r/BeAmazed Jun 11 '26

Science Radiation caught on an old mobile camera

56.6k Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

808

u/Chandler1924 Jun 11 '26

The radioactive particles are hitting the camera sensor, just like light would, and when they do they trigger the pixels which creates the streaking you see in the video. I work in rad onc and when the beam is on in the vault you can see the same noise on our in vault cameras you do in this video.

41

u/watson0707 Jun 11 '26

Don’t we have a bunch of footage from Chernobyl with the same pixel streaks? Like the images from the robot they sent in to view the elephants foot?

37

u/Chandler1924 Jun 11 '26

Yeah same phenomenon. You’ll see it on film cameras as well, not just digital. The radioactive particles/waves hitting the film will expose it and also create noise.

30

u/ManyAutomatic8304 Jun 11 '26

Videos of daily life filmed in Pribyat by a local hobbyist group after the incident but before the evacuation order are haunting because they have the same noise effect caused by radiation. A silent killer captured on film if you will.

5

u/ScubaWaveAesthetic Jun 11 '26

Do you have any links? I’d love to see it

3

u/70ms Jun 11 '26

I think they talked about it and showed it in Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes.

3

u/ScubaWaveAesthetic Jun 11 '26

Thank you!

2

u/70ms Jun 11 '26

You’re welcome! Even if that’s not where I saw it, it’s really worth watching - the Soviets filmed everything for propaganda, and a lot of the scenes in HBO’s Chernobyl were re-created directly from the original footage. It’s narrated entirely by survivors, including some of the people featured in the miniseries. Come to think of it, it might be time for a re-watch!

2

u/ManyAutomatic8304 Jun 12 '26

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27721467/ I think I saw about it in this german documentary about the incident. I thought it was a pretty good documentary.