Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What Is Radiation?

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What Is Radiation? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:06
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, what would you sacrifice for the sake of
0:09
Speaker 1: a big scientific discovery. Oh, that's a good question. I
0:13
Speaker 1: would give up something juicy. I don't know, weekends, evenings, maybe,
0:17
Speaker 1: like I don't know, a pinky toe. I'd probably give
0:20
Speaker 1: up a pinky toe. Really, you wouldn't sacrifice your life
0:23
Speaker 1: for science. You wouldn't risk your life for a big breakthrough.
0:26
Speaker 1: I would love to reveal something deep about the universe,
0:29
Speaker 1: but now I'd like to live to see it. You know,
0:31
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't think scientific breakthroughs are worth
0:33
Speaker 1: sacrificing your life. Well, you know, some of my my history's
0:36
Speaker 1: most famous scientists, like Marie Cree, died to make their
0:40
Speaker 1: prize winning discoveries. That's true, and I'm pretty impressed. Though
0:43
Speaker 1: I wonder if she really understood, like in advance, how
0:46
Speaker 1: dangerous that research she was doing actually was. But let
0:50
Speaker 1: me turn the table on you. Are you willing to
0:52
Speaker 1: risk your life or something like a really tasty snack?
0:56
Speaker 1: How tasty are we talking about? We're talking and long
1:01
Speaker 1: yellow and comes naturally wrapped in its own um, in
1:04
Speaker 1: its own packaging. Oh man, our snacks deadly? Now what
1:07
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Well, I'm sorry to be the
1:09
Speaker 1: one to tell you, but there's something in common between
1:12
Speaker 1: Madame Curies research in your favorite snack. Have you heard
1:18
Speaker 1: the joke of what did Pierre Cree tell Mary Curry? Now,
1:21
Speaker 1: what did Pierre Curry tell Mary Cury? He said, my dear,
1:24
Speaker 1: you are positively glowing tonight. You look radiant, Oh man.
1:49
Speaker 1: I am Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of
1:52
Speaker 1: PhD Comics. I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, and together
1:56
Speaker 1: were the authors of the book We Have No Idea
1:59
Speaker 1: and the host of this cast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
2:02
Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio, in which
2:05
Speaker 1: we look at things in the universe that makes sense
2:07
Speaker 1: or don't make sense, or or are slightly confusing or
2:11
Speaker 1: very confusing, and break them down for you to make
2:13
Speaker 1: sure we understand what's actually going on. That's right, all
2:16
Speaker 1: the amazing things in the universe that will astound you
2:19
Speaker 1: and amaze you and possibly also kill you or save
2:23
Speaker 1: your life. Sometimes there are good sides to things that
2:27
Speaker 1: sound dangerous. Yeah, like bananas. Like bananas. Yes, bananas are
2:33
Speaker 1: a double edged snack, exactly as we'll get into on
2:36
Speaker 1: this podcast. You mean like you eat them and they're delicious,
2:39
Speaker 1: But then the peel you can slip on and die. Well,
2:43
Speaker 1: I assume that you're always wearing you know, safety gear
2:45
Speaker 1: when you eat a banana, right, banana slipproof shoes. No,
2:50
Speaker 1: I'm talking about a helmet. If you have a helmet home,
2:52
Speaker 1: you eat a banana, then you know it's no big deal.
2:55
Speaker 1: I see, I seem to be On the podcast. We're
2:59
Speaker 1: tag playing a subject that a couple of people asks online,
3:03
Speaker 1: but which is kind of a big deal. It's in
3:05
Speaker 1: our everyday lives. We use it all the time, and
3:08
Speaker 1: it can be both dangerous and can also save your
3:12
Speaker 1: life at the same time. It's something you hear about
3:14
Speaker 1: a lot in science and science fiction. It's something that's
3:16
Speaker 1: vaguely mysterious, and I think has suffered from a bad
3:20
Speaker 1: PR campaign. It definitely, I think is associated with something bad.
3:24
Speaker 1: But as we want to show you in today's podcast,
3:26
Speaker 1: there's two sides to every particle. So today on the podcast,
3:29
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about radiation. Is it good for you?
3:37
Speaker 1: Is it bad for you? Spicy? Mild? What is radiation anyway?
3:41
Speaker 1: Is it fizzle when you eat it tastes like bananas? Right?
3:46
Speaker 1: Is it that are those cans that put on your tongue,
3:48
Speaker 1: Are those actually radioactive? Right? No? I think you're right.
3:51
Speaker 1: I think radiation sort of has a bad name in society, right,
3:54
Speaker 1: Like nobody thinks radiation and things. Oh, I could use
3:57
Speaker 1: some of that, thanks, Actually, where do I get some? Yeah?
4:01
Speaker 1: It definitely is a boogeyman, right, It's definitely something that
4:04
Speaker 1: people are afraid of. And I think the roots of
4:07
Speaker 1: it are are that it's something that's sort of recently discovered,
4:11
Speaker 1: you know, like our ancestors had no idea about radiation.
4:14
Speaker 1: It's something that it's a product of modern science. Yeah,
4:18
Speaker 1: I mean it was sort of discovered not too long ago, right,
4:23
Speaker 1: maybe a hundred years Yeah, exactly. So around the turn
4:26
Speaker 1: of the century, like eight late eighteen hundreds, people started
4:28
Speaker 1: to discover X rays and cathude rays and all sorts
4:32
Speaker 1: of other kind of rays, and they didn't really know
4:34
Speaker 1: what it was. It was this new mysterious thing. It
4:36
Speaker 1: was invisible. It could develop photographs, you could you could
4:39
Speaker 1: see it on photographic film. Um. Later they discovered it
4:42
Speaker 1: could kill you, right, Um, it could you could use
4:45
Speaker 1: it to like take pictures of the inside of the body.
4:48
Speaker 1: It was mysterious and weird. Um and so it's kind
4:52
Speaker 1: of new, it's kind of it's powerful, right, it kind
4:54
Speaker 1: of violates our everyday intuition. Yeah, exactly. And I think
4:58
Speaker 1: that's part of the the scariness of it is that
5:01
Speaker 1: it shows us that the world is different from what
5:04
Speaker 1: we understood, and that there's this untapped power, this untapped potential,
5:09
Speaker 1: which could be terribly dangerous. Right. For me, radiation is
5:12
Speaker 1: like the classic Frankenstein thing, like shows us that science
5:16
Speaker 1: has cracked open a whole new world. And it could
5:18
Speaker 1: go either way. Right, you could help you, or it
5:20
Speaker 1: could hurt you if you don't understand what what what
5:23
Speaker 1: you're doing, it could lead to dangerous side effects. Yeah.
5:26
Speaker 1: I feel like it's also cracked open the world of superheroes.
5:29
Speaker 1: You know, without radiation, you wouldn't have Spider Man, you
5:32
Speaker 1: wouldn't have the Hulk, you wouldn't have Captain America. Yeah.
