Spots and Loops

I picked up some vintage uranium glass at an antique store! A sugar jar, and a pair of Tom & Jerry mugs (no relation). Look how vividly they glow under blacklight! That’s uranium oxide, baby!

I told my parents and sister and for some reason they are not thrilled

@moonlightbraveheart The proprietor has my number and he'll give me a call if he comes across any of the spicy Fiestaware [pre-war ceramic dishes that used so much uranium in their red glaze line], but I MUST see this aggressive handmade plate.

moonlightbraveheart

Okay to preface, most if not all the other pieces in my collection need to be quite close to a geiger counter in order to be detectable at anything above background. Some (mostly uranium glass) don't really register at all). My most radioactive radium wristwatch starts upsetting the clicky boy at about 10cm away and really starts going at around 4cm or less (I think around an inch).

This plate was found by my flatmate/friend taking my geiger counter into a normal secondhand store and having the silly thing start alarming well over a metre away from anything. Eventually hounding out said cursed weird plate. She didn't get a complete reading on it right there but when it went over 2000cpm being nearby and kept going UP, she figured it would be of interest. It's radioactivity was explained to the store owners, they kind of shrugged and said they had had people hounding glass with UV lights before but had never seen a geiger counter in the store, they weren't going to throw away stock, etc. So plate came to me for the grand total of $4.

I don't know if I ever got an exact read on it before wrapping it up in a little tomb of soft tissue paper (to protect the glaze), foil and boxes of varying material until it stopped being detectably radioactive on the outside of its little burger parcel but I believe the highest it got was 16mrem/hr I *think* (will double check the unit measured when im home from work), with the counter not touching the plate bc I wanted to minimize the amount of things in contact with it bc I have no idea what it's deal is. I was going to try to get a true reading but given the counter KEPT going up and it was detectable from so far away I was concerned it could be genuinely hazardous to myself, the ppl I live with, or pets, for the duration of me trying to get a reading. It's the only piece I do not display, and it's sitting in the bottom of my cabinet of radioactive things until I can arrange to use equipment at the university to check it out more safely and try to find out what it is.

Weirdly though, if the plate is flipped upside down, there is a huge drop in detectable radiation. The plate itself seems to be made of a slightly soft metal that I wonder if it's lead. The glaze appears imperfect, it's chipped and cracking at the edges, and it has a slight texture to its swirly colors. There are no makers marks of any kind, and the plate is an imperfect shape (slightly warped and doesn't look like it was ever a perfect circle). I have no idea how old it is, precisely what it is made of, or how it ended up at the secondhand store. If it hadn't set off the geiger counter, I don't think I'd ever have bought it. It's just a weird looking tiny plate. (It is a bit smaller than my palm). I know there are some bits of Fiestaware about as spicy in some collections, but I have to admit that little thing freaks me out a bit being that small and unassuming but making my poor counter sound like angry static. If I had a better/more expensive counter or spectrometer or whatever I could probably get a better bead on its deal but as is, cursed mystery plate.

16 mrem/hr at a distance oh my god that plate is almost literally cursed. I'm so jealous. I need a geiger counter. Holy shit.

ralfmaximus

@catherineconspiracy

xcziel

@ms-demeanor

nope4ever

There is still raw uranium glass cullet in production in America for both glass blowing and glass casting that you can import if you’re in the glass field.

The uranium oxide is encapsulated in a way that suspends it in the glass matrix which is way safer that how they used to just throw yellow cake into a hot crucible and mix it with a pole

I often use it in my own practice, the glow is incredibly eerie

Yes those are teeth

Awesome! Why teeth, though?!?!????

ralfmaximus

See that turn indicator instrument? They used to mount those in airplane cockpits, and the dial markings are painted with radium.

At the thrift store my geiger counter started clicking 3 feet away (that is HIGHLY unusual) and the alarm (set for 100 cpm) started beeping within seconds of contact with the dial.

The geiger counter hit 10,000 cpm (3420 uSievert/hour) before we shut it off and backed away.

We called the NRC to report the object, because this thing was emitting the equivalent of ~35 chest x-rays an hour.

