The first being a very few submitted tracks of handheld click counters with limited accuracy and no reporting of the peaks across the breadth of gamma spectrum; the second being a decades long high resolution 256 channel 40 litre crystal pack calibrated, normalised, geophysical survey of the entire continent.
It's interesting that Crocodile Dundee doesn't actually use the "That's not X, this is X" pairing [Dundee says "That" not "This" both times] but that's what we end up remembering and what imitators do to reference that line.
This one isn't on Wikipedia's list (at time of writing) unlike "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'" or "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"
For context that above is processed and reduced data, for those that care.
The raw data (which was once online (and may still be, having shifted)) is full 256 channel counts + height + distance to ground + raw GPS packets + post processed GPS position + etc... straight out of the airframes (and additional "meta" data - the concurrent calibration runs, stripping weights, raw GPS base station packets, etc).
The data linked above is three values per grid cell post process - the full spectrums are normalised, then U-K-Th (Uranium, Potassium, Thorium) decay product peaks are extracted to reconstruct estimated U-K-Th values for a grid cell (and a pseudo colour image created from those three values)
Great for background environmental radiation mapping - useless for spotting out of band "stray" radiation events not of a natural origin.
For that you want to subtract a NASVD kernel from the data and look to the leftover peaks between the big three daughter decay peaks ( and similarly for removing radon smear, etc ).
I apologize if this is answered in the PDF, but I couldn't find an explanation there - any idea why fairly large chunks were omitted from the map? Some of them seem like population centers, others look like nature preserves.
> These Terms constitute a contractual agreement between you and RadiaCode. By accessing or using www.radiacode.com (the “Website”), you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you are not of eighteen years of age, or do not agree to the Terms, then you do not have permission to use the Website, and you must exit our Website immediately and uninstall the Application to the extent applicable.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog, because if you are, you are VERBOTEN according to the terms of service.
I left at the terms of service. I just wanted to see a map, it’s not worth trying to figure out what rights they want to take from me in order to do a quick browse.
The changing scales and meaning while zooming in and out makes it hard to derive conclusion from these measurements.
Sometimes it looks like somebody just used a more sensitive or uncalibrated device or is carrying a nuclear warhead around during an entire route of measuring.
From my observations it also seems to vary a lot depending on how the person recording behaves. Some people just walk around logging reading along the way. Others go out of the way to find interesting above background level radioactive objects and place the measurement equipment right next to those. Like finding 2 pieces of granite having 6x the background level in a giant pile of other rocks.
Another interesting pattern I saw while browsing around was increased level next to every fancy cast iron light fixture along a specific bridge. The bridge was made mid 20th century so I don't think they are old enough to have used thorium gas light mantles.
I wonder why colorado has so many red areas around hiking trails. Is it just one guy with a bad device who loves to hike or is it because there's bits of radioactive ore on the trails or something?
Same impression here reviewing several hiking trails in California. Some of the most famous ones too, like Yosemite’s Vernal Fall / Nevada Fall apparently have high radiation? What’s going on here? Am I to believe there’s a natural uranium deposit there?
> From my observations it also seems to vary a lot depending on how the person recording behaves. Some people just walk around logging reading along the way.
I think if this is only what they allowed it would be a useful since it would measure real world exposure.
Yeah, and I was hoping that you could still look at high-level averaging over a country ("maybe the bad data will average out") but when I looked at a few hotspots it appears that those all came down to a couple uncalibrated-looking devices.
Not very useful or interesting in its current form, unfortunately.
> The changing scales and meaning while zooming in and out makes it hard to derive conclusion from these measurements.
It is way simpler than that: at best it is misleading, at worst it shouldn't implement such algo nor display this thing.
The "macro zoom out" until "max zoom in - 1 step" visuals suggest a continuous, factual measurement when it is actually just a speculative mathematical model.
Only the maximum zoom in (displaying...raw data points) is correct. Until you stumble upon tracks sharing the same spots with one full red and the other full green. Miscalibration, shiny green people from earth: whatever it may be.
Yeah I checked some tracks and it basically looked like the longer someone spent in a place, the higher the readings got. Maybe when the device doesn't get a lot of ventilation it starts to misread.
Or they zeroed in on something interesting, since finding interesting radioactive bits is the primary use of the device. One I saw in CA was confirmed to be a uranium deposit, by geological survey, on a random trail near some houses.
If you don't believe any of this naturally occurring phenomenon for some reason, there are several YouTube channels that check out these places, and try to find their own high activity areas/objects. There also subreddits dedicated to it,'and even a map where you can find places! ;)
Pretty much, there are no shortage of ways to merge such data badly.
