• Question: how is gamma radiaton made?

    Asked by james68 to Ryan on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Ryan Ladd

      Ryan Ladd answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Gamma radiation is made by “high energy sub-atomic particle interactions”! I’m afraid I don’t really know much about this subject, it’s really complicated! Wikipedia has a page on it though but it’s really hard to understand – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray

Comments

  • Photo: james68

    james68 commented on :

    thanks 🙂

  • Photo: Evan

    Evan commented on :

    Hey, I know about that kind of stuff! 😉

  • Photo: james68

    james68 commented on :

    oh cool, can you tell me what you know?

    • Photo: Evan

      Evan commented on :

      Yes. Gamma-ray radiation is just a form of light, but it is the most high energy type! all light (electromagnetic radiation) can be made from getting a charged particle (or many of them if you like) and accelerating them (you can use high voltages to do this for example). The higher the acceleration the more energetic the radiation. The most energetic radiation is gamma-rays (more energetic than X-rays).

      Oh, and by the way, if there is gamma-ray radiation anywhere you should avoid it as it is very bad for your health (the light is so energetic it can go deep into your cells and mess them up). But don’t worry too much as the Earth’s atmosphere shields us from a lot of gamma-rays. That is why gamma-ray telescopes have to be in space, above the atmosphere. 🙂