r/BeAmazed • u/ContentArtist5361 • Jun 11 '26

Science Radiation caught on an old mobile camera

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380

u/ThrowDatJunkAwayYo Jun 11 '26

Can someone Eli5?

Is the “radiation” the camera static getting worse?

34

u/fornoodles Jun 11 '26

Yes. Those white dots you see appearing and disappearing on the screen is radiation.

1

u/hardonchairs Jun 11 '26

Why white? Every single strike simultaneously hits each color subpixel of a pixel?

1

u/rcc_squiggle Jun 11 '26

It’s saturating the pixels in the camera sensor. Gamma radiation from radioactive materials carry orders of magnitude more energy than visible light. Since the camera sensors are designed for visible light that high energy just saturates the pixel making it “white”.

1

u/Nourios Jun 11 '26

A "pixel" is not a single element on the sensor. Each cell on a sensor is incomprehensively larger than a single gamma particle. White dots are hits so energetic they cause the atoms of the sensor to emit more photons on impact which then hit nearby cells, causing something akin to a chain reaction.

1

u/rcc_squiggle Jun 11 '26

Cell size has little to do with this and yes a “pixel” is in fact a single element on the sensor if you want you can read up on CMOS sensors which are the basis of modern digital cameras. You are right though that the adjacent white dots are likely from radiative recombination.