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
Radiation can be high energy particles or light. These particles have enough energy that if they hit a molecule, that molecule will break apart. If it happens to hit your DNA, the DNA will be damaged. If your cell’s DNA repair mechanisms fail, they can either cause a mutation or kill the cell. If that mutation harms the cell, the cell will likely die. If your immune system notices the change, it will likely kill the cell. Only if the mutation occurs in a sex cell (sperm or egg cell) will the mutation be passed on to a child (the mutation may not even be expressed).
You’re not going to grow a third arm from exposure to radiation. If you expose a population to increased radiation for a long period of time, one of two things would happen. 1. The entire population dies of radiation poisoning. 2. Over time (several generations), the population evolves a resistance to radiation. There’s already enough factors leading to mutation (from normal background radiation to just normal cell reproduction) that there’s no benefit to speeding it up, only downsides.
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