Scintillator Crystals

Scintillator crystals detect high energy radiation by absorbing it and emitting lower energy light.  Often, this means they turn x-rays and gamma rays into a visible glow - but these crystals are so sensitive, they can also react to UV and blue light! This produces some beautiful fluorescent gemstones.

We got some of these scanned by the folks at Creative Electron, who make x-ray machines.  You can see what they look like from a camera inside the x-ray!