Radiation
hideIn physics, radiation describes any process in which energy emitted by one body travels through a medium or through space, ultimately to be absorbed by another body. Non-physicists often associate the word with ionizing radiation (e.g., as occurring in nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors, and radioactive substances), but it can also refer to electromagnetic radiation (i.e., radio waves, infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light, and X-rays) which can also be ionizing radiation, to acoustic radiation, or to other more obscure processes. What makes it radiation is that the energy radiates (i.e., it travels outward in straight lines in all directions) from the source. This geometry naturally leads to a system of measurements and physical units that are equally applicable to all types of radiation.
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News tagged with radiation
Transparent aluminium is 'new state of matter'
Jul 27, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminium' previously only existed in science ...
Touchable Hologram Becomes Reality (w/ Video)
Aug 06, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the University of Tokyo have developed 3D holograms that can be touched with bare hands. Generally, holograms can't be felt because they're made only of light. But the new ...
Galactic Colonization Limited By The Inability To Expand Exponentially
Jun 23, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- For more than 50 years, many have taken the so-called Fermi Paradox to indicate that the existence of intelligent alien civilizations is an impossibility. However, a recent re-examination ...
Scientists propose new hypothesis on the origin of life
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Sep 04, 2009 |
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The Miller-Urey experiment, conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, is the classic experiment on the origin of life. It established that the early Earth atmosphere, as they pictured it, ...
Gamma-ray photon race ends in dead heat; Einstein wins this round
Oct 28, 2009 |
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Racing across the universe for the last 7.3 billion years, two gamma-ray photons arrived at NASA's orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope within nine-tenths of a second of one another. The dead-heat finish ...
A Theory of Dark Matter
Sep 08, 2009 |
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Among the most astounding, unexpected, and important achievements of the past century (or even more) have been the discoveries of dark matter and dark energy, collectively dubbed the "dark sector."
Scientists Reproduce a Building Block of Life in Laboratory
Nov 06, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA scientists studying the origin of life have reproduced uracil, a key component of our hereditary material, in the laboratory.
Breaking the Planck's law, at the nanoscale
Jul 29, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A well-established physical law describes the transfer of heat between two objects, but some physicists have long predicted that the law should break down when the objects are very close together. ...
Scientists Explore Galactic Frontier, Release First-Ever All-Sky Map (w/ Video)
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Oct 15, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky ...
Quantum goes massive
Jul 16, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- An astrophysics experiment in America has demonstrated how fundamental research in one subject area can have a profound effect on work in another as the instruments used for the Laser Interferometer ...
Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages -- may also help predict future
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Aug 06, 2009 |
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Researchers have largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years - they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused ...
Researchers propose new way to reproduce a black hole
Aug 21, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Despite their popularity in the science fiction genre, there is much to be learned about black holes, the mysterious regions in space once thought to be absent of light. In a paper published in the August ...
WHO study suggests link between cell phones and tumors
Oct 27, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Preliminary results of an International investigation by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest there may be a "significantly increased risk" of some types of brain tumors after use of ...
Hidden Territory on Mercury Revealed
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Nov 04, 2009 |
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The MESSENGER spacecraft's third flyby of the planet Mercury has given scientists, for the first time, an almost complete view of the planet's surface and revealed some dramatic changes in Mercury's comet-like ...
Physicists Demonstrate Quantum Memory with Matter Qubits
Jul 03, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, scientists have successfully operated a quantum gate between two remote particles of matter, marking an important step toward the development of a quantum computer. In ...