5:35
Speaker 1: But I think that that just reflects that, right. I
5:37
Speaker 1: think what you see in comic books are like reflect
5:40
Speaker 1: what the what the population is thinking about, what they
5:43
Speaker 1: are afraid of, right, which is why radiation played such
5:46
Speaker 1: a big role, you know, Spider Man, as you said,
5:48
Speaker 1: and Bruce banner and all that stuff, and these days
5:51
Speaker 1: it's more like you see a lot of ai kind
5:53
Speaker 1: of stuff in comic books, like the villain is some
5:55
Speaker 1: computer that's taking over the world or something. And so
5:59
Speaker 1: maybe radiation had its day as the as a scientific villain.
6:02
Speaker 1: But like you were saying, in society, we still think
6:05
Speaker 1: of it as as bad, right, Like nobody, um wants
6:08
Speaker 1: to get any of that radiation, That's right. I think
6:10
Speaker 1: if you say radiation, people think cancer, or they think
6:13
Speaker 1: nuclear bombs, or you know, evil scientists and lab coats
6:18
Speaker 1: cackling maniacally, right, not good things. But we're wondering, do
6:21
Speaker 1: you think people really understand radiation? Like do they know
6:26
Speaker 1: what it is, what it means? And is it all
6:28
Speaker 1: that bad? All? Right? Where it comes from? Right? How
6:31
Speaker 1: to make it? How to avoid it? Um? Are you
6:33
Speaker 1: getting some right now? Yeah? So we were wondering too
6:36
Speaker 1: people have understanding. The answer is yes, you are being
6:41
Speaker 1: radiated um right now. You listen to this podcast, right,
6:45
Speaker 1: and so you're listening, you're getting sonic radiation right now.
6:49
Speaker 1: But I'm not just from our the brilliance of our
6:51
Speaker 1: thoughts and words, but you are literally right now bathed
6:55
Speaker 1: in radiation. Probably unless you're in a lead box somewhere,
6:59
Speaker 1: in which case you probably have other problems. Then we
7:03
Speaker 1: have to ask, yeah, what are you doing in that
7:05
Speaker 1: lead box? What did you to deserve it? Right, it's
7:08
Speaker 1: probably your fault. Yeah, Well, as usual, we got curious,
7:11
Speaker 1: and so Daniel went out into the street as people
7:14
Speaker 1: random people on the street. What is radiation? That's right?
7:18
Speaker 1: And here's what people had to say. How would you
7:20
Speaker 1: define or describe radiation? What is radiation? The one form
7:24
Speaker 1: of radiation I know is like extray. They emit radiation.
7:28
Speaker 1: I know there are other forms also, Yeah, there's like
7:30
Speaker 1: EUV and other times. All right, cool, thanks very much.
7:34
Speaker 1: What is radiation? Um, it's some kind of like some
7:38
Speaker 1: kind of force or like chemical kind of that can
7:41
Speaker 1: like go through things like an experience, Like there's radiation.
7:44
Speaker 1: M R. There's radiations and it goes through things. Well,
7:49
Speaker 1: radiation is bad, I think if you absorb it. But
7:52
Speaker 1: isn't radiation just like the splitting off of like the
7:56
Speaker 1: breaking a part of like particles and atoms, And so
8:00
Speaker 1: they become like like isn't that kind of like related
8:03
Speaker 1: to free radicals or something? And what is radiation? A
8:06
Speaker 1: little bit about it? About radiation, but specifically UV radiation,
8:10
Speaker 1: which causes diamondine dimers, which is obviously cause of skin cancer.
8:14
Speaker 1: So that's a major concern. But then you have the
8:16
Speaker 1: ozone layer, which can block some harmful radiation is photon.
8:21
Speaker 1: So nope, well I don't know, like it like gives
8:25
Speaker 1: off like I don't know, it comes from somewhere, but
8:27
Speaker 1: like give you cancer and stuff like I don't know.
8:29
Speaker 1: Do you know what it's made out of? Like what
8:32
Speaker 1: you know? I don't know what it's made out of? Cool?
8:34
Speaker 1: What is radiation? I don't know. I think that makes
8:37
Speaker 1: superheroes or something. I don't know. I don't know. It's bad,
8:42
Speaker 1: it's bad, Okay, alright, great, alright, So I like the
8:46
Speaker 1: person who said that it's the thing that makes superheroes.
8:48
Speaker 1: I was like, yes, something, here's something good about radiation.
8:53
Speaker 1: It gives these superheroes exactly. I mean, that's what we
8:55
Speaker 1: should do. We should just like take a bunch of
8:57
Speaker 1: our soldiers and radiatum and see what happens. Yeah, no,
9:00
Speaker 1: let's not do that. What could go What could go wrong? Right? Yeah,
9:06
Speaker 1: what could go wrong? But a lot of people just
9:08
Speaker 1: kind of immediately went with that it's something bad. It's
9:11
Speaker 1: not good, definitely bad. Right, radiation, Big Radiations lobbying firm
9:16
Speaker 1: has a lot of work to do on changing the
9:18
Speaker 1: public perception of radiation. Oh man, I wouldn't want that job.
9:23
Speaker 1: I work for Big Radiation. You know. What they need
9:26
Speaker 1: to do is come up with like a cute anthropomorphic
9:29
Speaker 1: character for radiation and have, you know, smile and bounce
9:32
Speaker 1: around and the scream with a little Diddy playing in
9:34
Speaker 1: the background, like a cute little cancer seal or something exactly,
9:38
Speaker 1: a cute little wave or a cute little particle. Maybe Hi,
9:42
Speaker 1: I'm a proton. I'm here to help to give you
9:45
Speaker 1: cancer treatments, right, m I don't know. But but a
9:49
Speaker 1: lot of people just kind of had the idea that
9:50
Speaker 1: it's some sort of energy, some something that moves the
9:53
Speaker 1: propagates and goes through things. Right, that's yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:57
Speaker 1: A lot of people were on the right track. A
9:58
Speaker 1: lot of people are on the right track. Faith thought
10:00
Speaker 1: it was bad. Some people didn't really know. So people
10:02
Speaker 1: listed an example of radiation, right, which is good, totally solid.
10:06
Speaker 1: I'd give them a solid it be on that answer. Um.
10:10
Speaker 1: And one of the guys whom I asked is actually
10:13
Speaker 1: a physics professor in my department costed on the street
10:17
Speaker 1: to ask him this question, and I gave a pretty
10:19
Speaker 1: good answer on the spot. So, um, I think we
10:21
Speaker 1: can we can break it down for people. What is radiation? Yeah,
10:25
Speaker 1: break it down from Dana, what is radiation? Radiation most
10:32
Speaker 1: generally can either be a particle or wave, but it's
10:35
Speaker 1: basically just energy moving through space, right, So it can
10:39
Speaker 1: be like photons, right, Like light is radiation. You know,
10:42
Speaker 1: all kinds of light, from radio waves to visible light,
10:46
Speaker 1: to X rays, to ultra violet light, to gamma rays
10:49
Speaker 1: that we talked about in a previous podcast, those are
10:51
Speaker 1: all examples of radiation. So basically light, you're saying. But
10:55
Speaker 1: like we covered in a previous podcast, light of different
10:59
Speaker 1: frequency have different names, but it's basically basically all this light.
