Radiation: What or where is it?

Right, let’s step back a bit and talk about what exactly is radiation. Many people are curious about what it is and hopefully after reading this you will realize that it’s not as mysterious as you first thought. I often get many questions ranging from the normal “What is radiation”, through to “does radiation kill zombies?”. Other questions I hear are things like “is radiation everywhere?”, or “is cell phone radiation dangerous?” and “can you feel radiation?” Answers to these are yes, no, and yes in that order. Done. Post finished!

So, what is radiation?

Radiation is simply a form of energy transfer that does not require a medium, or “stuff” to travel in originating from a specific source, hence the term radiation, it comes from the word radiate, as in radiate heat. When something is radiating it sends this energy in a packet of electromagnetic waves which travels fast, at the speed of light to be exact. I won’t spend to much time getting into the nitty gritty of the physics of radiation here.

Is radiation everywhere?

Yes, radiation is everywhere. Some types of radiation you may be familiar with are; UV rays, infrared (remember Heat, it’s just infrared radiation), sunlight, X-rays, gamma rays, and Radio waves. But what if I told you that they these are all the same type of radiation. That sunlight and X-rays are the same. Well they practically are. They are all just types of electromagnetic waves whose only difference is the amount of energy they carry in each packet. At the lower energy end we have microwaves and radio waves, like in your microwave or through the air to deliver you your daily news bulletin. And at the higher end of the energy spectrum we have Gamma and x-rays. This is called the electromagnetic spectrum.

The main characteristics that distinguish these types of radiation is how often they interact with stuff around use. This depends on their energy somewhat, with the higher energy wave not interacting much at all, like the high energy Gamma rays and x-rays. You can think of them as wind through your lawn. It occasionally blows down a blade of grass but mostly it just passes through undisturbed. UV rays, infrared, and visible light interact a lot and don’t pass through many materials, except things like glass and other transparent materials. Infrared interacts even more and can be trapped by glass. This is the principle of a greenhouse, the glass lets light through and does not let infrared out.

There are other types of radiation which are not waves. These are sub atomic particles which you may know of like electrons, proton, and neutrons. We will talk about them in a later post were we will elaborate on their uses in radiotherapy.

Can you feel radiation?

Ok, so I lied earlier when I answered yes to the question can you feel radiation. Well, the answer is actually it depends. It depends on where in the spectrum the radiation is. There is a range in this spectrum that you can feel. Our skin is sensitive to various infrared radiation which we now know is just heat. Heat is generally not damaging unless you physically get burned. Most of the other radiation you cannot feel, you can sense it with your eyes in terms of the visible spectrum. Asides from heat and visible light, humans have not adapted to sense any other types of radiation.

Now you can further classify the radiation types into ionizing and non ionizing. When I say ionizing I mean stripping and electron off an atom and molecules. The radiation does this as it has enough energy to pull the electron away from the atom or molecule. So think high energy radiation when thinking about ionizing radiation, x-rays, gamma rays, and some UV rays. Ionising radiation is the radiation that you not be over exposed to under normal circumstances as it can do damage to your cells. Think Sunburn, often caused by UV radiation.

So often when people use the term ‘radiation’ they referring to ionizing radiation which is harmful or potentially dangerous radiation but- rest assured — just about all the radiation emitted around you won’t harm you.

Now for the most important question; Dose radiation kill Zombies. Its assumed the question is about ionizing radiation, not just shining a touch at a zombie. Because that won’t do anything. It’s hard to answer this one as different fictional zombies have different characteristics.

The common belief is zombies’ tissue is already dead, so there won’t be any reaction to any amount of radiation. But there are other fiction works that claim radiation causes zombification as in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead . In which radiation from a fallen satellite was cited as the sole cause of reanimation. The internet debate is still out on this one!

Originally published at www.radicalradiationremedy.com.