by Tom Clynes
Miller and the teachers had always made things available to Taylor, but this worried her.
“Taylor, I don’t open up monitors; they can be dangerous.”
“Well, I need ’em for my lab,” Taylor said.
“Tell you what,” Miller said. “You get your daddy to come up and tell me you need them and then we’ll consider it.”
Taylor brought Kenneth in the next afternoon, but, says Miller, Taylor did most of the talking. They drove away with three monitors, which Taylor promptly tore apart when he got them into his grandmother’s garage. A couple of days later, Tiffany snapped a picture of her smiling son surrounded by lead shielding and the spilled-open guts of the monitors, one of the bare CRTs wired to a high-voltage supply.
As Dodds had recognized, Taylor was more than a bookworm. His curiosity drove him toward both theory and hands-on creation. If he read or heard about a phenomenon or a discovery that grabbed his interest, he’d immediately start thinking about ways to test it or build something practical to do with it. Then he’d head to his laboratory and start tinkering.
Taylor wanted to use the CRTs to reproduce the discovery that German physicist Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen made on November 8, 1895. Much of the debate among physicists in the second half of the nineteenth century revolved around whether light, heat, and other radiation were all part of a continuum. By the 1880s, scientists were feeling more confident about their understanding of what would come to be known as the electromagnetic spectrum. On the long-wavelength end of the spectrum are radio waves, preceded by shorter microwaves, which are preceded by even shorter infrared waves. Visible light, thought to be near the shorter-wavelength end of the spectrum, occupies a narrow range of frequencies before infrared. But the existence of wavelengths shorter than ultraviolet light was unknown.
Soon, a series of discoveries would collapse the foundations of late-nineteenth-century physics. The first occurred when Roentgen was experimenting with cathode rays, created by passing high-voltage current through an evacuated glass container. Cathode rays would eventually form the basis of every television and computer screen until liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) displaced them, a century after Roentgen’s experiments.
Roentgen was investigating the properties of cathode electron beams, which are very short range, less than an inch. Knowing this, the German was surprised when he switched on his electron beam and noticed that some fluorescent material suddenly glowed on the other side of his laboratory—even though the end of the tube was covered by cardboard. Roentgen then set up a screen and held his hand between it and the tube. In what must have been a moment worthy of a thousand shivers, he saw an image of his finger bones projected onto the screen.
Roentgen had discovered x-rays.
Six weeks later, the scientist incorporated film into his experiment and made the first radiograph, the now-famous x-ray image of his wife’s hand—bones, wedding ring, and all. Roentgen’s feat was quickly copied, and x-ray images became a worldwide sensation, celebrated variously as a technological attraction, an art form, and a magic visual gateway to the supernatural world. But it didn’t take long for Roentgen’s new form of electromagnetic radiation to prove its value in medicine, astronomy, security, and many diverse areas of science.
Taylor was fascinated by the possibilities of accelerating electrons through a vacuum. “The tubes in these computer monitors are a lot like the fluoroscopes in the old x-ray machines,” he says as he shows me his crude but functional x-ray devices. “You’ve got a power source that kicks up tens of thousands of volts and accelerates negatively charged electrons through a funnel-shaped vacuum tube. The x-rays get thrown up against this glass plate, which is doped with fluorescent or phosphorescent compounds, and the electron beam creates the image. The glass is leaded, so most of the x-rays stay inside.” Taylor tried different configurations for his x-ray machines using the school’s CRTs, rectifier vacuum tubes from old radios, even an ornate antique Crookes tube similar to what Roentgen had used.
As he was showing me the remnants of his experiments, it occurred to me that Taylor’s preternaturally early progression of experimentation was following—and would continue to follow—roughly the same path that particle physics itself had: from the discovery of x-rays and radioactive compounds to the use of alpha particles to induce nuclear reactions to the development of electrostatic accelerators and artificial radioactivity to, finally, nuclear fission and fusion.
