Slashdot Mirror
Radiation Detection Goes Digital
RedEaredSlider writes "In science fiction, explorers wave around a single device and pick up many kinds of radiation — think of the tricorders on Star Trek or Dr. Who's sonic screwdriver. A professor at Oregon State University is bringing that a bit closer to reality, though in this case it's for finding radioactive material. It's a radiation spectrometer, and it works on a very old principle: particles and photons that hit certain materials will make them emit flashes of light. But for decades, radiation spectrometers had been limited to detecting only one kind of radiation at a time. David Hamby, an OSU professor of health physics, felt that there was a need for a device that could see at least two kinds of radiation, as well as be smaller than the models currently available."
dooo-ba-deep-beep beep bzzt AWOOTAWOOT
Captain! I seem to have come across some life form readings! Nerds!
Geiger counters can detect all forms of ionizing radiation. They're over 100 years old, too.
...to carry through post apocalyptic waste lands.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'm waiting for the model that tells me when radiation will reach lethal levels. To the second if possible.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
If it is not news, then how is it this guy is the first to market with a device that will fit in your pocket?
Did you even read TFA?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You all should know it's "Doctor Who", not "Dr. Who" by now.
Perhaps it is because a beta radiation detector is useless if it is in your pocket.
Beta radiation detectors in general don't have a lot of use in the field because there is always gamma radiation with beta radiation. And small gamma detectors already exist, such as the digital electronic portable dosimeters workers at nuclear plants use. If there is a question about beta dose, these same workers have thermoluminescent dosimeters with beta windows that can be analyzed on-site. If you actually need to survey an area, you can always use a beta-gamma dosimeter, but you would only do that if you were health physics tech.
There is no real use for this device.
Use a PIN diode, these are tiny and will sense radiation, and are sensitive to a wide band of the spectrum (x-rays to gamma rays and (some) electrons and muons).
Did I mention that they're smaller than a corn kernel?
great...how far up my ass will the TSA want to stick it? I want to feel safe.
As a physicist that works with radionuclides, I'm appalled at this article. It is horribly written. "The crystal vibrates in a certain way" made me laugh.
A better summary is provided by OSU public relations dept at
http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2010/dec/new-technology-speed-cleanup-nuclear-contaminated-sites-reduce-costs-and-create-jo
Radiation detectors have been digital for a long long time. Some of the electronics has been analog because analog electronics are faster and always will be for filtering and integration.
Detect Neutrinos?
How about tachyons?
Midiclorians?
Beta particles (electrons ejected from the nucleus, basically) have a mean free path of about a foot in air. Place anything else in between, like a thin sheet of aluminum or a little bit of plastic, and it sucks up the betas real quick.
The other big problem is that gammas are quantized, beta particles are not. When something radioactively decays, it gives off gamma rays of distinct, unique energies -- very useful for determining the radioactive isotope you're looking at. Not so for betas; they're emitted over a wide range of energies, and it can be very difficult (but not impossible) to tell what you're looking at by betas alone. I don't mean to downplay what this accomplishes, in a nice, small form factor. But this doesn't revolutionize the world of radiation detection. To date, no one has really been crying for a combined, digital, gamma and beta detector. Maybe if you build it, they will come, but I don't see a large market for this.
"Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
We must preserve the Time-Space continuum!
Could you use an imaging sensor chip to detect radiation? something like this video, only more refined. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFNvYA7731o
Will it tell me what kind of alien leaves a green spectral trail and craves sugar water???
The (now grand)parent should be modded up, but one thing in your post is just plain wrong: the range of beta radiation is not "about a foot"; the range of beta radiation depends on its energy. Betas from a low energy nuclide like 35S, for example, do have a range of almost exactly a foot (32 cm) in air, but the high energy beta radiation emitted by 90Sr/90Yr OTOH has a range of slightly above 10 meters in air. And as for the quantization, beta emitters too have very distinct energy distributions (which you can look up in any good data sheet).
But you're right about portable beta spectrometry being pretty "meh". If it's high enough energy to worry about, it's easier to just look at the bremsstrahlung, really.
BTW, this was a really horrible article. There were no technical details whatsoever (well, just enough to realize that someone had been trying to explain scintillation to the very obviously non-techie journalist), and they seem to mix up radiation spectrometry with plain radiation detection...
