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Originally Posted by Tallor
Packed sand does a decent job of stopping radiation. Bricks and concrete are better. Steel is better still, and lead is typically considered the best.
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Depends what type of radiation you're stopping. Lead is good against moderate energy ionizing radiation, including gamma rays, but it's cruddy against neutrons and cosmic rays.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallor
But lead isn't really the most dense.
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Density helps with thickness, but in terms of weight what matters for shielding is how the electron shells are set up, so mostly you just want higher atomic number.
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Originally Posted by Tallor
This got me thinking--what about TL11 "hyperdense" materials? Perhaps cheaply producing osmium or some other ultra-dense material could produce even thinner shielding for the same mass!
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All depends on what 'hyperdense' actually is. It's not really all that dense (based on its performance, under 10^2g/cc; white dwarf material is upwards of 10^6g/cc, neutron star material upwards of 10^12) and it's not clear why you'd want compressed matter anyway, either one of things would explode violently if taken into an area of low pressure, such as a planet.