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Over 2000 nuclear tests took place between 1945 and the signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996, with the United States and Soviet Union combining for over 1700 explosions. More »
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Ready for the most counter-intuitive piece of medical research you'll hear about today? University of Oklahoma Neuroscientist Junie Warrington and colleagues have discovered that controlled oxygen starvation can reverse radiation induced brain damage in mice. Does this mean that you can cross the atomic wasteland of your bombed-out city safely just by holding your breath? More »
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History contains many examples of medical functions performed by frighteningly unqualified people. Barbers once were also dentists. Whoever was the oldest lady in the village was also a midwife. And x-rays were shot through children's feet - by shoe store attendants. More »
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Glossy magazines often contain a substance that has elevated levels of uranium and thorium. This means that reading one for various lengths of time slightly heightens your level of radiation exposure. Find out how much magazines like Playboy are poisoning your body, even if they're not corrupting your mind and polluting your soul. More »
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It's safe to say that most of us have come to accept, if not embrace, the abundance of wireless technology in our everyday lives. Not so for certain Americans who believe they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, or EHS. According to the BBC, five percent of Americans think that exposure to electromagnetic fields created by Wi-Fi and mobile phones are causing them to suffer headaches, muscle spasms, burning skin and chronic pain. And some of these people are seeking refuge in the secluded mountains of Appalachia. More »
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It's decently likely that, sometime in the future, a major solar storm will hit Earth, wreaking havoc on our infrastructure and crippling our satellites. But there's a more long-term danger: space could become too dangerously radioactive to stay there. More »
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Six months after the Tōhoku earthquake triggered the Fukushima disaster, former residents, scientists, and news crews are returning to the nuclear exclusion zone to survey how areas near the plant have fared after being abandoned for months. More »
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The Dockville Music Festival in Hamburg it the host of some pretty high concept art installations, such as this subterranean tiny town. Another piece on display this year was this eerie army of radiation workers, who spent the festival forever frozen and glowing. More »
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When emergency technicians in Fukushima attempted to cool the overheating reactor with seawater, they didn't realize they'd be enabling a set of incredibly accurate calculations that would allow researchers half a world away to calculate how bad the leak had been, and where it was going in the environment. More »
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In comics, superheroes often have "scientific" origin stories involving radiation or strange chemicals. But what would actually happen if you experienced one of these origin stories in real life? Let's take a look at six classic superhero tales and find out. More »
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As part of an ongoing monitoring program, the Japanese government is measuring the radiation exposure of people near the Fukushima plant. The nuclear emergency may be largely contained, but not all of the news is good. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5816095&view=rss&microfeed=true Medical patients going in for medical images of "gastric emptying" (when your stomach empties its contents into your intestines) have previously been stuck undergoing a rather uncomfortable ritual. First there's the fasting, and then there's having to eat an egg sandwich for breakfast — an egg sandwich laced with radioactive markers that track how fast your stomach empties. However, for those people who aren't egg fans there's now a new option: radioactive oatmeal. More »
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It seems that the Chernobyl reactor is sealed with a structure that will not hold. Not to worry; a new seal is being readied. But it's going to be weird. More »
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It's been 25 years today since the Chernobyl disaster, but that doesn't mean people don't drop by the ghost town of Pripyat. One sign of human visitation is the graffiti street artists leave behind. More »
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Hydrogen is the simplest of all atoms, and it's easily the most abundant, accounting for 90% of all atoms in the universe. And this fundamental building block may have something to tell us about one of the universe's great mysteries. More »
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Earth is surrounded by two huge regions of charged particles like protons and electrons, and these areas are known as the Van Allen radiation belts. These belts can mysteriously change their intensity, posing a threat to astronauts and sensitive electronics. More »
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Randall Munroe of xkcd fame has drafted this handy chart that puts in perspective how much radiation humans receive from commonplace activites (such as eating a banana) and less ordinary situations (spending one hour outside of Chernobyl, for example). More »
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The nuclear disaster in Japan has left many people in danger of exposure to radiation and radioactivity. Some are simply fearful. What exactly is this radiation? And what threat does it pose? We've got some answers below. More »
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Protests from animal rights activists have put a moratorium on NASA plans to expose 27 squirrel monkeys to gamma-ray radiation. Researchers hoped to simulate the effects of space radiation on humans, but protesters claim the experiment's cruel and unnecessary. More »
