#nuclid

[abyss-idiot]

Chapter 5 New Storm Info

With 1.4 we got some more info about the "Storm." Below the read more will be spoilers to chapter 5.

Starting with what 37 has about the storm, at first we learn what knows it as and what they think of it. As Apeiron is immune to the storm and isolated from the world they have different information and thoughts on it.

Pneuma is a Greek word for "breath", but if used in a religious context it can mean "soul." (I don't know what to make of this myself.)

They put the current year as 2007, as it would be that year if the storm never happened. So that means the storm has been around for 7ish years.

Later on we learn more about the dates and the fact that 37 and her mother predicted the years it happened.

The years on the monitor are 1999 - 1996 2000 - 1985 2003 - 1977 2004 - 1930s 2006 - 1912 2007 - 1966 1930s is taken from dialog, and 1977 is brought up in the report in The Star.

This tells us a few key things, first off that, excluding the latest storm there is a pattern that was able to be used to predict future storms. The monitor doesn't have the 1966 to 1929 or the 1929 to 1913 storms, tho the latter was messed with the Manus so it may break the pattern. Other key points it gives is the years of previous storms and the fact that the storm does not just move back in time, it also can jump forward as with the 1912 to 1966 storm. It could be inferred from the Green Lake event, but not directly stated. (Side note, 37 says 7 storms, the monitor shows 6, and adding the 1929 to 1913 storm it makes a total of 8.)

[whats-in-a-sentence]

The concept of half-life is depicted in figure 27.12, which shows the typical amount versus time decay curve for a radioactive nucleus, in this case ³²P, a nuclide widely used in labelling biological samples.

"Chemistry" 2e - Blackman, A., Bottle, S., Schmid, S., Mocerino, M., Wille, U.

[woolmasterleel]

Dash is dead, post a super messy wip

[kaytypestar]

Elements? You're thinking too broad, missing the finer details. Behold:

Thousands of genders!

[acesw]

The "Storm"

"The 'Storm' brings frequent anomalies. And also more development and field missions. Sadly, combat is not my thing; luckily, data analysis is!" - X, Xtreme Talent

The "Storm" is an intriguing topic to look into in the world of Reverse: 1999, and a lot of people tend to be confused on how it works alongside the functions of the immunity zones. For this post, this'll essentially be a more detailed explanation on it. This post will cover what the "Storm" is, its patterns, and the function of the immunity zones with Asymmetrical Nuclide R. This'll be a really long post, so hold tight. :) [Spoilers for Chapter 5-6]

What is the “Storm” anyway?

The “Storm”—or the "Emanation" to the Islanders—is a supernatural phenomena that is affecting most of the globe. It destroys the current era of society and reconstructs it into a point in the past or in the future. It “reverses” time, with the tendency to regress through eras. This means human technology increasingly deteriorates while arcanum flourishes.

Being a phenomena caused by arcanum, the “Storm” is difficult to be studied. Basic understanding of the "Storm" requires affinity with arcanum.

The “Storm” is unpredictable; Besides the Manus and the Apeiron to some degree, no one knows when the “Storm” happens, but the closer we get to its occurrence, the easier it is to figure it out. Manus activity is shown to accelerate the "Storm", with events beginning to deviate from the historic timeline due to their influence.

As of ‘The Star’ and Chapter 6, we find that Laplace has been keeping track of possible “critical points.” Critical points indicate where the eye of the “Storm” might be. An “eye” tends to be located at places globally significant, where historical events take place. It can be a cultural event, a significant movement, or a major conflict. These events don’t have to directly affect the entire world, per se. They merely have to be significant enough to leave a mark in the world's history.

Right now, 8 “Storms” have passed and we have one that is currently beginning to take place. With the information we have of each one, we find common themes among them:

1. Most of these “Storms” occur at least 1 year after the other. There are 4 exceptions to it: 

1999 (The Progenitor)

1987 (3 years)

1929 (1 day)

1914 (5 months)

2. They’re triggered when the timeline destabilises, or strays from what is the normal ‘course’ of the world’s timeline. (As said by Greta Hofmann)

3. The nature of the “Storm” and the Storm Syndrome are usually based on the themes of the era and the conflict.

A very clear example of this would be the “Storms” of 1966 and 1929. With 1966, we see how the height of the “Storm” deconstructs everything around the critical point with booming bold colours and pop-like art, reminiscent of the UK’s Swinging Sixties (as mentioned by the game itself).

