Just a bit of review....
Chemistry is about ALL elements and their combinations.
Mineralogy is all about natural minerals.
Gemology is all about natural minerals that are precious or semi-precious.
Geology is about the formation of mineral deposits.
Archeology is about the artifacts formed by man, some of high value.
Metallurgy is about solid phase of metal elements and exploiting the combination of metal elements with any element to create better materials.
Trying to figure out how many metals there are and which are actually useful is a metalurgist's point of view.
Since the motivation behind what this might be is partially driven by potential value, it helps to see which topics are involved. Huniting for treasure is all about finding someone else's lost hoard, not about digging through garbage dumps. Demolition of old homes might yiedl more consistent discovery of valuable items, or frequenting estate sales.
Of course, a garbage dump occasionally holds something of value that was accidently tossed away, but most of the value might be in reprocessing the metal content or harvesting the bio-gas generated by food waste. (The average annual food waste in the US is something like 200 pounds per person annually, That can generate a lot of methane.)
End result was a tiny, hardly visible, speck that sent the counter off the scale!
I don't know if that had anything to do with him living within sight of the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant
That is scary, can't be natural? How do you dispose of it? Call a government agency and you might have a fiasco. And I was worried about radon.
Uranium is natural, less to worry about. In it's natural state it isn't much of a hazard.
Plutonium is man-made, more to fear.
Reminds me of the Karen Silkwood incident. A pin head of plutonium when inhaled or ingested will likely kill you in about 20 minutes. It is not the radioactivity that kills, it is its toxicity.
Seeing as I went to work on the Hanford Nuclear Area just after this unsolved puzzle, I was quite wary of any nuclear waste. Hopefully you don't live near a nuclear fuel reprocessing facilty.
BTW, Karen Silkwood died in an auto accident - despite her exposure to plutonium contamination.
So we can add another branch of study to our list of topics.
I guess you see why I never get any microcontroller projects done. I have too many other interests as well.
If this turns out to be earthborn, and I wasted peoples time with some piece of junk,
I will pack up my discusion and take the long walk down dead thread road, I will spend a little time there and think, I will get boared after a while, witch will get me started back to doing what I love when there is meaningfull free time, messing around with those little magical electronic machines, microcontrollers. After being on this forum for a few months, I have found so many circuits I want to build, and a lot of projects I can only hope to start building, reading all the information gathered here is an education in it self, time and the propper mindset achieves so much when you have great material to work with.
Do you folks know what the big hassle is in home sales? Radon. Even in newly constructed ones.
Strange? What's that robot doing watching that house, Erco? Is it one of yours?
Yep, Radon is big business in the the real estate inspection service industry. Like termites and dry rot, it is just another fear factor that expands the fee. But the cancer scare of Radon just might be less than the carcenogenic presence of cresote or the toxic properties of pentacholophenol -- both wood preservatives. How many homes have been treated with those or chlorodane to kill termites, powder post beetles, and ants?
Radon exposure varies with regional geology and whether you have an excavated basement or not. Radon is a gas, but a heavy one. So it will flow to the lowest spots within enclosed spaces. About grade homes with a ventilated crawl space are low risk.
I don't think anyone's time has been wasted here.
I have enjoyed investigating the idea. And it demonstrates that modern techonology requires one to be aware of a wide range of topics. Just a bit of general chemistry or general physics isn't going to really get anything learned.
Reminds me of the Karen Silkwood incident. A pin head of plutonium when inhaled or ingested will likely kill you in about 20 minutes. It is not the radioactivity that kills, it is its toxicity.
Reminds me of this incident in an underground station in London (article mentions in a street but I remember the news report mentioned an underground station) although this was ricin not plutonium but still a small pellet of the stuff.
