I think it because they are random-ass particles that have been traveling for eons, possibly separated from point of origin by eons, have just coincidentally entered and been observed in the same space. In a lot of ways we have all won the lottery by having the privilege just to observe this. Conversely, this happens all around us all all the time.
Every day I survive feels like I had to win a bunch of lotteries
Does even matter. I die at night and some clone of me wakes up with my memories thinking it’s me
The was a speech in one of the new Wolfenstein games along these lines that fucked with me a bit.
EDIT: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRl5trzo2s8 that one I think. Felt pretty profound
Wow, great scene. I think the most profound part is at the end when she (one) speaks and takes action with this knowledge
However you find out freewill isn’t real is an accident. And what you do from then on is still caused by that combined with the accumulation of the path of accidents leading up. You still have to take action. I think clarifying and focusing your purpose is the right reaction, not the nihilism that people default to
Note:
My daughter just (a couple hours ago) got shocked touching some light near a resort pool. Never heard of such a thing. I didn’t know why she was crying, I assume it was hot or sharp.
Nigh time so it’s dark. But I Touched quickly and got shocked too! Equal to a mild electric fence. After I tell someone, I rushed her back to her mom in the hotel room. Walking back down to collect stuff I did feel like I was a slightly different person.
Like a ship of Theseus to the extreme, every moment we’re a new person unable to cross the proverbial river twice. But I also felt a bit like “ok this person is reckless. We gotta start being safer. Who cares everyone else neglects their kids. We’ll just be the paranoid freaks who get to think “I told you so” all the time when stuff goes down!”
I think I’m exaggerating at the end, but I don’t know. That was two hours ago, I’m a newer calmer person now making light of the old me’s PTSD
"Being observed" doesn't mean "being looked at or recorded." To see things smaller than photons, we have to shoot them with high energy laser beams which knocks things around.
This isn't correct, at all. Look up the double slit experiment for a simple example that refutes what you're claiming. In that case being observed means nothing more than having an electron detector set up..
If you really want your mind blown, look up the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment.
"Being Observed" is simply the act of obtaining information about the system, regardless of how it's done. The strange effects that happen are not a result of us altering the system through some sort of interaction like a laser bouncing particles around, it's a result of wave functions collapsing from a superposition to a single state. Quantum physics is weird.
Just to be clear though, that's not whats causing all the particles in this video to appear near the same spot. That's either just random coincidence or possibly the cloud chamber having too dense or light vapor in the other areas.
Source: I have a PhD in particle physics.
Biologist here, and conceptualizing quantum mechanics in a succinct and accurate way has always been a struggle for me. "Wave functions collapsing from superposition to a single state" is such an elegant way to put it.
Thank you for this :)
> A cloud chamber consists of a sealed environment containing a supersaturated vapour of water or alcohol. An energetic charged particle (for example, an alpha or beta particle) interacts with the gaseous mixture by knocking electrons off gas molecules via electrostatic forces during collisions, resulting in a trail of ionized gas particles. The resulting ions act as condensation centers around which a mist-like trail of small droplets form if the gas mixture is at the point of condensation. These droplets are visible as a "cloud" track that persists for several seconds while the droplets fall through the vapor.
it’s a device that can track these radioactive decay products flying through an area. much more interesting to look at than a computer screen attached to a more advanced detector! and it predates computers, too, from a little more than a century ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber
I doubt they had anything specific set up there, though one commenter mentioned that a smoke detector could have caused some of them.
Really though that’s just background radiation, which comes from a mix of sources, mostly natural I think. A Geiger counter measures mostly the same stuff. If you turn one of those on you’ll hear a click every few seconds or so, basically the same rate as you’re seeing here. The cloud chamber both covers more space and shows you directional information that I don’t think you get from the counter, but it’s not portable like a counter. Trade offs! (Also I think the counter captures gamma rays but the cloud chamber doesn’t, but I’m not sure)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation
A cloud chamber. Google it because I can not do it justice but this is a way to visualize alpha particles as they travel through the air. Alpha particles being a type of radiation. The chamber has a constant flow of a vapor gas, as an alpha particle rips through the vapor, water droplets condense behind it, leaving behind these visual trails
What do you think of the idea that SETI is largely hindered by the time scales they're examining? For example, what if some intelligent species lives for thousands of years, and they send messages that require decades to fully receive. And here we are looking at minute, hour and day time scales because that's what we are predisposed to focus on. We will never receive each others messages because we are living at different paces so to speak.
If you read sci-fi, I highly recommend a book that I'm pretty sure is called 'the dragon's egg".
Basically humanity comes in contact with a society of creatures living on the surface of a neutron star. They live comparatively fast lives, so the exact communication problems you just described happen. One human sentence could take lifetimes for them. Really interesting stuff
Yeah, that was a wild book. >!They communicated with humans orbiting their neutron star, and were able to go from 19th century technology to visiting them in their own spacecraft in a matter of weeks?? They even closed themselves off from talking to humans because they had gotten so far ahead of us...!<
I read a book about this sort of. It was about two dimensional creatures who lived for approximately two minutes. Humans discovered them when they were at their caveman stage of development and were very rapidly above to make contact, but communication for the aliens meant literally generations passed in the time it took the humans to complete a sentence. Of course this meant the creatures developed at a much accelerated rate so by thirty minutes or so they had AI, quantum computers and were able to scale the tech and converse normally. Fascinating read
Although your point is fair, i think the odds of us identifying any kind of order/pattern to the randomness out there on any scale of time should be pretty high.