With 1929, we see how the Storm Syndrome affects the mass population of humans, with how they sell food in exchange for gold and money to eat because of how it references the sudden rise in the American stock market. This led to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the crash caused an economic recession in the US.

Important notes about the "Storm"

Now we have to keep in mind that there are some things that need to be noted about this phenomenon. For one, the “Storm” doesn’t induce the grandfather paradox, since the survivors of the phenomenon don’t cease to exist whenever they arrive in an era that precedes their lifetime. They don’t encounter the younger versions of themselves either.

Also, since this is an event caused by arcanum, the people who are mainly affected are humans and mixed people who don't have strong arcanum. Pure-blood arcanists tend to be the ones who are the last to be affected by the "Storm," since they only begin to feel the effects once the countdown is approaches near-zero.

The memories of the survivors are quite faded. For example, none of them could remember what happened during 1999 that caused the first “Storm.” Greta and Vertin themselves confirm that they and the Foundation have rather vague memories of that time for reasons yet to be found.

And lastly, as stated before, the “Storm” can be accelerated / triggered early by orchestrating a chain of events that further puts strain on the critical point, and significantly causes disruption in the original timeline. This is the case with 1929 and 1914 right now.

Immunity Zones, Asymmetrical Nuclide R, and Vertin

With these out of the way, there is now space to talk about the points of immunity. For a location to be immune, the area would need a “core” that distributes a high concentration of Asymmetrical Nuclide R.

AN-R is a nuclide that’s present in the “Storm's" rainwater, as well as the fog in Apeiron, the Spinning Wheel, and possibly the Yuān temple in Pei City alongside Uluru in Australia. The nuclide creates a structure that makes it possible to survive the “Storm,” but it is an unstable component that can quickly disappear when isolated from the rain drops.

A more stabilised structure of these nuclides are those found imbued in the Manus Vindictae Mask, and the fog surrounding the cores of the immunity zones. However, when one comes close to said fog, it can affect people’s minds to the point of deep sleep until they’re taken out of the area. Otherwise, time flows normally within the immunity zones, unaffected by the “Storm.”

Meanwhile, as the truth remains unknown (noting that Asymmetrical Protein G is a false biomolecule), Vertin is the only person who is able to cross the “Storm” unharmed. She is able to endure most of its effects such as the fog.

For example: In the fog surrounding the Apeiron and the caves of the Island, she wasn’t afflicted with the deep sleep most of the time until she was fully immersed in it. However, she only needed to be woken up by any sort of disturbance. (i.e. pain caused by the bangle)

Despite this however, she’s unable to perceive and predict the “Storm," needing technology from Laplace to keep track of its countdown.

Anyway, AN-R tends to spread throughout an entire area and creates a range of immunity from the “Storm.” This range becomes theoretically weaker as one strays further from the main source; it's why Vertin’s breakaway group got reversed as they played outside the tower, while Madam Z survived while being barely outside the building. (Chapter 3)

It may also explain why the humans did not survive being in Vertin’s suitcase, since the spinning wheel might not be a strong enough core for the nuclide to resonate really well with humans. But I’m not exactly sure why this is, so this is only an assumption for myself.

For now, this is all the information that I have of the "Storm" and the immunity zones. There are some pieces of information that I also found while looking into it, but I've kept these as footnotes for now to go back to later once things begin to come together.

