[ RadSafe ] Article: How Atomic Particles Helped Solve A Wine Fraud Mystery

[CFRBUG]

In a laboratory, deep under a mile-high stretch of the Alps on the
French-Italian border, Philippe Hubert, a physicist at the University of
Bordeaux, is testing the authenticity of a bottle of wine.

"We are looking for radioactivity in the wine," says Hubert. "Most of the
time the collectors send me bottles of wine because they want to know if it
is fake or not."

By taking the bottle in the hand and putting it close to a detector, Hubert
records the gamma rays. The level of those gamma rays emitted can often
tell him something about when the wine was bottled. For example, if it was
bottled before about 1945, there shouldn't be any cesium 137 — radioactive
evidence of exploded nuclear bombs and the Atomic Age — in the wine.

Full article:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/06/03/318241738/how-atomic-particles-became-the-smoking-gun-in-wine-fraud-mystery




Bruce Bugg
cfrbug at gmail.com
(404)507-2237 [(404)507-2CFR]