Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
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Re: Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
#2I did not know this was a thing!
Re: Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
#3[dead]
Re: Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
#4Here is an example used in the mining industry. I heard them present at a NASA/USGS conference last month regarding in situ resource ultilization: https://ideon.ai/
Re: Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
#5If I recall correctly, a similar method was used to discover a hidden passageway in the Egyptian pyramids.
Re: Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
#6Neutrons can be used for these things as well. The advantage, say from x-rays, is attenuation is not by material density, where all metals will just look dark, but by thermal neutron absorption cross section. So boron might be dark, but metals won't be.
Muons are much nicer as you don't have to carry a neutron source around with you.
> However, if anyone is now thinking of standing under the bridge to get their body scanned, they shouldn't bother. First, they'd have to stand still for an hour, and second, the security patrol would be there within minutes.
Security patrol will come and bother you if you hand around the bridge for a few minutes?
Re: Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
#7Bit more info about the startup behind it: https://www.gscan.eu/
Re: Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
#8Neutrons can be used for these things as well. The advantage, say from x-rays, is attenuation is not by material density, where all metals will just look dark, but by thermal neutron absorption cross section. So boron might be dark, but metals won't be. Muons are much nicer as you don't have to carry a neutron source around with you. > However, if anyone is now thinking of standing under the bridge to get their body…
> Security patrol will come and bother you if you hand around the bridge for a few minutes?
There’s a land war in Europe. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives during the past few years. There have been cases of sabotage against the Baltic states as well as the Nordic states. Things are pretty grim there and lurking around basic infrastructure pretty much guarantees a talk with the police.
Re: Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
#9https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Walter_Alvarez
Alvarez proposed muon tomography in 1965 to search the Egyptian pyramids for unknown chambers. Using naturally occurring cosmic rays, his plan was to place spark chambers, standard equipment in the high-energy particle physics of this time, beneath the Pyramid of Khafre in a known chamber. By measuring the counting rate of the cosmic rays in different directions the detector would reveal the existence of any void in the overlaying rock structure.[48]
Re: Muons used to test the condition of a road bridge in Estonia
#10If I recall correctly, a similar method was used to discover a hidden passageway in the Egyptian pyramids.