Well, a bit of fact checking about plutonium toxicity provided this excerpted from Wikipedia ---
"Plutonium is more dangerous when inhaled than when ingested. The risk of lung cancer increases once the total radiation dose equivalent of inhaled plutonium exceeds 400 mSv.[120] The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the lifetime cancer risk from inhaling 5,000 plutonium particles, each about 3 µm wide, to be 1% over the background U.S. average.[121] Ingestion or inhalation of large amounts may cause acute radiation poisoning and death; however no human is known to have died because of inhaling or ingesting plutonium, and many people have measurable amounts of plutonium in their bodies.[103]
The "hot particle" theory in which a particle of plutonium dust radiates a localized spot of lung tissue is not supported by mainstream research—such particles are more mobile than originally thought and toxicity is not measurably increased due to particulate form.[118] When inhaled, plutonium can pass into the bloodstream. Once in the bloodstream, plutonium moves throughout the body and into the bones, liver, or other body organs. Plutonium that reaches body organs generally stays in the body for decades and continues to expose the surrounding tissue to radiation and thus may cause cancer.[122]
A commonly cited quote by Ralph Nader states that a pound of plutonium dust spread into the atmosphere would be enough to kill 8 billion people.[123] However, calculations show that one pound of plutonium could kill no more than 2 million people by inhalation. This makes the toxicity of plutonium roughly equivalent with that of nerve gas.[124] Nader's views were challenged in 1976 by Bernard Cohen, as described in the book Nuclear Power, Both Sides: The Best Arguments for and Against the Most Controversial Technology. Cohen's own estimate is that a dose of 200 micrograms would likely be necessary to cause cancer.[125]
Several populations of people who have been exposed to plutonium dust (e.g. people living down-wind of Nevada test sites, Nagasaki survivors, nuclear facility workers, and "terminally ill" patients injected with Pu in 1945–46 to study Pu metabolism) have been carefully followed and analyzed. These studies generally do not show especially high plutonium toxicity or plutonium-induced cancer results, such as Albert Stevens who survived into old age after being injected with plutonium.[118] "There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during 1940s; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."[124][126]
Plutonium has a metallic taste.[127]"
So I am not sure that a pinhead of plutonium will or will not kill in 20 minutes. I was just told that way back when I worked at Hanford and just accepted it as fact.
How much of this stuff is orbiting our planet, do satellite manufacturers use a small nuclear generators? Like NASA landed on Mars with the MSL. And when it has exceeded it's service life, they bring it in on a controlled re-entry right into our oceans.
How much of this stuff is orbiting our planet, do satellite manufacturers use a small nuclear generators? Like NASA landed on Mars with the MSL. And when it has exceeded it's service life, they bring it in on a controlled re-entry right into our oceans.
Good question.
We don't. Normally the ones we use are in places where solar cells won't work, outer planets for example. Or on the surface of Mars.
Scuttlebutt has it that the Russians have done so. And typically they get sent into a "disposal orbit", although the Cosmos954 bird did not......
----
Strange. No robot here.
Unpopular is it may be, I can't help thinking that nuclear power is a stepping stone away from the brink caused by coal fired power plant. Thorium nuclear plants in China would not merely offer a non-weapons alternative, it would create a big opportunity for them to clean up environmental damage they created with Thorium polution in mining and refining rare earth minerals.
China certainly has regions that are largely unpopulated for nuclear waste storage. And China has even taken on a major nuclear reactor construction project for the U.K. Still, this is not a quick fix as the usual nuclear reactor project takes about 10 years without added delays from local protests.
This race for nuclear power has one major flaw, the waste. After storing this stuff for generation's, and we find we have no recyclable use for it, polluting space with it maybe the only answer. If you ask me, I think the byproduct of nuclear power is going to be the harsh reality someday, just like landfills they don't go away, and they are always in the way of human progress.
The note with the sample was funny. You sent just the right amount. The sample looked like alien platinum, very interesting stuff.
I've attached the results from what looks like 80% tin 20% lead solder. It doesn't have to be solder, maybe someone else can comment on what else it could be.
Ignore the Rhodium spike, that's in the unit and safe to ignore.
The note with the sample was funny. You sent just the right amount. The sample looked like alien platinum, very interesting stuff.
I've attached the results from what looks like 80% tin 20% lead solder. It doesn't have to be solder, maybe someone else can comment on what else it could be.
