Robert Holub

	Robert Holub Research Professor  Meyer Hall Rm. 354  Phone: (303) 273 3194 email: rholub@mines.edu
Research Professor. BS, MS Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic; Ph.D. McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Research Interests

Radioactive aerosols and aerosols in soil air (geoaerosols)

During my 20 years with the Bureau of Mines' Radiation Hazards group, whose
task was to measure and control radon and natural radioactivity in underground
mines, I learned a lot about aerosols, fluid dynamics and earth sciences. Since
my training was in nuclear chemistry and experimental nuclear physics, I became
multidisciplinary in my research efforts.

One of our tasks was to make accurate measurements of airborne radon, its
daughters, and of ordinary aerosols. To ensure quality, we became the
founding member of the International Radon Metrology Program, sponsored by
the International Atomic Energy Agency, to standardize and perfect such
measurements. During the years of common exercises and intercomparisons in
mines and in the environment at various places around the world, we came to
realize that there are small but significant deviations from the expected
behavior of both the inert and radioactive aerosols. One of these
phenomena, recently confirmed in extensive experiments in a natural
underground cave in Europe, was finding very small aerosols (smaller than
100 nm diameter) deep in an unventilated part of a mine. The reason for
doing the experiment in a cave was to investigate the possibility if the
assumed speleotherapeutic effects of caves on asthma and other ailments is
caused by these small aerosols. Another of the unexpected phenomena was finding
short-lived radon daughters in excess of their long-lived parent, radon 222.
Another, perhaps the most convincing, came from exploratory Geochemists;
they routinely locate deep lying deposits by measuring in soil air what
they call geoaerosols, which are present at the earth surface even though
their source can be miles below. My research at CSM focuses on careful
experiments to confirm these deviations and to develop a theoretical model
for their explanation.

Selected publications:

"'Geoaerosols': Their Origin, Transport and Paradoxical Behavior: A Challenge to
Aerosol Science", with G.M.Reimer, P.K.Hopke, J.Hovorka, B.Krcmar and P.K.Smrz,
J. Aerosol Sci., Vol 30, Suppl. 1, p. 111, 1999

Holub, R.F., G.M.Reimer, B.D.Honeyman, and P.K.Smrz, "Measurement and
preliminary behavioral model of radioactive 'geoaerosols' ", J. Radional.
Nucl.Chem. 249: 239-244 (2001).

Holub, R.F., J.Hovorka, G.M.Reimer, B.D.Honeyman, P.K.Hopke, and P.K.Smrz,
"Further investigations of the 'geoaerosol' phenomenon", Abstracts of the
European Aerosol Conference 2001, J. Aerosol Sci.: S61 (2001)

Holub, R.F., P.K.Smrz, G.M.Reimer, P.K.Hopke, J.Hovorka, B.D.Honeyman, "Rebuttal
to "Unfilterable 'geoaerosols', their use in the search for thermal, mineral
and mineralized waters, and their possible influence on the origin of certain
types of mineral waters", by B. Krcmar and T.Vylita, published in Environmental
Geology 40(6): 678-682", Env. Geology 41:984-985 (2002).

Holub, R.F., and P.K.Smrz, "Localization of a bound particle outside the
potential well", Can. J. Phys. 80: 755-766 (2002).
Book written:

Holub, R.F., P.K.Smrz, B.D.Honeyman, P.K.Hopke, J.Hovorka, G.M.Reimer,
"'Geoaerosols' - a macroscopic quantum effect?", Abstracts of the 226th ACS
National Meeting New York, NY Sep. 7-11, 2003

Holub R.F., P.K.Smrz, B.D.Honeyman, P.K.Hopke, G.M.Reimer. "Anomalous nucleation
and growth of 1-200 nm aerosols and the formation and transport of
'geoarosols'", Abstracts of the European Aerosol Conference, pp. S223(2004)

Holub R.F., M.Benes, and B.D.Honeyman, "Interfacial phenomena in fluid dynamics:
linking atomistic and macroscopic properties: can they explain the transport
anomalies?", Proceeding of Czech-Japanese Seminar in Applied Mathematics 2004,
pp.57-62 (2004)

 Last Modified: December 1, 2005
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