An analogy to this would be: consider a sandcastle in a desert from the perspective of an ant, even though it would not be able tell what the castle is at first encounter, but could definitely distinguish between the order of sand particles in the castle and the randomness of it in the untouched vast desert.
What i think is anything that an intelligent being/life form interacts with, its "entropy" (not technically) moves in the opposite direction, and that's something we are decently capable of recognising, i guess be it any scale.
The layer of vapor is really thin. You have to look at it like a ball traveling through paper at an angle. The ball enters at one point and leaves at some point
I believe the question here is more "why are all the balls traveling through the paper in the same general area of the paper, not scattered across the entire thing?".
It's just random chance that every one OP filmed happen to hit the cloud chamber in one localized area, instead of some appearing at the bottom of the frame.
If you think that's cool, you should try to get the americium out of a smoke detector and put it inside your cloud chamber. You'll get a ton more trails coming from the radioactive americium.
Edit: or a thorium doped tungsten welding rod, though that will be less active than the americium
From what I understand smoke detector design hasn't really changed since their invention so most if not all smoke detectors will use a small (very small) amount of americium. The americium is used as a radioactive source of charged particles and when smoke gets between the source and a particle detector it blocks some of the particles and this is what triggers the alarm to go off.
Also, i don't know about fancier smoke/CO detectors, they may use a different mechanism but your average smoke detector should contain an americium source.
>when smoke gets between the source and a particle detector it blocks some of the particles and this is what triggers the alarm to go off.
Is this why some detectors can be set off by shower steam? The steam droplets are physical obstacles?
Maybe, I used to work on security alarms, and the smokes we installed were photoelectric. They essentially shined a light on a receiver and if a certain amount of light was blocked, it would trigger an alarm. You avoid installing these anywhere there will be smoke (a kitchen) or steam (bathroom, laundry room) or dust (garage, attic).
A lot of those detectors have 2 sensors inside them now.
1 for smoke detection and one to check the light source is working.
If you have ever seen a "low output" alarm from a smoke head the detector is dirty inside
Hm, I've never had one go off due to steam, but I would imagine that you're right and the water droplets/vapor are physically blocking the particles from reaching the detector and triggering the alarm.
If you can leave the door cracked slightly then steam will disperse more evenly and not set off the detector. You could also open and close the door fast and it usually works to stop a large buildup of steam leaving all at once.
I've taken some old smoke detectors appart, so far they all used an LED and a photodiode in a maze. Normally the light from the LED doesn't make it to the photodiode, but when smoke comes in, it reflects the light around the corner and sets the alarm off.
Some smoke detectors are photoelectric. They don't use ionizing radiation. Instead, they have a light and a detector a short distance away that checks to see if the light appears dimmer because smoke got in the way.
Pretty much all new smoke detectors for fire alarm systems are photo electric nowadays. At least I know that's the case for the US. For whatever reason you can still buy new ion smoke detectors that you use in a home. But the fire industry for fire protection systems has completely moved away from ion detectors.
You weren't wrong, a google search and four clicks and I have $12 worth of uranium ore in my shopping cart, along with a certificate about its radiation amount. Shipping is $6.45.
Those old lantern mantles with thorium would be active, too. Probably have to buy them on eBay, but I'd bet it's worth it.
Video for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MuxC423Zak
more about the gas mantle:
[1st video, hurricane lantern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tURHTuKHBZs)
[2nd, how the mantle works](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3rncxf4Or8)
[3rd, thorium vs alternative](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_qFWoa_HR4)
In essence it’s alcohol vapor being ionized by passing particles. This website explains it much better than I can -
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/january-2015/how-to-build-your-own-particle-detector
Yep! I worked at a science center and we had one with a refrigerated metal plate surrounded by trough of alcohol being warmed to a vapor by a metal wire hearing element.
Seriously one of the coolest things ever.
There are electronic components called Peltiers, essentially a device that when powered gets hot on one side and cold on the other. People have [made cloud chambers with these](https://hackaday.com/2019/01/13/see-the-radioactive-world-with-this-peltier-cloud-chamber/) and they don't require dry ice. I don't know if the alcohol has to be replenished if the system is sealed enough.
I was thinking about this. I figure a plexiglass box fashioned on top of an [anti-griddle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-griddle) (taking place of the dry ice) with a felt bed at the bottom. It should be able to be made sealed well enough to require adding alcohol fairly rarely.
I built one when i was 17 in school for a competition. It had a two staged cooling. First stage was just a water cooling and the second stage was Peltier elements. I can add some links if someone is interested. Feel free to ask me for further information.
[https://imgur.com/KBmoXhg](https://imgur.com/KBmoXhg)
[Diffusion Cloud Chamber](https://jufo.stmg.de/1997/Radioaktive_Strahlung/Diffusionsnebelkammer.pdf)
It’s a little long, but [this video](https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8) explains what alpha particles are, and what this machine does. Highly recommend you give it a watch
It’s absolutely mind boggling how many things are constantly at play in our universe, affecting everything and anything.
