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
1 Radiation is not ionized it is ionizing. To use your example non ionizing = spoon, ionizing = deadly knife.
Think of our DNA like a set of instructions written in 3 letter words (ATGC). All instructions for everything in the body from structure, functions and processes are coded in sentences of these 3 letter words. Ionizing radiation is strong enough to smudge some of these letters, our body can repair some to perfection, with others our body will take a guess as to what it said and others will be too far gone and need to be destroyed.
After prolonged exposure to ionizing some of the instructions will be changed while other will be unreadable.
There are several types of mutation, to keep it simple some are silent and will not be felt while other cause changes/ mutations. Some mutations can be beneficial while others detrimental. In this case the writers assume Bruce experienced mostly good mutations except being green.
But gamma radiation has so much energy that it simply destroys DNA.
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