Ryan's Super Cool Awesome Physic's Journey: March 2011

The electromagnetic spectrum is the scientific term for the different types of radiation. Radiation is simply energy that travels through anything, including a vacuum in which air is not present. This is one of the things that makes them so unique. As the waves travel, they spread out as they go. Hotter sources create higher amounts of radiation while cooler create lesser, such as an x-ray which creates a very large amount of radiation while radio waves create just enough to communicate. The seven types of electromagnetic waves are (in order from least to highest amount of radiation): radio, microwaves, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma-rays. Radio waves have a very long wavelength with a low frequency. Microwaves have a smaller wavelength but still quite long in comparison to other waves. Infrared waves have a noticeably shorter wavelength.Visible waves, which include things like lamps, light bulbs, etc., have a wavelength similar to infrared waves, as do ultraviolet waves. Ultraviolet is a type of wave that is primarily created by the sun, i.e. the rays of sun the beam down on the earth. Finally, the two shortest wavelengths are x-rays and gamma-rays. X-rays have to have a short wavelength to see into our bodies, while gamma-rays, the highest form of radiation is what is found in radioactive substances.

Two types of waves that some people find most interesting are gamma-rays and x-rays. Gamma-rays have a wavelength starting around .03 nanometers and frequency starting around 6.009 x10^10 GHz. These get progressively smaller and bigger, respectively (the size and frequency of the waves). Instances where gamma-rays occur include medical therapy, nuclear reactions, and things in space like supernovas and stars. Gamma-rays have the most energy of any of the waves. It is said that gamma-rays can emit more energy in 10 minutes than our sun can in its entire 10-billion year expected lifespan. Humans cannot see gamma-rays, it takes a special type of telescope to see them.

Second, x-ray waves start at about 3 nm and a frequency of 2.459 x10^7 GHz. They get smaller and bigger, respectively (the size and frequency of the waves), until they reach .00623 nm and 4.809 x10^10 GHz. X-rays are used primarily for medical diagnostics to view bones and other parts of the body. There are classic x-ray machines, but now there are things like CAT Scans and MRI machines which view your body more in depth. Our sun generates mostly x-rays, even though it is visible light, the waves themselves have characteristics of x-rays. High energy particles emitted from planets in our solar system can be seen through certain telescopes because they are hot enough to emit x-rays. The sun's x-rays aren't harmful to us because our atmosphere absorbs most of them. However, the use that most everyone knows about in the world is medical diagnosis because of the energy the x-rays emit that isn't powerful enough to harm us, but it is powerful enough to take images of things under our flesh.

This is the burst of a gamma-ray when a black hole is being created, pictured 12.8 billion light years away from Earth. Obviously if we can see it that far away, the energy must be pretty high. This picture was taken with NASA's Swift satellite in deep space. This object is among the most distant objects ever detected.