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[–] 99 points 5 months ago (12 children)

I see the stylisric reason to only apply the effect around the object, but it isn't realistic.
That radiation isn't affected by optics, it'll go right through the lenses that flip and focus the image and the aperture that might be engaged, and will hit the entire sensor equally. The entire image should be that noisy.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Beta particles wouldn't go through the glass in the first place.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    The beta emission of ⁶⁰Co can probably get through over 6mm of glass. This should be plenty for phones.

    But also

    ⁶⁰Co undergoes beta decay to an excited state of the stable isotope nickel-60 (⁶⁰Ni), which then emits two gamma rays [...]

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Oh cool

    So if you had a camera with mirror would it still go a bit through the enclosure and hit the sensor?

    What if the sensor is flipped so it has to go through the silicon substrate before hitting the sensitive bits, would it be equally noisy but less noisy overall?

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    Yes. Silicon substrate is too thin to matter. Redirecting with mirrors is probably gonna make it worse. Your housing would need over a cm of solid plastic to block beta radiation. On a dedicated camera you might have a sizeable lens with many lenses totalling a cm of shielding, but redirect the light and place the sensor not behind the lens and you only have that camera housing.

    Realistically though you have a smartphone, and that β-radiation will probably make it most of the way through the entire thing.

    And the gamma radiation really won't care, even if you have a 50cm long zoom lens right between the sensor and source.
    This is where you might want a lead brick wall, 10cm thick should make it short-term safe for ⁶⁰Co.

    Edit: forgot this was in general, not about the β

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