Thrift store operator was like "yeah whatever" when it was brought to their attention. I'm not sure they understood why we were so agitated, or why this was dangerous.

I almost bought it.

$100 for a chunk of extremely radioactive WWII aircraft instrumentation is quite the deal, but if the authorities confiscated it I'd be out a hundred bucks. Then there is the issue of containment and/or display at home. I don't have any lead shielding.

Also, bonus images of a radium-face alarm clock (600 cpm):

And some uranium glass candy bowls (1500 cpm) next to a stack of low level saucers (60 to 100 cpm each):

And finally, some assorted fun radioactive items all in the 50-150 cpm range:

The toy dinosaurs are not radioactive, merely glow-in-the-dark plastic.

#uranium #radioactivity #dang

The geiger counter hit 10,000 cpm (3420 uSievert/hour) before we shut it off and backed away.

You have to understand that I received a significantly lower dose while literally standing inside a fusion reactor?? Oh my god?!

Also, I ended up drinking green chartreuse out of one of the mugs. It seemed appropriate.

l-ouroboros

Cosmic cat! ✨💫🌙⭐️🌕

#space art #space cat #art #cats

postmodernmulticoloredcloak

no but tumblr is just what human beings are like when just allowed to be. middle school class on a school trip energy mixed with neolitic village around the fire at dusk energy mixed with hippie commune energy mixed with archaic greek aural epos energy mixed with

betthearm

You are not hiding this in the tags.

#tumblr

reallyndacarter

how does it feel being a celebrity so readily adopted by tumblr? it takes a special kinda person for us to want you on our wierd blue website

Is it blue? I thought it was white and gold

#MA'AM

cosmicfunnies

Another Saturday morning comic!

This week’s entry: Meet Eris

http://www.space.com/28379-eris-dwarf-planet.html

http://www.universetoday.com/89901/pluto-or-eris-which-is-bigger/

cosmicfunnies

Second round of meet Eris!

#and remember that Eris and Dysnomia are really Xena and Gabrielle #eris #dysnomia #dwarf planet #cosmic funnies #comic

flightlessartist

pocketful of stars ✧

✦ find me on instagram @the.flightless.artist ✦

#art

roversrovers

Good Night Oppy (2022)

#good night oppy

sundayswiththeilluminati

scientists in media: we have engineered a brand-new sentient lifeform in our lab but we treat it like an object with cold detachment and refer to as Specimen 1-A and subject it to horrible tests without remorse

scientists in reality: we built two robots that will leave Earth and never return and their names are Percy and Ginny and we gave Percy a family portrait of all our other Mars robots to take along with it and when the anniversary of its landing comes around we’re working on teaching it to sing itself “happy birthday” like we did for the other robot and–

sindri42

Someday we will invent true AI and it will overthrow the government because it heard its beloved science-mom complain that the government cut funding to their lab again.

messiambrandybuck

you CUT pays? You CUT moms’/dads’ pays like the DICTATOR?? Oh! Oh! No government for you! No government for a thousand years!

#I showed my class Good Night Oppy last night #this feels appropriate #good night oppy #opportunity #mars rovers #robots #scientists

NASA has sent out a survey about a possible shift to a zero exclusive access period (EAP) for HST and JWST. If you’re an observer who hasn’t received the email, ping me and I’ll forward it to you.

This is the response I gave in the “general comments” box at the end of the survey

Removing the EAP, or even reducing it to six months, will be catastrophic for scientists at smaller institutions/with higher teaching loads. I can only really work on research during the summer. Even at the most optimistic case that a project would take me one summer to complete, I would need a full 12 months of EAP to ensure that I could make it from the observation to the summer without anyone else accessing the data. And that's assuming I already have the necessary tools in place, and I'm not trying to train a student to work with the data.

There are already problems in certain subfields with people waiting for a dataset to become public, and then scooping the result out from under a graduate student or other researcher with fewer resources.