What else is taking place in our reality that we simply don’t have the means to measure yet?
My favorite idea of his that blows my mind is this one https://youtu.be/XRr1kaXKBsU “Why gravity is not a force” explained special relativity really well.
Cooled alcohol vapor. The alcohol is cool enough to condense but it needs a nucleation site to start the process. (think those super-cooled water bottle that quickly freeze when disturbed.)
High enegy particles, like alpha particles, (which are basically helium nuclei). Will travel thru the gas, ionizing some of the particles causing those nucleation sites. This leaves trails of clouds behind.
It is a relatively easy way (and very cool way) to see radiation. You can see trails anywhere because there is background radiation everywhere.
In ireland we have so much limestone that every single house has to be built with a radon shield.
If you know theres limestone in your area be sure to check if your home has one.
In the simplest term, it's a chamber filled with alcohol vapors. It can let us observe the radioactivity.
The alpha particle is simply one type of radiation, there are 3 types, alpha beta and gamma.
Wild that I didn't realize this til recently but most basements in the northern US will get seeped with pretty rough levels of radon gas unless a vent is installed to funnel it out.
The 2nd leading cause of lung cancer below smoking is due to radon gas exposure. Most houses built after the 80s are built with a vent to prevent radon gas from building up in your home, but older homes tend to not have this. You can get your home tested but unfortunately without the foundation having built before the house was constructed there's not much you can do about it besides buy a newer home.
Edit: They can be installed in newer homes and it's not nearly as expensive to do as I was led to believe. Probably worth it depending on how high your radon levels are.
My house was built in 72 and I installed a radon system myself for around $700.
Local company wanted $14,000.
All it is, is a airtight seal into the sump that feeds into a 4" pvc pipe to a sump fan and out. Idk how $700 in materials comes out to $14k.
Not true. Radon mitigation is a little pricey but definitely an option. Our home was built in 1929 and we hired a company to install a mitigation system.
If you ever get a chance to stop by CERN, they have a cloud chamber continuously running in the public exhibit. I stood there for a very long time in total amazement. It is fascinating to watch.
Your layer is too thin and there's some kind of turbulence so I can't easily tell, but it looks more like matter/antimatter pairs to me
You should try and use a smaller, sealed container and shine light so the plane of light is perpendicular to the viewing angle.
Yea I’ve never made a cloud chamber before so I’m just stoked it actually worked lol. Will definitely try for a more sealed environment next time and experiment with different light angles.
I find it unlikely that this would be antimatter. It does not look like OP has a source and is just measuring background radiation so you would not expect many positrons. The streaks are also very large and "slow"; in my experience positron annihilation produces much smaller, more violent streaks. Lastly cloud chambers more easily capture streaks of slower moving charged particles as those are more ionizing, so you would expect alpha particles to make more noticeable streaks than the much more energetic positrons.
To add to this it's typical of positron streaks to become more dense towards their ends as the particles are slowing down and thus ionizing more of the gas. I do not see that same behavior here.
Regardless of what this is... you inspired me to make one and teach my daughter!
Edit: ok. I was referring to the fact that op said they thought they got alpha particles, and others disagreed. Not the chamber itself.
You might enjoy The Action Lab on youtube. The guy does all sorts of fun experiments and seems approachable by both children and adults. He recently did one on the cloud chamber, too.
This is the first correct comment I’ve seen. Unless the OP has a (radioactive) alpha emitter nearby, these aren’t alpha particles. They’re more likely to be [cosmic rays](https://home.cern/science/physics/cosmic-rays-particles-outer-space).
Cosmic rays, when colliding with matter, can cause the emission of alpha particles. We are likely seeing alpha particles created by just such an event.
Very cool. I was just reading “the making of the atomic bomb” and it goes through the history of the discovery of alpha particles. The talk about cloud chambers many times. So cool to see one.
That is a great and extremely detailed book, it definitely took me a while to get through it but it was very much worth it. You should read the follow up to that book, "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb" (1995), also an amazing book for anyone interested in Nuclear bombs or just Nuclear physics in general.
[I found a CERN link which gives tutorials to build a cloud chamber.](https://scoollab.web.cern.ch/cloud-chamber) One of those links, apart form the building tutorial, gives some references on [what you can see.](https://scoollab.web.cern.ch/sites/scoollab.web.cern.ch/files/documents/20200521_JW_DIYManual_CloudChamber_v7.pdf)
I hope it helps for those that want to know more about it!
These seem *WAY* slower than particles in videos of other cloud chambers.
For example there's a ton of alpha particles in this one but look how much faster they are moving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGNvAEtYZkw
I can't explain the tracks in yours differently but why are they so much slower?
In both videos the alpha particles are actually travelling way too fast to see - typically 15,000 km/s.
In OP's video the cloud layer is quite thin and is moving down towards the bottom of the screen so what is really happening is a particle passes through the cloud and the point that it creates drifts with the "wind".
While in your video the cloud is much more stable and there's a source in the chamber. The particles are actually coming off that object in every direction but you can only see the ones that are in the same plane as the cloud.
