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posted by chromas on Friday November 01 2019, @11:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the Lead-in-the-Hold dept.

In a sort of a reversal of the problem that Clair Patterson had, wherein, as you will recall, his research was contaminated by environmental lead, originating in gasoline additives, researchers attempting delicate studies of very far away phenomena need shielding, namely lead, that is not contaminated by radioactivity.
Fine article available at The Atlantic.

In 2017, Chamkaur Ghag, a physicist at University College London, got an email from a colleague in Spain with a tempting offer. The year before, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, Frank Calaprice, had learned of old Spanish ships that had sunk off the New Jersey coast 400 or 500 years ago, while carrying a cargo of lead. Calaprice obtained a few samples of this lead and sent it off to Spain, where a lab buried within the Pyrenees tested its radioactivity. It was low: just what Aldo Ianni, the then-director of the Canfranc Underground Laboratory, was hoping for. Now that sunken lead was being offered to any physics laboratory willing to pay 20 euros per kilogram—a fairly high price—for it.
        Lead is mined and refined all over the world, but that centuries-old lead, sitting in a shipwreck, has a rare quality. Having sat deep underwater since before the United States of America was born, its natural radioactivity has decayed to a point where it's no longer spitting out particles. For particle physicists, that makes it exceptionally valuable.

Source of radioactive contaminants in lead? Yes, you guessed it!

Take steel: It's an excellent shield from intruding vagabond particles—so much so that Fermilab, a particle-physics and accelerator laboratory in Illinois, has used tons of it in the past few decades to shield its own experiments, says Valerie Higgins, Fermilab's historian and archivist. That steel frequently came from decommissioned warships, many of which existed around the time of, or served in, the Second World War or the Korean War, including the Astoria, the Roanoke, the Wasp, the Philippine Sea, and the Baltimore.

The timing of those conflicts matters. At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, the first-ever nuclear-device detonation took place in the Jornada del Muerto desert, in New Mexico. The atomic age had begun, and with each subsequent nuclear fireball, more radioactive fallout was sprinkled over the world.

During the Cold War, that radioactive atmospheric contamination got effortlessly sucked into blast furnaces when steel was made, Duffy says. This infused the final product with radiation, making it unsuitable for many physics experiments.

Thus the market in sunken lead. And a conflict between astrophysics and archeaology. Ah, science!


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 03 2019, @06:53AM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 03 2019, @06:53AM (#915247) Journal

    Modded informative. It's true, I've never seen duct tape that actually seals duct work. If you have reason to actually look at HVAC duct, any duct tape present is probably loose, and flapping around. I think a lot of duct tape is used to hold the duct together, while the duct work is lifted into place, then suspended with hangers. Since I've never worked in that field, I can't offer any better explanation. Maybe a lot of HVAC guys believe that the tape will last more than a couple months?

    re "duck tape", it has been my experience that "duck tape" is just a cheaper version or grade of "duct tape". Some brands are utter crap, while other brands actually hold stuff together for awhile. "Duck" seems to be the cheapest, most worthless version. But, if you wrap enough of it around your ducks, I presume the ducks will get pissed off?

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    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @11:15AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @11:15AM (#915285)

    Since I've never worked in that field, I can't offer any better explanation.

    The real mystery is why you are offering any explanation at all, since you clearly do not know what you are talking about.

    Maybe if the Spanish ships had had some Duct Tape on board, they wouldn't have sunk, and the entire Fine Article would never have been written.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 03 2019, @11:35AM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 03 2019, @11:35AM (#915289) Journal

      LOL - maybe if you and ten friends participated more, I wouldn't venture into so many conversations. If your expertise were posted promptly, I wouldn't need to venture an opinion. This is your opportunity to make a journal entry, telling us everything there is to know about tape of all kinds. And, if you are especially thorough, the only thing I might post is a "thank you", maybe a question, and mod you up. I mean, really, what else is there to say, once an expert has told us everything he knows?

      Have a nice day, and try not to be too jealous of me. Not everyone can be me!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @09:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @09:43PM (#915447)

        Thank you, Runaway1965, for sharing your ignorance and lack of knowledge here on SN. If not for you, those "know-it-all" SJW libtards would have taken over the place already!

        --
        Gohmert/Gaetz 2020! Dumb and Dumber for the win!