Many ideas can be thought of on how the phenomenon could affect many other areas, but this is essentially how it works based on what was observed in the story. I hope it answers a lot of questions for some who don't quite understand the "Storm." And if there aren't, feel free to ask me anything. Thanks for reaching the end. :)

[rlyehtaxidermist]

"isobar" is one of those words where broad scientific literacy really comes back to bite me because i always think "no, it can't be that, that's a term in [meteorology/nuclear physics], not [nuclear physics/meteorology]" and have to google "term for [nuclides with same mass/contours of equal pressure]"

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Chromium-62 study helps researchers better understand shapes around islands of inversion

In a recent paper in Nature Physics, an international research collaboration used world-class instrumentation at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) to study the exotic nuclide, or rare isotope, chromium-62. The researchers used a gamma-ray spectroscopy experiment in tandem with theoretical models to identify an unexpected variety of shapes in chromium-62. The finding provides more insight into so-called "islands of inversion," or regions in the nuclear chart where certain nuclides diverge from traditional viewpoints based on the properties of stable nuclei. The work involved the joint effort of 23 researchers with 12 different affiliations among them. Led by Alexandra Gade, professor of physics at FRIB and in MSU's Department of Physics and Astronomy and FRIB scientific director, the collaboration also included Robert Janssens, Edward G. Bilpuch Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Brenden Longfellow, former FRIB graduate researcher and current staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as significant contributors.

Read more.

[callsign-bubbles]

Radon is a chemical element; it has symbol Rn and atomic number 86. It is a radioactive noble gas and is colorless and odorless. Of the three naturally occurring radon isotopes, only 222Rn has a sufficiently long half-life (3.825 days) for it to be released from the soil and rock where it is generated. Radon isotopes are the immediate decay products of radium isotopes. The instability of 222Rn, its most stable isotope, makes radon one of the rarest elements. Radon will be present on Earth for several billion more years despite its short half-life, because it is constantly being produced as a step in the decay chains of 238U and 232Th, of which both are abundant radioactive nuclides with half-lives of at least several billion years. Under standard conditions, radon is gaseous and can be easily inhaled, posing a health hazard.

Toward the end of the second period of the Toronto Maple Leafs' 5-4 win against the Dallas Stars on Wednesday, Stars forward Mason Marchment delivered a hit to Jake McCabe. The Maple Leafs defenseman cleared the puck out of his zone with a no-look pass when Marchment came in a bit late with a hit McCabe certainly didn't expect. McCabe was visibly angry after the hit that left him bloody due to the player's visor coming down on his face with a direct velocity. There was no penalty call on the play and Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe was visibly angry.

(x. x. x. x.)

part of the nhl periodic table of poems featuring elemental haiku by mary soon lee, created by @simmyfrobby

[adamfanti11i]

gabriel landeskog, colorado avalanche -> mary soon lee, elemental haiku "flerovium"

Flerovium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Fl and atomic number 114. [...] Six isotopes of flerovium are known, ranging in mass number between 284 and 289; the most stable of these, 289Fl, has a half-life of ~1.9 seconds, but the unconfirmed 290Fl may have a longer half-life of 19 seconds, which would be one of the longest half-lives of any nuclide in these farthest reaches of the periodic table.

coming off a calder trophy winning rookie campaign, gabriel landeskog was named captain of the colorado avalanche prior to the 2012 lockout shortened season. in the years since, he’s experienced leading a team through a then historic low for points over an 82 game season in 2016-17 and a successful stanley cup winning run in 2021-22. a series of knee procedures has kept landeskog sidelined since that cup run, but he stated in his may 2024 end-of-season press conference that he plans to return sometime this upcoming season.

part of the nhl periodic table poems collaboration hosted by @simmyfrobby

images sourced from: x x x x

[tomorrowusa]

The first hominins in Europe were Ukrainian. Okay, to be more accurate, we now know that the oldest record of a hominin presence in Europe is in Korolevo in western Ukraine.

These folks were Homo erectus, a species which went extinct before the Neanderthals.