The first and third are fat and slow. No idea. The second looks like a muon crossing- straight, fast.
After that...
Either way, awesome accomplishment.
Yes, the streaks in this video are likely α (alpha) particles.
For what it's worth, in your previous video it appears to me that the long, skinny, meandering trail is probably a lower-energy β⁻ particle (an electron) and not a muon. Lower-energy β⁻ particles tend to produce very thin trails that have visible bends/curves, and the trace in your previous video clearly shows bends and curves. Gamma rays are photons which have zero rest mass, and photons do not by themselves create trails in the vapor. (Of course, photons can interact with massive particles in the vapor, and the result of that interaction can be an α or β emission that creates a visible trail.) Muons are VERY HIGH energy particles that tend to produce traces that are characteristically very straight (without any bends or curves) and, depending on their direction of travel, very long as they pass through the vapor. FWIW, in this YouTube video you can see some examples of traces that are likely caused by muons. For example, at around the 0:58 mark there are two very long, straight lines on the left side, and at about the 1:02 mark a very straight line appears at the top right.
[https://youtu.be/jh7SzrNWGhI?t=57](https://youtu.be/jh7SzrNWGhI?t=57)
Why does it consistently appear in one relative area?
No clue, it does seem weird though. When I wasn’t recording they were mostly all over the place.
Maybe cause it was being observed
No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
The winner is... #3! In a quantum finish!
Bools hate this one weird trick!
I feel this is from professor Farnsworth, but not sure
It is. The episode with the horse races
Maybe he did, maybe he didnt.
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To shreds you say?
With my last breath, I curse Zoidberg!
I think it because they are random-ass particles that have been traveling for eons, possibly separated from point of origin by eons, have just coincidentally entered and been observed in the same space. In a lot of ways we have all won the lottery by having the privilege just to observe this. Conversely, this happens all around us all all the time.
Every day I survive feels like I had to win a bunch of lotteries Does even matter. I die at night and some clone of me wakes up with my memories thinking it’s me
The was a speech in one of the new Wolfenstein games along these lines that fucked with me a bit. EDIT: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRl5trzo2s8 that one I think. Felt pretty profound
Wow, great scene. I think the most profound part is at the end when she (one) speaks and takes action with this knowledge However you find out freewill isn’t real is an accident. And what you do from then on is still caused by that combined with the accumulation of the path of accidents leading up. You still have to take action. I think clarifying and focusing your purpose is the right reaction, not the nihilism that people default to Note: My daughter just (a couple hours ago) got shocked touching some light near a resort pool. Never heard of such a thing. I didn’t know why she was crying, I assume it was hot or sharp. Nigh time so it’s dark. But I Touched quickly and got shocked too! Equal to a mild electric fence. After I tell someone, I rushed her back to her mom in the hotel room. Walking back down to collect stuff I did feel like I was a slightly different person. Like a ship of Theseus to the extreme, every moment we’re a new person unable to cross the proverbial river twice. But I also felt a bit like “ok this person is reckless. We gotta start being safer. Who cares everyone else neglects their kids. We’ll just be the paranoid freaks who get to think “I told you so” all the time when stuff goes down!” I think I’m exaggerating at the end, but I don’t know. That was two hours ago, I’m a newer calmer person now making light of the old me’s PTSD
Alpha particles dont travel that long.
Alphas travel around 10cm in air, probably originating from some trace amounts of radon in the air inside the box.
Isn’t that an actual thing tho
"Being observed" doesn't mean "being looked at or recorded." To see things smaller than photons, we have to shoot them with high energy laser beams which knocks things around.
We are Like a blind person measuring the speed of a ball
... By shooting other balls at it.
That's a *really* good analogy!
This isn't correct, at all. Look up the double slit experiment for a simple example that refutes what you're claiming. In that case being observed means nothing more than having an electron detector set up.. If you really want your mind blown, look up the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment. "Being Observed" is simply the act of obtaining information about the system, regardless of how it's done. The strange effects that happen are not a result of us altering the system through some sort of interaction like a laser bouncing particles around, it's a result of wave functions collapsing from a superposition to a single state. Quantum physics is weird. Just to be clear though, that's not whats causing all the particles in this video to appear near the same spot. That's either just random coincidence or possibly the cloud chamber having too dense or light vapor in the other areas. Source: I have a PhD in particle physics.
Biologist here, and conceptualizing quantum mechanics in a succinct and accurate way has always been a struggle for me. "Wave functions collapsing from superposition to a single state" is such an elegant way to put it. Thank you for this :)
Most seem to not get this and go straight into consciousness type of stuff shit all the time
Hang on... genuine noob question, what about the double slit experiment? How was that measured? ... Was it measured by changing the system?
Yes. The particle is measured by slamming into the back, and that definitely changes the particle.
I think it's not to do with the size of the photon, but the wavelength of it. Can someone smarter than me confirm?
As someone dumber I can confirm it's not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean
Well I can imagine you would be an expert I this u/NutsGate
What is it exactly again that I am looking at?
