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Cake day: January 4th, 2024

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  • There’s actually a somewhat brand new miracle treatment for cancer that uses individual atoms of actinium-225.

    Each cancer cell gets a single atom, and then it dies when that atom decays. And since it’s an alpha decay, the cell gins some high energy helium. That’s it.

    Well, the atomic nucleus of a helium-4 atom. Which then rips some electrons from whatever it collides with.

    And then that happens a few times to produce bismuth-209, which has a halflife of 2x10^19 years. Which means it’s perfectly safe.

    Anyway, this treatment, called targeted alpha therapy is specifically approved for Bone metastasized prostate cancer, and significantly improves survival rates vs placebo.

    It’s not that good against solid tumors










  • Interestingly, no. It’s not the same as if you ate a chunk of lead.

    Lead binds to calcium channels, and then blocks them. This makes it a bit of a neurotoxin. It also accumulates in the bones.

    Uranium on the other hand is one of the heavy metals that the body is good a filtering out of the blood. The body is not as good at expelling the uranium. It accumulates in the kidney. This can lead to kidney disease, and other related issues. And that’s just the chemical toxicity of Uranium. Add in the radioactive side of things, and you have a truly distinct form of metal poisoning.



  • Except the Ironman style reactor is pure science fiction, whereas hydrogen fusion is real, but still has issues of energy capture, which several groups are working on.

    There are two promising avenues, one is a direct physical capture, as in fusion is initiated with huge pistons that are physically moved by the fusion explosion,

    And the other cool one is direct magnetic coupling.

    I expect both to take off long before the tokamak style does.

    But fission power is already here, and much easier to set up. Molten Salt Thorium is also promising. And once some corrosion issues are solved, could power the earth at current levels for the next thousand years.

    All while producing an isotope of actinium that produces only alpha radiation. Which is super useful in killing cancer cells.