"Natural radioactivity" refers to the process by which certain elements in nature spontaneously release energy in the form of radiation. This radiation can come in the form of alpha particles, beta particles, or gamma rays. It occurs naturally in the Earth's soil, rocks, and minerals.
Full definition
To shield the detector as much as possible
from natural radioactivity in the cavern, the detector (a so - called Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chamber) sits within a cryostat submersed in a tank of water.
It sits within a cryostat in the middle of the water tank, fully submersed, in order to shield it as much as possible from
natural radioactivity in the cavern.
AtEast Driefontein, Onstott planned to gather more samples to test ahypothesis that some deep bacteria extract energy from elementsreleased as by - products of
the natural radioactivity of the rocks.
This model describes three types of forces: electromagnetic interactions, which cause all phenomena associated with electric and magnetic fields and the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation; strong interactions, which bind atomic nuclei; and the weak nuclear force, which governs beta decay — a form of
natural radioactivity — and hydrogen fusion, the source of the sun's energy.
What makes the ingots equally valuable to physicists is the fact that over the past 2,000 years their lead has almost completely lost
its natural radioactivity.
The task of most dark matter detectors is to spot any oddballs, hits that can not easily be explained away as cosmic rays or
natural radioactivity.
But shielding from the outer world is not enough since all materials on Earth contain tiny traces of
natural radioactivity.
The «three to four orders of magnitude» says that the added radioactivity from the Fukushima accident is, give or take, 1,000 — 10,000 times less important than
natural radioactivity.