what’s is radiation and does everything emit radiation?
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“Radiation” is an extremely broad term that includes several different categories of phenomena. The one thing they all have in common is that they involve things “radiating,” or originating at a source and traveling outwards from it.
Microwaves that we use to heat food are radiation. Radio waves that we use for all sorts of electronic communication are radiation. Light from a candle, or the Sun, or your phone’s screen is radiation. The orange glow from a hot piece of metal is radiation. X-rays are radiation. A beam of electrons is radiation, and so is a beam of neutrons. A high-speed hydrogen nucleus from outer space is radiation.
>does everything emit radiation?
In the broadest sense of the term, yes, everything emits radiation. This is typically *blackbody radiation*, constantly emitted by any substance that’s warmer than absolute zero. It’s a type of *electromagnetic radiation,* a spectrum that runs all the way from low-energy radio waves up through microwaves, visible light, ultraviolet light, x-rays, and gamma rays.
In the narrower sense of the term that applies to nuclear reactions, *almost* everything emits radiation, because almost all objects around us contain tiny trace amounts of unstable atoms which can break apart at any moment and eject subatomic shrapnel at high speed. It’s nothing to worry about, because the amount of radiation you’re exposed to in this way is incredibly small.
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