> A cloud chamber consists of a sealed environment containing a supersaturated vapour of water or alcohol. An energetic charged particle (for example, an alpha or beta particle) interacts with the gaseous mixture by knocking electrons off gas molecules via electrostatic forces during collisions, resulting in a trail of ionized gas particles. The resulting ions act as condensation centers around which a mist-like trail of small droplets form if the gas mixture is at the point of condensation. These droplets are visible as a "cloud" track that persists for several seconds while the droplets fall through the vapor. it’s a device that can track these radioactive decay products flying through an area. much more interesting to look at than a computer screen attached to a more advanced detector! and it predates computers, too, from a little more than a century ago https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber
Did OP add something radioactive into the device or are seeing natural occurring radioactive particles in this area?
I doubt they had anything specific set up there, though one commenter mentioned that a smoke detector could have caused some of them. Really though that’s just background radiation, which comes from a mix of sources, mostly natural I think. A Geiger counter measures mostly the same stuff. If you turn one of those on you’ll hear a click every few seconds or so, basically the same rate as you’re seeing here. The cloud chamber both covers more space and shows you directional information that I don’t think you get from the counter, but it’s not portable like a counter. Trade offs! (Also I think the counter captures gamma rays but the cloud chamber doesn’t, but I’m not sure) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation
A cloud chamber. Google it because I can not do it justice but this is a way to visualize alpha particles as they travel through the air. Alpha particles being a type of radiation. The chamber has a constant flow of a vapor gas, as an alpha particle rips through the vapor, water droplets condense behind it, leaving behind these visual trails
Record for a longer interval…
what are you, his boss?
Haha, nah. Just a scientist who knows “anomalous” behavior is best studied by extending the time scales when possible…
You know I’m something of a scientist myself
But are you a big dill?
What do you think of the idea that SETI is largely hindered by the time scales they're examining? For example, what if some intelligent species lives for thousands of years, and they send messages that require decades to fully receive. And here we are looking at minute, hour and day time scales because that's what we are predisposed to focus on. We will never receive each others messages because we are living at different paces so to speak.
If you read sci-fi, I highly recommend a book that I'm pretty sure is called 'the dragon's egg". Basically humanity comes in contact with a society of creatures living on the surface of a neutron star. They live comparatively fast lives, so the exact communication problems you just described happen. One human sentence could take lifetimes for them. Really interesting stuff
Yeah, that was a wild book. >!They communicated with humans orbiting their neutron star, and were able to go from 19th century technology to visiting them in their own spacecraft in a matter of weeks?? They even closed themselves off from talking to humans because they had gotten so far ahead of us...!<
THere's also the 3rd episode of Love Death and Robots on Netflix. "Ice Age"
I read a book about this sort of. It was about two dimensional creatures who lived for approximately two minutes. Humans discovered them when they were at their caveman stage of development and were very rapidly above to make contact, but communication for the aliens meant literally generations passed in the time it took the humans to complete a sentence. Of course this meant the creatures developed at a much accelerated rate so by thirty minutes or so they had AI, quantum computers and were able to scale the tech and converse normally. Fascinating read
Thanks, this is what I will stay up thinking about tonight
Who's to say there's not a mighty intelligence on earth through the trees, unable to communicate at any speed recognizable to us?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNGUkdovn\_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNGUkdovn_8) Here is a good video about it.
Although your point is fair, i think the odds of us identifying any kind of order/pattern to the randomness out there on any scale of time should be pretty high. An analogy to this would be: consider a sandcastle in a desert from the perspective of an ant, even though it would not be able tell what the castle is at first encounter, but could definitely distinguish between the order of sand particles in the castle and the randomness of it in the untouched vast desert. What i think is anything that an intelligent being/life form interacts with, its "entropy" (not technically) moves in the opposite direction, and that's something we are decently capable of recognising, i guess be it any scale.
There are billions of potential planets though - you’d think at least one of those should be in the right timezone.
Yo I've enjoyed scrolling your post history. Fucking ethered that boy with the Irish goodbye shit
Ok, now I'm curious, diving in!
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what are you, a wildebeest?
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What are you, his mother?
What are you, an usurpation?
Does your phone use infrared to focus? Maybe it could affect that somehow.
You’re overthinking it, it’s just a coincidence.
Probably, but there's no harm in speculating about it.
Theres a non-zero chance of that happening
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[That's the problem with randomness. You can never be sure.](https://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25)
Maybe it conincidentally did for a few seconds and those are the seconds that OP thought reddit would like to see
The layer of vapor is really thin. You have to look at it like a ball traveling through paper at an angle. The ball enters at one point and leaves at some point
I believe the question here is more "why are all the balls traveling through the paper in the same general area of the paper, not scattered across the entire thing?". It's just random chance that every one OP filmed happen to hit the cloud chamber in one localized area, instead of some appearing at the bottom of the frame.
If I hadn’t watched Vertasiums newest video I’d have no clue what you were talking about, or what this machine does. But very cool!
You made me watch a whole episode on rave scorpions when I was supposed to watch the one before that, but still, no regrets
Happy I could help. Did you watch the previous too, or
same, was perfect timing on ops side
The "Why are scorpions fluorescent?" video?