11:03
Speaker 1: It's all. Yeah, there's lots of different kinds of light, right,
11:06
Speaker 1: which which comes because they have different they wiggle at
11:08
Speaker 1: different speeds, right, wiggle really really fast, the gamma rays
11:11
Speaker 1: that wiggle really really slow, their radio waves that wiggle
11:14
Speaker 1: in the middle of their visible light, and all light
11:17
Speaker 1: is radiation because it's energy moving through space, right, Like
11:20
Speaker 1: when the sun makes light and shines it on the earth.
11:23
Speaker 1: It's irradiating the earth. So next time you go out
11:26
Speaker 1: and like enjoy the sun's warmth, you are like absorbing
11:30
Speaker 1: radiation from the sun. Right, And so every photon you absorb,
11:34
Speaker 1: every photon that hits your eye technically is radiation, but
11:37
Speaker 1: it's not a particular frequency range where it's not a
11:40
Speaker 1: particular type of light. Like all light is considered radiation,
11:43
Speaker 1: Like the the light bulb in here in my house,
11:45
Speaker 1: in my room, that that that is emitting radiation that
11:48
Speaker 1: I'm receiving and I'm using it to see that's right.
11:51
Speaker 1: And here again we run into the same problem that
11:53
Speaker 1: we run into like all the time in this podcast,
11:55
Speaker 1: where we have a name that people use in language, radiation,
12:00
Speaker 1: and then we have the physics term, right, which is
12:02
Speaker 1: a technical definition, so the technical definition, and like in science,
12:07
Speaker 1: all light is radiation. Practically, when we you know, colloquially,
12:11
Speaker 1: when we talk about radiation, what we mean is damaging radiation,
12:14
Speaker 1: radiation that can hurt you, right, But technically light is radiation, right,
12:19
Speaker 1: all light, visible lights from the life of the photons
12:22
Speaker 1: in your room is also radiation. That's probably not what
12:24
Speaker 1: people mean when they say radiation, but technically it's true.
12:28
Speaker 1: And you know there are other things that are also radiation,
12:30
Speaker 1: like sound. Sound waves is radiation. It's acoustic radiation. Right.
12:35
Speaker 1: So I'm talking to my microphone, I'm irradiating this microphone,
12:38
Speaker 1: and then I'm irradiating your ears and you listener are
12:41
Speaker 1: being irradiated by our sonic vibrations right now. Wow. Okay,
12:45
Speaker 1: so that you're saying to physics technical definition, it's really
12:48
Speaker 1: just anything that moves and propagates through space. Yeah, anything
12:52
Speaker 1: that transfers energy. It can be particles, it can be waves.
12:55
Speaker 1: Some things are particles slash waves slash weird quantum mechanical things.
12:58
Speaker 1: We don't really understand. All that stuff is radiation. So
13:01
Speaker 1: that includes you know, protons and electrons and neutrons and
13:06
Speaker 1: alpha particles which are just helium nuclei. It even includes
13:10
Speaker 1: things like gravitational radiation, right, like gravitational waves that were
13:13
Speaker 1: detected recently by Ligo, that big interfrometer that saw the
13:17
Speaker 1: ripples in space and time when black holes collided. That's
13:20
Speaker 1: radiation also. So basically you're saying that anything that moves
13:24
Speaker 1: is radiation. It doesn't matter if it has energy, if
13:27
Speaker 1: he has no mass, anything that moves through space is radiation. Like, yeah,
13:32
Speaker 1: me walking down the hall, I'm radiating down the hall.
13:38
Speaker 1: You know, I never thought of that, but yeah, you
13:40
Speaker 1: are radiation, that's true. I am a peper here, Danny.
13:46
Speaker 1: So radiation can't be all bad, right because it includes
13:49
Speaker 1: people nice people like you. So there you go, there
13:52
Speaker 1: you go, case closed, case closed. Radiation is not all bad. Um. Yeah.
13:56
Speaker 1: But so from a technical point of view, radiation is everywhere.
14:00
Speaker 1: It is. It's all around us. Um. And you know
14:02
Speaker 1: sound is radiation, light is radiation, all this kind of stuff. Um.
14:06
Speaker 1: One person said, you know radiation is a chemical or
14:08
Speaker 1: it's a force, right, It's not. It's not really a
14:11
Speaker 1: chemical or force. Um. People do get treatment for cancer
14:16
Speaker 1: that's called chemotherapy, and some people think that involves radiation.
14:19
Speaker 1: It doesn't involves chemicals, which is it's called chemotherapy. Um.
14:24
Speaker 1: So radiation is not like a chemical you inject in
14:26
Speaker 1: your body. It's not a force. It's not like gravity
14:29
Speaker 1: or the electromagnetism or whatever. But though some of the
14:33
Speaker 1: particles that transmit those forces, like photons, are radiation, so
14:37
Speaker 1: it's not like its own force or its own chemical.
14:40
Speaker 1: So there are things that are not radiation. It's not
14:43
Speaker 1: everything not radiation. Yeah, there are things that are not radiation. Yeah.
14:46
Speaker 1: And and actually we live in a time in the
14:48
Speaker 1: universe when there isn't very much radiation. What. Yeah, if
14:53
Speaker 1: you look at the history of the universe, like the
14:55
Speaker 1: really long scale history of the universe, the very early universe,
14:59
Speaker 1: there was a huge amount of radiation. Like if you say,
15:03
Speaker 1: take all the energy in the universe, right, what is
15:05
Speaker 1: what's in the universe that has energy? Well, there's matter, right,
15:08
Speaker 1: matter has energy, there's radiation, radiation has energy, right, and
15:12
Speaker 1: there's things like dark energy, mysterious forces that are expanding
15:16
Speaker 1: the universe we don't understand. Well, the interesting thing is
15:19
Speaker 1: that through the history of the universe, different slices of
15:22
Speaker 1: that pie have been dominant. So in the very early universe,
15:26
Speaker 1: most of the energy in the universe was in a
15:28
Speaker 1: radiation like big bang, huge explosion. Mostly it's just a
15:32
Speaker 1: bunch of photons. Oh, I see. But then something changed, yeah, exactly,
15:37
Speaker 1: some of that energy to transformed into something else has right,
15:41
Speaker 1: A lot of that energy is transformed into matter, right,
15:43
Speaker 1: And the universe spread out and cooled, right, and a
15:46
Speaker 1: lot of those photons were absorbed, right, they were sucked
15:49
Speaker 1: up by matter um which is no longer ionized like
15:52
Speaker 1: formed atoms, and those atoms could absorb photons. So for
15:55
Speaker 1: in the very first period of the universe, or like
15:58
Speaker 1: the first um sixty years or so, the universe was
16:01
Speaker 1: radiation dominated. Most of the energy in the universe is radiation.
16:04
Speaker 1: Then for billions of years it was matter dominated, like
16:08
Speaker 1: most of the energy and the universe was stored in
16:10
Speaker 1: matter um, and radiation was a smaller piece of the pie.
