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Mythbusters to Test Cockroach Radiation Myth
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Oct 19, 2007 03:43 PM
from the still-be-here-when-we're-gone dept.
from the still-be-here-when-we're-gone dept.
redwoodtree writes "An article on the site for the Tri-City Herald sums it up perfectly: 'Contrary to popular belief, not a significant amount of research goes into cockroach radiation.' To test the old saw about 'the cockroaches being the only survivors of a nuclear war' Discovery Channel's Mythbusters are going out to Hanford Site, where plutonium was manufactured for the first nuclear bomb. It's the single most polluted nuclear waste site in the U.S. The Mythbusters are going to take cockroaches and other insects and apply successively higher doses of radiation in a controlled setting."
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Hardware: Robots Assimilate Into Cockroach Society 107 comments
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Don't forget to test twinkies as well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't forget to test twinkies as well (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Don't forget to test twinkies as well (Score:5, Funny)
Are you NUTS? They'll MUTATE! It's bad enough with NORMAL lawyers already!
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Re:Don't forget to test twinkies as well (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously, science should be doing more research into this issue.
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Re:Don't forget to test twinkies as well (Score:5, Funny)
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Safety? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Safety? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Safety? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Safety? (Score:5, Funny)
Note: this is generally good advice anywhere.
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Re:Safety? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Safety? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Safety? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it isn't now, but I had friends working for Bechtel, who were doing radiochemical testing of natural ponds to try and figure out which one was going to go critical *first*. I'm not joking or exaggerating: there was so much leaked radioactive material on/in the ground that they expected it to concentrate through natural drainage to above critical mass. One friend told me about several of the criticality incidents they had, where waste plutonium had accumulated in oil-filled coolant ducts and started thermal runaway reactions (that boiled all the oil, displacing all the plutonium chips, which then settled back down to start the cycle again...) So while Hanford might be okay now, I wouldn't go there unless I was with someone who had worked there a long, long time. That's the only place I've ever visited where they gave me a heavy steel tag with a number stamped on it, for rugged identification, along with the film badge.
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Re:Safety? (Score:5, Informative)
It's nice to see my home-town being used for such an awesome mythbusters episode. : )
This is osjedi, reporting live from Tri-Cities, WA. Home of the world's best apples, grapes, hopps, cherrys, and weapons grade plutonium.
Parent
Re:Safety? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gamma irradiator. Basically, big lead tube with a gamma source inside. You can't get it out. You can't expose the source to the outside world. There is a lead "airlock". You put the roach inside. Irradiate. Release. I went to a High School that had a gamma irradiator. We DID this experiment. Exposed roach to greater than 1000, but less than 10000 roentgens. We weren't real precise. But the roach lived long enough for us to decide we better squish it before it reproduced.
Oh, yes, "stuff doesn't glow when you expose it to radiation". Not 100% true. Some stuff DOES. Namely most crystals. One of the most impressive examples is Sodium Chloride. Yep, table salt. Irradiate it overnight. The gamma rays knock the electrons up to a higher energy level. But since salt has a very tight crystaline structure, they don't snap back down immediatly. Remove from irradiator, and over the course of the next 24 hours, it glows pretty brightly (bright as a glow stick) in a funky red-orange light (spectra of sodium). Eventually all the electrons snap back down to their ground state and it quits glowing. Not radioactive at any point while this is going on. The only thing it emits is red-orange photons which are not "radiation" by most people's standards. (Well it is, but ALL light is...)
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Dude! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Dude! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Safety? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Safety isn't the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
In a former life, I worked as an NDT technician. One of our biggest jobs was industrial radiography. Which, long story short, involves radioisotope cameras and lots of safety training. With an radiation safety expert, radiation alarms, survey meters, and proper equipment they'll be plenty safe.
The biggest problem for them would be to properly dose the cockroaches. What kinds and levels of radiation will they be receiving? Any clown can x-ray a roach until it dies, but what would the fallout profile of a world-ending nuclear war look like? What's the long-term effect of radioisotopes in their bodies? How much ionizing radiation will they receive?
There's alpha, beta, gamma, neutron... What kind of radiation are they going to use? Safety, while incredibly important for an experiment like this, is relatively easy to accomplish if they get an expert. Attacking the correct problem may prove far more troublesome.
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Re:Safety isn't the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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Call from PETA in ... 3, 2, 1 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Call from PETA in ... 3, 2, 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Call from PETA in ... 3, 2, 1 (Score:5, Interesting)
But really the question is not that simple. Would you savagely murder one fluffy dog to save 100M people from a deadly virus? Would you savagely murder one human to save 100M people from a deadly virus? Would you savagely murder 1M humans to save 100M people from a deadly virus? Where is your threshold? I believe this is what Protectors of the Ringworld couldn't wrap their mind about.
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Deadly virus? (Score:5, Insightful)
These kinds of "dilemma's" are nothing but intellectual masturbation. I'll tell you right now: in a real world situation, that man or that dog would be a greasy spot if it was only thought that their death would save 100,000 people.
