Hi Ya'll,
Maybe some of you would like to tease your minds with some of this info ?
Here is the Link and the article:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html
Electromagnetic Spectrum
Measuring the electromagnetic spectrum
You actually know more about it than you may think! The electromagnetic (EM)
spectrum is just a name that scientists give a bunch of types of radiation when
they want to talk about them as a group. Radiation is energy that travels and
spreads out as it goes-- visible light that comes from a lamp in your house or
radio waves that come from a radio station are two types of electromagnetic
radiation. Other examples of EM radiation are microwaves, infrared and
ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma-rays. Hotter, more energetic objects and
events create higher energy radiation than cool objects. Only extremely hot
objects or particles moving at very high velocities can create high-energy
radiation like X-rays and gamma-rays.
Here are the different types of radiation in the EM spectrum, in order from
lowest energy to highest:
Radio: yes, this is the same kind of energy that radio stations emit into the
air for your boom box to capture and turn into your favorite Mozart, Madonna, or
Coolio tunes. But radio waves are also emitted by other things ... such as stars
and gases in space. You may not be able to dance to what these objects emit, but
you can use it to learn what they are made of.
Microwaves: they will cook your popcorn in just a few minutes! In space,
microwaves are used by astronomers to learn about the structure of nearby
galaxies, including our own Milky Way!
Infrared: we often think of this as being the same thing as 'heat', because it
makes our skin feel warm. In space, IR light maps the dust between stars.
Visible: yes, this is the part that our eyes see. Visible radiation is emitted
by everything from fireflies to light bulbs to stars ... also by fast-moving
particles hitting other particles.
Ultraviolet: we know that the Sun is a source of ultraviolet (or UV) radiation,
because it is the UV rays that cause our skin to burn! Stars and other "hot"
objects in space emit UV radiation.
X-rays: your doctor uses them to look at your bones and your dentist to look at
your teeth. Hot gases in the Universe also emit X-rays .
Gamma-rays: radioactive materials (some natural and others made by man in things
like nuclear power plants) can emit gamma-rays. Big particle accelerators that
scientists use to help them understand what matter is made of can sometimes
generate gamma-rays. But the biggest gamma-ray generator of all is the Universe!
It makes gamma radiation in all kinds of ways.
A Radio Wave is not a Gamma-Ray, a Microwave is not an X-ray ... or is it?
Radio waves, visible light, X-rays, and all the other parts of the
electromagnetic spectrum are fundamentally the same thing, electromagnetic
radiation.
We may think that radio waves are completely different physical objects or
events than gamma-rays. They are produced in very different ways, and we detect
them in different ways. But are they really different things? The answer is
'no'. Radio waves, visible light, X-rays, and all the other parts of the
electromagnetic spectrum are fundamentally the same thing. They are all
electromagnetic radiation.
Electromagnetic radiation can be described in terms of a stream of photons,
which are massless particles each traveling in a wave-like pattern and moving at
the speed of light. Each photon contains a certain amount (or bundle) of energy,
and all electromagnetic radiation consists of these photons. The only difference
between the various types of electromagnetic radiation is the amount of energy
found in the photons. Radio waves have photons with low energies, microwaves
have a little more energy than radio waves, infrared has still more, then
visible, ultraviolet, X-rays, and ... the most energetic of all ... gamma-rays.
The electromagnetic spectrum can be expressed in terms of energy, wavelength, or
frequency.
Actually, the electromagnetic spectrum can be expressed in terms of energy,
wavelength, or frequency. Each way of thinking about the EM spectrum is related
to the others in a precise mathematical way. So why do we have three ways of
describing things, each with a different set of physical units? After all,
frequency is measured in cycles per second (which is called a Hertz), wavelength
is measured in meters, and energy is measured in electron volts.
The answer is that scientists don't like to use big numbers when they don't have
to. It is much easier to say or write "two kilometers or 2 km" than "two
thousand meters or 2,000 m". So generally, scientists use whatever units are
easiest for whatever they are working with. In radio astronomy, astronomers tend
to use wavelengths or frequencies. This is because most of the radio part of the
EM spectrum falls in the range from a about 1 cm to 1 km (30 gigahertz (GHz) to
100 kilohertz (kHz)). The radio is a very broad part of the EM spectrum.
Infrared astronomers also use wavelength to describe their part of the EM
spectrum. They tend to use microns (or millionths of meters) for wavelengths, so
that they can say their part of the EM spectrum falls in the range 1 to 100
microns. Optical astronomers use wavelengths as well. In the older "CGS" version
of the metric system, the units used were angstroms. An angstrom is equal to
0.0000000001 meters (10-10 m in scientific notation)! In the newer "SI" version
of the metric system, we think of visible light in units of nanometers or
0.000000001 meters (10-9 m). In this system, the violet, blue, green, yellow,
orange, and red light we know so well has wavelengths between 400 and 700
nanometers. This range is only a small part of the entire EM spectrum, so you
can tell that the light we see is just a little fraction of all the EM radiation
around us! By the time you get to the ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray regions
of the EM spectrum, lengths have become too tiny to think about any more. So
scientists usually refer to these photons by their energies, which are measured
in electron volts. Ultraviolet radiation falls in the range from a few electron
volts (eV) to a about 100 eV. X-ray photons have energies in the range 100 eV to
100,000 eV (or 100 keV). Gamma-rays then are all the photons with energies
greater than 100 keV.
Show me a chart of the wavelength, frequency, and energy regimes of the spectrum
!
Why Do We Have to Go to Space to See All of the Electromagnetic Spectrum?
Electromagnetic radiation from space is unable to reach the surface of the Earth
except at a very few wavelengths, such as the visible spectrum, radio
frequencies, and some ultraviolet wavelengths. Astronomers can get above enough
of the Earth's atmosphere to observe at some infrared wavelengths from mountain
tops or by flying their telescopes in an aircraft. Experiments can also be taken
up to altitudes as high as 35 km by balloons which can operate for months.
Rocket flights can take instruments all the way above the Earth's atmosphere for
just a few minutes before they fall back to Earth, but a great many important
first results in astronomy and astrophysics came from just those few minutes of
observations. For long-term observations, however, it is best to have your
detector on an orbiting satellite ... and get above it all!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The vertical illustration of the different regions of the EM spectrum and their
common uses was done by Design at Work for the curriculum supplement "Human
Physiology in Space" by Barbara F. Lujan and Ronald J. White, 1994. Used by
permission. --End of article--
As usual not everything may be as it may first seem to be !
I remember when I 1st started talking about Electro-magnetic Energy and how it
relates to Health or Lack of it, that some got all Bent out of shape that there
couldn't be any such stuff, and some of those are still Bent out of shape in the
Debate forums to this Day !
What was that about Seeking the "Truth" and it may set "YOU" Free ?
Do you supposed these Bashers and Complainers in the Debate forums just Lack in
the "Truth" ?
Surely it could not be this Simple?
Could it be ?
Smile Tis your choice.