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Low-Background Steel
- dang 6y agoIf curious see also 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931747 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6609114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6609114
- anamexis 6y agoRelated: 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13973322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13973322
- Cerium 6y agoThis comes up on HN every now and then, it is how I learned about low background steel. If this is new to you, you may also enjoy reading about the cesium content of wine: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/19/141390/fukushimas-nuclear-signature-found-in-california-wine/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/19/141390/fukushima...
- xattt 6y agoIs there a particular trigger for this post? Is this a case of someone stumbling into the concept and wanting to share it with the world? Is there some trend in SV around low-background steel right now? Genuinely curious about the phenomenon of posts around topics that have a great deal of understanding and aren’t necessarily trending in the general news cycle.
- aaronax 6y agoThere was a post a week or so ago where low-background steel was discussed in the comments. I can't find it on Google though. Probably someone saw that and either made a calendar reminder for a few days out to post it or had it in their open tab backlog. Edit: I'm pretty sure it was the knife steel post.
- runawaybottle 6y agoIf I had to guess, the moderators curate certain technical discussions to the top. But I’d wager that Reddit curates their front page too. There’s no way an organic algorithm is populating the front page.
- confeit 6y agoI saw it linked from the comments on a Tweet by Karpathy and found it intellectually curious. > By posting GPT generated text we’re polluting the data for its future versions https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1284660899198820352 https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1284660899198820352
- Gaelan 6y agoYou seem to have gotten your replies mixed up. This looks like it's for the GPT "Bitcoin" thread?
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y agoNo, low-background steel is mentioned in the replies. It's similar in the sense that GPT-3 generated text is going to contaminate the data we collect from now on.
- Gaelan 6y agoAh, yeah, that makes sense. My bad.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kalium-xyz 6y agoOne of the latest xkcd comics mentioned low background steel. I assume that is the reason
- timeinput 6y agoIt could be as simple as OP being one of [today's lucky 10,000](https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/).
- flywheel 6y agoThe 75th anniversary of the first nuclear bomb test was just a few days ago, on July 16th. It's been in the news a bit lately, and this topic is related.
- smallpipe 6y agoLow background lead was recently mentioned on xkcd[0]. Maybe that circled back to HN? [0] https://xkcd.com/2321/ https://xkcd.com/2321/
- croutonwagon 6y agoThere was a recent post on the trinity test Someone going on a binge from that, through discovering how Kodak found out about nukes from film and low background steel isnt a huge stretch either
- lucb1e 6y agoOP answered in a sibling comment, but might additionally be interesting to know why a repost like this gets upvoted: I upvoted it because I didn't know of it (this is the first time I see it) and I wasn't aware that there is that much radiation lingering from tests decades ago, which was interesting to me.
- crispyporkbites 6y agoIm always curious how we will send messages to future civilizations. How will we ensure we’ll be remembered or even noted in 10,000, 100,000, 1 million years? How can we prevent the same disaster(s) that eventually wipes our civilisation out from repeating again in future intelligent generations (human or otherwise) Could environmental markers like these be the way? After all, it’s how we look at the past today
- Razengan 6y agoWe already know what can last for literally millions of years: Life. Maybe we could encode some information in birdsong, tree rings, or the matting patterns drawn by fish in the seafloor. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpdlQae5wP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpdlQae5wP8
- philipswood 6y agoA SF short story about a biologically encoded message from ancient aliens (written by one of the Autodesk founders): We'll Return, After This Message by John Walker https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic.
- ars 6y agoThe link seems broken? Should be: https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic.html https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic.html
- vmilner 6y agoIt's fascinating that in 1983 it was thought that a 768-bit RSA number would take 40 million years to factor. (It actually took 26 - RSA-768 was factored in 2009.)
- shantara 6y agoThis reminds me of Whisper, one of my favorite exotic alien concepts. The alien civilization in question has selected a planet with as stable environment as possible, and planted it full of genetically engineered grass. The sound of wind blowing through the grass creates an acoustic computer which hosts a virtual space its creators have uploaded themselves into. https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/470007b39d192 https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/470007b39d192
- goatsi 6y agoLow-background lead is also sought after in shipwrecks [0]. With lead it isn't contamination from nuclear tests that's the issue, but natural radioactivity that needs hundreds of years to decay. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/search-dark-matter-depends-ancient-shipwrecks/600718/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/search-d...
- ChuckMcM 6y agoAnd here https://physicsworld.com/a/ancient-romans-join-neutrino-hunt/ https://physicsworld.com/a/ancient-romans-join-neutrino-hunt... I had some low radiation lead for a while, makes for an interesting curio. As I recall its providence was re-melted musket balls from a shipwreck in the Bahamas.
