RenoVous

  While the laureates were already revealed in  October , the actual ceremony is held today, as well as the very first, in 1901. So today's bits of history include a few mentions of past winners of the Peace Prize, including The Red Cross (1917), Woodrow Wilson (1920), and American diplomat Ralph Bunche (1950). But I wanted to look at 1903, when Marie and Pierre Curie won the Physics Prize for their work with radium.  I recently saw a post that mentioned her journals, which will remain radioactive for another 1,500 years. Marie Sklodowska Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1867, the daughter of a Physics teacher.  In 1891, she went to study in Paris.  She received a degree in physical sciences (1893) and mathematics (1894) before she met Pierre.  They were married in 1895. As a subject for her doctoral thesis, she began studying uranium.  She coined the term radioactivity, describing the phenomenon of radiation caused by atomic decay. Together, she an...

Cryptococcus neoformans, radiotrophic fungi found on the walls of Chernobyl's reactor. Scientists have known about this fungus since 2007 - it decomposes radioactive material such as the hot graphite in the remains of the reactor.  Very dark melanin pigment absorbs radiation and processes it harmlessly for energy.  Scientists hope to mimic this process for radiation/sun blocking as well as for a renewable energy source. Outside the exclusion zone, the fungi has less melanin, suggesting it adapted to the radiation.  Other studies have shown that the fungi grows faster with the radiation, and they point their spores towards the source - they love it. NASA has been researching this and have been growing the fungus on board the International Space Station.  The ambient radiation there is high compared to Earth's surface, and understanding how we could use the fungus has great potential for future space travel. Radiation Reference: On average, we ar...

Cherenkov Light: Electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle passes through a medium at a speed greater than the speed of light within that medium. This is the blue light we see when a nuclear reactor is placed underwater. For years, patients undergoing radiotherapy described seeing a flash of light, and now scientists have obtained photographic proof of its existence. They used a CDose camera which is specially designed to view light emissions from biological systems - "as the radiation beam passes through the eye, light is generated within the vitreous fluid." The researchers believe that this phenomenon can be monitored during therapy to confirm whether the radiation has hit the intended target. IFLScience Nature