After the release of Prometheus, craftmaker Steve was so inspired by a tweet by Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait that he went out and constructed his own "Giger Counter" using a half-scale model skeleton (and not other simulcra of the human anatomy). And luckily for Steve, his home made for a poor testing ground:

As poisons go, polonium-210 is a bit of a mixed bag. Is it effective? Absolutely. If you eat a piece of polonium-210 the size of a grain of salt, it'll probably be enough to kill the average adult. That said, the highly unstable element is notorious for leaving an unmistakable calling card: ridiculously high levels of…

Last Wednesday, Mike Apatow was getting on to Interstate 84 in Newtown, CT, when police stopped him for no reason he could determine. When the cop told him that his car had set off his radioactivity detectors, it started making sense: Apatow was most certainly radioactive.

In the wake of last year's disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the world is once again dealing with contamination from a nuclear catastrophe. Now researchers have repurposed mining technology into a capsule that could make radiation tainted water drinkable.

Radioactive elements in your local Super Wal-Mart or camping store! It sounds like a bad five o'clock news headline, but gas lamps containing the radioactive element Thorium are extremely common, with millions sold annually.

Back in the day, you could shove all sorts of goods containing that miracle chemical radium in your body. There were radium-infused beers, chocolate, and suppositories. But radium-mania didn't stop with quack remedies.

The chart of relative doses of radioactivity that appeared on io9 yesterday set many minds at ease, but also raised questions. Questions like, "Why do you get dosed with radioation when eating a banana?"

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.

A must-read entry for all future dictators. Take a look at the meaning of "enriching uranium," why it's necessary, and some of the processes used to do it.