4 ms·

Creatures of the dawn: How radioactivity unlocked deep time

3 points by rognjen 5y ago

sturza 5y ago
is it just me or the "radio-mania" poster resembles the iPod ads?
dhosek 5y ago
I'm in the middle of reading The Radium Girls.¹ One fascinating thing to me is that radium, once ingested, tends to deposit itself in the bones (which makes sense if you glance at the positions of Calcium and Radium in the periodic table) and as a consequence, in the later stages of radium poisoning will make the bones glow in the dark. One of the young women who died of radium poisoning, woke up in the middle of the night, and saw her skull glowing through her skin when she faced a mirror near her bed. Another woman, whose body was exhumed during the lawsuit against the US Radium Corporation, again had a visible glow in the bones when her coffin was opened. 1. An interesting read, although not that well written.
Maursault 5y ago
> In 1854, it was forecast by Scottish mathematician Lord Kelvin that there were only 300,000 years left. I'm not really sure what the convention is with lords, but William Thomson, born in Belfast to Irish parents, did not become 1st Baron Kelvin and Lord Kelvin until 1892. So he was either or both Irish and Northern Irish, and also British. But when (and how) did William Thomson become Scottish?
8bitsrule 5y ago
Well-written, reflective piece of science history. People's reactions are seldom mentioned. It got me thinking about what H.G. Wells (surely!) had to say on the topic. (Of course.) I ran across this: "H G Wells coined the term “atomic bomb” in his 1914 novel The World Set Free, which depicted a mid-20th-century war fought with radioactive bombs that exploded – and then kept exploding, poisoning the area with radiation." [https://theconversation.com/even-before-hiroshima-people-knew-the-atomic-bomb-45271 https://theconversation.com/even-before-hiroshima-people-kne...] The article links to the Gutenberg copy of the novel, which includes a 1921 preface by Wells. [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1059/1059-h/1059-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1059/1059-h/1059-h.htm] I've been listening to an audiobook of 'The Time Machine'. It's not there but: In his 1960 movie, George Pal's screenplay wrote-in a stop in 1966 for the Time Traveller - so he could experience the explosion of a 'nuclear satellite'. I suspect that scene was derived from TWSF, in which "The bomb flashed blinding scarlet in mid-air...."

3 points by rognjen 5y ago

is it just me or the "radio-mania" poster resembles the iPod ads?

I'm in the middle of reading The Radium Girls.¹ One fascinating thing to me is that radium, once ingested, tends to deposit itself in the bones (which makes sense if you glance at the positions of Calcium and Radium in the periodic table) and as a consequence, in the later stages of radium poisoning will make the bones glow in the dark. One of the young women who died of radium poisoning, woke up in the middle of the night, and saw her skull glowing through her skin when she faced a mirror near her bed. Another woman, whose body was exhumed during the lawsuit against the US Radium Corporation, again had a visible glow in the bones when her coffin was opened. 1. An interesting read, although not that well written.

Maursault 5y ago

> In 1854, it was forecast by Scottish mathematician Lord Kelvin that there were only 300,000 years left. I'm not really sure what the convention is with lords, but William Thomson, born in Belfast to Irish parents, did not become 1st Baron Kelvin and Lord Kelvin until 1892. So he was either or both Irish and Northern Irish, and also British. But when (and how) did William Thomson become Scottish?

8bitsrule 5y ago

Well-written, reflective piece of science history. People's reactions are seldom mentioned. It got me thinking about what H.G. Wells (surely!) had to say on the topic. (Of course.) I ran across this: "H G Wells coined the term “atomic bomb” in his 1914 novel The World Set Free, which depicted a mid-20th-century war fought with radioactive bombs that exploded – and then kept exploding, poisoning the area with radiation." [https://theconversation.com/even-before-hiroshima-people-knew-the-atomic-bomb-45271 https://theconversation.com/even-before-hiroshima-people-kne...] The article links to the Gutenberg copy of the novel, which includes a 1921 preface by Wells. [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1059/1059-h/1059-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1059/1059-h/1059-h.htm] I've been listening to an audiobook of 'The Time Machine'. It's not there but: In his 1960 movie, George Pal's screenplay wrote-in a stop in 1966 for the Time Traveller - so he could experience the explosion of a 'nuclear satellite'. I suspect that scene was derived from TWSF, in which "The bomb flashed blinding scarlet in mid-air...."