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
I’m not a nuclear physicist. But this isn’t *that* sub.
Heat is the answer. But it’s not the entire answer because wavelength matters. You need a wavelength that is going to be just the right scale to bypass the dermal layer of our skin. But large enough to interact with our DNA. That leaves a pretty small spectrum of the EM field.
As to what it does? It introduces energy, heat, into the structure. Whatever that structure might be. From cells to DNA, again depending on wavelength. And that extra heat and energy can cause the original structure to change chemically.
That change can come in many forms, from death of a cell, to mutation of a nucleotide.
But it’s always from heat, applied at very specific wavelengths.
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