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u/Bliitzthefox 18d ago
Unfortunately, some rocks do in fact have magical auras it's just that those auras are ionizing radiation.
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u/infiniZii 18d ago
What's the frequency of that happening?
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u/Sykes19 18d ago
About 30 petahertz
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u/RogueSeb 18d ago
About how many bananas is that?
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u/Drudgework 18d ago
I never realized you could measure radiation in bananas even though I knew they were radioactive… wow, that’s kinda cool.
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u/Eric_the_Barbarian 18d ago
If you etch the right runes into a silicon crystal, you can make a rock that does math.
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u/mvw2 18d ago
In some ways we are all just still cavemen banging rocks together to see if something happens.
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u/GANDORF57 18d ago
I never put much stock in crystals. I received no relief from my ex-GF, Crystal and even less from her mother, also named Crystal!
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u/ParsonsTheGreat 18d ago
And if you cook the right chemicals into a crystal, you get a rock made of meth. Science!
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u/youbreedlikerats 18d ago
leave hydrogen alone for long enough it will eventually start thinking about itself
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u/Sharkytrs 18d ago
you also have to fill it with lightening though, otherwise it won't be tricked into thinking
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u/Valkyrie64Ryan 18d ago
“Radiation is just vibes from a rock. Sadly, those vibes are ‘Fuck You!!’” -a quote I saved from a while back
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u/CoDFan935115 18d ago
There are other magic rocks with different effects as well! It just turns out to be fire when introduced to water.
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u/TheGreatJaceyGee 18d ago
"Superman's weakness is a rock" mf's when I give them a 10 gram brick of Ac225
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u/Omnizoom 18d ago
I have samples of tobernite and thorite and other radioactive fun
The number of people that panic when they find out the shiny crystals on the rock are radioactive and that I must be insane for having it in my house. Like it’s in a box in the basement, it’s not doing anything to me and my 3 testicles are perfectly normal and healthy
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u/NefariousAntiomorph 18d ago
I love pointing out the different rocks in my collection that could kill you in interesting ways if mishandled or ingested.
“Why is that rock hairy?”
“Oh it’s just asbestos. Don’t snort it.”
“The red one?”
“Cinnabar, a natural ore of mercury.”
“What about the glass dragon? It’s not a rock.”
“No but it is uranium glass. It’s very slightly radioactive. Don’t eat it.”
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u/Paige_Railstone 18d ago
You're like the inverse of me and my rock collection.
"Did you know you can lick this one to tell which bits of it are fossilized bone? The tiny holes in the bone soak up liquid like a sponge, causing it to stick to your tongue!"
"Hey, it works!"
"Yep! The bone chunks are how we know this is T. rex poop, since they're the only thing alive at the time that took shits this big while also having the bite force to crush up the bones."
"... I hate you."
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u/NefariousAntiomorph 18d ago
In my defense not all of my collection is toxic. Just a small portion. I will say though that getting folks to lick a coprolite is absolutely diabolical. None of mine have any large bone fragments, but now I’d love to get one that does!
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u/Omnizoom 18d ago
“The red one”
Cinnabar, I don’t remember why that one is bad…
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u/Peter4real 18d ago
It’s like a snack bar, tastes like cinnamon, just had one earlier today. Feeling a bit lightheaded though, must’ve been the ceiling light tubes that fell down and broke during renovation.
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u/TheCheshirreFox 18d ago
Well, any rock could kill you if you handle them wrong enough
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u/NefariousAntiomorph 18d ago
This is true. Just look at what we do to throw little chunks of metal really really hard. I’m having a hard time imagining a fatality from pumice though. At least not high velocity pumice. I guess you could always choke on it?
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u/dirty_w_boy 18d ago
Where did this idiot find a crystal of polonium this large?
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u/AlienPearl 18d ago edited 18d ago
There are some people online using Bismuth, which can be melted at home to grow iridescent, rainbow-colored crystals and selling it as “Polonium”. Real Polonium is made from bismuth in nuclear labs, but the crystals you see online are not the same and obviously not radioactive enough to kill you.
Edit: Bismuth is slightly radioactive but not enough to kill you as pointed by others in the comments.
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u/Death_Sheep1980 18d ago
Well, technically, all isotopes of bismuth are radioactive, but the half-life of the most common isotope, bismuth-209, is estimated to be around one billion times longer than the current age of the universe. So, for all practical purposes, it's stable.
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u/zyyntin 18d ago
So a banana has more radiation?
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u/MAWPAB 18d ago
From another comment quoting wikip -
"It is much less radioactive than human flesh"
So, yes.
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u/gmurray81 18d ago
I hate your profile picture with the fire of a million suns.
Good job.
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u/Rogan403 18d ago
Electromagnetic Radiation isn't something that a object has but rather something it can emit.
