wrote:
| According to your logic, the Germans should harangue the
| Azerbaijanis till they change "Almaniya" (the word for
| Germany in their language, which probably derives from
| the French "Allemagne") to "Deutschland".
|
| The Finns call Germany "Saksa", those Finno-imperialists!
|
| The Poles call it "Niemcy".
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Exactly. And in the case of "Niemcy" above (which
| ultimately comes from the proto-Slavic "*nem'c'", meaning
| "mute"), it would be ridiculous to claim that Poles have
| some kind of colonial relationship with the Germans. If
| anything, the reverse has been true in history: it was
| the Germans who engaged in colonial politics toward
| Poland, including the enactment of cultural policies that
| were designed to ethnically cleanse and germanize the
| country.
| closewith wrote:
| Yes, Germany could request that all of the above rename
| Germany in their respective languages and at least the EU
| nations would.
|
| This has already happened quite recently as the
| Netherlands requested that countries moved to
| translations of Netherlands when referring to their
| country (as opposed to Holland and translations thereof)
| and all the EU nations did. This was in 2019.
|
| So if Germany so desired, they could make those requests
| and they would be honoured. In a few decades, the old
| names would be as antiquated as Rhodesia, Burma, or Zaire
| are now.
| cge wrote:
| >Republic of Ireland refers to the soccer team and
| nothing else, FYI.
|
| 'The Republic of Ireland' is the official descriptive
| term for the country named 'Ireland' in English, per the
| Republic of Ireland Act 1948. I have certainly heard
| 'Republic of Ireland' used in Ireland, or just 'the
| Republic', but almost always in cases where the
| descriptive distinction is important. I'd agree that
| outside of those cases, using 'Republic of Ireland' by
| default can be a problem.
|
| >Because the country of Czechia has asked the English-
| speaking world to refer to it that way.
|
| Unlike the political complexities around 'Republic of
| Ireland', 'The Czech Republic' actually _is_ the official
| long name of the country in English, with 'Czechia' the
| official short name; the country's government promotes
| 'Czechia', but I don't think there is a suggestion that
| 'Czech Republic' is no longer acceptable. I have also
| never actually heard anyone in the country refer to it as
| Czechia in English.
| closewith wrote:
| > The Republic of Ireland' is the official descriptive
| term for the country named 'Ireland' in English, per the
| Republic of Ireland Act 1948.
|
| The context is important. The Act revoked dominion status
| and role of the British Crown in the Irish executive
| branch, thus making Ireland a republic, and so deserving
| of a new description (the previous having been the Irish
| Free State).
|
| Czechia is the only way I've heard the country referred
| to (in the news as it rarely comes up in person).
| workfromspace wrote:
| > no one can type that u on a keyboard without googling and
| copypasting it. you might as well insist on using
| hieroglyphs for CJK things
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U#Letter_U
|
| > The letter U is present in the Hungarian, Turkish, Uyghur
| Latin, Estonian, Azeri, Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, Kazakh
| Latin and Tatar Latin alphabets
|
| I see and generally agree with your point, however that "no
| one" is approx. 120 million people. Just saying.
| jaoane wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they prefer "Kyiv", though.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Spelling is one thing, but no one pronounces it the
| Ukrainian way ('kIjiu) which is somewhat torturous for non-
| Ukrainian speakers. The best common pronunciation in
| English that more or less respects English phonetic
| patterns IMO is "KEE-iv".
|
| Still, people need to respect the fact that each language
| can create their own variants. English speakers are under
| no obligation to call Wales "Cymru" or Finland "Suomi".
| It's fine.
| kergonath wrote:
| > The still use Czech Republic for Czechia
|
| Czech Republic is sill the formal name, right? Last time I
| checked it was overly formal, but not wrong to use it.
|
| > Republic of Ireland for Ireland
|
| Brits do this because of Northern Ireland (mostly for bad
| reasons, but still).
|
| Countries are called differently depending on language and
| context. It's fine.
| GJim wrote:
| > Brits do this because of Northern Ireland (mostly for bad
| reasons, but still).
|
| This isn't specific to the British! ROI and NI refer to
| different countries on the island of Ireland.
|
| I'm curious why you state "mostly for bad reasons"? (I
| assume you are American!)
| closewith wrote:
| > This isn't specific to the British!
|
| But it is. Republic of Ireland when used to refer to the
| country is used almost exclusively in Britain and
| specifically to marginalise the country of Ireland.
| BalinKing wrote:
| I'm dubious--I'm an American who knows comparatively
| little about the Troubles and yet have always thought
| "Republic of Ireland" was the official name. I certainly
| use it fairly often, completely innocuously, to
| distinguish between it and Northern Ireland. I probably
| picked it up from the Wikipedia article, which
| prominently lists them both as common names.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| any source on this? It's difficult to find any primary source
| on her opinion
|
| All her written texts i can find after she moved to France she
| referred to herself as "Marie"
|
| In her biography of Pierre Curie, she herself wrote of herself
| before she married "Mon nom est Marie Sklodowska"
|
| here's a letter she wrote to the president and signed simply
| "Marie Curie"
| https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/letter-from-mar...