Ignore the Rhodium spike, that's in the unit and safe to ignore.
Thanks Jon,
Now we know, I will have to depend on you, or someone else to evaluate those readings. Does the tin composition classify it as from this planet?
This race for nuclear power has one major flaw, the waste. After storing this stuff for generation's, and we find we have no recyclable use for it, polluting space with it maybe the only answer. If you ask me, I think the byproduct of nuclear power is going to be the harsh reality someday, just like landfills they don't go away, and they are always in the way of human progress.
Doesn't seem to be a common soldering alloy. The closest listed ones would be the general purpose Sn70Pb18 and Sn70Pb30. Any alloy with close to 80% tin has virtually no lead in it.
Probably some Pot or Babbit metal like Loopy suggested.
I'd guess with the tin/lead/antimony content, something like pewter. Interesting that a little gold shows up.
Some poor farmer threw in any metal handy, maybe some of wife's gold plated costume jewelry, I thought my garden was pretty much pristine of junk, a lot of people and their history, finding some of the other artifacts on this land has been fun.
Comments
I can imagine that scenario, that's a geographic specific joke isn't it?
Chemistry is about ALL elements and their combinations.
Mineralogy is all about natural minerals.
Gemology is all about natural minerals that are precious or semi-precious.
Geology is about the formation of mineral deposits.
Archeology is about the artifacts formed by man, some of high value.
Metallurgy is about solid phase of metal elements and exploiting the combination of metal elements with any element to create better materials.
Trying to figure out how many metals there are and which are actually useful is a metalurgist's point of view.
Since the motivation behind what this might be is partially driven by potential value, it helps to see which topics are involved. Huniting for treasure is all about finding someone else's lost hoard, not about digging through garbage dumps. Demolition of old homes might yiedl more consistent discovery of valuable items, or frequenting estate sales.
Of course, a garbage dump occasionally holds something of value that was accidently tossed away, but most of the value might be in reprocessing the metal content or harvesting the bio-gas generated by food waste. (The average annual food waste in the US is something like 200 pounds per person annually, That can generate a lot of methane.)
Uranium is natural, less to worry about. In it's natural state it isn't much of a hazard.
Plutonium is man-made, more to fear.
Reminds me of the Karen Silkwood incident. A pin head of plutonium when inhaled or ingested will likely kill you in about 20 minutes. It is not the radioactivity that kills, it is its toxicity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood
Seeing as I went to work on the Hanford Nuclear Area just after this unsolved puzzle, I was quite wary of any nuclear waste. Hopefully you don't live near a nuclear fuel reprocessing facilty.
BTW, Karen Silkwood died in an auto accident - despite her exposure to plutonium contamination.
So we can add another branch of study to our list of topics.
Toxicology.
If this turns out to be earthborn, and I wasted peoples time with some piece of junk,
I will pack up my discusion and take the long walk down dead thread road, I will spend a little time there and think, I will get boared after a while, witch will get me started back to doing what I love when there is meaningfull free time, messing around with those little magical electronic machines, microcontrollers. After being on this forum for a few months, I have found so many circuits I want to build, and a lot of projects I can only hope to start building, reading all the information gathered here is an education in it self, time and the propper mindset achieves so much when you have great material to work with.
Seems Plutonium can be naturally occurring.
Rare mergers of binary neutron stars found as the source of radioactive plutonium-244 in nature
Strange? What's that robot doing watching that house, Erco? Is it one of yours?
Radon exposure varies with regional geology and whether you have an excavated basement or not. Radon is a gas, but a heavy one. So it will flow to the lowest spots within enclosed spaces. About grade homes with a ventilated crawl space are low risk.
I don't think anyone's time has been wasted here.
I have enjoyed investigating the idea. And it demonstrates that modern techonology requires one to be aware of a wide range of topics. Just a bit of general chemistry or general physics isn't going to really get anything learned.
Ah ha.... Google will make a fool out of us all.