- Natsu 6y agoIt's always confused me how mined lead somehow has more radioactivity. Shouldn't the lead in the ground also have decayed over time? Also, it makes me wonder why someone enterprising hasn't stockpiled a few tons of the stuff somewhere to let it become low background lead for the future. You'd think that some government or another would be able to drop a million dollars on putting a lead stockpile somewhere safe for the future.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- w0mbat 6y agoThe scene of the battle of Midway would also hold a hoard of nice steel (the Japanese lost a lot of ships including aircraft carriers). I understand that Scapa Flow has been heavily salvaged with only 7 out of 52 ships still down there.
- TwoBit 6y agoHow deep are the sunken ships at Midway?
- dnautics 6y agoYeah but there are issues with disturbing a grave site. A lot of people don't take kindly to that, especially when it's a military grave. Scuttled ships, well in theory anyways, shouldn't have had anyone on board.
- solarhoma 6y agoThe grave site was in regards to Midway. 9 german sailors were killed while surrendering On land. None were killed on the the ships themselves.
- mmaunder 6y agoProbably too close to the Pacific Proving Grounds.
- nwallin 6y agoThe Battle of Midway was fought in spectacularly deep water, on the order of 17,000-18,000 feet deep. This would make salvaging difficult, if not impossible. Scapa Flow is shallow enough for divers. Once we run out of cheaply salvageable steel, we'll likely turn to steel smelting processes that do not introduce air into the steel. These processes require dramatically more energy and are thus more expensive, but will still be way less expensive than attempting to salvage at deep ocean depths.
- ars 6y ago> steel smelting processes that do not introduce air into the steel. Air is perfectly fine. Both Oxygen and Nitrogen do not stay radioactive for longer than a few seconds. It's CO2 that is the problem, specifically the carbon. And of course any other random impurity. They could just use cryogenicaly distilled air, and take the nitrogen-oxygen part (the boiling points are very close).
- melvyn2 6y agohttps://xkcd.com/2321/ https://xkcd.com/2321/
- fuball63 6y agoThat's how I first heard about this concept, which was fairly recently.
- TwoBit 6y agoIf I understand it right, it's possible to produce non-radioactive steel but doing do is just a lot more expensive for the time being than just getting it from old sources.
- fnord77 6y agono way to make steel without forced air?
- batt4good 6y agoI need to find the source, but this has actually been a significant issue sourcing steel and titanium from China.
- whoisjuan 6y agoCan it be recycled without contamination of existing radiation in other elements used to melt it and such? I mean how do they create the instruments in the first place and keep the radiation low?
- superjan 6y agoA few years ago it was in the news that several militairy shipwrecks vanished in indonesia waters[0], presumably plundered for the steel. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37997640 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37997640
- tshoaib 6y agoThese isotopes are also used to help spot fake art https://physicsworld.com/a/nuclear-fallout-used-to-spot-fake-art/ https://physicsworld.com/a/nuclear-fallout-used-to-spot-fake...
- shmerl 6y agoCan you make such steel by using clean air? Or it's not possible to purify it from radionuclides?
- amacbride 6y agoIt occurred to me as they were taking down the cantilever (eastern) section of the Bay Bridge that lots of it would have been low-background, based on its construction in the 1930s.
- est31 6y agoI'm not sure about some of the the claims of the Wikipedia article. * First, the article implies that air continues to be the main reason for contamination of steel. It might have been the case, back when atmospheric levels for radioactive elements were higher. However now there is less contamination in the air [0], and the main source for contamination is recycled steel. Either because it itself is non-low-background steel or because e.g. medical radioactive sources were put into the scrap metal supply. See also this IAEA report on scrap metal [1]. * The article also says that the primary source for low background steel are shipwrecks, but I think that's an exaggeration. Especially, the topic came up on hn a few weeks ago and someone in the know debunked it [2]. [0]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Radiocarbon_bomb_spike.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Radiocar... [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20111016193221/http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/SealedRadioactiveSources/pdfs/handout_scrap.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20111016193221/http://www.iaea.or... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23666436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23666436
- rossdavidh 6y agoYou should update the Wikipedia article. I mean, you've already got the references.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoHe isn't paid to work on Jimbo Wales's digital plantation.
- dsun179 6y agoSince tabacco gets its cancer making polonium from the air, I wonder if smoking got riskier because of the nuklear testing.
- albntomat0 6y agoDo you have more information on this? Seems interesting!
- dsun179 6y agoWell there is much known fact about how tabacco absords radiating material. But until now I have not found anything about how that changed during the ages. But simple logic tells me there must have been an affect on how dangerous smoking is.
- grkvlt 6y agoJust search for the paper on the topic, written by the Phillip Morris Unbiased Research Group. it explains how frogs breathing air got more cancer then frogs trapped in airtight boxes and only allowed to breathe exhaled tobacco smoke, who mostly died for other reasons. seems legit...
- jeffrallen 6y agoWar is stupid.
- gnufx 6y agoIt's been pointed out it's wrong but, as a sometime nuclear spectroscopist, I'm curious: why are people insisting that β-decay, i.e. ¹⁴C, is the issue?
- Havoc 6y agoI seem to recall some of those shipwreckers getting nicked too?