Many devices, uncalibrated and drifting, poor time normalisation to address counts accumulating when lingering, ... ffs they probably don't even adjust for cosmic or radon ...
( TBF the last two are pretty picky objections unless you're going hardcore geophysical professional )
Your general point is true, but in this case the devices are not really sensitive enough for radon to matter and the same is usually true for cosmic radiation.
When capturing open-air terrestrial tracks they are more or less uranium and thorium detectors.
If only I'd had the foresight to indicate that cosmic & radon removal weren't something to fuss about on handheld consumer click counters <doh> - thank you for chipping that in.
Might be worth pointing out the principle reason preventing radon removal from a click counter, no matter how sensitive, is the lack of a channeled spectrum bucketing counts by energy level, and the main reason cosmic cannot be removed is the lack of channeled stacked height descent readings allowing a ground level current cosmic estimate.
> When capturing open-air terrestrial tracks they are more or less uranium and thorium detectors.
and Potassium also- just all bundled together as a total count with no discernment.
Still, perhaps one day in the future, just as modern GPS carry a coarse ground / ellipsoid separation model in order to return 0 elevation at the seashore, perhaps rad counters will carry a coarse global radiation background model to focus on counts over and above the expected.
( again, unlikely due to lack of real sensitivity and channel bucketing )
> Radiaverse turns those tracks into one shared map, with the places worth knowing about described by the people who found them.
This Claude sentence would be greatly improved by deleting everything after the comma. That clause adds nothing informationally and in some sense is using a very weird definition of describe and found.
If you type Pripyat, you will be suggested about the hotspot there. Pripyat is in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The highest measurement in the map is 12.60 μSv/h. According to https://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiatio..., there are some open places that reach this high, like a cemetery where measurement that can reach 22 μSv/h, but in a few closed places, like Hospital 126 basement, it can be way higher, higher than 380 μSv/h.
Also, if you type Fukushima, and it will be suggested a spot with measurements of 61.63 μSv/h.
This is totally useless. Coverage is almost entirely by a single individual in each area and the colour coding changes every time you scroll and zoom, and doesn’t even make sense when you’re static.
I recall there were studies about the dissemination of radiative remnants from nuclear disasters traveling across oceans to the globe. It'd be nice to have some kind of historical view on the map to monitor the process over past periods and future.
If anyone want to fund a homeless guy buying one of these devices to use while he drive around the United States I could sure add a lot of contribution to the science. Let me know. I would love to help with this and be somehow useful in a society that finds me useless.
I see many two-way trips, especially in the north. Some are "December 2025" with one reading followed by "January 2026" with a consistently different reading between trip sets. It looks like someone driving to/from grandma's house for Christmas.
The distinctly different readings on each leg of the trip suggests a rather unscientific methodology, radiation stable to the detector rather than a measurement of background. Maybe someone picked up some banana bread at grandma's for the drive home?
The detectors they use seem to measure only gamma. Not alpha or beta or neutrons. Which is not surprising since cheap handheld detectors usually only measure gamma.
This map is entertaining but it's not terribly useful scientifically.
Germans are particularly paranoid about nuclear power, that's why they shut down nuclear reactors during an energy crisis. Ironically this meant using coal which spreads far more radioactive material into the air than their nuclear power plants.
That's not a radiation map of Australia ( https://radiaverse.com/country/au#2.82/-27.05/133.28 )
This is a radiation map of Australia: https://www.ga.gov.au/bigobj/GA13928.pdf ( gridded data available for d/load )
The first being a very few submitted tracks of handheld click counters with limited accuracy and no reporting of the peaks across the breadth of gamma spectrum; the second being a decades long high resolution 256 channel 40 litre crystal pack calibrated, normalised, geophysical survey of the entire continent.
I see you've played knifey-spoony before.
It's interesting that Crocodile Dundee doesn't actually use the "That's not X, this is X" pairing [Dundee says "That" not "This" both times] but that's what we end up remembering and what imitators do to reference that line.
This one isn't on Wikipedia's list (at time of writing) unlike "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'" or "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"
I knew him well
Data, for those interested: https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/radiometric-grid-of-austral...
Good addition, cheers for that.
For context that above is processed and reduced data, for those that care.
The raw data (which was once online (and may still be, having shifted)) is full 256 channel counts + height + distance to ground + raw GPS packets + post processed GPS position + etc... straight out of the airframes (and additional "meta" data - the concurrent calibration runs, stripping weights, raw GPS base station packets, etc).
