For example, UV light from the sun is known to cause skin cancer, so what makes it different from the visible spectrum (other than that we can’t see it)? Furthermore, does the spectrum gradually become more harmful, or is it a sudden jump to being harmful?
In: Physics
It’s not both ends of the EM spectrum, only one end. The lowest energy side of the spectrum is radio waves which have no effects on the body. Anyway, the reason is energy. As you move up the spectrum from radio waves, energies increase. By the time you get to hard ultraviolet, the light has enough energy to ionize atoms. We call this ionizing radiation. This damages your DNA and can lead to cancer or, in larger amounts, cause so much damage that your cells are basically shredded and you die within days or weeks.
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