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| You're focusing only on "Marie", whereas the greater emphasis
| should arguably be on "Sklodowska".
|
| AFAIK, in 19th century France, a woman's legal name did not
| change after she married. She adopted her husband's name as a
| matter of usage, however. FWIW, I, too, have heard that Marie
| Sklodowska-Curie wished to make prominent her maiden name,
| perhaps in the double barrelled form (which is the way I've
| seen it many times in other languages).
| GJim wrote:
| Regardless.
|
| She is far more widely known as Marie Curie in the English
| speaking world. Using any other name would be confusing for
| most readers.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| As long as the "Curie" is kept the confusion is small,
| however serves as a vehicle to teach more about her and the
| time.
|
| And after a while it won't be confusing at all.
| shmeano wrote:
| Would it be possible to make a radioactivity camera? I guess not
| because it doesn't refract?
| voidUpdate wrote:
| From my limited knowledge, itwould be very hard to make it
| react to all types of radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) since they
| penetrate differently and interact with forces differently. You
| could potentially make a magnetic "lens" that would interact
| with alpha and beta particles, but gamma rays would ignore it.
|
| The best way I can think of to make a "radiation camera" is
| similar to how you can make a "wifi camera", by hooking up a
| radiation detector to a pan-tilt mechanism, and moving it
| around very slowly and sampling the amount of radiation
| detected at each point. Essentially a single pixel "camera"
| that you have to move around to take a full picture. However,
| you'd also have to shield the detector from any radioactivity
| coming from directions that it's not pointed in, which is
| especially hard if you're trying to capture gamma rays, since
| they like to penetrate through everything. Its like if light
| could leak into the side of a normal camera, you'd get rubbish
| photos
| dmurray wrote:
| Why would it have to be a single pixel instead of an array of
| sensors like any digital camera?
|
| Sure, we probably can't make Geiger counters in a form factor
| that allows an array of a million of them in a handheld
| device, but maybe 20x16 or something?
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I mean you could make that work, but you'd have to shield
| between all of the detectors so that you don't get the
| radiation equivalent of bloom on your pictures. If you have
| only one, it'll be easier to shield, in my head anyway
| adrian_b wrote:
| You could make a pin-point camera with an array of detectors
| that will receive thus only the radiation coming from the
| direction fixed by the positions of the aperture and of the
| detector.
|
| However that might not work well because the material around
| the pin-point aperture might not absorb sufficiently the rays
| coming from different directions and it cannot be made thick.
|
| So what may work better is to make the detector array in the
| form of a compound arthropod eye, where each detector is at the
| bottom of a long tube whose walls absorb the rays coming from
| any other direction except its axis.
|
| In practice, besides trying to absorb the rays coming from
| different directions, preventing them to reach the detector,
| for high-energy rays there is the alternative to use 2 or more
| collinear detectors for each direction (corresponding to an
| image pixel). A high-energy particle or photon will pass
| through all collinear detectors, causing simultaneous pulses at
| their outputs. Whenever such pulses are not simultaneous, they
| are discarded, because they correspond to rays coming from
| another direction than intended for that pixel. The accumulated
| count of filtered pulses per some time interval will give the
| luminosity of the corresponding image pixel.
| perihelions wrote:
| There's viable optics up through x-rays; though they don't
| refract, they can still _reflect_ at shallow angles,
|
| https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/technical-details-...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolter_telescope
| MisterTea wrote:
| While a sensor array of tiny/microscopic Geiger-Muller tubes
| sounds practical, focusing the particles to generate an image
| on that sensor is not. There is no lens that can simultaneously
| focus all the different types of particles.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation#Directly_io...
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Depends on the energy ranges and particle types you are
| interested in.
|
| For instance we routinely take plenty of x-ray images, though
| there is fortunately not a lot of stuff just lying around that
| are bright enough x-ray sources to properly expose standard
| x-ray detectors.
|
| Detecting electrons or protons (beta and alpha radiation) in
| such a way that you can work out their arrival direction is
| also doable, but the equipment is fairly bulky and you tend to
| have to wait a long time to accumulate enough detections to see
| anything.
| aconst wrote:
| I live in Sceaux, bit south of Paris, where she lived some years.
| I once visited her house (now owned by someone who worked with
| one or more descendants of her) at some special occasion. One of
| the bedroom has a radiation sticker, and is officially controlled
| by the authorities, as some radiation were found. She obviously
| used to bring some work home :)
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