Stone tools in Ukraine dated to 1.4 million years ago may be the earliest solid evidence of humans in Europe, a new study reveals. The makers of these tools likely weren't Homo sapiens but a close, now-extinct relation. Scientists analyzed finds from the archaeological site of Korolevo in western Ukraine, where researchers have unearthed stone tools, such as choppers, from the Paleolithic (2.6 million to 10,500 years ago) since the site's discovery in 1974.  The artifacts at Korolevo were made by hominins — the group that includes modern humans and the extinct species more closely related to humans than any other animal — but it's unknown which species created them. Other hominins reached Europe long before Homo sapiens did. [ ... ] The earliest stone tools at Korolevo may be about 1.4 million years old, the scientists found — meaning the site contains the earliest known evidence of hominins in Europe. "Confidently dated early hominin sites are scarce in Europe," Toshiyuki Fujioka, a senior researcher of cosmogenic nuclide dating at Spain's National Research Center on Human Evolution who did not participate in this study, told Live Science. "This study provides a much-needed reliably dated chronological site to add fuel to our discussion on ancient human migration."  While the tools are too old to be the work of either modern humans or our closest extinct relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, they could be the work of Homo erectus, an extinct human species that first appeared in Africa about 2 million years ago and later spread to Asia and Europe, the researchers said. 

The so called "young Earth creationists" like Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson effectively think that Homo erectus or other hominin relatives did not exist because the universe is just over 6,000 years old. 😕

BTW, one practice I find confusing is that in the same article the term "human" is used BOTH to specifically denote Homo sapiens AND to refer to to all species in the genus Homo. Scientists and science journalists need to address this issue. Call me a sapiensist, but I personally use "human" only for Homo sapiens.

This chart from The Economist gets the terminology right.

BONUS TRACK v češtině: Czech scientists had a lot to do with the recent research at Korolevo. So if you know any Czech, you might enjoy this vid from the Czech Republic's Academy of Sciences.

[weekendviking]

Uh oh:

Abstract: "The persistence and size of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) through the Pleistocene is uncertain. This is important because reconstructing changes in the GrIS determines its contribution to sea level rise during prior warm climate periods and informs future projections. To understand better the history of Greenland’s ice, we analyzed glacial till collected in 1993 from below 3 km of ice at Summit, Greenland. The till contains plant fragments, wood, insect parts, fungi, and cosmogenic nuclides showing that the bed of the GrIS at Summit is a long-lived, stable land surface preserving a record of deposition, exposure, and interglacial ecosystems. Knowing that central Greenland was tundra-covered during the Pleistocene informs the understanding of Arctic biosphere response to deglaciation."

[wokrs-of-whimsy]

The oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4.5682+0.0002

−0.0004 Ga (billion years) ago.[35] By 4.54±0.04 Ga the primordial Earth had formed.[36] The bodies in the Solar System formed and evolved with the Sun. In theory, a solar nebula partitions a volume out of a molecular cloud by gravitational collapse, which begins to spin and flatten into a circumstellar disk, and then the planets grow out of that disk with the Sun. A nebula contains gas, ice grains, and dust (including primordial nuclides). According to nebular theory, planetesimals formed by accretion, with the primordial Earth being estimated as likely taking anywhere from 70 to 100 million years to form.[37]

Estimates of the age of the Moon range from 4.5 Ga to significantly younger.[38] A leading hypothesis is that it was formed by accretion from material loosed from Earth after a Mars-sized object with about 10% of Earth's mass, named Theia, collided with Earth.[39] It hit Earth with a glancing blow and some of its mass merged with Earth.[40][41] Between approximately 4.1 and 3.8 Ga, numerous asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the greater surface environment of the Moon and, by inference, to that of Earth.[42]

Earth's atmosphere and oceans were formed by volcanic activity and outgassing.[43] Water vapor from these sources condensed into the oceans, augmented by water and ice from asteroids, protoplanets, and comets.[44] Sufficient water to fill the oceans may have been on Earth since it formed.[45] In this model, atmospheric greenhouse gases kept the oceans from freezing when the newly forming Sun had only 70% of its current luminosity.[46] By 3.5 Ga, Earth's magnetic field was established, which helped prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind.[47]