The data linked above is three values per grid cell post process - the full spectrums are normalised, then U-K-Th (Uranium, Potassium, Thorium) decay product peaks are extracted to reconstruct estimated U-K-Th values for a grid cell (and a pseudo colour image created from those three values)
Great for background environmental radiation mapping - useless for spotting out of band "stray" radiation events not of a natural origin.
For that you want to subtract a NASVD kernel from the data and look to the leftover peaks between the big three daughter decay peaks ( and similarly for removing radon smear, etc ).
That's incredible! Thank you for sharing.
I apologize if this is answered in the PDF, but I couldn't find an explanation there - any idea why fairly large chunks were omitted from the map? Some of them seem like population centers, others look like nature preserves.
I was surprised to zoom in on Olympic Dam and not see anything measured given it is a uranium mine. But I guess its measured by the people
More is measured than is passed on, that is true.
The entirety of Fiji,and most of Mali should ideally also be online / available - but can be a tricky find (ditto many other places about the globe).
Before and after Pokhran-II India, (1998) should also be an interesting study that might be tricky to hoard the data for.
Obligatory Dundee clip:
https://youtu.be/HwAO5IET0xw?si=sPeOpu8p9tTtRMVo
> Video unavailable It was blocked due to the claimed content by VA Media.
Crikey
> These Terms constitute a contractual agreement between you and RadiaCode. By accessing or using www.radiacode.com (the “Website”), you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you are not of eighteen years of age, or do not agree to the Terms, then you do not have permission to use the Website, and you must exit our Website immediately and uninstall the Application to the extent applicable.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog, because if you are, you are VERBOTEN according to the terms of service.
I left at the terms of service. I just wanted to see a map, it’s not worth trying to figure out what rights they want to take from me in order to do a quick browse.
If you had continued they probably took just about zero rights away from you. Anyone can put a bunch of unenforceable scary language in their EULA.
I removed the ToS overlay with ublock and frankly you're not missing much, very sparse data, mostly just green everywhere.
For a while there, perhaps still the case, there were officially no gay people in Russia.
The official stance was to keep no count and so the count remained NaN.
I think I finally know how The Prisoner was recorded in the database.
The changing scales and meaning while zooming in and out makes it hard to derive conclusion from these measurements.
Sometimes it looks like somebody just used a more sensitive or uncalibrated device or is carrying a nuclear warhead around during an entire route of measuring.
From my observations it also seems to vary a lot depending on how the person recording behaves. Some people just walk around logging reading along the way. Others go out of the way to find interesting above background level radioactive objects and place the measurement equipment right next to those. Like finding 2 pieces of granite having 6x the background level in a giant pile of other rocks.
Another interesting pattern I saw while browsing around was increased level next to every fancy cast iron light fixture along a specific bridge. The bridge was made mid 20th century so I don't think they are old enough to have used thorium gas light mantles.
I wonder why colorado has so many red areas around hiking trails. Is it just one guy with a bad device who loves to hike or is it because there's bits of radioactive ore on the trails or something?
Same impression here reviewing several hiking trails in California. Some of the most famous ones too, like Yosemite’s Vernal Fall / Nevada Fall apparently have high radiation? What’s going on here? Am I to believe there’s a natural uranium deposit there?
> From my observations it also seems to vary a lot depending on how the person recording behaves. Some people just walk around logging reading along the way.
I think if this is only what they allowed it would be a useful since it would measure real world exposure.
Yeah, and I was hoping that you could still look at high-level averaging over a country ("maybe the bad data will average out") but when I looked at a few hotspots it appears that those all came down to a couple uncalibrated-looking devices.
Not very useful or interesting in its current form, unfortunately.
> The changing scales and meaning while zooming in and out makes it hard to derive conclusion from these measurements.
It is way simpler than that: at best it is misleading, at worst it shouldn't implement such algo nor display this thing.
The "macro zoom out" until "max zoom in - 1 step" visuals suggest a continuous, factual measurement when it is actually just a speculative mathematical model.
Only the maximum zoom in (displaying...raw data points) is correct. Until you stumble upon tracks sharing the same spots with one full red and the other full green. Miscalibration, shiny green people from earth: whatever it may be.
Yeah I checked some tracks and it basically looked like the longer someone spent in a place, the higher the readings got. Maybe when the device doesn't get a lot of ventilation it starts to misread.
Or they zeroed in on something interesting, since finding interesting radioactive bits is the primary use of the device. One I saw in CA was confirmed to be a uranium deposit, by geological survey, on a random trail near some houses.
If you don't believe any of this naturally occurring phenomenon for some reason, there are several YouTube channels that check out these places, and try to find their own high activity areas/objects. There also subreddits dedicated to it,'and even a map where you can find places! ;)
I wonder if this explains why many of the higher radioactivity sites in my state are hotels.