Chicken Little was also fearful of Galatic debri. I take a bit of faith and courage to not panic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov
"Plutonium is more dangerous when inhaled than when ingested. The risk of lung cancer increases once the total radiation dose equivalent of inhaled plutonium exceeds 400 mSv.[120] The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the lifetime cancer risk from inhaling 5,000 plutonium particles, each about 3 µm wide, to be 1% over the background U.S. average.[121] Ingestion or inhalation of large amounts may cause acute radiation poisoning and death; however no human is known to have died because of inhaling or ingesting plutonium, and many people have measurable amounts of plutonium in their bodies.[103]
The "hot particle" theory in which a particle of plutonium dust radiates a localized spot of lung tissue is not supported by mainstream research—such particles are more mobile than originally thought and toxicity is not measurably increased due to particulate form.[118] When inhaled, plutonium can pass into the bloodstream. Once in the bloodstream, plutonium moves throughout the body and into the bones, liver, or other body organs. Plutonium that reaches body organs generally stays in the body for decades and continues to expose the surrounding tissue to radiation and thus may cause cancer.[122]
A commonly cited quote by Ralph Nader states that a pound of plutonium dust spread into the atmosphere would be enough to kill 8 billion people.[123] However, calculations show that one pound of plutonium could kill no more than 2 million people by inhalation. This makes the toxicity of plutonium roughly equivalent with that of nerve gas.[124] Nader's views were challenged in 1976 by Bernard Cohen, as described in the book Nuclear Power, Both Sides: The Best Arguments for and Against the Most Controversial Technology. Cohen's own estimate is that a dose of 200 micrograms would likely be necessary to cause cancer.[125]
Several populations of people who have been exposed to plutonium dust (e.g. people living down-wind of Nevada test sites, Nagasaki survivors, nuclear facility workers, and "terminally ill" patients injected with Pu in 1945–46 to study Pu metabolism) have been carefully followed and analyzed. These studies generally do not show especially high plutonium toxicity or plutonium-induced cancer results, such as Albert Stevens who survived into old age after being injected with plutonium.[118] "There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during 1940s; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."[124][126]
Plutonium has a metallic taste.[127]"
So I am not sure that a pinhead of plutonium will or will not kill in 20 minutes. I was just told that way back when I worked at Hanford and just accepted it as fact.
http://www.fortfreedom.org/p22.htm
Good question.
We don't. Normally the ones we use are in places where solar cells won't work, outer planets for example. Or on the surface of Mars.
Scuttlebutt has it that the Russians have done so. And typically they get sent into a "disposal orbit", although the Cosmos954 bird did not......
----
Strange. No robot here.
Usually, in a lab - they poison animals such as rats with ever increasing doses until they get a dosage where 50% of the lab animals die.
The is called LD sub-script 50.
Please read...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicity
Unpopular is it may be, I can't help thinking that nuclear power is a stepping stone away from the brink caused by coal fired power plant. Thorium nuclear plants in China would not merely offer a non-weapons alternative, it would create a big opportunity for them to clean up environmental damage they created with Thorium polution in mining and refining rare earth minerals.
China certainly has regions that are largely unpopulated for nuclear waste storage. And China has even taken on a major nuclear reactor construction project for the U.K. Still, this is not a quick fix as the usual nuclear reactor project takes about 10 years without added delays from local protests.
The note with the sample was funny. You sent just the right amount. The sample looked like alien platinum, very interesting stuff.
I've attached the results from what looks like 80% tin 20% lead solder. It doesn't have to be solder, maybe someone else can comment on what else it could be.
Ignore the Rhodium spike, that's in the unit and safe to ignore.
Thanks Jon,
Now we know, I will have to depend on you, or someone else to evaluate those readings. Does the tin composition classify it as from this planet?
_Mke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_metal
Or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_(metal)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35074848
Probably some Pot or Babbit metal like Loopy suggested.
Some poor farmer threw in any metal handy, maybe some of wife's gold plated costume jewelry, I thought my garden was pretty much pristine of junk, a lot of people and their history, finding some of the other artifacts on this land has been fun.
This discussion has certainly been fun.