As the molten outer layer of Earth cooled it formed the first solid crust, which is thought to have been mafic in composition. The first continental crust, which was more felsic in composition, formed by the partial melting of this mafic crust.[49] The presence of grains of the mineral zircon of Hadean age in Eoarchean sedimentary rocks suggests that at least some felsic crust existed as early as 4.4 Ga, only 140 Ma after Earth's formation.[50] There are two main models of how this initial small volume of continental crust evolved to reach its current abundance:[51] (1) a relatively steady growth up to the present day,[52] which is supported by the radiometric dating of continental crust globally and (2) an initial rapid growth in the volume of continental crust during the Archean, forming the bulk of the continental crust that now exists,[53][54] which is supported by isotopic evidence from hafnium in zircons and neodymium in sedimentary rocks. The two models and the data that support them can be reconciled by large-scale recycling of the continental crust, particularly during the early stages of Earth's history.[55]

New continental crust forms as a result of plate tectonics, a process ultimately driven by the continuous loss of heat from Earth's interior. Over the period of hundreds of millions of years, tectonic forces have caused areas of continental crust to group together to form supercontinents that have subsequently broken apart. At approximately 750 Ma, one of the earliest known supercontinents, Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia at 600–540 Ma, then finally Pangaea, which also began to break apart at 180 Ma.[56]

The most recent pattern of ice ages began about 40 Ma,[57] and then intensified during the Pleistocene about 3 Ma.[58] High- and middle-latitude regions have since undergone repeated cycles of glaciation and thaw, repeating about every 21,000, 41,000 and 100,000 years.[59] The Last Glacial Period, colloquially called the "last ice age", covered large parts of the continents, to the middle latitudes, in ice and ended about 11,700 years ago.[60]

Chemical reactions led to the first self-replicating molecules about four billion years ago. A half billion years later, the last common ancestor of all current life arose.[61] The evolution of photosynthesis allowed the Sun's energy to be harvested directly by life forms. The resultant molecular oxygen (O2) accumulated in the atmosphere and due to interaction with ultraviolet solar radiation, formed a protective ozone layer (O3) in the upper atmosphere.[62] The incorporation of smaller cells within larger ones resulted in the development of complex cells called eukaryotes.[63] True multicellular organisms formed as cells within colonies became increasingly specialized. Aided by the absorption of harmful ultraviolet radiation by the ozone layer, life colonized Earth's surface.[64] Among the earliest fossil evidence for life is microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone in Western Australia,[65] biogenic graphite found in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks in Western Greenland,[66] and remains of biotic material found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia.[67][68] The earliest direct evidence of life on Earth is contained in 3.45 billion-year-old Australian rocks showing fossils of microorganisms.[69][70]

During the Neoproterozoic, 1000 to 539 Ma, much of Earth might have been covered in ice. This hypothesis has been termed "Snowball Earth", and it is of particular interest because it preceded the Cambrian explosion, when multicellular life forms significantly increased in complexity.[72][73] Following the Cambrian explosion, 535 Ma, there have been at least five major mass extinctions and many minor ones.[74] Apart from the proposed current Holocene extinction event, the most recent was 66 Ma, when an asteroid impact triggered the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and other large reptiles, but largely spared small animals such as insects, mammals, lizards and birds. Mammalian life has diversified over the past 66 Mys, and several million years ago, an African ape species gained the ability to stand upright.[75][76] This facilitated tool use and encouraged communication that provided the nutrition and stimulation needed for a larger brain, which led to the evolution of humans. The development of agriculture, and then civilization, led to humans having an influence on Earth and the nature and quantity of other life forms that continues to this day.[77]

YESSSS, FEED ME KNOWLEDGE

(Did you copy and paste from Wikipedia)

(And I’m also writing this in school😈)

[thirdchoiceurl]

Oh cool whats NAA? Also I've heard of using neutrons to treat nuclear waste, but I was never able to find any recent papers on it? Or maybe I wasn't using the correct search terms.

NAA stands for Neutron Activation Analysis. There’s a few varieties, but in our lab we typically do Delayed Gamma Neutron Activation Analysis or DGNAA. We bombard samples with a strong flux of thermal neutrons from the reactor, and the neutrons are absorbed by all manner of atoms in the material. In doing so, the stable nuclei are transmuted into short-lived radioisotopes that then decay via beta emission and emit gamma photons with characteristic energies. By using a scintillator and photomultiplier with an MCA (or the HPGe setup if it’s available (it never is) and we have the nitrogen (we never do)), we can then build a gamma ray spectrum that tells us exactly which trace elements are in the sample and, through cross-section analysis, we can get good measures of exactly how much of each element is present.

