There are unstable people, there are unstable elements, there are people I know of personally who are unstable in their elements, and then there were The Curies — a stable people who spent their lives working with unstable elements: This is their Venn diagram (am I overdoing these?), and this is their story:
The story of the Curies is the story of radioactivity and of all their Nobel prizes, the first of which came in 1903 for Physics. It was split thus: Henri Becquerel (50% — discovered X-rays), Pierre Curie (25%) and (upon the insistence of Pierre), Marie Curie (25%).
Here they are from the Nobel Prize archives, Henri Becquerel (1852 -1908), Pierre Curie (1859-1906) and Marie Curie (1867 - 1934):
At a time when there were such few women scientists, Marie Curie then remarkably went on to receive an additional Nobel prize, this time in 1911 for Chemistry — (according to the Nobel website): "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element".
And then if that wasn’t enough, Marie and Pierre’s older daughter Irene Joliot-Curie received the Nobel prize also for Chemistry in 1935, which she shared with her husband Frederic Joliot for discovering even more radioactive elements.
And then if that enough wasn’t enough, Marie and Pierre’s younger daughter Eve who had been exposed to some pretty silly levels of radiation in the womb and (ergo?) did not get the Nobel herself, married a Henry Richardson Labouisse Jr. who then went on to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1965 on behalf of UNICEF.
Unfortunately, little was known about the dangers of being around radioactivity back then, and so Marie, Irene and Irene’s husband Frederic all ended up dying from radiation poisoning. In the movie Radioactive, Marie Curie is seen casually walking around with radium glowing in her pockets, playing with radioactive ore with her bare hands, even sleeping with it — Pierre on one side, radium on the other.
(A song that came too late):
All I do is radium gaga.
Radium goo goo.
Radium, what's new?
Radium will kill you ….
Pierre Curie died from a road accident, but he too had been showing signs of radiation poisoning. All said and much won then, all of the Nobel-laureate Curies were dead by the time the fifth and last Nobel for Peace was finally bestowed upon this ultra-bright (and most likely ultra-exhausting) family.
Radioactivity |
(Why are some elements unstable, and why is that radioactivity?)
A stable nucleus makes for a stable element (think brain). And just like an over-excited brain sometimes needs an Adderall to calm the f..k down, these unstable elements need to shed some energy and get to a lower, more stable energy state … which they do by emitting subatomic particles via a process called radioactive decay. The time that half of any sample of a radioactive element takes to decay is constant, and is called its half-life, which can range from Hydrogen-7 at one end with a half-life of ~652 yoctoseconds (one yoctosecond = 10−24 seconds! … who knew?), and elements like Uranium-238 and Thorium-232 with half-lives of ~4.5 billion years and ~14 billion years respectively at the other — now that is one HECK of a range!
Note 1: The number that appears after the element name represents its atomic weight i.e. the sum total of protons and neutrons inside the nucleus. An element always has the same number of protons, but can have varying numbers of neutrons (isotopes), some configurations of which can be unstable/radioactive.
Note 2: The shortest measurable unit of time is 10−44 seconds and it’s called Planck time after Max Planck, the German scientist who discovered quanta, the basis for quantum mechanics. This lower limit also nicely supports the ‘simulation hypothesis’ … a probabilistic hypothesis which says that we are more likely to be “living” inside of a simulation than not. (I am sold on this hypothesis, but more on that in some other post as well.)
Note 3: Nobody can predict which specific atoms from a sample will decay when — each atom only has a certain probability of decaying at any point in time. But in a large enough sample, approximately half the atoms will decay over the element’s half-life, which is really fascinating, but more on this in a later post as well. Note in note: I am currently watching Ozark on Netflix, and gambling is much the same … one can’t predict who will win in a casino on any given day, but one can predict the % of people who will win over a day, or days. (Statistics is beautiful.)
Lastly, radioactivity can also be created synthetically e.g. Curium which is named after the Curies is created by bombarding Plutonium with alpha particles.
The good, the bad, & the ugly |
The good:
Today radioactivity is used all over the place: in smoke detectors, for radiating foods to kill microbes, even in some glow-in-the-dark signage, and of course in medical imaging and medical treatments.
One interesting use of radioactivity is in carbon dating, something that I had always wondered about, so here goes: Carbon exists in the atmosphere in 3 configurations (isotopes): C-12 (stable), C-13 (stable), and C-14 (radioactive). All living creatures absorb these elements from food and from air such that we all have the same ratio of these 3 isotopes inside of us as in the atmosphere. And this ratio remains constant until we die at which point, while the C-14 (half-life 5,730 years) starts to decay into Nitrogen-14, the C-12 being stable stays as is. So by measuring the ratio of C-12 : C-14 and comparing it to the ratio found in living organisms (or the atmosphere), we can determine how dead say, a human is. (Evidently this will not work for determining how alive a human is — not unlike speed-dating, one simply must ask.)
The bad:
Bombs. Everyone who has watched the movie Oppenheimer knows about the Manhattan Project and the two most infamous bombs that came out of it with the two most ridiculous of names: Little Boy, dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki three days later. (Apparently that’s what they looked like. And nuked like.)
& The ugly:
Generating nuclear energy using radioactive elements is an extremely efficient and clean way to produce energy, and with the proper precautions, a Chernobyl or a Fukushima are extremely unlikely to happen … especially as the technology keeps getting better. I, 100% support nuclear energy — as does Bill Gates, who recently invested a lot of money in the company TerraPower that has just begun construction of a smaller, cheaper, and safer nuclear power plant in Wyoming, USA.
From micro-soft to micro-reactors — one small step for Bill Gates, one giant leap for mankind.
Strange things people once did with radioactivity |
After the discovery of radioactivity and before the ill effects of radiation poisoning were known (many decades), everyday life was delightfully aglow with radioactivity!
Tho-Radia (Thorium + Radium), a French beauty cream —
Radithor, an American energy drink with radium marketed for the wealthy —
A German toothpaste containing thorium —
(A limerick that came too late):
All that glitters is not gold
If it radiates, it should not be sold
Radioactivity is fun, it’s true
But its half-life will kill you.
My favorite so far!
I found your article very informative, interesting and raised many questions in my mind about how we human beings can be naive and play with stuff that has potential to kill us. I was unaware that we once used radioactive substances in our cosmetics! I wonder how many such other things we use now?