Detecting radiation in parts per billion isn't a new advance. Radiacs (Portable radiation detectors) from the late fifeties and early sixties were capably of this sort of precision. I work on a nuclear power plant and recording swipes in terms of micro-micro (or pico, if you will) curies is par for the course. BTW a curie is a unit of desintegration, 3.7e10 desintegrations per second. This is NOT the same as units of radiation, although for certain types of radiation there are easy corrolaries. e.g. for gamma emmiters, one curie at one meter is one rem. For a point source radiation levels decrease with the square of the distance.
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Detecting radiation in parts per billion isn't a new advance. Radiacs (Portable radiation detectors) from the late fifeties and early sixties were capably of this sort of precision. I work on a nuclear power plant and recording swipes in terms of micro-micro (or pico, if you will) curies is par for the course. BTW a curie is a unit of desintegration, 3.7e10 desintegrations per second. This is NOT the same as units of radiation, although for certain types of radiation there are easy corrolaries. e.g. for gamma emmiters, one curie at one meter is one rem. For a point source radiation levels decrease with the square of the distance.
Isn't this the exact same technology that made one of the protagonists of Clarke's novels--something cowritten or ghostwritten about earthquakes....
Man, I feel dorky.