Inspired by Roentgen, Henri Becquerel began researching x-rays, theorizing that they were caused by phosphorescent compounds, which he believed were influenced by sunlight. One by one, he placed his specimens on photographic plates wrapped in black paper and set them in the sun, assuming that the x-rays would pass through the paper and expose the plates with their telltale signatures. But the day in 1896 on which he’d planned to test uranium salt crystals dawned cloudy, so Becquerel stashed both the uranium and the photographic plate in a drawer. Several days later he processed that plate and discovered that the uranium salts had left an image. Somehow, the uranium was spontaneously emitting some sort of penetrating radiation that had nothing to do with sunlight.
“I did the same thing,” Taylor says. He’d borrowed some film from Tiffany’s camera and placed samples of various radioactive materials on top of it—uranium ore, radium gauge hands, thorium lantern mantles. “The film I had wasn’t the best for the job and my technique was fuzzy, but when I developed it, sure enough, there were pictures of the stuff I put there.”
But x-rays weren’t responsible for exposing Becquerel’s or Taylor’s film. Becquerel had stumbled upon yet another class of energy, a high-frequency electromagnetic wave within the larger phenomenon that Marie Curie would call radioactivity. But this energy didn’t emanate from atoms’ electron clouds. Scientists would eventually learn that this energy—gamma rays, which have the smallest wavelengths and the most energy of any wave in the electromagnetic spectrum—is emitted from excited atomic nuclei. Due to their short wavelength, gamma rays are the most penetrating form of radiation and, like x-rays, can travel great distances through air.
As Taylor was ramping up the scale and ambition of his experiments, he was also becoming an ever more obsessive collector. After dinner he’d typically skip his homework and spend the evening scouring eBay, seeking out nuclear-related items. Some he bought to experiment with; others he bought just because he thought they were cool. Some became part of his sixth-grade science-fair project, an expanded study of environmental radioactivity that included radioactive samples gleaned from nuclear power plants and nuclear test sites. Taylor built a glove box of wood and Plexiglas with a large PVC pipe that could be unscrewed from outside or inside the chamber—“just like in the movie The China Syndrome!” he excitedly told those who stopped to view his display. He bought a more sophisticated sodium iodide scintillation detector and invited visitors to reach into the gloves and handle the materials (which had radiation levels low enough that they could have been safely picked up and held—for a short time, at least—with bare hands).
Taylor used his school computer-lab time to study uranium chemistry. “I knew he wasn’t doing what I’d assigned,” says Melde. “But I also knew he was learning a lot, so I let him do his own thing.” Likewise with recess: Taylor got along with everyone, Melde says, but in the sixth grade, he stopped playing with his classmates. While the other kids chased one another and played soccer, Taylor would sit on a bench with Melde and go through a binder filled with correspondence from physicists and scholarly articles about how uranium processors transformed weakly radiating rocks into reactor-grade fuel that is, ounce for ounce, more than two million times more energetic than coal.
Uranium is produced by supernovae, which occur when stars burn through their nuclear fuel. The star’s core collapses catastrophically and brightens in an explosion that boosts its luminosity by a factor of ten billion, outshining the entire galaxy that contains it. Inspired by Becquerel’s discovery, the Curies experimented with
techniques to extract uranium from an ore called pitchblende. Enriched uranium is the chain-reacting stuff of atomic bombs and power stations, but the element in its raw form decays so slowly in its multibillion-year-long cascade toward stability that uranium ore is only slightly radioactive.
After separating the uranium metal from the ore, the Curies were surprised to find that the leftover waste products were more radioactive than the extracted uranium. To explore the phenomenon, Marie acquired tons of pitchblende tailings from a factory in Austria and experimented with the material until she isolated two previously unknown, highly radioactive elements: polonium and radium. In 1911 she won a second Nobel Prize (for Chemistry) in recognition of these discoveries, making her the only person to win a Nobel in two different sciences.