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In 1958, the United States tested the 18-kiloton "Cactus" nuclear device on Runit Island in the Pacific. 20 years later, Cactus' 350-foot-wide crater was filled with radioactive soil and covered with a 100,000-square-foot concrete dome. Worst vacation ever? More »
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Microwaves within your microwave are invisible, but it is possible to see them with a little creative preparation and some mechanical know-how. More »
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The craggy Martian terrain is daunting for wheeled probes, and Mars' distance from Earth makes refueling rovers impossible. English scientists are exploring the possibility of harnessing radioactive isotopes and Mars' abundant carbon dioxide to launch probes across the Martian landscape. More »
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Aside from government politics, space radiation is one of the biggest threats to humans seeking to leave our home world. More »
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Helium is a noble gas, so it doesn't react chemically with anything. It doesn't solidify at Earth's atmospheric pressure. As soon as it is released, it streams away from earth. How is it packaged up and used to fill balloons? More »
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It's been 25 years since Chernobyl fallout contaminated flora and fauna in Europe, but German hunting officials are still dealing with rising numbers of radioactive wild boars. But why? More »
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So apparently there's tritium leaking into one of New Jersey's main aquifers. As a proud Garden Stater, I have no choice but to hope that this environmental clusterfuck will give us fancy new phenotypes and not horrible, horrible cancer. More »
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Toyota vehicles have been having a problem with sudden, uncontrollable acceleration lately. It's been variously attributed to faulty circuits and driver error, but the real culprit might be radiation from beyond the skies. More »
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Science illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger records mutations of insects found near radioactive disasters, including Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Her watercolors offer a rarely-seen view on the long-lasting effects of radioactive contamination on living beings. More »
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Sure, the characters in the Enterprise's holodeck would occasionally try to kill you, but when they worked, the tactile holograms looked like incredible fun. Now researchers are getting closer, creating holograms that can be felt and respond to human touch. More »
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Apparently, it's not all downsides to the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor; the intergalactic future of plant life may already exist on Earth, thanks to the effects of radioactive fallout from the 1986 disaster. More »
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A new study released this week shows that medical imaging scans expose patients to seven times more radiation than they did twenty years ago. Could a scan for cancer actually be giving you cancer? More »
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There is an organism living on this planet who can travel through space without a suit. Cute, unassuming little invertebrates, these organisms are called tardigrades, or water bears, and usually spend their days crawling around on a piece of nice wet moss in a forest, or meandering through our vast oceans. They only grow to be about 1.5 millimeters long, but over 1,000 species of them inhabit the planet, and they all have a superpower unmatched by any other species on Earth. No now knows why, but tardigrades can withstand temperatures as cold as liquid nitrogen, radiation doses that would kill a human 100 times over, thrive in an outer-space-like vacuum, and survive without water for years. More »
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The salvage crew is ready to board a wreck drifting off Reticulum when the engineer calls over the comm: radiation detected. They pop the airlock and pull out a translucent green ball that fits in the palm of a hand. Fitting it into a spherical metal sheath that's perforated like a colander, they toss it onto the derelict ship, then pull back and wait. Eventually they retreive the little ball, analyze it with a computer, and get a 3D map of all nearby radiation sources. This strange device is called RadBall, and it's already been invented. More »
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Forget the ozone layer, global warming, and all of the other things environmentalists whine about: the one thing holding life together here on Earth is its powerful magnetic field. And for the past 150 years that humans have been measuring it, our only line of defense against deadly cosmic and solar radiation has been mysteriously weakening. Now, new research says the situation is even more dire than we thought. Looking back 2,000 years into the past, geophysicists have calculated that the field's been weakening the entire time, and that we've got about 500 years to go before it's gone entirely. More »
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All those vintage "How We'll Live In The Future" articles rarely mentioned anything that could be construed as a cell phone. Microwave ovens, yes; online shopping, yes—but not the now ubiquitous cell phone. This 1960 ad for Radiation, Incorporated (yes, they've changed their name since then) is an exception—and it touches on GPS technology, too. Click through for a closer look at "The New Age of Communication." More »
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Radiation exposure is going to be a serious problem after the nuclear apocalypse, or when your orbital home is going to be bombarded with plenty of dangerous cosmic radiation from solar flares. And in fact, it's already a problem now in many workplaces where people work with radioactive materials. But a solution may be in sight with a new pill, Protectan, that developer Cleveland BioLabs promises can prevent radiation sickness. More »
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