So if Schrodinger’s cat took a selfie, would that collapse the wave equation?
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What if a friend of a friend of Wigner had lied about a story he’d misinterpreted?
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I think the cat would have to tweet it first.
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But the square cube law works for point-like sources…I’m not sure that distance is as helpful when you’re talking about a large volume…
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Is it just me or does it look like he’s rocking a telecaster in the double exposure? Literal heavy metal, yo.
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Ya it is more proportional to 1/r rather than 1/r^2.
Still not life threatening for a 5 minute exposure.
That could be difficult. Every time my cat tries to work with twitter, feathers end up everywhere.
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What if he tweets it to Wigner’s friend?
Russians are well known to be nearly immune to radiation. Anatoli Bugorski for example, who took a particle beam to the face:
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The risk factors associated with radiation exposure are pretty well understood. 160km is well outside any significant threat zone. I think it would be a fascinating place to visit. OK, 2m from the “elephant’s foot”? Not-so-much.
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I was just in Kiev last September and wandered down to the “Chernobyl Museum” there. There were trips to the site available for those brave enough. I was feeling brave enough but sadly I did not have the time to go. Here is a rather expressive artist’s interpretation of the damaged reactor core that was hanging inside the museum:
BTW Kiev is a great place to visit!
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Can’t unsee that now.
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The biological effect of the dose likewise depends on whether radionuclides enter the body… 'cause that’s a whole different game, even with “the same” dose.
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[pedant hat 2]“Remarkably” he’s not 100% dead… “remarkably” there’s a possibility he is alive. 
No it isn’t, dose is dose.
Actually, getting an internal dose equivalent of x rem, probably has less “real” biological effect than an acute external exposure of x rem since the internal dose is a fifty year committed dose… Depending on the nuclide, that committed dose might essentially be x/50 rem per year or might be x/2 the first year; x/3 year 2; then essentially 0.003*x the remaining 48 years. An internal dose is more like having an increased background exposure as opposed to an acute exposure – the risk from an acute exposure is typically ~2x the risk from a chronic exposure.
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I’m struggling to understand how this is actually a selfie, given the commonly accepted definition of “selfie”.
And reading the Atlas Obscura article, there is no reasoning whatsoever how this could be considered even a self-portrait, ie. the subject set up a tripod or sat the camera on something (which wouldn’t be a “selfie”).
[quote]From a safe distance, workers—or “liquidators” as they were called—rigged up a crude wheeled camera contraption and pushed it towards the Elephant’s Foot. Careful examination determined that it wasn’t all nuclear fuel. In fact, the mass was comprised of only a small percentage of fuel; the rest was melted concrete, sand, and core shielding that all melted and flowed together. The material was dubbed “corium,” after the part of the reactor that spawned it. Over time, the Elephant’s Foot decomposed. It puffed dust and its surface cracked. But for years it remained too dangerous to approach.
When this photo was taken, 10 years after the disaster, the Elephant’s Foot was only emitting one-tenth of the radiation it once had. Still, merely 500 seconds of exposure at this level would bring on mild radiation sickness, and a little over an hour of exposure would prove fatal. The Elephant’s Foot is still dangerous, but human curiosity and attempts to contain our mistakes keep us coming back to it.
Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink. Long after bleeding from the core, this unique piece of waste continues to be a testament to the potential dangers of nuclear power. The Elephant’s Foot will be there for centuries, sitting in the dark basement of a concrete and steel sarcophagus, a symbol of one of humankind’s most powerful tools gone awry.[/quote]
Mmm, corium: lava from the melted heart of the reactor core. It’s actually been studied, since it (obviously) has a big impact on containment and cleanup from any major meltdown.
( http://www.wired.com/2013/04/the-most-dangerous-manmade-lava-flow/ )
Turns out it makes short work on concrete while it’s extra hot and exothermal when tested, at Chernobyl, and we’ll likely see more again at one or more reactors at Fukushima daiichi, once it has “cooled” enough:
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