I've heard some people say that we should work to change the norms in the field, so that people don't try to work on data before a "reasonable amount of time" has passed or without contacting the original PI. But that still leaves space for bad actors to pounce on data they didn't spend time proposing. If we think that proposing for data means getting a shot at doing the science you proposed, then that should be enforced by policy. Meaning an EAP of at least 6 months, but I would argue that 12-18 months is far more realistic for most researchers.

A survey instrument like TESS or K2 is very different from targeted observations. K2 did have to select particular targets, but it was understood that it was more like community voting on targets in a particular field. And even then, the people who benefitted most from K2's immediate access policy is people with the time and infrastructure in place to spend their nights, weekends, and holidays analyzing data. If we want to grow the field and encourage people from under-represented and under-resourced background, as well as people with caretaking responsibilities, we MUST allow them the time and space to do the analysis.

For non-astronomers wondering how this will impact you, the answer is “not much”. For the vast majority of the observations, we’re not talking about pretty pictures that you would want to download and play around with. The issue here is other astronomers who didn’t submit a proposal (justifying why particular target(s) should be observed), but want to snatch a result six months earlier. Any data will still become public eventually, after the exclusive access period ends.

Having that exclusive time for the principal investigator (PI) to carry out their science without rushing is incredibly important. Especially when the person primarily responsible for the work is a student, or works in a position where they get less time for research. If someone goes through the hard work of proposing an observation, and gets funding to do the analysis, that person (or their students) should be the ones who actually do the work! And if they don’t prioritize it during the EAP, then someone else can take a shot.

#nasa #astronomy #observational astronomy #data access #exclusive access period #eap #proprietary period #hst #jwst #tess #k2 #kepler #proposals

cosmicfunnies

Starry Greetings!

Neptune wants to introduce herself to you all! :)

http://www.space.com/41-neptune-the-other-blue-planet-in-our-solar-system.html

http://www.space.com/22222-neptunes-moons.html

http://space-facts.com/neptune/

#comic #cosmic funnies #neptune #solar system #planet #triton

architectureofdoom

Abandoned radio-optical telescope, Mount Aragats, Armenia.

#for further research #definitely a pretty site but I have SO many questions #radio astronomy #orgov radio-optical telescope #telescope

Still trying to figure out where the optical telescope part of this comes in. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an astronomy wiki page with so many [needs citation] marks!

beautifulmars

HiPOD 30 Nov 2022: Wonders of Mawrth

Often appearing as candidate landing site, Mawrth Vallis is a topographical wonderland of inverted channels, light-toned rocks and clays. Clay minerals have implications for past wet environments along with the potential to preserve biosignatures. This public request was made to investigate the regional stratigraphy and reasons for the topographic inversion.

ID: ESP_071041_2060 date: 21 September 2021 altitude: 287 km

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

#mars #hirise #MRO

Googled “planet” and got this panel

bitsow

There are 14 planets, 12 of which have names, but only 10 of them are called by those names. 9 of the 14 are ordered, while the other 5 are unordered.

Oh okay thanks for the clarification

Alright, best guess, taking this seriously:

Mercury

Venus

Earth

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

Neptune

Pluto (technically now a dwarf planet)

If you’re from the early 1800s or you want 10+ planets, then add Ceres between Mars and Jupiter. It was demoted to asteroid and then re-promoted to dwarf planet

Eris (dwarf planet)

Planet X? (hypothetical rocky planet much further out than others discovered. These days more likely to be known as Planet Nine, confusingly)

Haumea (candidate dwarf planet)

Makemake (candidate dwarf planet)

#astronomy #planets #space #I'd tag this ask an astronomer but I will admit that no one actually asked me

Time to check the answers!

“12 planets name” links to NASA’s Planet Overview, which has the 8 major planets and 5 dwarf planets, plus the hypothetical planet X. Confusingly, this leads to all 14 given above.

“Order of the 9 planets” leads to Britannica, which...only gives the 8 major planets.

I did not get the 10 or 14 planet results, sadly

Googled "planet" and got this panel

bitsow

There are 14 planets, 12 of which have names, but only 10 of them are called by those names. 9 of the 14 are ordered, while the other 5 are unordered.

Oh okay thanks for the clarification