Pretty much, there are no shortage of ways to merge such data badly.
Many devices, uncalibrated and drifting, poor time normalisation to address counts accumulating when lingering, ... ffs they probably don't even adjust for cosmic or radon ...
( TBF the last two are pretty picky objections unless you're going hardcore geophysical professional )
Your general point is true, but in this case the devices are not really sensitive enough for radon to matter and the same is usually true for cosmic radiation.
When capturing open-air terrestrial tracks they are more or less uranium and thorium detectors.
If only I'd had the foresight to indicate that cosmic & radon removal weren't something to fuss about on handheld consumer click counters <doh> - thank you for chipping that in.
Might be worth pointing out the principle reason preventing radon removal from a click counter, no matter how sensitive, is the lack of a channeled spectrum bucketing counts by energy level, and the main reason cosmic cannot be removed is the lack of channeled stacked height descent readings allowing a ground level current cosmic estimate.
> When capturing open-air terrestrial tracks they are more or less uranium and thorium detectors.
and Potassium also- just all bundled together as a total count with no discernment.
Still, perhaps one day in the future, just as modern GPS carry a coarse ground / ellipsoid separation model in order to return 0 elevation at the seashore, perhaps rad counters will carry a coarse global radiation background model to focus on counts over and above the expected.
( again, unlikely due to lack of real sensitivity and channel bucketing )
> Radiaverse turns those tracks into one shared map, with the places worth knowing about described by the people who found them.
This Claude sentence would be greatly improved by deleting everything after the comma. That clause adds nothing informationally and in some sense is using a very weird definition of describe and found.
If you type Pripyat, you will be suggested about the hotspot there. Pripyat is in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The highest measurement in the map is 12.60 μSv/h. According to https://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiatio..., there are some open places that reach this high, like a cemetery where measurement that can reach 22 μSv/h, but in a few closed places, like Hospital 126 basement, it can be way higher, higher than 380 μSv/h.
Also, if you type Fukushima, and it will be suggested a spot with measurements of 61.63 μSv/h.
Why do I have to agree to terms and conditions to look at a map
Just more NAG SCREENS !
This is totally useless. Coverage is almost entirely by a single individual in each area and the colour coding changes every time you scroll and zoom, and doesn’t even make sense when you’re static.
3 popups about consent later i just closed the site
Having worked with EURDEP data in the past I'm a big fan of governments publishing the radiological data they collect publicly: https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Advanced.aspx
Many interesting high radiation places are missing in the map, Ramsar - Iran, beaches in south Kerala - India.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181016-why-india-wants-to-...
I recall there were studies about the dissemination of radiative remnants from nuclear disasters traveling across oceans to the globe. It'd be nice to have some kind of historical view on the map to monitor the process over past periods and future.
There is plenty of uranium in Venezuela and I don't see a single dot in the map
Only 403 contribute in the USA. Is that enough to be of value now?
watch out for this hotspot in nyc!
https://radiaverse.com/map#15.65/40.782/-73.974
who knew we kept such things just lying around :)
What’s the source? The museum’s granite facing?
I’m surprised no one visited this site
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/primo-autobody-repair
If anyone want to fund a homeless guy buying one of these devices to use while he drive around the United States I could sure add a lot of contribution to the science. Let me know. I would love to help with this and be somehow useful in a society that finds me useless.
This is cool. What are the other cool maps exists like this?
this makes no sense, but at least it's provocative and it gets the people going
> Keeping the map honest
I love me an honest map, it's absolutely load bearing for me.
Any more affordable alternatives to the radiacode scintillator devices?
I see many two-way trips, especially in the north. Some are "December 2025" with one reading followed by "January 2026" with a consistently different reading between trip sets. It looks like someone driving to/from grandma's house for Christmas.
The distinctly different readings on each leg of the trip suggests a rather unscientific methodology, radiation stable to the detector rather than a measurement of background. Maybe someone picked up some banana bread at grandma's for the drive home?
This is quite interesting.
The detectors they use seem to measure only gamma. Not alpha or beta or neutrons. Which is not surprising since cheap handheld detectors usually only measure gamma.
This map is entertaining but it's not terribly useful scientifically.
Curious as to why Germany seems to be the only large country with almost full coverage.
If all the data is crowdsourced it’s probably the German Atom-Angst
Lots of german STEM content creators who made ads for Radiacode (Advanced Tinkering for example)
Germans are particularly paranoid about nuclear power, that's why they shut down nuclear reactors during an energy crisis. Ironically this meant using coal which spreads far more radioactive material into the air than their nuclear power plants.
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