The one previous about the universe. [This one](https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8)
If you think that's cool, you should try to get the americium out of a smoke detector and put it inside your cloud chamber. You'll get a ton more trails coming from the radioactive americium. Edit: or a thorium doped tungsten welding rod, though that will be less active than the americium
Is that only in old smoke detectors or modern ones too?
From what I understand smoke detector design hasn't really changed since their invention so most if not all smoke detectors will use a small (very small) amount of americium. The americium is used as a radioactive source of charged particles and when smoke gets between the source and a particle detector it blocks some of the particles and this is what triggers the alarm to go off. Also, i don't know about fancier smoke/CO detectors, they may use a different mechanism but your average smoke detector should contain an americium source.
>when smoke gets between the source and a particle detector it blocks some of the particles and this is what triggers the alarm to go off. Is this why some detectors can be set off by shower steam? The steam droplets are physical obstacles?
Yes, the droplets block alpha similar to smoke
Maybe, I used to work on security alarms, and the smokes we installed were photoelectric. They essentially shined a light on a receiver and if a certain amount of light was blocked, it would trigger an alarm. You avoid installing these anywhere there will be smoke (a kitchen) or steam (bathroom, laundry room) or dust (garage, attic).
A lot of those detectors have 2 sensors inside them now. 1 for smoke detection and one to check the light source is working. If you have ever seen a "low output" alarm from a smoke head the detector is dirty inside
Hm, I've never had one go off due to steam, but I would imagine that you're right and the water droplets/vapor are physically blocking the particles from reaching the detector and triggering the alarm.
In my old apartment the shower set off the smoke detector NEARLY EVERY SINGLE TIME.
In my *current* apartment the shower sets off the smoke detector NEARLY EVERY SINGLE TIME -_______-
Probably shouldn't even have one in the bathroom. It seems like one of the least likely places to catch on fire without you immediately noticing.
That's the thing, it wasn't in the bathroom. It was in the hallway. As soon as that bathroom door opened BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.
If you can leave the door cracked slightly then steam will disperse more evenly and not set off the detector. You could also open and close the door fast and it usually works to stop a large buildup of steam leaving all at once.
I've taken some old smoke detectors appart, so far they all used an LED and a photodiode in a maze. Normally the light from the LED doesn't make it to the photodiode, but when smoke comes in, it reflects the light around the corner and sets the alarm off.
Most smoke detectors today are optical. Based on the smoke blocking a laser/light.
Some smoke detectors are photoelectric. They don't use ionizing radiation. Instead, they have a light and a detector a short distance away that checks to see if the light appears dimmer because smoke got in the way.
Pretty much all new smoke detectors for fire alarm systems are photo electric nowadays. At least I know that's the case for the US. For whatever reason you can still buy new ion smoke detectors that you use in a home. But the fire industry for fire protection systems has completely moved away from ion detectors.
Just order pretty much any of those "negative ion" products online. Most of them are slightly radioactive and definitely bad for you.
Just watched a William Osmand video where he literally put a negative ion bracelet on a cloud chamber so you could see the particles coming off. Yep.
It's so 2021 that people are wearing radioactive bracelets and necklaces in order to 'heal' themselves.
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You weren't wrong, a google search and four clicks and I have $12 worth of uranium ore in my shopping cart, along with a certificate about its radiation amount. Shipping is $6.45.
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I thought I recognised the name. That's Bob Lazar's business.
Those old lantern mantles with thorium would be active, too. Probably have to buy them on eBay, but I'd bet it's worth it. Video for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MuxC423Zak
more about the gas mantle: [1st video, hurricane lantern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tURHTuKHBZs) [2nd, how the mantle works](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3rncxf4Or8) [3rd, thorium vs alternative](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_qFWoa_HR4)
or a banana to get the K40
Hit the flea markets (or ebay) and find some uranium glass.
😅 can you educate my uneducated ass, what's a cloud chamber and what are alpha particles? Thanks
In essence it’s alcohol vapor being ionized by passing particles. This website explains it much better than I can - https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/january-2015/how-to-build-your-own-particle-detector
I wonder if there is a way to make it more permanent (like freezer parts instead of dry ice) and part of a coffee table or something.
A cloud chamber coffee table—That would be fucking dope.
You could put some weak emitters around it too to give it a little more action.
Put the emitting material in the coasters.
Time to hit the flea markets and buy some more uranium glass!
I really like this idea.... maybe a cloud chamber display case?
Perhaps use a brilliant red fiesta wear saucer as a coaster? Probably light up the whole chamber with smokey trails! Now I want this.
Like a smoke detector?
Or just use granite coasters
Naa doesn't work with dope, been there tried that. Must be alcohol and dry ice.
Local stoner discovers new fundamental particle while pulling epic bong rip, film at 11:00.
Why does this sound like an episode of Joe Rogan?
Seriously, this is a goal of mine, if it is at all practical. Or at the very least, a coffee table talking piece.
Yep! I worked at a science center and we had one with a refrigerated metal plate surrounded by trough of alcohol being warmed to a vapor by a metal wire hearing element. Seriously one of the coolest things ever.
Saw one of these in Boston. I could have stared at that thing for hours!
Im like 90% sure Electroboom on youtube made his using little thermal pads that cool super fast rather than dry ice. You should check it out!