16:13
Speaker 1: And then for the last five billion years or so,
16:16
Speaker 1: those got outstripped by dark energy, this new mysterious thing
16:20
Speaker 1: which is expanding the universe and now eats seventy of
16:24
Speaker 1: the whole pie, the energy budge of the universe. Now
16:26
Speaker 1: we live in a dark energy dominated universe. Wow, so
16:30
Speaker 1: weird to think the universe is changing, you know, like
16:33
Speaker 1: it's it's a composition, what it's made out of is
16:36
Speaker 1: not constant. He sounds like somebody talking about your niece
16:39
Speaker 1: or nephew. You're like, you got so big, I can't
16:41
Speaker 1: believe you, Like, whoa, how did you get so so harry?
16:45
Speaker 1: What exactly used to be all radiation? And now you
16:49
Speaker 1: got these energy Now you're this emailed team I don't
16:53
Speaker 1: get it. Yeah, the universe is evolving and we don't know,
16:57
Speaker 1: like what's the next epoch of the universe, Right, Is
17:00
Speaker 1: dark energy going to go away? Is something else going
17:02
Speaker 1: to turn on and swamp dark energy? Radiation is gonna
17:05
Speaker 1: come roaring back? Or you know who knows? Right? But
17:08
Speaker 1: I like, I like sort of how you said that.
17:10
Speaker 1: There's sort of the official physics definition of radiation, and
17:13
Speaker 1: then there's the kind of cultural societal definition of radiation yea,
17:17
Speaker 1: which is kind of specifically which specifically means something that
17:23
Speaker 1: energy that's somehow causes damage or effects your bodily functions
17:30
Speaker 1: or your your cellular the things in your body. Yeah, exactly,
17:35
Speaker 1: you can think of damaging radiation. It's sort of like
17:37
Speaker 1: really fast, super tiny little bullets. Each one can cause
17:42
Speaker 1: a tiny little bit of damage. And I think that's
17:44
Speaker 1: the kind of radiation people are most interested in. So
17:46
Speaker 1: let's focus on that for a minute, right. And there's
17:48
Speaker 1: kind of there's different kinds of radiation that can damage you, right.
17:51
Speaker 1: So for example, gamma rays, these are just high energy photons,
17:55
Speaker 1: but they have enough energy that they can penetrate through
17:58
Speaker 1: your skin and they can eye eyes. Ionizing means that
18:01
Speaker 1: it deposits enough energy on the electron in an atom
18:04
Speaker 1: that the electron it like escapes, right, It's like gets
18:08
Speaker 1: escape velocity, and so it can fly off and the
18:11
Speaker 1: atom then becomes an ion. And that's bad. It changes
18:14
Speaker 1: the chemistry that's happening inside your body, and it can
18:17
Speaker 1: change your DNA and can cause mutations and all sorts
18:20
Speaker 1: of stuff. But wait, what about regular light, like from
18:23
Speaker 1: a light buelb. Why isn't that Why doesn't that one
18:26
Speaker 1: cause any damage? Because it's absorbed by your skin. It
18:29
Speaker 1: doesn't have enough energy to penetrate your skin. The higher
18:32
Speaker 1: the frequency, the higher the energy. So gamma rays have
18:35
Speaker 1: more energy than normal visible light. Normal visible light, you know,
18:39
Speaker 1: stopped by your skin. That's why your skin, that's why
18:42
Speaker 1: your body is not transparent, right because light can't pass
18:44
Speaker 1: through it. That's why you're not invisible. If light could
18:46
Speaker 1: pass through you, you would be invisible that you know of.
18:52
Speaker 1: But what do I mean that doesn't emit enough energy
18:55
Speaker 1: like it it gets to the cells in my skin
18:58
Speaker 1: and it doesn't another energy to puncture through to wiggle around.
19:02
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Yeah, it's absorbed by the energy
19:05
Speaker 1: by the very outer layer of your skin, which is
19:08
Speaker 1: basically dead cells, right, and so it doesn't penetrate into
19:11
Speaker 1: anything important, whereas ultra violet light and gamma rays, those
19:16
Speaker 1: are the things that give you cancer and the reason
19:18
Speaker 1: they give you cancers because they go deeper into your skin.
19:21
Speaker 1: And so the way to protect yourself is like be
19:24
Speaker 1: inside because then the house absorbs the energy of the
19:27
Speaker 1: gamma rays or the UV light or wear sunscreen, right,
19:30
Speaker 1: because that has things in it that are good at
19:32
Speaker 1: absorbing um those kind of that frequency photon. So it's
19:37
Speaker 1: not it's not a it's is it an energy thing
19:39
Speaker 1: or like a frequency thing? You know, Like we had
19:41
Speaker 1: an episode about why is the sky blue and you
19:44
Speaker 1: said that the light it's because blue light is at
19:49
Speaker 1: the right sort of wavelength of that of the size
19:52
Speaker 1: of the molecules in the atmosphere, Is it something like
19:55
Speaker 1: that or is it just just energy, Just it just
19:57
Speaker 1: barrels through. It's just energy. Yeah, Just think of the
20:00
Speaker 1: body is like a bag of water, right, and it
20:05
Speaker 1: eventually gets slowed down and absorbed, and it's just a
20:08
Speaker 1: question of how deep into the body it gets. And
20:10
Speaker 1: so if it if it stops at the outermost layer
20:12
Speaker 1: where it's all just dead skin, then it doesn't really
20:15
Speaker 1: do any damage. Or you know, it gets stopped by
20:17
Speaker 1: your clothing, right, like visible like gets stopped by your clothing. Um,
20:21
Speaker 1: but if it gets into that bag of water and
20:22
Speaker 1: penetrates and you know, can ionize something important, then yet
20:25
Speaker 1: it can cause cancer. Well, it's interesting to me that
20:27
Speaker 1: it's not just like like gamma rays and X rays.
20:31
Speaker 1: It's also like radiation harmful. Radiation can be also like protons, right,
20:36
Speaker 1: and which is what I'm made out of and you're
20:39
Speaker 1: made out of. Like the things we're made out of
20:41
Speaker 1: can also be radioactive and and not good for you,
20:45
Speaker 1: that's right. And so like as we said before, like
20:47
Speaker 1: a proton can be good or bad. It can be
20:49
Speaker 1: part of a tasty snack, or it can come bringing cancer.
20:52
Speaker 1: And the only difference is that is whether it has energy.
20:55
Speaker 1: Like if I shoot a proton at you, and I
20:58
Speaker 1: could deposit a lot of energy in a part of
21:00
Speaker 1: your body, that's bad. Right, Think of a proton, it's
21:02
Speaker 1: like a tiny bullet. I mean, I could hand you
21:04
Speaker 1: a bullet. It's not going to kill you, right. A
21:05
Speaker 1: bullet by itself doesn't kill you. If I shoot a
21:08
Speaker 1: bullet at you really really fast, right, then it's gonna
21:11
Speaker 1: hurt you. Right, it's gonna deposit all of its energy
21:13
Speaker 1: in your body. It's gonna tear a hole in you.
21:15
Speaker 1: So it's the energy that that particle has that's the problem, right,
21:19
Speaker 1: not the particle itself. You're saying, bullets don't kill people.
21:23
Speaker 1: It's the protons. Kinetic energy kills people. Bullets people don't
21:31
Speaker 1: kill people. Physics stuff. Technically that's true. Oh man, oh man,
21:37
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be in trouble with the physics community after
21:39
Speaker 1: that comes out. You can deposit kinetic energy on somebody
21:46
Speaker 1: with lots of things, right. You could use a brick,
21:48
Speaker 1: you can use a bullet, you can use a rock like,
21:51
Speaker 1: you could even use a banana. I guess I don't know.
