Still Cooking

Last week--more than six months after the first atomic bomb exploded--the New Mexican soil which melted to greenish glass was still aboil with radioactivity. Fragments weighing only a fraction of an ounce caused a continuous roar when held near a Geiger-Muller counter, a gadget which clicks once when an ionizing particle passes through it. Ionizing particles zoomed out of the fragments so fast that the clicks they made as they passed through the counter could not be distinguished individually.

Pieces of twisted steel from the wreckage were radioactive too. Some of their iron atoms must have been transmuted by the explosion into unstable isotopes.

Like radium, the glass fragments and the steel gave off alpha rays (ionized helium atoms), beta rays (electrons) and gamma rays (natural X rays). The proportions of the rays varied with the material. The steel gave off the most gamma rays. Sometimes the radiation from a piece gave a sudden, brief spurt, much above its normal level.

Experts said that the atomic glass was not dangerous unless kept close to the skin for a considerable time--e.g., the movie stars who were photographed wearing "atomite" jewelry would do well not to wear it too often, or too long.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.