At 5:46 PM 11/3/95, Brad Dolan wrote:

The tag on my Montana Sunshine Radon Mine radon pillow is a little blurred. I think the following is the right phone number.

Sunshine Mine is an amusing concept. People pay money to go breathe radon there, while others are spending much money avoiding radon.

Anyway, the pillows make nice sources and good conversation pieces.

I'd say they make poor sources. Far too large. A smaller source has better access to the detector without adding much to the overall background the user is exposed to. (I'm not saying low-level uranium or thorium sources are much of a hazard, but the fluence presented at the detector is very low for such an extended source.) It depends on the detector type (alpha, beta, gamma, neutrino?), but high count rates can be obtained in a variety of ways. (Don't get too high a count rate, or the dead time characteristics of the pulse-height analyzers will introduce spurious correlations that decrease entropy--I mention this to show that even radiation detector sources of entropy have non-random issues to take into account.) --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."