21:53
Speaker 1: But the thing that kills somebody is the kinetic energy transfer. Right,
21:56
Speaker 1: you hit somebody with a car, right, doesn't have to
21:58
Speaker 1: be a small thing. You deposit a lot of kinetic
22:01
Speaker 1: energy on somebody, you're going to hurt them. Now, proton
22:03
Speaker 1: is basically just a super tiny bullet. And so if
22:06
Speaker 1: a uranium atom shoots out a proton a really high
22:09
Speaker 1: speed and it hits you, then you know it doesn't
22:11
Speaker 1: cause you make you bleed, but it can knock out
22:13
Speaker 1: some atoms and do some damage internally, which screws up
22:16
Speaker 1: the chemistry, and then it can give you cancer. Right,
22:19
Speaker 1: And I think specifically the problem is when it hits
22:22
Speaker 1: like a DNA molecule inside of you, that's when the
22:25
Speaker 1: mutations happen. That's what really kills the cells. Right, that's right.
22:28
Speaker 1: And again though it's not always bad. Right if one
22:32
Speaker 1: of your you know, sperm or eggs gets hit by
22:34
Speaker 1: a proton and it changes the DNA that you're passing
22:37
Speaker 1: on to your kids, maybe that's what makes your kid
22:40
Speaker 1: like the next Michael Phelps or Albert Einstein. Right, mutations
22:43
Speaker 1: can be good. It's a critical part of evolution that
22:46
Speaker 1: we have mutations to explore the evolutionary space. Radiation is
22:50
Speaker 1: an important part of how evolution works. So you know,
22:53
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's bad, but also sometimes it's good.
22:56
Speaker 1: And I think we touched it. We talked about this
22:58
Speaker 1: a little bit in a previous cast, which is that
23:00
Speaker 1: it's kind of a sweet spot, right, Like, if if
23:03
Speaker 1: our planet had been in an area of the galaxy
23:06
Speaker 1: where there was a ton of radiation, then you probably
23:08
Speaker 1: couldn't develop living things. But at the same time, you
23:12
Speaker 1: need a little bit of radiation to kind of stimulate
23:15
Speaker 1: all that evolution and mutation to that, to that animals
23:19
Speaker 1: and species can evolve. Yeah, it's I think it's a
23:21
Speaker 1: difficult thing to study, right. It would be fantastically interesting
23:25
Speaker 1: to get to like simulate the Earth with more or
23:27
Speaker 1: less radiation and say, like would life evolve more rapidly
23:31
Speaker 1: with more radiation because things would mutate faster or everything
23:34
Speaker 1: you just get cancer and die off more quickly. Um.
23:36
Speaker 1: I think it's a huge complex question because it's so
23:39
Speaker 1: interconnected with you know, ecosystems and how things live and
23:42
Speaker 1: die and eat each other. So I think it's really
23:44
Speaker 1: complex thing that I think physicists are attempted to simplifying superheroes. Um.
23:50
Speaker 1: But you touched on something interesting, which is that you
23:53
Speaker 1: know where the radiation comes from, right, Like, Um, A
23:55
Speaker 1: lot of the radiation that we worry about comes from space.
23:58
Speaker 1: It comes from our son. Our sun is a huge, huge,
24:02
Speaker 1: um factory of radiation. I mean, some of that radiation
24:05
Speaker 1: is good, like the light that you soak up when
24:07
Speaker 1: you're enjoing a nice day here in southern California, or
24:10
Speaker 1: the protons that make up the solar wind right that
24:12
Speaker 1: that that are really dangerous for astronauts. So what's more
24:15
Speaker 1: dangerous to be next to like a uranium stone or
24:19
Speaker 1: mine or to be out in space? Floating around out
24:22
Speaker 1: in space is really dangerous. Yeah, there's a huge amount
24:25
Speaker 1: of radiation out there, and the reason that we are
24:27
Speaker 1: protected from that radiation is because of our atmosphere. Our
24:30
Speaker 1: atmosphere absorbs most of it, like the protons and the
24:33
Speaker 1: gamma rays and the UVY light, most of that is
24:35
Speaker 1: absorbed by either the ozone or other parts of our
24:38
Speaker 1: atmosphere and protects it. It's like a huge shield. But
24:41
Speaker 1: of course it doesn't protect you from all of it. Right,
24:43
Speaker 1: A lot of uvy light makes it to the surface
24:45
Speaker 1: and can give you a sunburn and maybe even skin cancer. Right,
24:49
Speaker 1: But definitely out in space. Out in space is a
24:51
Speaker 1: very high radiation environment. All right, let's get into a
24:54
Speaker 1: bit more. But first let's take a quick break. All Right,
25:09
Speaker 1: we're talking about radiation, and we know that it's um
25:12
Speaker 1: It's basically anything that moves around with energy kind of right, Like,
25:16
Speaker 1: it can be protons, or it can be electrons, or
25:19
Speaker 1: it could just be light that hits you and imparts
25:22
Speaker 1: energy on you. That's right, and a lot of it
25:24
Speaker 1: comes from space. We're saying the atmosphere protects us, but
25:27
Speaker 1: you know, the atmosphere is not super thick, and the
25:30
Speaker 1: higher up you go in the atmosphere, the less atmosphere
25:32
Speaker 1: you have to protect yourself, which is why every time
25:35
Speaker 1: you take, for example, of flight across the country or
25:38
Speaker 1: around the world, you're actually getting a pretty serious dose
25:40
Speaker 1: of radiation. Really so that the plane doesn't protect you
25:44
Speaker 1: like the shell of the plane. No, the shell the
25:46
Speaker 1: plane is not enough to stop protons and really high
25:49
Speaker 1: energy photons from penetrating. You need to be like really
25:52
Speaker 1: thick lead. And remember airplanes are designed to be light
25:55
Speaker 1: so that they can fly right and be fuel efficient.
25:57
Speaker 1: And so for example, this is why UM flight attendants
26:01
Speaker 1: and pilots are limited in how many flights they can
26:03
Speaker 1: take because otherwise they all get cancer. Wow, because of
26:06
Speaker 1: the radiation. Radiation. Yeah, and you know those folks are
26:11
Speaker 1: exposed to more radiation than people who work at like
26:14
Speaker 1: nuclear power plants. Really. Yeah, no, it's a serious amount.
