Gamma Rays and their Place in Our Lives

By now, you're probably getting more and more excited about the universe right?... right? If not, bear with me as we go through another popular element of science, gamma rays. While reading through Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution (First 3 chapters) by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith, Gamma rays was mentioned quite a few times when researching for my previous posts.

Firstly, gamma rays are a type of radiation present in our universe, charged with many times more energy than the photons we can see as light. In my second post, Dr.'s Tyson and Goldsmith mentioned how your body'd react if exposed to this radiation. You'd get sick and die of cancer, but get a glimpse of particles freaking out in the radiation, or you'd turn into the Hulk if your lucky(Tyson and Goldsmith 37)

Above is a visual depiction of the radiation scale, gamma rays have the highest energy, frequency and shortest wavelength than any other electromagnetic radiation (Tyson and Goldsmith 306). Translation, they are capable of twisting space on an atomic level, literally shaking your existence.

To give you something to relate the magnitude of gamma rays to, this picture shows a light bulb and the radiation associated with it when turned on.

I won't say much more because I don't want to spoil my next and final post. I find it amazing how we can go on with our lives, unaware of so many cool things around us, each of us is simply bathing in millions of charge less energized particles of pure light and we hardly take time out of our day to think about it.

Gamma rays are extremely hard to come by, if you got the chance to be exposed to gamma radiation on the off chance you'd grow huge muscles when angry, would you do it? What kid of information would you like to know before signing the waiver? ^_^

Tyson, Neil DeGrasse and Goldsmith, Donald. Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution. Norton & co. Inc.(USA)2005, reissued 2014. Print