In simple words, radiation means the emission of energy or it can be said that transmission of the energy in form of waves or particles through a material medium it also includes electromagnetic radiations which are included as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, and gamma radiation. Radiation consist of two categories including ionizing and nonionizing which depends on the energy of the radiation particles where ionizing radiation carries more than ten eV which is better to ionize the atoms and molecules and this is an important distinction because of the large differences of harmfulness. Radioactive materials are a common source of ionizing radiation. There are gamma rays, X rays and higher levels of rays or higher levels of energy range of ultraviolet light which constitutes the ionizing part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Basically the word radiation arises from the phenomena of waves radiating.
Uses of this radiation?
These radiations are used in many fields like medicine, electrics, science, communication and many more. In medicine radiation and radioactive substances are used for diagnosis, research and treatment for example when it passes through muscles and tissues but is stopped by dense materials and this particular property of X rays enable doctors to find broken bones and also helps to locate cancer which is growing in someone’s body. By injection, some radioactive substances doctors can also find certain diseases and ionizing radiation is mainly known as the substance used for radiation injection in some kind of other diseases. And if communication is concerned than all modern type of communication system works on electromagnetic radiation as variation in the intensity of the radiation which represents changes in sound and pictures. Radiations are mainly used to determine the composition of the materials in the area of science which is known as neutron activation analysis and this is mainly used by scientists to reform or to know the properties of the substances.
What is cosmic radiation?
The sun and the deep space are two of the sources of high energy particles that are entering the earth’s atmosphere from outer space where the sun always emits particles which are primarily free protons, in the solar wind and with coronal mass ejections. The particles which are from deep space are much less frequent but consist of much high energy. From studies still, it is not clear from where these cosmic rays are emerging but the scientist is learning these rays in detail to give the world a whole new concept on these kinds of radiations.