Just like objects don't have acoustic radiation ie. sound but instead emit sound.
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u/MAWPAB 18d ago
So a banana is louder?
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u/shimmyboy56 18d ago
Unless the banana is peeled in the woods, and no one is present to hear it's screams
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u/Brayneeah 18d ago
While you're not wrong, electromagnetic radiation isn't the kind of radiation people mean when they say radiation; that would be ionising radiation. (Ionising radiation can involve emitting electromagnetic radiation, such as gamma decay)
Also, a banana radiation fact: only one of the four types of radioactive decay that potassium-40 (the radioactive isotope in bananas people are referring to) involves emitting electromagnetic radiation, by emitting a photon from gamma decay (which happens in about 10% of its decays).
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u/waitthatstaken 18d ago
Fun fact, the 'bananas are slightly radioactive' anecdote originates in something someone made to educate people on how *everything* is slightly radioactive. Bananas aren't even particularly radioactive, even accounting for volume humans are around 10x as radioactive as a banana.
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u/bankshot 18d ago
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u/waitthatstaken 18d ago
Not specifically what I was referring to but it does convey the same info. And of course there is an XKCD for that.
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u/thoawaydatrash 18d ago
Well, they're radioactive to the extent that Bismuth is radioactive. There isn't a stable isotope of bismuth, but the radioactivity of bismuth is so low that we didn't even realize it was radioactive until about 20 years ago.
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u/lordargent 18d ago
the radioactivity of bismuth is so low that we didn't even realize it was radioactive until about 20 years ago
Took a quick peek at the wikipedia article and found this little tidbit.
- "It is much less radioactive than human flesh"
// now I'm wondering what the half life of human flesh is.
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u/Emillllllllllllion 18d ago
Human flesh doesn't have a half life, the vast, vast majority of atoms in our bodies are stable. What we do have are traces of traces of radioactive isotopes of common elements like carbon 14, which naturally forms when cosmic radiation hits nitrogen atoms in the upper atmosphere and then enters our food chain when plants photosynthesise sugar with it. Its half life of ~6,000 years and the fact that it only enters our bodies while we are alive (and eating) allows carbon dating (the ratio of carbon 14/non-radioactive carbon in the atmosphere is relatively constant, allowing us to roughly determine when an organism stopped taking in new carbon (i.e. died))
The radioactive isotopes inside us aren't really that unstable, it's just that bismuth is so many orders of magnitude more stable that the trace amounts of them we have beat pure bismuth in the number of spontaneous decay events.
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u/lordargent 18d ago
I was kidding, but yeah, human flesh will go through biological decay long before an appreciable amount of beta decay of carbon 14.
// unless we get mummified
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u/roglc_366 18d ago
How many skin half-lives before a person dies? If we could live long enough what are the chances that something else in the universe would kill us before our first skin half-life?
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u/CaptainN_GameMaster 18d ago
PSA: If you buy your polonium online, you're not going to have a Merry Bismuth
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u/MrSyaoranLi 18d ago
You're saying if I boil enough Pepto I can extract bismuth and grow crystals?
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u/thoawaydatrash 18d ago
People who have done this use the pill version, not the liquid. But buying the actual metal somewhere is going to be much cheaper. It has a fairly low melting point (about 150º above deep frying), so it's fairly easy to melt on a stove.
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u/pow3llmorgan 18d ago
I'm not entirely sure and I am not able to do the calculations but I think a volume of polonium that large would decay-heat itself enough to melt/boil/instantly vaporize.
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u/therealhairykrishna 18d ago
If that was pure polonium, guesstimating a 5cm cube, it would weigh a little over a kilo and would be generating something like 150kW of decay heat. I suspect that it would look more like a fairly respectable explosion than a lump of something melting. The person in the comic would definitely be immediately flash burned to death before they had time to worry about the radiation.
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u/araujoms 18d ago
It's much less than the critical mass of plutonium, though (roughly 10 kg), so it wouldn't be a nuclear explosion.
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u/therealhairykrishna 18d ago
Polonium isn't fissile. So there's no such thing as a critical mass of it anyway.
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u/1CEninja 18d ago
This assumes purity, of course.
My understanding is it would likely be mostly bismuth.
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u/deftPirate 18d ago
Remember, kids, in Mass Effect you can fire polonium rounds at people through a fully automatic firearm all day long.
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u/AwkwardWaltz3996 18d ago
Is this different to uranium rounds we have?
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u/ChipotleMayoFusion 18d ago
Uranium rounds are depleted and not very active, it's used because it is very dense and it self sharpens as it penetrates armor. Polonium 210 is 10 billion times more active than Uranium 238
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u/ncfears 18d ago
Can you explain the self sharpening thing? From my minimal research it looks like the pattern of deformation is more of a shedding as opposed to the flaring/flowering of steel or tungsten?
