Common Everyday Items That Are Radioactive

You are exposed to radioactivity every day, often from the foods you eat and the products you use. Here is a look at some common everyday products and foods that are radioactive. Some of these objects may pose a health risk, but most of them are a harmless part of your everyday environment. In almost all cases, you get more exposure to radiation if you take a ride in a plane. Still, it's good to know the sources of your exposure.
1. Brazil Nuts

Brazil nuts are probably the most radioactive food you can eat. They provide 5,600 pCi/kg (picocuries per kilogram) of potassium-40 and a whopping 1,000-7,000 pCi/kg of radium-226. Although the radium is not retained by the body for very long, the nuts are approximately 1,000 times more radioactive than other foods. It's interesting to note the radioactivity seems not to come from elevated amounts of radionuclides in the soil, but rather from the extensive root systems of the trees.
2. Beer

Michael Connors, morguefile.com
Beer is not particularly radioactive, but a beer does contain, on average, about 390 pCi/kg of the isotope potassium-40. All foods which contain potassium have some of this isotope, so you could sort of consider this a nutrient in beer. Of the items on this list, beer probably is the least radioactive, but I found it amusing to note that it is, in fact, slightly hot. So, if you were afraid of the Chernobyl energy drink from that movie "Hot Tub Time Machine," you might want reconsider. It could be good stuff.
3. Cat Litter

GK Hart/Vikki Hart, Getty Images
Cat litter is sufficiently radioactive that it can set off radiation alerts at international border checkpoints. Actually, it's not all cat litter you need to worry about -- only the stuff made from clay or bentonite. Radioactive isotopes naturally occur in clay at the rate of about 4 pCi/g for uranium isotopes, 3 pCi/g for thorium isotopes, and 8 pCi/g of potassium-40. A researcher at Oak Ridge Associate Universities once calculated American consumers buy 50,000 pounds of uranium and 120,000 pounds of thorium in the form of cat litter each and every year.

This does not pose much of a danger to cats or their humans. However, there has been a significant release of radionuclides in the form of pet waste from cats being treated for cancer with radioisotopes. Gives you something to think about, right?
4. Bananas

mconnors, morguefile.com
Bananas are naturally high in potassium. Potassium is a mix of isotopes, including the radioactive isotope potassium-40, so bananas are slightly radioactive. The average banana emits around 14 decays per second and contains about 450 mg of potassium. It's not something you need to worry about, unless you are hauling a bunch of bananas across an international border. Like kitty litter, bananas can trigger a radiation alert for authorities seeking nuclear material.

I don't want you thinking bananas and Brazil nuts are the only radioactive foods out there. Basically, any food that is high in potassium naturally contains potassium-40 and is slightly, but significantly radioactive. This includes potatoes (radioactive french fries), carrots, lima beans and red meat. Carrots, potatoes and lima beans also contain some radon-226. When you get right down to it, all food contains a small amount of radioactivity. You eat food, so you are slightly radioactive, too.
5. Smoke Detectors

Whitepaw, public domain
About 80% of standard smoke detectors contain a small amount of the radioactive isotope americium-241, which emits alpha particle and beta radiation. Americium-242 has a half-life of 432 years, so it's not going anywhere anytime soon. The isotope is enclosed in the smoke detector and poses no real risk to you unless you break apart your smoke detector and eat or inhale the radioactive source. A more significant concern is the disposal of smoke detectors, since the americium eventually accumulates in landfills or wherever discarded smoke detectors wind up.
6. Fluorescent Lights

Deglr6328, Creative Commons License
The lamp starters of some fluorescent lights contain a small cylindrical glass bulb containing less than 15 nanocuries of krypton-85, a beta and gamma emitter with a half-life of 10.4 years. The radioactive isotope is not a concern unless the bulb is broken. Even then, the toxicity of other chemicals typically outweighs any risk from radioactivity.
7. Gemstones

Gregory Phillips, Free Documentation License
Some gemstones, such as zircon, are naturally radioactive. Additionally, several gemstones may be irradiated with neutrons to enhance their color. Examples of gems that may be color-enhanced include beryl, tourmaline, and topaz. Some artificial diamonds are made from metal oxides. An example is yttrium oxide stabilized with radioactive thorium oxide. While most of the items on this list are of little to no concern where your exposure is concerned, some radiation-treated gemstones retain enough "shine" to be radiologically hot to the tune of 0.2 milliroentgens per hour. Plus, you may wear the gems close to your skin for an extended period of time.
8. Ceramics

Salvation Army, Creative Commons
You use ceramics every day. Even if you aren't using old radioactive stoneware (like brightly-colored Fiestaware), there's a good chance you have some ceramics that emit radioactivity.
For example, do you have a cap or veneer on your teeth? Some porcelein teeth have been artificially colored with uranium containing metal oxides make them whiter and more reflective. The dental work can expose your mouth to 1000 millirem per year per cap, which comes out to two and a half times the average whole body annual exposure from natural sources, plus a few medical x-rays.

Anything made of stone may be radioactive. For example, tiles and granite countertops are slightly radioactive. So is concrete. Concrete basements are especially high, since you get off-gassing of radon from the concrete and collection of the radioactive gas, which is heavier than air and can accumulate.

Other offenders include art glass, cloisonne enameled jewelry, and glazed pottery. Pottery and jewelry are of concern because acidic foods can dissolve small amounts of radioactive elements, so that you might ingest them. Wearing radioactive jewelry close to your skin is similar, where the acids in your skin dissolve the material, which may be absorbed or accidentally ingested.

