The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

atlasobscura.com ^ | Dan Nosowitz

[HiTech RedNeck]

The best scientific explanation would be that it was in the eye. In water (aqueous humor) the flash would require slower particles than in air.

[Nowhere Man]

I remember reading about it in high school, the scientist’s name was Louis Slotin.

[rlmorel]

I must admit, I have a mason jar of the legal “moonshine”, Junior Johnson’s “Midnight Moon”, and while some might find it overly sweet, I like it that way, and it packs a wallop because it goes down so darn easily!

Fortunately, now, I have the desire to tie one on (on occasion) but rarely the energy...and that is probably not a bad thing!

[alexander_busek]

Mr. K: See my post #63:

I wouldn't have thought that the difference in the phase velocity of light in air at s.t.p. as compared with in a vacuum would suffice [post-editing: i.e., would be GREAT ENOUGH] for the charged particles released by such an accidental event to create a noticeable amount of Čerenkov radiation.

HiTech RedNeck:

The best scientific explanation would be that it was in the eye. In water (aqueous humor) the flash would require slower particles than in air.

That's the best explanation I've heard yet: That the "blue flash" occurred in the aqueous and vitreous humors of the eye, itself. (But then, the question is: What charged particles could have had the penetrating power to traverse the room and enter the eye, where they then proceeded to produce Cherenkov radiation? In space, astronauts need only close their eyes to perceive the Cherenkov radiation produced by PRIMARY COSMIC RAYS [chiefly high-energy protons] in their eyeballs).

Regards,

[riri]

Are these the videos where she is on a moped or motorcycle?

I will admit to losing an entire afternoon to those. I was completely enthralled.

[alexander_busek]

I personally believe the blood of millions of people is on the hands of environmentalists and liberals for the banning of DDT. It is that scumbag Rachel Carson at the root of it.

Indubitably! Due chiefly to higher rates of malaria, etc.

Regards,

[Axenolith]

It was “sick”, you clean it up with either nitric acid or boiling and re-condensing it out (both of which you need to know what the hell you’re doing before you try it).

“Sick” mercury has got dirt on it, and a film of oxide. It does poorly at amalgamating gold with that layer, and it has to be cleaned to be useful.

Back “in the day” there were copper troughs on the crush end of some stamp mills for gold ores with sizeable (as opposed to microscopic) free metal. You would take and rub the clean trough down with mercury until it was silver with it, then crush the ore and have water washing through the crushed down the trough. After X time of operation you’d stop, get putty knives, and scrape off the mercury/gold amalgam from the troughs and wad it up into putty like balls for placing in the retort to boil off the mercury and get the rough gold out. The chimney of the retort was often shaped in such a way and high enough that the mercury would condense out and run down the inside in a small track.

You’d lose some that way, of the ~90K tons humped over to the Comstock/N.NV mines they lost about 10% in production.

[rlmorel]

Yes...that is what we saw, it had a nasty film and stopped looking nice, clean and shiny!

I have a degree in chemistry, never used it, but I did get some nitric acid on my skin one time, and it sucked. I got a large swath of skin that turned hard and dark brown, and stayed that way for a long time.

Oddly, I don’t remember it blistering, but I remember it hurt like Hell.

[loungitude]

Different person.

[Mr. K]

wow! that is an incredible story

As for this woman in Chernobyl I would be more afraid of her acquiring super powers more than anything else.

[archy]

Links to videos at the link

Sort of reminds me of Elana, The Kid of Speed.

[archy]

My dad played with mercury too. He’s still sane as far as I can tell.

Me too. The only lasting effect I've noticed is that sometimes I have a tendency to repeat myself.

Me too. The only lasting effect I've noticed is that sometimes I have a tendency to repeat myself.

Me too. The only lasting effect I've noticed is that sometimes I have a tendency to repeat myself.

Me too. The only lasting effect I've noticed is that sometimes I have a tendency to repeat myself.

[archy]

The amount of material in an atom bomb the size that was dropped on Japan was about the size of a grapefruit, if I remember correctly

Pretty close, but only the *Little Boy* unit dropped on Nagasaki utilized Plutonium. The Little Boy unit dropped three days previously on Hiroshima was a gun-type fission unit that used Uranium U-235.

Even more interesting: the German *Virus House* design, which used U-235/U238 in layers, shielded by nothing more than kerosene. The bottom half of the unit was a massive iron semisphere, which when it impacted with the Earth at near supersonic speed, crushed the plates together and sprayed the kerosene out from between them, allowing the mass to go critical. Would it have worked? I'm glad we never found out.

[archy]

Boys will be boys, playing with dangerous things.

Crikey! Got a stick, mate?

[archy]

Are these the videos where she is on a moped or motorcycle?

See post # 131.

[riri]

That was it. Something very fascinating about Chernobyl. I couldn't get enough of the images of everything just left as it was.

Anthony Bourdain traveled into there also on one of his shows episodes.