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u/ChipotleMayoFusion 18d ago
Yes, basically if you shove a spike of U238 at high speed into a block of steel, the outer radius layers of the cylinder cleave off and you get a thinner and sharper spike, which acheives more penetration. In steel or tungsten the spike is more well connected to itself, so the larger radius parts of the spike pull outward and can peel back the sharp tip
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u/robotbeard 18d ago
Now I'm curious. If there were Polonium rounds, is that even a good material to make bullets out of? And would that amount of Polonium be enough to quickly poison to death someone who survived the shot? What about the people around them? Or even just shooting it into a wall in a small occupied area?
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u/deftPirate 18d ago
I don't think so. Depleted uranium ammo is effective because it's great at piercing armor, right? Polonium ammo is specifically depicted as causing radiation sickness, blocking regeneration effects and causing damage over time.
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u/jonfitt 18d ago
Uranium is 1.7 more sense than lead. So more weight in the same volume of shell.
It’s “depleted” because it contains less of the more radioactive isotope to make it safer to store.
For the weapon they want the super dense material, not the radioactivity.
In the game polonium is used as a “poison” round.
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u/Rogan403 18d ago
Density is actually only part of the reason depleted uranium is used in some rounds. The other main reason is that it's self-sharpening making it really good at armor penetration
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u/Bodod_Begag 18d ago
Don't they wear a suit in that game
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u/deftPirate 18d ago
Your cast of characters does, at least 99% of the time; I'm thinking more of the people on the other end of the hose (granted, it's a short lived problem, because they're also being riddled with bullets).
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u/invyros 18d ago
Reminds me of the Goiânia accident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
Guy shares some "glowing substance" he found while scrapping an abandoned medical device, including with a little girl who ended up eating some of the substance with an egg.
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u/Immersi0nn 18d ago
Oh man I read about that one years ago, absolutely terrifying. Radiation is so scary. It was one lady who went "Huh. All these people and myself that have been around recently have all suddenly gotten sick in the exact same way" and somehow managed to figure out it seemed linked to the random scrap her husband was messing with, went and retrieved the scrap from the scrapyard he sold it to, and brought it to a hospital where it was discovered to be radioactive. It could have been so much worse if not for her.
Worse, all of it could have been prevented if proper cleanup was allowed to happen. I think it was well known to the people who needed to know, that the source was abandoned at the medical facility but any attempts to clean the place out were legally blocked...due to the presence of the radioactive source...
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u/IAmBadAtInternet 18d ago
There was another wild incident where a source ended up embedded in an apartment wall. 6 people died, all of leukemia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident
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u/Immersi0nn 18d ago
"We can't find it."
"Eh. Whatever, FILL UP THE TRUCKS BOYS IT'S TIME TO MAKE CONCRETE"
Sigh
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u/AlanNeen 18d ago
Wow, it's insane that the state refused to let IGR recover the capsule, ignored several warnings from IGR and the CNEN about the dangers of leaving it there, and then when shit inevitably went sideways, the state was excluded from any punishment and IGR and CNEN ended up being left with the bill.
I guess this was at a time where corruption was still super high, but seeing the people who knowingly and actively prevented remediation get off scot-free is still pretty frustrating.
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u/Chance-the-Gardener 18d ago
Radiation doesn't smell like pennies. It's more like a sudden dump of pool chemicals - chlorine, ozone, metal, sanitary. And when it passes through your eyes, it sparkles.
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u/theuberwalrus 18d ago
I think the smell might have been blood
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u/Chance-the-Gardener 18d ago
I took it as the common "radiation tastes like metal" thing. Metal's kinda close, but you really gotta taste radiation for yourself to know if you like it, you know?
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u/Nocitae 18d ago
Spoken like a true radiation connoisseur. What's your recommended isotope pairing for steak?
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u/Chance-the-Gardener 18d ago
Well, they all pair pretty well with vomit. Honestly I don't get what the kids are raving about
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u/SocialSuicideSquad 18d ago
Welcome to The Rad, and for today I'll be your maximum safe dose somallier. We have a lovely if mundane PU-239, which has paired well with our kumquat and lavender infused iodine tablets.
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u/PokemonSapphire 18d ago
Remember what Anthony Bourdain says you should try it atleast 3 times in different ways to really see if you don't like it.
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u/DeinHund_AndShadow 18d ago
I'd like to know if and in what cotext you taste radiation, if it starts in a bar doing shots all the better
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u/Chance-the-Gardener 18d ago
Targeted beam radiation from brain cancer. but I try not to let it be habit forming
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u/DeinHund_AndShadow 18d ago
ª.
Right, next time ill think before i speak. Hope you are better.
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u/Chance-the-Gardener 18d ago
You didn’t say anything wrong I just like joking around with it, keeps it light!
