Everyone knows nuclear radiation is harmful when exceeding a certain limit. Is it different from other forms of radiation such as electromagnetic radiation from electronic devices? Like if I got blasted with some sort of super WiFi would I be harmed in the same way as nuclear radiation?
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Gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation (high frequency, high energy) so they are far more dangerous than Wifi. They’re higher energy than UV and X-rays, both of which we know to be damaging so yes they can do a lot of damage to your cells, though the likelihood of a single gamma photon interacting with a cell is small; most will just pass straight through your body.
Other types of nuclear radiation are small particles rather than pure energy: alpha particles are the same as a helium nucleus (alpha decay is where much of earth’s helium comes from now because of how light it is and its ability to escape the atmosphere) and are easily stopped or absorbed so outside of the body they’re not very damaging. Inside the body they can do A LOT of damage so eating a large amount of an alpha emitter is a very bad idea, whether the element itself is toxic or not.
Beta radiation is an electron (or its anti-particle, the positron, which has the same mass but a positive charge rather than a negative) that is ejected from the nucleus at close to the speed of light. These can penetrate fairly well and still do some damage so are actually the most dangerous type of nuclear radiation.
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