9. Recycled Metal

Frank C. Müller, Creative Commons License
We all want to reduce our impact on the environment. Recycling is good, right? Of course it is, as long as you know what it is you're recycling. Scrap metal can get grouped together, which has led to some interesting (some would say horrifying) cases of radioactive metal getting incorporated into common household objects.

For example, back in 2008 a gamma-emitting cheese grater was found. Apparently scrap cobalt-60 found its way into the metal used to make the grates. Metal tables contaminated with cobalt-60 were found scattered across several states.
10. Glowing Items

Wiki Phantoms
You probably don't have an old radium-dial clock or watch, but there is a decent chance you have a tritium-lighted object. Tritium is a radioactive hydrogen isotope. Tritium is used to make glowing gun sights, compasses, watch faces, key ring fobs and self-powered lighting.

You may buy a new item, but it may include some vintage parts. Although radium-based paint may not be used anymore, parts from old pieces have been finding new life in jewelry. The problem here is that the protective face of the clock or whatever gets removed, allowing the radioactive paint to flake or peel off. This can result in accidental exposure.

A circle drawn on a sphere (b) has a shorter circumference than one drawn on a flat sheet of paper (a), while a circle drawn on the surface of a saddle (c) has a longer cirumference, even though they all have the same radius.

From Brian Greens' Elegant Universe

Spatial Fabric around the Sun

Beautiful way to express how the earth is kept in its orbit by the Sun as it rolls along a 'valley' in the warped spatial fabric. This follows the "path of least resistance" in the distorted region around the sun. 

Also, this is another way to suggest how gravitational 'explosion' could me 'immediately' felt if something happened to the sun. Whereas it might take light to reach the Earth from Sun in about 8 minutes, Newton suggested the gravitational impact would be instantaneous!! Something travelling faster than light is still not allowed in Physics unless General Theory of Relativity is invoked.

From Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe

The BRAIN Re-BOOTED!

Eben Alexander did not believe in spirituality and was fond of para-jumping which he had done several times. Once he was about to dash against another trooper while on JUMP, but some part of his brain (he calls it CORE - Not the one that does analysis, neither the one that controls body parts), shifted him to his utter astonishment to safety.

Later he had an attack from E.Coli bacteria (1 in 1,00,00,000 of meningitis patients!) that lead him to COMA for 7 days. He describes those days as touring the Universe beautifully with something that was always pleasant, like sun-rise, green-cover, water-falls, canals etc. He could find himself flying above these.

For a neurosurgeon who had performed 100's of brain surgeries, opened the skulls, injected plasma, no amount of antibiotic worked and his return from death-bed, he says, was due to pure LOVE from God.

Out of his coma he was given a picture of his birth sister, whom he’d never met because he was adopted and she had died. He was shocked to find that she was the angelic guide who gave him the tour of the universe.

On Science he writes that "our focus on exponential progress in science and technology has left many of us relatively bereft in the realm of meaning and joy, and of knowing how our lives fit into the grand scheme of existence for all eternity".

About BRAIN: The brain does not REALLY THINK!!!. It filters bits and pieces of information and formulates a story. This is what it decides is reality, all the while true reality lies outside its awareness. Our daily experiences are an illusion. However, love is the true reality and the love we have for our children, spouses, friends, pets, etc. never dies.

# Time does not exist in reality. Time and space are only a function of the dualistic nature in the physical universe.

# We are loved, innocent and there is nothing to fear.

# We must choose love instead of fear because we are allowed to choose what we will experience.

# The false belief in separation from God is the source of all anxiety and problems and the solution for every problem is recognizing that we are one with each other and God.

# Physicality is characterized by defensiveness. There is no loss in Spirit, therefore nothing to defend.

He also refutes other scientific versions in an appendix, with medical language that only a physician would understand.

Excellently narrated, this book should become must read for everyone who love spirituality and who believe in life-after-death. I would go to an extent suggesting that this book could even be included in some 'literature' part of the College syallbus. I am thankful to Prof. Rahmatullah Vellore for referring us to a review about this author in 'Newsweek' some time back.

Inside NASA's mission control centre

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/10/going-boldly-what-it-was-like-to-be-an-apollo-flight-controller/

10 Everyday Things that Cause Brain Farts

Our brains balk at the thought of four-dimensional hypercubes, quantum mechanics or an infinite universe, and understandably so. But our gray matter is generally adept at processing sensory data from the mundane objects and experiences of daily life. However, there are glaring exceptions. Here are 10 things that unexpectedly throw our brains for a loop, revealing some of the bizarre quirks in their structure and function that usually manage to slip under the radar. Read more at

http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2354-10-everyday-brain-farts.html

Eye Vs Camera

http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/17/the-camera-versus-the-human-eye/

Laplace Demon

"We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes."

If we imagine the exercise as purely mental, involving only the idea of such knowledge, we can see the Laplace's demon as a secular substitute for an omniscient God with perfect foreknowledge.

Laplace's view implies that the past and the present always contain exactly the same knowledge. This makes information a constant of nature. Indeed, some mathematicians think that information is a conserved quantity, like the conservation of mass and energy.

The Moving Rows Paradox

# At a given time the trains are positioned as in first figure.
# A second later they are all aligned as shown in next figure.
# Look at train B: in one second it has move the length of ONE carriage past train A, right?
#But at the same time it has moved two carriages past train C!!

The paradox is that train B has moved a distance and twice that distance at the same TIME!!!! 

Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka: A Prose Poem, 1848

Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us a uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy - since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids, which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.