(Brookhaven did a whole bunch of cool stuff, back when folks were still working at the nuclear level rather than getting down below that. Some of it being in the simple “so what _would_ happen if…” category. One of my favorites was the nuclear forest — put a high-intensity source (which could be shielded remotely) out in the middle of a few square miles of woodland, leave it exposed most of the time, and see just how nature reacts to the insult — what survives and how well.

Though Brookhaven was always fairly respectful of what they had, so they never caused anything like the incident that inspired Fred Small’s song, _Hot_Frogs_On_The_Loose_.

I regrettably have no super powers to show for it. Those comic books are fictitious I say!

I once knew a dumb kid who had swiped a tube of tritium(?) from an exit sign, and joked about jabbing himself with it, I told him that was a Bad Idea, that it may be harmless externally, but taken internally… No, he didn’t do it, at least not while I was around.

Well she’s my hero!

Anatoli Bugorski was working on the Soviet Union’s largest particle accelerator when safety measures failed and his head got caught in the beam. The place where the beam entered his head got hit with 200,00 RAD (that’s not a typo or exaggeration) and 300,000 RAD where it came out. To give you an idea the maximum permissible, life time, full body dose for a radiation worker is 25 RAD. Somehow he managed to not only live but completed his PhD and raised a son. Assuming he’s still alive today he’s 67 years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski

He points out the case of Eben Byers, the socialite son of a wealthy American industrialist, who died in 1932 after drinking more than 1000 bottles of a “medicine” made up of radium dissolved in water.

There was a WSJ piece on this at the time, called “The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off”.

…Makes me think of eve hypos from bioshock.

“The Man Who Evolved” by Edmond Hamilton in 1931 is the earliest story I know of in which a human gains super powers through exposure to radiation (in this case “cosmic rays,” decades before the Fantastic Four). However, this was no accident – the scientist in the story was deliberately trying to evolve himself with radiation. (This story seems to be the premise of the Outer Limits episode “The Sixth Finger”)

These types of stories became more popular after the atomic bomb.

Radiation-mutation stories have an ancestor in electricity-evolution stories. There were claims that electricity could be used to manipulate cells or generate life in the 1800s (some of these are referred to in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a pre-Darwinian evolutionary tract).

“Professor Bommsenn’s Germs” by Ernest G. Harmer, published in 1888, was the story of a scientist who found a way to cause cells to evolve by manipulating them with electricity. While attempting to create a cow from a single cell, he accidently created a large headed being with “mesmeric” abilities.

I think that may be a typo ;)

The blue glow of Radium is definitely not Cherenkov radiation. It is ionization, not dissimilar to an electric spark traveling through air. Many other purified radioactive materials exhibit the same property.

If you are interested in this sort of thing, I recommend joining the GeigerCounterEnthusiasts Yahoo Group. There is a treasure trove of experts from many different radiation-related areas there. You will learn a lot.

What kind of science geek is this man? Never read comics? Next we’ll find out he’s at ease around pretty girls and plays sports. He’s a fraud!

billo had almost the whole story. Alan Moore was originally writing “Watchmen” using existing characters, including the Captain Atom character. When DC (as I recall) asked him to not use those characters, he switched every one to an original — so Blue Beetle became Nite Owl, The Question became Rorshach… and Captain Atom became Dr. Manhattan. (I think it’s significant because it sort of lessens to total # of occurrences by 1 or 1/2 because Dr. Manhattan would never have existed if some lawyers hadn’t stuck their noses in there.) I concur, also, that he was a deliberate evocation of the Atomic Age trope.

2. I just thought the blue light was as simple as that he was a source of energetic photons and that we just couldn’t see anything — or, more likely, Dr. M. didn’t let anything leave his personal space — that was more energetic than blue light.

Dr. Manhattan probably learned after a while that letting his body emit UV light causes all his stuff to start breaking down and gives people cancer (wouldn’t want that to happen!), so he made sure that the most energetic photons that could reach anyone/anything around him was harmless, soothing blue light. He’s the world’s wackiest mood ring!

(I also base my theory on the instance where he deliberately changes color. How could he do that unless the source of his light and his color were the same phenomenon, and that it was a phenomenon that was chromatically alterable? In other words, if Dr. M. was blue because of tiny electrical sparks, there’d be no way for him to change the nature of electrons so as to turn al those tiny sparks turquoise… but if it were simply photonic emission, then perhaps he could “tune” himself to whatever color was necessary.

Cannabis is great.

It should be clarified that photons individually never travel at anything other than C (the speed of light in a vacuum). It’s just that in a transparent medium, they are constantly being absorbed and reemitted by successive atoms, leading to a propagation that moves slower than C.

Clumsy analogy: Person A throws a snowball at person B 50 feet away. Person B takes out his anger at this by making another snowball an hour later and throwing it at person C, 50 feet beyond, who is then likewise enraged and begins crafting his own snowball. While the wave of snowball-induced rage is traveling at 100ft/hour, actual snowballs are flying much faster than that, and the snowball the emerges at the end is not the same as the one that started it, though it may be identical.

Stupid scientists! Stop ruining our lives with your “science”.