As I understand it, Marie Curie’s remains are in a coffin lines with an inch of lead, because they’re radioactive. Would the radioactivity tend to preserve her body? Or would she rot like everyone else?
If you weren’t aware, here is the final Jeopardy! clue on December 11th (sorry for no spoiler):
The World of Science
nobleprize.org says some papers of this scientist “are stored in a lead box”, a “legacy that is virtually untouchable”
It’s the papers that are in a lead box in this case. Her remains? The article below says her coffin was indeed lined with lead, but only 0.09 inches (2.54 mm), not inches.
The journal article on which that article was based is much more detailed and rather more accurate.
Note that all the protocols put in place for the exhumations at Sceaux in 1995 were decided before anyone had any idea whether there would be a problem. They were done simply as precautions. They then proved to be unnecessary. All that was found was that Pierre Curie’s remains were a bit more radioactive than normal.
Also, it isn’t at all obvious that there was any significance in the fact that her coffin was lined with lead. Lead-lined coffins weren’t particularly rare in 1930s France.
I’ve heard the same (burial in a lead-lined coffin, because of the risk of radiation from the body) about Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector who was killed by the FSB with Polonium-210.
Which, if true, is ridiculous, since Po-210 is an Alpha emitter, and Alpha particles can’t penetrate a piece of paper.
That’s why the corpse is in a No. 10 business-size envelope.
What about the daughter isotopes?
I seems that there aren’t any:
Polonium-210 (210Po, Po-210, historically radium F ) is an isotope of polonium. It undergoes alpha decay to stable 206Pb with a half-life of 138.376 days (about 4+1⁄2months), the longest half-life of all naturally occurring polonium isotopes (210–218Po).
Anybody else read this and have the urge to get married and reproduce just so you can have a girl and say “This is my daughter, Isotopes.” ? Is it just me?
No, and I also want her to play for the Springfield (NT) baseball team.
Would you settle for Albuquerque?