Apologies if the tag is wrong!
From what I understand, the radiation doesn’t do squat untill it’s ionized. The way it was explained to me is that the Radiation is the knife, while the ionization is the hand weilding the knife.
So how does it affect the body? I know it does something to our DNA but what does it do specifically?
Bonus Question: What did scifi writers assume Gamma Ray’s would do to Bruce Banner to make him the Hulk, as opposed to what it does IRL and just… kill you.
In: 63
Imagine your DNA is like a Lego set.
Imagine a radioactive particle like an alpha/beta particle is a bowling ball.
Throw the bowling ball at the Lego set, and it gets smashed up.
Now you want to rebuild the Lego set, but you don’t have the instructions, so different colour bricks end up in different places than the original position in the set. This is known as a mutation which can be deadly.
Or the Lego set can be completely obliterated and you can’t rebuild it. This is cell death. This is how certain types of cancer are treated, they’re bombarded with beta particles, and it rips the cancerous tissues to shreds.
>Bonus Question: What did scifi writers assume Gamma Ray’s would do to Bruce Banner to make him the Hulk, as opposed to what it does IRL and just… kill you.
It’s a comic book and it made for a compelling origin story.
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