radioactivity was

When radioactivity was first discovered, no one was sure what the cause was.

His work and essays popularising the new understanding of radioactivity was the main inspiration for H. G. Wells's The World Set Free ( 1914 ), which features atomic bombs dropped from biplanes in a war set many years in the future.

Historically, radioactivity was thought of as a form of " radio-luminescence ", although it is today considered to be separate since it involves more than electromagnetic radiation.

The new phenomenon of radioactivity was seized upon by the manufacturers of quack medicine ( as had the discoveries of electricity and magnetism, earlier ), and a number of patent medicines and treatments involving radioactivity were put forward.

Residual radioactivity was consolidated into a covered, clay-lined cell at the Canonsburg mill site, which is fenced and posted.

The Navy agreed it would finance Ballard's Titanic search only if he first searched for and investigated the two sunken submarines, and found out the state of their nuclear reactors after being submerged for such a long time, and whether their radioactivity was impacting the environment.

In 1901, Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford discovered that radioactivity was part of the process by which atoms changed from one kind to another, involving the release of energy.

Soddy wrote in popular magazines that radioactivity was a potentially “ inexhaustible ” source of energy, and offered a vision of an atomic future where it would be possible to “ transform a desert continent, thaw the frozen poles, and make the whole earth one smiling Garden of Eden .” The promise of an “ atomic age ,” with nuclear energy as the global, utopian technology for the satisfaction of human needs, has been a recurring theme ever since.

When Becquerel discovered that, with no external source of energy, the uranium generated rays which could blacken the photographic plate, radioactivity was discovered.

They used radiometric methods to identify which stream the radioactivity was in after each chemical separation ; they separated the uranium ore into each of the different chemical elements that were known at the time, and measured the radioactivity of each fraction.

The radioactive cloud from Buffalo 1 ( One Tree ) reached a height of 37, 500 ft, exceeding the predicted 27, 900 ft, and radioactivity was detected in South Australia, Northern Territory, New South Wales, and Queensland.

Detected radioactivity was especially high in eight counties in Iowa and one county each in Nebraska, South Dakota and Illinois.

The first observation of heavy-ion radioactivity was that of a 30-MeV, carbon-14 emission from radium-223 by H. J.

Nordström was known to be interested in radioactivity, and a firm adherent to the then-widespread misconception that radioactivity was beneficial for one's health.

For two of them, natural radioactivity was observed, and three others are predicted to be radioactive but their decays were never observed, due to extremely long half-life times.