26:18
Speaker 1: And I actually know this because you know, I work
26:20
Speaker 1: on this app that detects particles using your phone, and
26:23
Speaker 1: some of the best data we get is when we
26:24
Speaker 1: fly around the world, like we fly to Discern all
26:27
Speaker 1: the time in Switzerland and back, and we take these
26:29
Speaker 1: long flights, we run the app. You don't put it
26:31
Speaker 1: on airplane mode like you're supposed to know. We put
26:34
Speaker 1: it on airplane mode. But then we turn on our
26:36
Speaker 1: app and we can see those particles like we can
26:38
Speaker 1: see them zooming through the through the device. So it's
26:41
Speaker 1: it's definitely a lot of radiation up there. Um, you have,
26:44
Speaker 1: do you put on some block whenever you get on
26:46
Speaker 1: an airplane. Sun block won't help you from protons man
26:50
Speaker 1: or from Gama raise. No, protect you from the UV light,
26:54
Speaker 1: but not from Gamma raise and not from protons. And
26:57
Speaker 1: there's a lot of those up there. Um. So you know,
26:59
Speaker 1: if you're the kind of person who's like, you know,
27:01
Speaker 1: not sure you want to take a dental X ray
27:03
Speaker 1: because of the radiation, but you're happy to take a
27:05
Speaker 1: flight to Thailand. Remember there's a lot of radiation on
27:07
Speaker 1: those flights. Wow. Does that mean that people who fly
27:11
Speaker 1: a lot age faster, possibly they're definitely an increased risk
27:15
Speaker 1: for cancer? Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, exactly. I think that. I
27:20
Speaker 1: think that's something a lot of people don't realize that
27:22
Speaker 1: there's radiation sources in our everyday lives. Right, You don't
27:25
Speaker 1: just have to avoid nuclear plant meltdowns or nuclear weapons
27:29
Speaker 1: or evil scientists like their sources of radiation in our
27:31
Speaker 1: everyday lives. Not just an airplane though, also a lot
27:34
Speaker 1: of things that we eat have radiation. Yeah. I heard
27:37
Speaker 1: um something near and dear to me and that our
27:40
Speaker 1: listeners are probably tired of hearing about, which is the bananas.
27:44
Speaker 1: Bananas are very radioactive. Yeah, I would say very radioactive,
27:48
Speaker 1: but they are. They have potassium in them, and the
27:50
Speaker 1: potassium is of a kind that radiates it it decays
27:54
Speaker 1: and it shoots off radiation, and so of a kind
27:58
Speaker 1: is it. So there's different kinds of potassium. Yeah, there's
28:02
Speaker 1: more and less stable versions of potassium. You know. Potassium
28:05
Speaker 1: has isotopes, just like every other element, which means you
28:07
Speaker 1: can have like more or less neutrons, and the exact
28:10
Speaker 1: configuration of protons and neutrons in the nucleus determines how
28:13
Speaker 1: stable something is and whether or not decays by shooting
28:16
Speaker 1: off a proton or a neutron. Um And so somehow bananas,
28:20
Speaker 1: when banana plants make bananas, they somehow gather a lot
28:23
Speaker 1: of this kind of radioactive potassium. Yeah, and you know,
28:27
Speaker 1: I don't want to get a lot of angry emails
28:29
Speaker 1: from big Banana supporters, so let's be specific about it.
28:33
Speaker 1: On the radiations that he called the big banana of
28:37
Speaker 1: Big Banana, I think I've seen that movie, actually Big Banana.
28:40
Speaker 1: But the radiation exposure from consuming a banana is approximately
28:45
Speaker 1: one percent of the average daily exposure to radiation. So
28:48
Speaker 1: you're getting radiation from the sun and just from you know,
28:51
Speaker 1: natural radioactive elements in the earth and stuff, and so
28:54
Speaker 1: eating banana does increase your amount of radiation, but really
28:57
Speaker 1: by a tiny amount. So go out there and eat
29:00
Speaker 1: a hundred bananas and don't worry about it. But you
29:02
Speaker 1: told me something cool earlier, which is that a truckload
29:05
Speaker 1: of bananas, like if I have a truck full of bananas,
29:08
Speaker 1: will actually cause a false alarm when going through a
29:11
Speaker 1: radiation detector. Yeah. They have these things at ports because
29:15
Speaker 1: they want to see if like terrorists are gonna try
29:17
Speaker 1: to smuggle in uranium to make a dirty bomb or something.
29:20
Speaker 1: So they have these scanners that look for radiation inside
29:22
Speaker 1: shipping containers. If you have like a truckload or a
29:25
Speaker 1: shipping container full of bananas, it'll set one of those
29:27
Speaker 1: things off. Like, this is real, people, Banana really are radioactive.
29:31
Speaker 1: So if the agent is like, are you carrying a
29:33
Speaker 1: dirty bomb with you? You can be just like, nope,
29:35
Speaker 1: just the banana bomb. That sounds pretty dirty to me too.
29:41
Speaker 1: It's slippery but not dirty, that's right. And um, and
29:44
Speaker 1: there are other natural sources of radiation, you know, just
29:46
Speaker 1: in the earth and the rocks around us, there are
29:49
Speaker 1: radioactive elements, not in huge quantities, but you do get
29:52
Speaker 1: some radiation from the trace amounts of uranium, for example. UM,
29:57
Speaker 1: in the earth crust, you do get radiation from just
30:00
Speaker 1: radioactive elements that are decaying slowly over time. But none
30:03
Speaker 1: of them so now. But none of these is dangerous, right,
30:06
Speaker 1: Like potatoes, kidney, beans, sunflower seeds, nuts, they all radiate
30:10
Speaker 1: kind of like bananas, but it's you know, maybe not
30:14
Speaker 1: that bad for you. That's right. You should not change
30:16
Speaker 1: your diet based on this podcast. I mean that's a
30:17
Speaker 1: general rules and we have no expertise in nutrition or
30:20
Speaker 1: dietary science. Um, but specifically, you should not be worried
30:24
Speaker 1: about the radiation from food, right. Um. Also, your body
30:28
Speaker 1: is pretty good at regulating this stuff, and so like
30:31
Speaker 1: you'll take in that radioactive potassium and then you'll pass
30:33
Speaker 1: out some more. So your body maintains like a steady
30:36
Speaker 1: state amount of these chemicals because it needs some. Right,
30:40
Speaker 1: So you're saying I can keep eating French fries as
30:43
Speaker 1: much as I'm saying French fries won't give you cancer
30:46
Speaker 1: due to the radiation. That's all I'm gonna say. No,
30:49
Speaker 1: don't kill you. They'll kill you in other ways. What
30:52
Speaker 1: you're saying, that's right, You could definitely think of creative
30:56
Speaker 1: ways to die from French fries that are not getting cancer.
30:58
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's get into this idea of whether
31:01
Speaker 1: radiation is good for you or bad for you. But
31:04
Speaker 1: for us, let's take a quick break al right, Ianne,
31:19
Speaker 1: break it down for us? Is radiation good for us
31:22
Speaker 1: or bad? Frisk? Well, you know I think both, right, Um?
31:26
Speaker 1: The classic cancer is yes and no. So radiation is
31:29
Speaker 1: good for you in some ways and it's bad for
31:31
Speaker 1: you in other ways. You know. Let's remember what radiation
31:34
Speaker 1: can do, right. Radiation can break the bonds in your atoms.
31:37
Speaker 1: You can ionize, right, Um, if it has enough energy,
31:40
Speaker 1: and if it has less energy, right, then it can
31:43
Speaker 1: just sort of deposit something or just have to ionize
31:45
Speaker 1: the electron to deposit some energy um in your system.
31:48
Speaker 1: And this can be good or it can be bad.