Beta radiation detectors in general don't have a lot of use in the field because there is always gamma radiation with beta radiation. And small gamma detectors already exist, such as the digital electronic portable dosimeters workers at nuclear plants use. If there is a question about beta dose, these same workers have thermoluminescent dosimeters with beta windows that can be analyzed on-site. If you actually need to survey an area, you can always use a beta-gamma dosimeter, but you would only do that if you were health physics tech.
There is no real use for this device.
FTFA:
Each kind of radioactive material produces different ratios of gamma rays to beta particles, and so from the signal one can tell what it is. A basic use for the detector is to see whether a soil sample, for example, is contaminated with anything radioactive. It could also be used to check whether a given area is worth mining for elements such as uranium.
Their claim is that the beta/gamma ratio (which it detects) is useful. Are you saying it is not?
Radiation detectors that can differentiate between two types of radiation have existed for a very long time and digital systems that can differentiate between alpha, beta and gamma radiation have existed for at least the last 3 years which is when I started working with them (http://www.canberra.com/products/13452.asp).
Granted, those systems are rarely spectrometric systems and only a few are small enough to fit in your pocket.
The article does not actually say how the system works but my guess is that it is a simple scintillation material (probably organic) and that they perform some type of very simplified pulse analysation of the output pulse before it is integrated (to determine the energy of the radiation).
If this is the case; the only thing new is probably the miniaturisation, and I am not even sure about that.
Beta detectors can be both very small and very sensitive, but I agree they are generally less useful than gamma detectors. There is a use in health-physics for detectors which can distinguish gamma and neutron radiation. But they exist already, and have done for years and years.
... a device that will fit in your pocket...
My understanding is that it only fits in the pockets of red shirts.
is there an iPhone app for this yet?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Agreed. At first I thought we had GNURadio/USSP at the giger counter wavelength.
After reading the articles I'm none the wiser.
A blog I run for the wealth
Exactly, let me know when they come up with a handheld neutrino detector.
Agreed, we were building digital x-ray and gamma ray spectrometers decades ago. Yes with a CPU and everything (a Z80 in fact). I fail to see how this is unique at all.
The other big problem is that gammas are quantized, beta particles are not.
Actually both are quanta of their respective fields and, as free particles, neither have quantized energies. However gammas tend to have discrete energies, whereas betas do not due to the neutrino emission.
Their claim is that the beta/gamma ratio (which it detects) is useful. Are you saying it is not?
If all it does is detect the ratio then it is close to useless. Suppose there are three elements A (gamma only), B (beta only) and C (gamma+beta). If all I can do is detect the ratio of betas to gammas then it is impossible to distinguish between material that is 100% C vs. material which is 50% A and 50% B.
Fortunately nature provides a solution and if you measure the energy spectra of gamma rays it will very quickly tell you which elements are present. So, as described in the article, the device seems useless for its intended purpose. However the article is very badly written so I'd reserve judgement until proper information is available.
Three years ago, mike449 wanted to use the CMOS sensor of the built-in camera of a cell phone to detect gamma-radiation. See also the patent US 7737410: Apparatus and method for detection of radiation.
Bringing up the doctor isn't fair, there's probably some hyper-spacial sensing and processing machine the size of Manhattan inside the sonic screwdriver using Time Lord Technology (tm), and you simply can't tell from the 3-D part. The real problem is simply trying to detect and analyze different kinds of radiation. Look at the difference between a radio-telescope and the Chandra space telescope.
Now in the Apple iTunes AppStore for $4.99!
Well, for me, the article is a crap. What I guess from it - somebody took scintilator detector, photomultiplier, put DSP processing unit at the end of it. The software may:
1. distinguish between gamma and electrons (long time people distinguish gamma,neutrons,heavy particles...)
2. codes the energy of the radiation
3. analyses spectrum as it comes and guesses what are the main sources (from gamma - nowadays scintilators can have very good resolution)
4. all electronics is put to a small PCB
What I do not understand is
1. why all the time about beta radiation? The spectrum is (usually) continuous, the energy depends on the distance you are, hard to even measure quantitatively.
2. what is the real point of the device?
GNURadio is so powerful yet so poorly documented. The USRP2 hardware is wicked-expensive (and now end-of-life), but really powerful. The N210 is its replacement.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
about the size of a pager or a basic clamshell phone, and they can distinguish between different isotopes. I know, I got pulled over and scanned (undisclosed period) after a radiation cardiac stress test.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?