strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Apr 7 03: if you can read this
then it means that our cable modem continued to work long enough for me to post this. The nice fix-it man came today. Lo, even seven hours later, it is still fixed.
cri de coeur
Welcome to Winter II: the revenge. I am fighting off a cold at the moment, and it hurts to swallow, and I’m singing at Carnegie Hall the day after tomorrow. But the suffering of my body pales beside the suffering of my soul: it is snowing.Again.
Please, just make it stop. If I don’t get some warm breeziness soon I may perish.
oooh
Who says science isn’t beautiful? Anyone with a band broad enough to handle a 1.8MB image should examine the following: a picture of the Z machine at Sandia Labs, which is attempting to make fusion work. Is that Cherenkov radiation in the tank? So strange, so blue. A lovely shade.wait. what?
Cherenkov radiation. Think of it as a “sonic boom” produced when a particle goes faster than the speed of light. A “photonic boom.” Sure, light is the fastest thing there is when it’s travelling through a vacuum, but when it’s moving through water, there are some high-energy particles that will leave it in the dust. Therefore, submerged sources of high-energy particles (notably reactor cores) will give off Cherenkov light. Which is a fascinating blue color.Man, the universe is cool.