31:51
Speaker 1: Like you know, what's an example of how radiation can
31:53
Speaker 1: be good, well at particle accelerators. We use the accelerators
31:57
Speaker 1: sometimes to treat people who have cancer because you can
32:01
Speaker 1: use it like um, you can you can shoot protons
32:04
Speaker 1: at people and shoot it just exactly at their cancer
32:07
Speaker 1: and basically just like target the cancer itself. Right, It's
32:10
Speaker 1: called proton therapy, and you can try to kill just
32:13
Speaker 1: the tumor and that works. Like you can save lives
32:16
Speaker 1: by shooting people with radiation. It's like you purposely radiate
32:20
Speaker 1: yourself because you're trying to kill something inside of you. Yeah,
32:24
Speaker 1: I mean that's always the game with cancer, right. Cancer
32:26
Speaker 1: is part of you, and if you want to kill it,
32:28
Speaker 1: you have to like be willing to hurt it more
32:31
Speaker 1: than it hurts than it hurts you. Right, It's a
32:34
Speaker 1: it's a like a medical game of chicken um uh
32:37
Speaker 1: and uh. In one way to do that, it's so yeah,
32:39
Speaker 1: shoot these tiny little proton bullets inside you. And there's
32:42
Speaker 1: a lot of physics that goes into that, like how
32:45
Speaker 1: how much radiation do you need and how do you
32:48
Speaker 1: angle it so that it lands mostly in the tumor
32:50
Speaker 1: and doesn't hurt the surrounding tissue. Um, there's a whole
32:53
Speaker 1: field of medical physics and people who are really real
32:55
Speaker 1: experts at that. Yeah, but I think it it's sort
32:57
Speaker 1: of targets cancer selves because of the fat that cancer
33:00
Speaker 1: cells are multiplying all the time, right, Like, just the
33:03
Speaker 1: idea that they're multiplying more than your regular cells kind
33:07
Speaker 1: of makes them more vulnerable to things like protons and
33:12
Speaker 1: getting their DNA changed. I don't know, maybe, Um, I
33:15
Speaker 1: think from the physics point of view, we just treat
33:18
Speaker 1: them as bags of water. Like seriously, we treat everything.
33:20
Speaker 1: Every human, every flesh is just like bags of water
33:23
Speaker 1: to a physicist, and we think about how much energy
33:25
Speaker 1: we deposit, and I think we just try to kill it. Um. Right, Well,
33:29
Speaker 1: it can also save your life if you dial nine
33:33
Speaker 1: one one on your cell phone, right, if there's an emergency,
33:35
Speaker 1: because radiation is basically how cell phones work. That's right,
33:39
Speaker 1: All communication relies on radiation, right, You're using electromagnetic radiation
33:44
Speaker 1: to communicate wirelessly all the time. Um, you're listening to
33:47
Speaker 1: this podcast thanks to radiation, right, and so without radiation
33:52
Speaker 1: we would have any sort of wireless communication. Um, so yes,
33:55
Speaker 1: thank you radiation for connecting the world and downloading information
33:59
Speaker 1: into our brains. And I've heard a lot of scaremongering
34:02
Speaker 1: about like the dangers of cell phones and is five
34:04
Speaker 1: G safe, etcetera. People worrying about whether their cell phone
34:08
Speaker 1: is going to give them cancer. They won't. You don't
34:10
Speaker 1: have to worry about it. That radiation is not dangerous.
34:13
Speaker 1: It's very very low energy radiation. It's r F frequency,
34:17
Speaker 1: which means it's radio waves. It's very low frequency, which
34:20
Speaker 1: means it's very low energy, so it can't ionize your atom.
34:24
Speaker 1: So you can just make them wiggle a little bit,
34:26
Speaker 1: you know, kind of gently. Bananas are more dangerous than
34:29
Speaker 1: cell phones, So don't worry about using your cell phones. Okay,
34:33
Speaker 1: what if you're like watching a movie on your phone
34:38
Speaker 1: about a superhero who got irradiated by radiation? Is that
34:43
Speaker 1: just just just that just blows your mind? Are you
34:45
Speaker 1: about to pitch me banana man? Is that what this is? Potato?
34:51
Speaker 1: It's the whole team, Potato Man, Kidney Man, Kidney bees Man,
34:54
Speaker 1: Brazil not Man, Brazilian. He's he's just called the Brazilian. Okay,
35:02
Speaker 1: I'm gonna disavow loud laughing at that joke. Seems culturally
35:05
Speaker 1: insensitive somehow. I'm not sure how. But yeah, radiation plays
35:09
Speaker 1: a big role, right, not just in communication also or
35:11
Speaker 1: in treatment, but also in diagnosis. Right. You go to
35:14
Speaker 1: the hospital and you want to see, like did I
35:17
Speaker 1: break my wrist or is it just really hurt? Right?
35:19
Speaker 1: What do they do? They take an X ray? You
35:21
Speaker 1: want to see, like, hey, what's going on inside my guts?
35:24
Speaker 1: Do I have appendicitis or not? Right? They do a
35:26
Speaker 1: cat scan. All that uses radiation to image what's going
35:30
Speaker 1: on inside your body. So, I mean, you work at
35:32
Speaker 1: the large Hadron collider, and so you you know that
35:37
Speaker 1: there's a lot of radiation out there. There definitely is,
35:40
Speaker 1: Yet you still go to work. Yet people go to work. Yeah,
35:42
Speaker 1: you could die every day due to anything, but people
35:45
Speaker 1: just seem to get up and go to work anyway. Right,
35:47
Speaker 1: That's kind of amazing. I see, it's like an acceptable risk. Yeah, Well,
35:52
Speaker 1: we don't have much radiation at the large Hagon collider.
35:55
Speaker 1: The particles do collide and they create a lot of radiation,
35:58
Speaker 1: but it's a hundred meters underground, and so we're shielded
36:01
Speaker 1: by a lot of earth. So there's not a lot
36:03
Speaker 1: of radiation risk at the at the LHC. You know,
36:06
Speaker 1: I mean just from staring at your computers along. Oh yes, absolutely,
36:09
Speaker 1: you know there's radiation everywhere and it's just part of life, right,
36:12
Speaker 1: and so you go about your normal day, you get
36:14
Speaker 1: your dose of radiation. Um. You know you can you
36:17
Speaker 1: can use apps or you can get a dissimiter to
36:19
Speaker 1: track your radiation dose. Um. There is one thing which
36:22
Speaker 1: people should be aware of, which is rate on gas.
36:25
Speaker 1: Rate on gas is something that happens in various places
36:27
Speaker 1: around the world and on the East Coast. It's this
36:30
Speaker 1: invisible radioactive gas that seeps out from people's basements and
36:34
Speaker 1: it actually does kill like tens of thousands of people
36:37
Speaker 1: every year. So real. Yeah, that is actually something you
36:40
Speaker 1: can do to potentially save yourself from cancer is just
36:43
Speaker 1: get like a cheap rate on detector. Wow. So this
36:46
Speaker 1: this is gas that is radioactive. Like it it's gas
36:50
Speaker 1: that's breaking down and emitting all kinds of protons and
36:53
Speaker 1: particles exactly. It's emitting radiation and it's invisible and it
36:58
Speaker 1: doesn't smell like anything, and it's see up from underground.