It’s an incredibly powerful tool for detecting and characterizing trace elements, with sensitivity several thousand times beyond purely chemical methods. One of the recent experiments we did analysis for involved mapping ancient trade routes in Central America by using pottery shards to identify the characteristic minerals of specific clay deposits and correlating them with how far they had traveled from their origin point. The amount of information that can be found from the atomic fingerprint of an object is astounding.

My pet project (the “refried beans” theory of nuclear waste as some of my buddies call it) is typically referred to as waste transmutation. High-level nuclear waste is produced from the processing of spent fuel, which is laden with highly radioactive fission products that pose a serious danger to anyone who may carelessly handle it in the present or future. While many of these fission products are short-lived and decay almost completely while the fuel waits in the cooling pool of its reactor, some isotopes (especially Caesium-137 and Strontium-90) have half-lives in the range of decades and product abundance above 5%. These nuclides are in the sour spot of maximum danger, with half-lives short enough to be ferociously radioactive even in tiny quantities and long enough that one can’t simply wait for them to decay significantly in a human lifetime.

My project, which is currently a bunch of spreadsheets and slideshows I use to try to convince someone to let me mess around with some highly corrosive extremely radioactive nitric acid salts, involves intercepting the fission product waste after reprocessing separates out the industrially useful heavy radioactinides and placing that waste back into the neutron flux of a reactor or accelerator. In doing so, preliminary simulations show that significant portions of the long-term waste activity can be reduced as the hardy and problematic long-lived isotopes are transmuted into short-lived ephemeral products that decay into stable nuclei in a matter of days rather than centuries.

This process isn’t without its drawbacks and hazards. Waste to be transmuted must be carefully chemically treated to remove elements like Calcium or Chlorine which can absorb neutrons from the beam and become new nuclear waste. Another issue is that the transmutation process makes the waste drastically more radioactive for a brief period of time. No fission product exists can be transmuted directly into a stable isotope, we can only pre-empt their decay. In time, the refried waste and the untreated waste will release the exact same quantity of radiation, and forcing it to undergo centuries’ worth of decay in a matter of weeks will make it extremely hot both physically and metaphorically.

It’s a work in progress.

[thatswhywelovegermany]

Solange die Atombombe sich nur in den Händen der beiden Großmächte befindet, gibt es keinen Krieg. Gefährlich wird es erst, wenn sich jeder das dazu notwendige Plutonium aus der Drogerie holen kann.

As long as the atomic bomb is only in the hands of the two great powers, there will be no war. It only becomes dangerous when everyone can get the necessary plutonium from the drugstore.

Otto Hahn, (1879 – 1968), German chemist, pioneer of radiochemistry, discoverer of numerous nuclides and nuclear fission, Chemistry Nobel prize laureate in 1944

[spenglercore]

Isotopic Nuclides

I finished the Vday short!

[fivenightsatcorans]

despite being very good at incorporating highly detailed science and engineering, the martian still has an extreme fear of plutonium-238, which as a primarily alpha emitter, is mostlyyy harmless unless inhaled. although it does emit gammas, so it doesn't give zero dose. HOWEVER, the gamma dose would be much higher than a different nuclide source of similar activity, because it not only emits high-energy gammas, it emits a LOT of gamma energies. so the dose from one decomposition would be higher bc there are many more gamma rays. ALSO, the novel depicts well a layman's fear of plutonium, and it's likely mark is a relative layman on the topic of radiation; also, it isn't specified what the activity of the plutonium is (probably pretty high given the amount of heat it releases) so the gamma dose is probably pretty bad on account of that. tbh with absolutely no lead shielding i'd be scared of that too. and i love gammas a lot.

anyway all this to say: it's got a good depiction of a layman's fear of plutonium, which usually is unfounded, but given the info provided (in itself surprisingly minimal) i can assume it's reasonable. but also leads me to assume that andy weir is either an extreme layman on the subject of radiation or very good at writing one