One day at the school computer, Taylor came across a description of a process that extracts uranium from ore. He realized that it was something he might be able to do at home. That night, he took a heavy hammer and began whacking at a chunk of uranium ore he’d purchased on the Internet. After a night of experimenting with different combinations of chemicals and heating methods, he went out to Grandma’s garage, “and there was this beautiful yellow fluorescent solution” (uranyl acetate).
Next, he tried leaching concentrated pitchblende (uranium dioxide) with acetic acid and hydrochloric acid. He filtered the leachate with a vacuum flask and let the solution evaporate. “Those uranium salts really took off and grew some incredibly beautiful yellow fluorescent crystals. That was cool! I tried different combinations of chemicals and it got even better. The colors were just amazing!”
If Taylor had a true counterpart at the dawn of the nuclear era, it was the English physicist Ernest Rutherford. Enthusiastic and relentlessly curious, Rutherford was fascinated by the esoteric powers of the atom. At the time, most physicists believed that positive and negative charges were distributed evenly inside atoms. But Rutherford, in his most famous experiment, proved otherwise. In 1911, he shot a narrow beam of alpha particles emitted by radium at a thin sheet of gold foil. Most of the particles passed through the foil onto the screen behind it, but some of the particles bounced back, deflected by the gold.
“It was as if you had fired a 15-inch naval shell at a piece of tissue paper and the shell came right back and hit you,” wrote Rutherford. “It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive centre carrying a charge.”
Rutherford realized that a few of the alpha particles were colliding with something so dense they were deflected away, which disproved the theory that particles simply traveled through atom “clouds.” Rutherford concluded that what they were encountering was the central part of the atom, which held most of the atom’s mass; he dubbed this small, dense concentration of charge and mass the nucleus, from the Latin word for “kernel.” Two years later, Hans Geiger, a collaborator on the gold-foil experiment, would verify these conclusions and prove Rutherford’s theory. Thereafter, studies of the nucleus became known as nuclear physics, and they would lead to the discovery of the proton and neutron (by Rutherford and his research partner James Chadwick) and eventually to the splitting of the atom.
“Those were the discoveries,” says Taylor, “that made my career possible.”
Among the enablers of Taylor’s budding career, few were as useful as the Internet. Little more than a decade earlier, the still-infant web had yet to connect far-flung amateurs or provide easily accessible sources of information on their esoteric interests. To get guidance on techniques and find sources for the radioactive materials he sought, David Hahn posed as a physics instructor and initiated snail-mail correspondences with officials at organizations listed in his Boy Scout merit-badge booklet. Amazingly, no group proved more helpful to Hahn’s endeavors than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) itself. Responding to Hahn’s inquiries, Donald Erb, the NRC’s director of isotope production and distribution, sent “Professor Hahn” tips on isolating radioactive elements. He also provided a list of isotopes that could sustain a chain reaction, as well as commercial sources for the radioactive wares Hahn wanted to purchase.
Taylor started nosing around online in 2006 or so, and he quickly made connections with hobbyists who were eager to share their knowledge and point him toward sources for radioactive materials. To finance his purchases, he started a small business buying broken iPods, fixing them, and reselling them on eBay. Guided by his similarly obsessed cyberfriends (most of whom had no idea they were communicating with an eleven-year-old), Taylor expanded his collection of radioactive “naughties,” as some in the community refer to them.
“You’d actually be surprised at some of the things you can buy online,” Taylor says. Unsettled might be a better word. While researching and writing this book, I often looked up terms like minimum critical mass of enriched uranium, and I sometimes wondered if I was raising an NSA data-miner’s eyebrows, but Taylor’s nightly cyberhunts and purchases attracted no inquiries from regulatory or law enforcement agencies. Considering the degree of official paranoia focused on more benign materials and information-gathering since 9/11, that’s surprising. Considering that Taylor was an eleven-year-old child when he began buying radioactive materials on the Internet, it’s disturbing.