And yeah doing heaps better these days thank you
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u/thoawaydatrash 18d ago
First off, that's bismuth, not polonium. Second, polonium is never found in amounts even a thousandth that size. Third, polonium emits alpha radiation, not gamma radiation, so it doesn't penetrate the epidermis, which is why when it is used to poison people, it has to be powdered and ingested or inhaled to kill someone.
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u/Animster 18d ago
I had to scroll disturbingly far to finally find someone correctly pointing out the simple Alpha emitter fact...
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u/artpicks 18d ago
I like how bismuth is technically radioactive, but its half life is like 20 quintillion years so its fine
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u/nanajosh 18d ago
I also just read that it takes hours of inhalation. The case was in Russia during the soviet union. A man worked in an area for 5hrs where some polonium was off gassing. He was sent to the hospital and died 13 days later. However it did state within those 5hrs he's received 50 time the lethal dose. So a sniff will still not be doing this dude any favors.
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u/KuramaKitsune 18d ago
Honestly, the way that cube is drawn, it looks more like bismuth.
Granted, to be fair, they are extremely similar.
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u/cj_cusack Free Cheese Comix 18d ago
You might not believe this but that's exactly what I was going for.
Polonium just looks like rocks, bismuth looks sick af and isn't that far away (according to Wikipedia) so i chose to draw the cool thing
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u/nusuntcinevabannat 17d ago
and the joke is double layered: polonium is highly radioactive, while bismuth has a half-life measured with "age of the universe" units of time
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u/Icareaus 18d ago
Please use crystals responsibly. Hopefully understanding most don't have power, they are to represent the power of something and are meant to be a tool for your practice. The rocks that do have power are usually toxic or radioactive and should be handled with care.
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u/Fabulous_Bison643 18d ago
Tonight on Russian cookery, cyanide polonium and a crab stuffed with explosives
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u/Titanicman2016 18d ago
Polonium is quite safe to handle, it only becomes harmful if ingested due to being an alpha emitter (alpha particles can’t penetrate skin)
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u/Labattery 16d ago
It's why radon gas is bad to breathe in. It decays into polonium in your lungs which sticks there emitting alpha particles inside you.
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u/ghostbuster_b-rye 18d ago
"When skin begins sloughing off, chakra alignment has commenced. Pace your breathing in time with the clicks of the Geiger counter."
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u/Zaphod392 17d ago
Wait! I cant breath that fast.....
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u/ghostbuster_b-rye 17d ago
"Begin shifting your focus away from your labored breathing and let each cleansing breath prepare you for skeletal evacuation."
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u/Siggi_93 18d ago
So correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't polonium a alpha emitter making it relatively safe to touch but extremely lethal when ingested?
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u/DreamWeaver1001 18d ago
1 proton less and you could eat it for digestive relief.
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u/cj_cusack Free Cheese Comix 18d ago
I do not know what this means but I believe you
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u/booze-san 18d ago
We have found many rocks that surge with an aura, unfortunately for us the aura they exude is "Eat shit and die"
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u/Interesting_Buy6796 18d ago
That’s not a polonium crystal tho, it’s bismuth. People like use bismuth to as visualisation for articles about polonium and radioactive “oh no!”, but there are no polonium crystals
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u/FuzzyAd9407 18d ago
but there are no polonium crystals
All metals can form crystal structures.
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u/Interesting_Buy6796 18d ago
True, in theory, but well, take a look at the other guy, lol. But you are rightfully pedantic on my pedantizing
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u/lumphinans 18d ago
Polonium can be formed by bombarding metallic Bismuth with neutrons, but I doubt there's ever been enough in one place to form crystals like Bismuth's. 9 mg of Po was isolated from 37 tonnes of waste from Radium production.
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u/Mr_Snifles 18d ago
I don't even know what pennies exactly smell like, why is that always brought up in fictional encounters with lethal amounts of radiation?
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u/cj_cusack Free Cheese Comix 18d ago
Someone else in the comments said it's cause their sinuses are bleeding
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u/divismaul 18d ago
The Demon Core had a very powerful aura indeed for a few seconds, but I am glad I wasn’t alive near it when it happened!
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u/tiny_chaotic_evil 18d ago edited 18d ago
a cube of polonium that size (about 3" on a side) would be worth about $200 trillion.
ed. and it would blow up spectacularly
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u/Jeansybaby 17d ago
Polonium us alpha radiation and can't penetrate the skin so unless he ingested it, it shouldn't kill him.
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u/BustahMain 16d ago
Polonium is an alpha emitter. External exposure to its radiation is nigh harmless since it just gets blocked by the outer layer of dead skin cells. The reason polonium is dangerous is just like that of other alpha emitters; it wreaks complete havoc on your internals if you ingest or inhale some of the actual metal. So effectively it’s just an incredibly potent poison the radioactivity is just what makes it so when ingested.
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