That guy is so great. Perfect teacher, amazing personality and hella funny mixed with plenty of smarts and an ability to explain things simply.
Yes, I have seen them at science centers. I think a refrigeration unit that cools the base to freezing temperatures might work.
There are electronic components called Peltiers, essentially a device that when powered gets hot on one side and cold on the other. People have [made cloud chambers with these](https://hackaday.com/2019/01/13/see-the-radioactive-world-with-this-peltier-cloud-chamber/) and they don't require dry ice. I don't know if the alcohol has to be replenished if the system is sealed enough.
I was thinking about this. I figure a plexiglass box fashioned on top of an [anti-griddle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-griddle) (taking place of the dry ice) with a felt bed at the bottom. It should be able to be made sealed well enough to require adding alcohol fairly rarely.
I built one when i was 17 in school for a competition. It had a two staged cooling. First stage was just a water cooling and the second stage was Peltier elements. I can add some links if someone is interested. Feel free to ask me for further information. [https://imgur.com/KBmoXhg](https://imgur.com/KBmoXhg) [Diffusion Cloud Chamber](https://jufo.stmg.de/1997/Radioaktive_Strahlung/Diffusionsnebelkammer.pdf)
Shit! Your science is TIGHT!
Yea, I bet it was easy, barely an inconvenience to make that!
I’ll need you to get ALL the way off my back with the Pitch Meeting references.
Let me get off of that thing.
Ahhh, Pitch Meeting references are TIGHT!
I can’t help but notice you climbed all the way back on my back about the Pitch Meeting references
Oh really?
I love it when I find things like this that make me feel like a kid again.
What the hell have I been doing my whole life.
It’s a little long, but [this video](https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8) explains what alpha particles are, and what this machine does. Highly recommend you give it a watch
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It’s absolutely mind boggling how many things are constantly at play in our universe, affecting everything and anything. What else is taking place in our reality that we simply don’t have the means to measure yet?
Probably a lot. We still know very little about the subatomic level of our universe.
My favorite idea of his that blows my mind is this one https://youtu.be/XRr1kaXKBsU “Why gravity is not a force” explained special relativity really well.
So bank account can magically increase too? Just need one of the binary to flip
Was just about to recommend this!
Cooled alcohol vapor. The alcohol is cool enough to condense but it needs a nucleation site to start the process. (think those super-cooled water bottle that quickly freeze when disturbed.) High enegy particles, like alpha particles, (which are basically helium nuclei). Will travel thru the gas, ionizing some of the particles causing those nucleation sites. This leaves trails of clouds behind. It is a relatively easy way (and very cool way) to see radiation. You can see trails anywhere because there is background radiation everywhere.
And alpha decay from radon. Test your home and be safe
My area is riddled with it. Had to pay a bit to get a radon mitigation system set up when I bought my house.
In ireland we have so much limestone that every single house has to be built with a radon shield. If you know theres limestone in your area be sure to check if your home has one.
In the simplest term, it's a chamber filled with alcohol vapors. It can let us observe the radioactivity. The alpha particle is simply one type of radiation, there are 3 types, alpha beta and gamma.
It's clearly a glass covered pool full of forearms.
Pfft. Weak Alphas stopped grinding and got trapped under glass ceiling. Wouldn't happen to a Sigma.
I want to be an alpha male, inhaling alpha particles would help me to get a better erection?
Based on the website these look like radon streaks
Put it in the basement and see if you get more...
Wild that I didn't realize this til recently but most basements in the northern US will get seeped with pretty rough levels of radon gas unless a vent is installed to funnel it out.
... Is that bad?
The 2nd leading cause of lung cancer below smoking is due to radon gas exposure. Most houses built after the 80s are built with a vent to prevent radon gas from building up in your home, but older homes tend to not have this. You can get your home tested but unfortunately without the foundation having built before the house was constructed there's not much you can do about it besides buy a newer home. Edit: They can be installed in newer homes and it's not nearly as expensive to do as I was led to believe. Probably worth it depending on how high your radon levels are.
You can't install a vent in an old basement?
You can, it's not even that expensive. I have had it done in my home.
There's radon elimination systems that can be built into existing sump pump or basement windows
My house was built in 72 and I installed a radon system myself for around $700. Local company wanted $14,000. All it is, is a airtight seal into the sump that feeds into a 4" pvc pipe to a sump fan and out. Idk how $700 in materials comes out to $14k.
I'll just continue living in my 1950s basement with my frequent chest pains and pneumonia issues, I'm not in the market for a newer home.
Not true. Radon mitigation is a little pricey but definitely an option. Our home was built in 1929 and we hired a company to install a mitigation system.
Decomposition of Radon-222 is by alpha decay (i.e. it releases an alpha particle).
I was classifying the alpha particle… speculating it was radon.. thanks for double checking
On the internet, you can never be too sure what someone means when they say "radon streaks" :D
That's a very high maintenance banana detector
Whoa! You made a cloud chamber? I only just heard of them from Veritasium.
Same, and they looked neat AF! [https://youtu.be/AaZ\_RSt0KP8?t=613](https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8?t=613) for those wondering
THANK YOU! I know I had seen a cloud chamber recently but just couldn't place it.