But Taylor undoubtedly knew more about the proper handling of these materials than many of the online buyers and sellers—nearly all of whom, it’s safe to presume, were older than him. Unfortunately, some apparently were not old enough to know better, as evidenced by the thirty-one-year-old Swedish do-it-yourselfer who in 2011 tried to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen using materials he’d bought on eBay. Richard Handl started cooking a mix of americium, beryllium, and radium in a broth of sulfuric acid in a confused attempt to “see if it’s possible to split atoms at home.” Though his approach wasn’t capable of splitting atoms, he did achieve a meltdown of sorts when the materials exploded in his face. Handl then called Sweden’s Radiation Authority and asked if what if he was doing was legal. It was not. The authority directed police to Handl, who was charged with unauthorized possession of nuclear material.
Taylor bought more lead pigs to contain his newest treasures: samples from nuclear power plants; check sources from nuclear weapons tests; chunks of thorite (the ore source of thorium); radioactive glass from mortar sights and other weapons used by American, Soviet, and Chinese forces. Some of these would play a part in Taylor’s increasingly ambitious experiments. Others, such as his Revigator—an earthenware drinking-water crock lined with radium-226 or other radioactive materials—were bound for his collection of antique radioactive quack cures.
Some of Taylor’s artifacts containing significant quantities of radium-226 are as dangerous now as they were when they were created, in the days before anyone fully understood the damage that ionizing radiation could do. They are also, counterintuitively, some of the least controlled radioactive items in the U.S. Like antique cars exempt from emissions standards, these materials are not inspected or tracked. They’re regulated under a “general license” from the NRC that allows “any person to acquire, receive, possess, use, or transfer” them, as long as the materials are not dangerously altered or damaged in a way that could result in a loss of radioactive material. In that case, the owner is required to notify the NRC.
8
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Alpha, Beta, Gamma
THE RADIOACTIVE QUACK-CURE craze began in the early twentieth century after British physicist J. J. Thomson, a Nobel laureate who had discovered the electron, wrote a letter to the scientific journal Nature in which he announced that he had found radioactive gas in well water. This inspired others to check the waters in many of the world’s most famous health springs; several were found to have elevated levels of radioactivity. In one of history’s more catastrophic breakdowns of logic, medical experts jumped to the conclusion that radioactivity must be responsible for the springs’ supposedly therapeutic properties. U.S. Army surgeon general George H. Torney wrote glowingly of the relief that radioactive water c
ould bring for ailments from gout to malaria to chronic diarrhea. Dr. C. G. Davis noted in the American Journal of Clinical Medicine that “radioactivity prevents insanity, rouses noble emotions, retards old age, and creates a splendid youthful joyous life.”
Suddenly, radiation was all the rage. In Europe and North America, health- and status-seekers drank Radithor, a brand of radium-treated bottled water. Radium-infused ointments, toothpastes, contraceptives, and suppositories became the latest craze, and uranium-containing cigarette holders were marketed as a means to fend off cancer. The wackiest invention of them all may have been the Radiendocrinator, a sort of radium-soaked jockstrap that men were advised to place under their scrota at night to stimulate endocrine glands and boost virility.
The negative health effects of radiation exposure didn’t become well known until the death of Radithor’s most famous victim, Eben McBurney Byers, in 1932. The wealthy industrialist drank more than a thousand bottles of the stuff over three years; most of his jaw fell off, and holes opened up in his skull. He was buried in a lead-lined coffin. Byers’s widely reported demise boosted public awareness of radiation’s dangers and led the U.S. Congress to strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s enforcement powers. But the inventor of Radithor and the Radiendocrinator, William J. Bailey, demonstrated his faith in his products by continuing to use them, telling people he’d “drunk more radium water than any living man,” until he succumbed to bladder cancer.
During the height of the radiation quack-cure craze, if you wanted to produce your own radioactive water, you could buy a Revigator, patented in 1912 and marketed as a remedy for arthritis, flatulence, and senility. Though he had no intention of using it for its intended purpose, Taylor managed to find and purchase one of the uranium-ore-lined ceramic crocks with a spigot at the bottom to dispense the irradiated water. He stored it in his grandma’s garage amid the expanding jumble of gadgets, vials, lead pigs, and instruments.