Dr. Joe Baptista wrote:

hold on mr. expert.

you hold a sub critical mass in your hand and in a few days you end up shitting out your guts, lose your hair and die.

so i assume the person who had the opportunity to hold such a critical mass is now dead. where are you getting your info on what it feels like? curious george here.

The common fissionable isotopes are alpha emitters with half-lives measured in thousands of years. Their rate of decay is miniscule. Alpha radiation, which consists of helium nuclei, can be stopped by a sheet of paper. Plutonium-239, which has a half-life of about 24,000 years, is slightly warm to the touch. Fissionable isotopes with much longer half-lives do not noticibly differ from room temperature. Alpha emitters are life threatening only if ingested. No ones hair is falling out. Really. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"