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Comment on Kosmos 482: questions around a failed 1972 Venera lander still orbiting Earthparent

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The tritium interacts with a phosphor through beta decay, so presumably if you hung a watch near it the phosphor would glow brighter with higher concentration of beta decay. Basically a sort of visual Geiger counter.

Zinc sulphide, from brief googling, seems like it would glow in anything so if this was a thing, it probably makes most sense for gamma radiation since the 'detector' isn't being massively lit up by that internally already.

Sure, but run the inverse-square law on the difference between a ~100 micron paint layer and a source that's ~1 meter away.

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