Why is lights like gamma rays and X-rays dangerous while visible light and radio waves isn’t?
In: Physics
The energy that light has changes how it interacts with matter. Photons in the visible part of the spectrum have enough energy to energize electrons into a higher “orbit” around the nucleus of its atom. After a short time, the electron will lose its energy and drop back down, spitting out a new photon (with lower energy).
A little bit above the visible part of the spectrum, photons have so much energy that they don’t just move the electron into a higher “orbit”, the electron will fly off entirely. This *ionizes* the atom, unbalancing the charges since normally there is an equal number of protons and electrons.
Atoms bond to each other by sharing or stealing electrons. If an atom gets ionized, it really messes up that sharing and can break up the molecule. The ionized atom doesn’t like being ionized so it’ll grab onto some other electron, which can rip that atom out of its molecule and break it. If one of the molecules that gets damaged is your DNA, it’ll probably kill the cell. Or worse, the cell doesn’t die and the gene that got damaged is the one that prevents the cell from becoming cancerous.
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