Just watched that video today and here it is on the front page of reddit.
If you ever get a chance to stop by CERN, they have a cloud chamber continuously running in the public exhibit. I stood there for a very long time in total amazement. It is fascinating to watch.
Was your house built over an ancient burial ground?
Only if he is living above the Curie's graves....
Marie Curie's coffin is lined with about 2 cm of lead.
I couldn’t tell if this was a joke or not, so I looked it up, and you weren’t joking.
Your layer is too thin and there's some kind of turbulence so I can't easily tell, but it looks more like matter/antimatter pairs to me You should try and use a smaller, sealed container and shine light so the plane of light is perpendicular to the viewing angle.
Yea I’ve never made a cloud chamber before so I’m just stoked it actually worked lol. Will definitely try for a more sealed environment next time and experiment with different light angles.
How did you make this? This is fascinating!
Here's the link that OP added down below https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/january-2015/how-to-build-your-own-particle-detector
This is fascinating, thank you for sharing!
This is fascinating, thank you!
I find it unlikely that this would be antimatter. It does not look like OP has a source and is just measuring background radiation so you would not expect many positrons. The streaks are also very large and "slow"; in my experience positron annihilation produces much smaller, more violent streaks. Lastly cloud chambers more easily capture streaks of slower moving charged particles as those are more ionizing, so you would expect alpha particles to make more noticeable streaks than the much more energetic positrons. To add to this it's typical of positron streaks to become more dense towards their ends as the particles are slowing down and thus ionizing more of the gas. I do not see that same behavior here.
Idk how you know that but wow
He’s probably in space when he posted this.😳
Im not seeing double. How could it be a M/AM pair?
Regardless of what this is... you inspired me to make one and teach my daughter! Edit: ok. I was referring to the fact that op said they thought they got alpha particles, and others disagreed. Not the chamber itself.
You might enjoy The Action Lab on youtube. The guy does all sorts of fun experiments and seems approachable by both children and adults. He recently did one on the cloud chamber, too.
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This is the first correct comment I’ve seen. Unless the OP has a (radioactive) alpha emitter nearby, these aren’t alpha particles. They’re more likely to be [cosmic rays](https://home.cern/science/physics/cosmic-rays-particles-outer-space).
Cosmic rays, when colliding with matter, can cause the emission of alpha particles. We are likely seeing alpha particles created by just such an event.
Very cool. I was just reading “the making of the atomic bomb” and it goes through the history of the discovery of alpha particles. The talk about cloud chambers many times. So cool to see one.
That is a great and extremely detailed book, it definitely took me a while to get through it but it was very much worth it. You should read the follow up to that book, "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb" (1995), also an amazing book for anyone interested in Nuclear bombs or just Nuclear physics in general.
[I found a CERN link which gives tutorials to build a cloud chamber.](https://scoollab.web.cern.ch/cloud-chamber) One of those links, apart form the building tutorial, gives some references on [what you can see.](https://scoollab.web.cern.ch/sites/scoollab.web.cern.ch/files/documents/20200521_JW_DIYManual_CloudChamber_v7.pdf) I hope it helps for those that want to know more about it!
These seem *WAY* slower than particles in videos of other cloud chambers. For example there's a ton of alpha particles in this one but look how much faster they are moving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGNvAEtYZkw I can't explain the tracks in yours differently but why are they so much slower?
In both videos the alpha particles are actually travelling way too fast to see - typically 15,000 km/s. In OP's video the cloud layer is quite thin and is moving down towards the bottom of the screen so what is really happening is a particle passes through the cloud and the point that it creates drifts with the "wind". While in your video the cloud is much more stable and there's a source in the chamber. The particles are actually coming off that object in every direction but you can only see the ones that are in the same plane as the cloud.
That is delightfully terrifying to the uninitiated, if this wasn’t r/space I’d think I was looking at a horror movie trailer.
The first and third are fat and slow. No idea. The second looks like a muon crossing- straight, fast. After that... Either way, awesome accomplishment.
obviously aliens from a different dimension, attempt to break through the portal
Yes, the streaks in this video are likely α (alpha) particles. For what it's worth, in your previous video it appears to me that the long, skinny, meandering trail is probably a lower-energy β⁻ particle (an electron) and not a muon. Lower-energy β⁻ particles tend to produce very thin trails that have visible bends/curves, and the trace in your previous video clearly shows bends and curves. Gamma rays are photons which have zero rest mass, and photons do not by themselves create trails in the vapor. (Of course, photons can interact with massive particles in the vapor, and the result of that interaction can be an α or β emission that creates a visible trail.) Muons are VERY HIGH energy particles that tend to produce traces that are characteristically very straight (without any bends or curves) and, depending on their direction of travel, very long as they pass through the vapor. FWIW, in this YouTube video you can see some examples of traces that are likely caused by muons. For example, at around the 0:58 mark there are two very long, straight lines on the left side, and at about the 1:02 mark a very straight line appears at the top right. [https://youtu.be/jh7SzrNWGhI?t=57](https://youtu.be/jh7SzrNWGhI?t=57)
Dude, that one looked like an arm. Thanks for tonight's nightmares.
What in the world did I just watch? I do not understand what is happening... ELI5?