It’s official. GoPro cameras deserve the moniker, Hero. They’ve been eaten by crocodiles, gone out on spacewalks, and been submerged in lava, and they’ve consistently come back with their precious POV footage intact. For its latest trick, the camera that’s had more near-death experiences than Richard Branson on holiday suited up in radiation shielding and went through an electron beam irradiator, which pumps out one hundred times the lethal dose of radiation required to kill a person every second. (Radiation that’s not so great for electronics either.)
PetaPixel picked up on the eerie GoPro footage, which feels like it’s been recovered from a test gone wrong at Hawkins National Laboratory. The video was posted by plasma physics graduate Andrew Seltzman, and it was presumably made to show what the inside of an electron beam irradiator looks like while it’s doing its thing — blasting an assortment of objects with a deadly electron beam.
Reddit user ParentPostLacksWang gives a quick rundown in this thread of how the deadly machine works, noting that an electron beam is fired into a particle accelerator and then spread out with a beam sweeper in order to irradiate a wide swathe of the conveyor belt, and more importantly the objects on the belt, beneath it. ParentPostLacksWang adds that this type of irradiator puts out 3,000 grays per second, which is a hundred times the 30 grays required to easily kill a person. (A gray is a measurement of absorbed ionizing radiation.)
Radiation shielded GoPro going through the electron beam irradiator.
As for what this insane death-ray machine is used for, it’s good for a load of services that range from blasting medical and pharmaceutical goods with electron radiation in order to sterilize them, to blasting materials that are set to be recycled with electron radiation to help break them down. Really, if you need anything blasted with radiation, this machine’s your go-to option. There’s also Godzilla’s atomic breath, of course, but his safety standards are subpar.
What do you think about this GoPro getting bathed in extreme electron beams? Give us your thoughts in the comments below!
Images: Andrew Seltzman
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