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To: Farcesensitive; Tuscaloosa Goldfinch; Melian
Crazy 8s symbolism / thread decay, since this thread is already beyond its half-life . . .
——

The element with atomic number 8 is Oxygen [O].

88 can be represented by the concatenation [O][O].

The element with atomic number 88 is Radium [Ra].
It's a soft, radioactive metal.
Pierre & Marie Curie discovered it in 1898, when they extracted it from uranium [U] pitchblende.

All isotopes of radium are radioactive. The most stable one is radium-226, with a half-life of 1,600 years.

In the early 20th century, charlatans hawked various fake "wonder drugs" containing radium, which had deadly effects, of course.

in the 1920s, five young women worked at US Radium, hand-painting the dials of luminous watches & alarm clocks.
The paint contained small amounts of radium.
They licked their small brushes to get a fine point for the detailed work.
Some of them became so contaminated that their faces & hair glowed in the dark.
They sued their employer for causing their serious illnesses.
Each was awarded $10,000, but they died a few years later.

Marie Curie became another victim of exposure to radioactive elements. She died in 1934 from aplastic anemia.

The Curies' papers from the 1890s are too dangerous to handle. Even Marie's cookbook is highly radioactive.

1,345 posted on 08/17/2023 8:52:51 AM PDT by goldbux (“The whole world is a very narrow bridge. The main thing is to have no fear at all.” –– R. Nachman)
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To: goldbux

:: a half-life of 1,600 years. ::

You missed this one.

where half of 1600 is \8\ hundred.
Shadilay


1,346 posted on 08/17/2023 9:00:36 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Cracker...)
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