Blog
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Geiger Readings for Feb 12, 2017
Ambient office = 114 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 165 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 167 nanosieverts per hourAvocado from Central Market = 81 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 92 nanosieverts per hourFilter water = 87 nanosieverts per hour -
Geiger Readings for Feb 11, 2017
Ambient office = 121 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 94 nanosieverts per hourBartlett pear from Central Market = 108 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 86 nanosieverts per hourFilter water = 72 nanosieverts per hour -
Geiger Readings for Feb 10, 2017
Ambient office = 128 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 159 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 159 nanosieverts per hourGinger root from Central Market = 99 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 99 nanosieverts per hourFilter water = 88 nanosieverts per hourDover sole – Caught in USA = 61 nanosieverts per hour -
Nuclear Weapons 343 – Russia Moves Iskander Missiles In Kaliningrad
The Kaliningrad Oblast is a Russian enclave located on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania. It is separated from Russia proper and is the western-most province of Russia. The Kaliningrad Oblast covers about six thousand square miles. It is considered to be the most militarized zone on the entire European continent. The Russian have installed missiles, tanks, warships, soldiers, bases and listening posts.
The Lithuanian president has just confirmed that Russia has shipped nuclear-capable missiles to Kaliningrad. He said “Iskander missiles are being stationed in Kaliningrad for permanent presence as we speak. This is not just a threat to Lithuania, but to half of all European countries.” Lithuanian intelligence agencies monitored the movement of the missiles into Kaliningrad. Iskander missiles are short-range but can carry nuclear warheads.
Such missiles would play a major role in any Russian-NATO conflict. The Russians have stated that they would consider the use of such tactical nuclear weapons if they were losing a conventional ground war against NATO.
Given the present tension between the U.S. and Russia, moving such missiles into Kaliningrad is seen as a major threat to Europe. However, a Kremlin spokesperson said “I want to remind you that the placement of particular armaments and the deployment of specific military units on Russian territory are solely the sovereign issue of Russia.” The Russian defense minister said that the missiles had been deployed in response to NATO operations near Russia. It is interesting to note that while Russia says that its buildup is a private matter, they also say that it is a response to NATO operations in other countries.
NATO often stations troops in Lithuania. There is currently a contingent of German-led troops on alert in Lithuania. Britain’s top general issued a report last month saying that Russia is now a clear and present danger to NATO nations. Russia and NATO continuously argue about who is acting aggressively as they both stage wargames with troops, tanks, ships and planes around eastern Europe near the Russian border.
Russia has been accused of having territorial ambitions in eastern Europe ever since it annexed the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. The small Baltic countries of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia have been especially nervous about Russian actions near their borders. There was an incident last week over the Black Sea in which a Russian jet flew within five feet of a U.S. jet. Russia denies that it has any aggressive intent while accusing the West of wanting to restart the Cold War.
In the past few years, Russia has flown nuclear bombers in and out of the air space of other nations without notice. It has also sailed surface ships and nuclear submarines in and out of the territorial waters of other nations without any notice. They have repeatedly stated the intent to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on modernizing their nuclear forces and developing new nuclear weapons. Many analysts are concerned with how freely the Russians talk about using tactical nuclear weapons. I believe that it is beyond dispute that Russia is acting aggressively to intimidate other nations with its nuclear arsenal and moving Iskander missiles into Kaliningrad is just the lasted move in the game they are playing.
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Geiger Readings for Feb 09, 2017
Ambient office = 115 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 112 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 114 nanosieverts per hourCelery from Central Market = 108 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 98 nanosieverts per hourFilter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour -
New Radiation Detector Created With Graphene
Graphene is a form of carbon where a single layer of carbon atoms forms a flat sheet with a hexagonal grid arrangement. It was discovered in 2004 and thought to hold great promise. Research on graphene has uncovered a variety of interesting and potentially useful features including being light weight, strong and a good conductor. Graphene also has the ability to convert heat directly into electricity. Recently, a group of researchers developed a new type of radiation detector based on graphene.
A bolometer is an instrument that can measure electromagnetic radiation through the heating of a material in which the electrical resistance is related to temperature. The new graphene radiation detector is a type of bolometer. The graphene bolometer is able to work over a much broader range of temperatures that existing commercial bolometers. The design for the graphene bolometers is simple and the cost of production is low. There could be a lot of commercial applications for the new bolometer.
Grigory Skoblin does research at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. With respect to graphene, he said, “…there are some strong fundamental limitations for this material. Nowadays, the real industrial applications of graphene are quite limited.” Most current uses of graphene are based on its mechanical properties. Skoblin says that “…our device shows that more fundamental properties can be used in actual applications.”
The graphene bolometer is based on the thermoelectric properties of graphene. Radiation heats a piece of graphene which causes electrons to move through the material. The moving electrons generate an electrical field. A voltage difference is created across the bolometer. The change in voltage can be used to directly measure the radiation.
Other bolometers also use voltage differences to measure radiation, but they need an external power source to generate the initial current. Because the graphene bolometer generates its own current under the influence of the radiation, it is much simpler than other bolometers. The piece of graphene inside the new bolometer is very small so the new bolometer is very fast because it is quickly heated by the radiation being measured.
The new bolometer can measure radiation up to temperatures of two hundred degrees Celsius. There have been other attempts to create graphene-based bolometers, but they used two layers of graphene which makes manufacturing more difficult and expensive. Current bolometers can only work at very low temperatures referred to as “cryogenic.”
An additional innovation in the new bolometers is the material used to coat the instrument. The developers use a dielectric polymer called “Parylene” for the coating. Parylene provides a good combination of performance and scalability. Hexagonal boron nitride offers better performance than Parylene but it is hard to obtain and the processed used to apply the coating would be more difficult to scale up.
The prototype for the new bolometer can only detect microwave radiation at ninety-four gigahertz but the researchers will be working to broaden the detection range of frequencies. The developers are also working on a vapor deposition process to produce bigger pieces of graphene which will help scale up production of the new bolometer.
