It seems that fungi in Chernobyl are thriving by utilizing gamma radiation as a food source, and they are progressing towards the heart of the reactor core.
A variety of fungi have been found to harness the energy of strong radiation, such as gamma radiation, to promote their growth. This was initially discovered when these fungi were observed flourishing in the highly radioactive surroundings of the Chernobyl reactor disaster site. The fungi use a pigment known as melanin, which not only shields them from the harmful effects of radiation but also enables them to convert the energy from the radiation, much like how plants utilize sunlight for photosynthesis. Interestingly, these fungi appear to switch to this unique energy source when they find themselves in environments lacking in nutrients, like the inside of the Chernobyl reactor.
Insights into these fungi and their melanin could potentially lead to a range of applications, such as creating protection against radiation, aiding in the clean-up of radioactive waste, and possibly even offering new sources of renewable energy in harsh environments where typical plants can’t survive.
Individuals employed at U.S. nuclear power facilities experience less radiation exposure compared to the amount emitted by the granite walls within the U.S. Capitol Building.
Long term radiation damages the cameras on the ISS. Also, astronauts occasionally see flashes of light as heavy ions or charged particles crash through their skull and fire off photo receptor cells in their eyes despite being closed.
Computers at a soviet train station would randomly bug out and no one knew why. One guy eventually traced it to when livestock was being brought in from Ukraine, where Chernobyl left the cows with so much radiation they could flip bits.
The Grand Canyon Museum had three buckets of radioactive uranium ore on display for 18 years, and only found out when a kid was goofing around with a Geiger counter.
The solar system is pretty extreme as far as temperatures go. At its core, our sun registers at around 27-million degrees Fahrenheit, but its surface is no slouch temperature-wise either: it’s clocks in at about 10,000 degrees.
So is it kind of weird that in outer space, away from the sun and the mild atmosphere of Earth, the temperature measures -455 degrees?
What’s really going on out there?
Let’s go over some basic physics. Heat is actually energy, radiating as an infrared wave (like light, but below the spectrum of what’s visible to human eyes) that moves from its source (ie, the sun) to…everything else. As infrared radiation comes into contact with molecules, it imparts some of its energy, causing them to become excited and heat up. But only the matter in the path of the radiation will heat up –any matter outside of the path will remain cold. Any void the energy travels through will also remain cold because there’s nothing in it to get warmer.
Consider the planet Mercury. As the planet turns and night falls, the newly dark surface plunges in temperature to 1000 degrees colder than the radiation-exposed day side.
Earth, in contrast, feels warm even if you’re standing in the shade. Summer nights stay warm too. Even night during the wintertime in Canada is warmer than most other places in our solar system at night (withe some exceptions, notably Venus). This is due to the sun’s radiation causing convection and conduction.
When radiation hits molecules, the molecules pass that energy to others next to them, which then pass their extra energy on to their neighbors. This chain reaction is conduction. Areas outside of the path of radiation are warmed this way – so night stays warm (relatively speaking).
But in empty space there are fewer molecules that are too far apart to transfer energy if they are heated. Conduction, under these circumstances, can’t happen. This is the void issue we touched on earlier.
Convection, the process by which heat moves via a fluid (ie air or water), also can’t happen in low-gravity, molecule-scarce space.
Engineers at NASA takes all this in consideration when they are designing spacecraft for exploration. Out in space, probes and other equipment are exposed to temperatures either boiling hot or icy cold, depending on where they’re traveling in relation to the path of the sun’s radiation.
The closest any spacecraft has gotten to the sun was the Parker Solar Probe, which came within 15 million miles. This was only possible because of the specially designed heat shield that kept the rest of the probe cool.
The ability to adjust to the rising and dropping in temperatures to the tune of hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit is a necessity for surviving the extremes of space.
Luckily, our balmy little home planet manages it for us surprisingly well.
Concorde flew so high passengers received twice the dose of radiation from flying in a conventional aircraft, which was believed to increase cancer risk. The flight deck contained a radiometer so they could descend in case of a solar storm.
Quaker Oats fed radioactive milk and oatmeal to unsuspecting special needs kids under the guise of a science club in order to find out how beneficial certain nutrients were in their oats.
Animal life in Chernobyl is thriving, not because the radiation is gone, there’s still a lot of it, but because there’s barely any humans living in that area.
There was a radioactive energy drink called Radithor on the US market between 1918-1928. One prominent user was buried in a lead coffin. That user was Eben Byers. In 1927 Byers injured his arm falling from a railway sleeping berth. For the persistent pain a doctor suggested he take Radithor, a patent medicine manufactured by […]