And as for the reverse, you can bet, in a quarantine situation, they would kill as many as it took (or as they could) to keep the sick separated from the well. It's the only thing that can be done in that situation, 1, 100, or 1,000,000. The reverse also holds: if you were stuck in a quarantine, and you believed yourself or your family to be in danger of being infected, you'd do whatever you could to break quarantine, even at the risk of infecting countless others...That's why they defend barricades with guns, not pamphlets on disease control.
The desire to protect yourself and your loved ones trumps it all, when it comes down to it. That's just human nature.
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Hmph. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who are you saving? What are you actually doing? You're just torturing some slob for dated information that's not going to help anyone. And torture is a crappy way of getting accurate information anyhow...Witness all the people who "confessed" to witchcraft during the inquisition, and the witch trials.
Traditional intelligence gathering methods were sufficient to get the information that would have stopped 9/11, if the methods of analysis were good enough. Now, they're gathering so much more information, and I've seen no proof that their methods of analysis have improved by anything even resembling a similar amount...Basically, they're drowning themselves in un-analyzed crap information, while giving concrete examples to the people who think that we're corrupt torturers, that we are in fact, corrupt torturers, and screwing the people at home who're finding it hard to think we really are the good guys when we're torturing POWs, and yes, if we're "at war" with terror, then people we capture in the war, are POWs...That's what it means.
In short, it's stupid, it's pointless, and it's immoral. We may be forgiven for taking the moral low road for an end like saving a million people, but when you take the moral low road for a worthless end, you should expect to be strung up by your nuts for it. Make no mistake; you sacrifice a human life because of something you think is right, that's still murder...If enough other people think you were right to do so, society may forgive you. Otherwise, they may put your ass in the electric chair.
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Ha. (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't been in that situation, so I'm not quite sure what I'd do. It'll depend on a lot of things. How long do I stay in quarantine if there is no food? How long if no water? No vague attempt at medical aid from the outside? No idea.
But you apparently know...Unlike all the "trample your fellow man" sheep of the world, you'd never act in anything but a selfless manner.
Or you're talking out of your ass. I've seen a lot of people talk a big line, and the bigger the line, the faster they crack when the shit hits the fan.
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Re:Call from PETA in ... 3, 2, 1 (Score:5, Informative)
Objection, your Honor - Loaded Question (Or is it leading the witness?)!
The correct question is "So what is your criteria for what you will and won't kill?"
"Killing" is performing an action that causes something that is living to cease doing so.
"Murder" is a legal definition, along with "manslaughter", "homicide", etc. By it's very definition, it is impossible to "murder" a cockroach.
If you are going to troll, do it correctly.
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Re:Call from PETA in ... 3, 2, 1 (Score:5, Funny)
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go-go roachzilla (Score:5, Funny)
So, what precautions do they have on hand in the event one of them grows to enormous size and goes on a rampage?
Re:go-go roachzilla (Score:5, Funny)
Adam will whip up something out of a chainsaw, some mysterious plumbing he found at the junk jard, and a large tank of napthalene that he happened to have out back. The result will have a major design flaw but will spew flaming death anyway. The result will be bolted onto Jamie's customised vending machine robot. With the addition of about twelve wireless video cameras, the result will go out and kick ass. Adam will get overexcited.
Does that answer your question?
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COAP? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:COAP? (Score:5, Funny)
Cockroaches are used to better living conditions than coach anyway... certainly better food.
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Call Homeland Security on these terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought it was for a different reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Not studied? (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, it seems that a lot of scientists have done just that. [google.com]
For a pretty decent explanation: the mysterious Dr. Karl! [abc.net.au]
Nukes? Cockroaches are dead even w/o radiation (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't let Jamie get hit with radiation... (Score:5, Funny)
...otherwise his mustache will become huge and go on a rampage!
Boric Acid (Score:5, Funny)
take care (Score:5, Funny)
Re:take care (Score:5, Funny)
- Fear of light
- Lives mostly indoors
- Hunched over
- Content with junk food
*looks at "computer nerd" checklist**looks at "Cockroach-Man" checklist*
Oh my God.
I HAVE SUPER POWERS
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From Caltech via the Wayback Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
I've done this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is it a MYTH??? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Is it a MYTH??? (Score:5, Funny)
You are mythtaken, it is actually a mythtery
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Re:Is it a MYTH??? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Is it a MYTH??? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Why does the first post is *ALWAYS* funny? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Suffer the little creatures (Score:5, Interesting)
I heard an interview once with a scientist who wanted "endangered species" to include the less cuddly critters. He cited the fact that when the last surviving California condors were captured for breeding, the first thing that was done to them was a delousing. It never occurred to anybody that if a species is endangered, then their parasites must be endangered as well.
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Re:Cockroaches, harmed in the making of broadcast? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mythbusters uses their science terminology properly, is open to peer review, and doesn't try to trick anyone. They even go so far as retesting things if their viewers find holes in their methodologies. It may not be formal, academic science, but it IS real science.
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Re:Cockroaches, harmed in the making of broadcast? (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, roaches and dogs taste COMPLETELY different.
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Re:wont someone think of the Cockroaches! (Score:5, Insightful)
To all of those whining "oh, how can they just kill those living things???". Put down your fucking hamburger, take off your leather shoes, and head off into the woods. Go take up your own cause and live naked in a cave you overzealous assholes.
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