Posted on 10/28/2008 10:04:14 PM PDT by neverdem
Associated Press
Just two weeks after a Nobel Prize highlighted theoretical work on subatomic particles, physicists are announcing a startling discovery about a much more familiar form of matter: Scotch tape.
It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.
Who knew? Actually, more than 50 years ago, some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off glass. But the new work demonstrates that you can get a lot of X-rays, a study co-author said.
"We were very surprised," said Juan Escobar. "The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous."
Escobar, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, reports the work with UCLA colleagues in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature...
(Excerpt) Read more at dsc.discovery.com ...
Pregnant women urged to use string instead.
I wonder what would happen if you unraveled a roll of toilet paper really, really fast inside a vacuum? That might be one mystery that’s better left unsolved......
Paraphrasing the guy in the article — you need to be careful about eating Wintergreen lifesavers when spacewalking without your spacesuit.
Bremstrallung.
Not to worry, James V Sokaloff will represent all those factory workers who tape boxes closed and suffer from Sterilization Box Taping Syndrome. They will be due a cash settlement.
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