37:00
Speaker 1: It's like a naturally occurring thing. So a lot of people,
37:03
Speaker 1: like the earth shifts, it'll it'll start to collect in
37:06
Speaker 1: your basement, and then people can be getting these high
37:09
Speaker 1: doses of radiation without even knowing about it, reaping it in, right, yeah,
37:13
Speaker 1: breathing it in exactly. So I can't imagine why anyone
37:17
Speaker 1: would think radiation is bad. Exactly. No, it can be dangerous,
37:21
Speaker 1: and so if that's the kind of thing you worry about,
37:23
Speaker 1: you should, or you have the young kids or whatever,
37:25
Speaker 1: you should definitely look to see if you live in
37:28
Speaker 1: a kind of place where radiant where radar occurs naturally,
37:31
Speaker 1: so you should get it checked out, because that is
37:32
Speaker 1: really a health houzard. Well, this one is interesting. You
37:35
Speaker 1: also wat down here that we use radiation to make
37:38
Speaker 1: our food safer. Yeah, exactly. If you take a slab
37:42
Speaker 1: of meat, for example, and you zap it with a
37:44
Speaker 1: bunch of radiation, you can kill everything that's still alive
37:47
Speaker 1: in it, meaning bacteria. Right, So you want to keep
37:50
Speaker 1: your meat safe, you can zap it with radiation. It
37:53
Speaker 1: will kill almost everything in there. Um, So that's one
37:56
Speaker 1: one way we can use radiation to keep ourselves safe.
37:59
Speaker 1: Of there's a twist to that, which is that you're
38:02
Speaker 1: applying artificial selection, which means you zap enough steaks and
38:06
Speaker 1: eventually all that's going to be left is bacteria that
38:09
Speaker 1: can survive radiation, and so you're like helping breed radiation
38:15
Speaker 1: proof bacteria. Well, you're something that I've never quite understood,
38:18
Speaker 1: which is that um radiation needs to be something that
38:22
Speaker 1: you can pass from one thing to the other. Do
38:24
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like like chernobyl happen and
38:28
Speaker 1: all this radioactive stuff went out there. But it also
38:31
Speaker 1: you can also sort of irradiate things make things radioactive. Yes,
38:34
Speaker 1: that true? Yeah, the way that works, it's not like contagion,
38:38
Speaker 1: like a disease, though there's something in common. What happens
38:41
Speaker 1: is that radiation can cause other things to become radioactive. Right,
38:46
Speaker 1: It can make yours, It can make um new things unstable.
38:49
Speaker 1: So how does that work? Well, radiation, like uranium breaks down,
38:52
Speaker 1: it shoots out protons and neutrons. Those protons and neutrons
38:56
Speaker 1: can hit other atoms and make those unstable. It can
38:58
Speaker 1: cause like a chain react action. Right, So radiation can
39:02
Speaker 1: definitely spread it's not just like, oh that radiation hit
39:05
Speaker 1: me and I'm done. It can make something inside you radioactive,
39:08
Speaker 1: which could then unstable, which means it like breaks up
39:11
Speaker 1: and shoots out more particles. Right. Right. So, for example,
39:16
Speaker 1: you have like a block of metal that was at
39:18
Speaker 1: Chernobyl or block of concrete right that got irradiated a lot.
39:22
Speaker 1: Then it becomes radioactive. And the reason is that stuff
39:25
Speaker 1: inside that concrete or that that brick or that block
39:28
Speaker 1: then became unstable because I got hit by a passing
39:31
Speaker 1: particle and now it's emitting particles. Wow. Yeah, so it's
39:36
Speaker 1: sort of good and bad. Right. Radiation can be good
39:41
Speaker 1: for all these treatments to communicate, to kill bacteria, but
39:46
Speaker 1: it can also you know, if you get overexposed to it,
39:48
Speaker 1: it can give you cancer. Yeah, exactly. It's you know,
39:52
Speaker 1: it's like everything else in science. It's an awesome power.
39:54
Speaker 1: It shows us that the universe is incredible and has
39:58
Speaker 1: so much that we have not yet understood. Um. And
40:00
Speaker 1: that power can be used for good or for bad. Exactly.
40:04
Speaker 1: It can hurt you or it can help you. Um.
40:06
Speaker 1: I think. One one of my favorite stories about life
40:08
Speaker 1: and radiation came from my wife who told me the
40:11
Speaker 1: story about this amazing bacteria they discover that can survive
40:13
Speaker 1: like almost any amount of radiation. And the way it
40:17
Speaker 1: does it is it has like fifty copies of its
40:20
Speaker 1: DNA inside it. So if radiation comes in and blast
40:23
Speaker 1: one open, it's like, no worries. I got forty nine
40:25
Speaker 1: backups and it just like repairs and it fixes the
40:30
Speaker 1: one that got damaged to right, Yeah, exactly. It has
40:32
Speaker 1: a bunch of copies and it has all these things
40:34
Speaker 1: zooming around all the time to fix mistakes. It's like,
40:37
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta drive, you gotta backup of your
40:39
Speaker 1: hard drive and something goes wrong, you you recover from
40:42
Speaker 1: the backup. This thing is like fifty backups simultaneously at
40:46
Speaker 1: all times, and so we can survive a lot of radiation.
40:49
Speaker 1: So that that's something you can do to prevent radiation
40:52
Speaker 1: poisoning yourself become a bacteria. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that,
41:04
Speaker 1: all right, Daniel, Well, I think I learned that I'm
41:06
Speaker 1: gonna have to stop eating bananas and going on airplanes. Well,
41:11
Speaker 1: I think you should fly less, yes, but I think
41:13
Speaker 1: you can eat bananas without worrying about it too much.
41:15
Speaker 1: Maybe you should trade, you should take fewer trips and
41:17
Speaker 1: eat more bananas. Take fewer trips to eat more bananas exactly.
41:22
Speaker 1: So there you go, folks, that's what radiation is. A
41:25
Speaker 1: lot of people did understand what radiation was. It's you know,
41:28
Speaker 1: ultra vilet light, it's gamma rays, it's particles shut out
41:31
Speaker 1: by radioactive elements, and it can certainly hurt you, and
41:34
Speaker 1: you should be on the lookout for radon gas and
41:36
Speaker 1: you should think about the flights you take. But it
41:38
Speaker 1: can also help you. So like everything in science, it's
41:41
Speaker 1: fundamentally neutral and it just depends on how it's applied.
41:44
Speaker 1: And in either case, just remember to wear your sunscreen
41:48
Speaker 1: or at least a hat. That's right. And if you're
41:50
Speaker 1: eating banana, make sure to wear a helmet or make
41:54
Speaker 1: your make a hat out of bananas. Does that does
41:56
Speaker 1: that cancel out? That sounds totally safe to me. Absolutely,
42:01
Speaker 1: I totally open. Please please go ahead and send me
42:04
Speaker 1: a picture. All right, Thanks for listening, everybody. We hope
42:09
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Tune in next time, keep on radiating.
42:20
Speaker 1: If you still have a question after listening to all
42:22
Speaker 1: these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
42:25
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
42:28
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
42:32
Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
42:36
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
42:38
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio from
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