[ale] Way OT: X-ray glasses

[James P. Kinney III]

On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 18:54, tfreeman at intel.digichem.net wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, James P. Kinney III wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 10:26, tfreeman at intel.digichem.net wrote:
> > > I wonder... Could the software running these things be enhanced to screen 
> > > for lung problems? Say like tuberculosis? Keeping the walking ill off 
> > > aircraft might save more long term than keeping the nut cases out.
> > 
> > No. These are very "soft" X-rays. They can't penetrate the skin for more
> > than a few millimeters. I would not want a full chest X-ray every time I
> > fly. The radiation dose at 5 miles up is bad enough. 
> 
> Well, since they are very "soft", it wasn't quite the best idea ever. I 
> was under the (wrong) impression that the xrays were at a very low 
> intensity, and the software/detectors were more advanced. My error.
> 

It's a bit of both, actually. The soft X-rays are low energy compared to
what would be used to say, X-ray your teeth. The more stuff and the
higher density of that stuff that the radiation has to penetrate, the
highter the energy needed to penetrate.

Now the detector technology has also dramatically improved. There are
new flat panel detectors that are sensitive to these soft X-rays and
work like a CCD imager for them (way cool!). So the actual dosage (total
mW/m^2) can be very low. 

If you want to have some fun with these things use some metallic paint
before you get dressed and have a like minded wacko write silly stuff on
your butt cheeks. I'm thinking about things like "your job sux" and "I
voted for Zappa", etc. :)

Of course, nothing beats the aluminum foil cutout of a gun profile
stuffed into a travel companions pad of paper in their carry-on luggage.

I don't fly much any more :)

-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
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GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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