posted
Delta Radiation is mentioned several times in TOS. If I recall correctly, this is what cripples Capt. Pike. I have seen a suggestion that Delta Radiation is Faster Than Light. Does this make sense?
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posted
Before you can decide what it is you have to look at all the instances of it's use... I don't have that but here some food for thought:
Gamma radiation is real and a current scientific term for high energy EM. Star Trek also has Theta radiation, which is produced concerning the warp drive, especially the waste. Theta radiation was portrayed as stronger/higher than Gamma radiation IIRC. So Delta radiation might be somewhere in between.
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posted
Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation all exist, right? And, if I recall Psysics lessons from 8 years ago, they go from being really penetrative but with short half lives to being, er, not very penetrative but with long half lives. To Delta Radiation might just continue the trend.
Or I could be thinking of an old episode of "Super Monkeys From Mars". I forget which.
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quote: # Alpha - these are fast moving helium atoms. They have high energy, typically in the MeV range, but due to their large mass, they are stopped by just a few inches of air, or a piece of paper.
# Beta - these are fast moving electrons. They typically have energies in the range of a few hundred keV to several MeV. Since electrons are might lighter than helium atoms, they are able to penetrate further, through several feet of air, or several millimeters of plastic or less of very light metals.
# Gamma - these are photons, just like light, except of much higher energy, typically from several keV to several MeV. X-Rays and gamma rays are really the same thing, the difference is how they were produced. Depending on their energy, they can be stopped by a thin piece of aluminum foil, or they can penetrate several inches of lead.
Interestingly enough, while it also gives a plethora of links for delta radiation (for Star Trek, unfortunately) This http://www.yphysics.freenet. , whatever it is gives the definition of delta raditaion as
quote: (d -radiation, delta rays, d -rays) � the secondary electrons emitted by the impact of ionizing radiation on matter. Their energies are of the order of only 103 eV. They can cause further ionizations.
posted
The definitions for alpha, beta, gamma and delta radiation are correct and show that beta and delta radiation are essentially the same thing, electrons, except that beta radiation has much higher energy than delta.
The greek letter designations were given in the early 20th century when the effects of radiation were measurable but when we had very little idea about the mechanisms behind those effects. If we had continued assigning greek letters to every sort of "radiation" we would soon have used the whole alphabet. But today's scientists prefer to be more direct and talk about the sort of particles involved.
Of course Trek was written by scientific laymen, so adding further sorts of radiation by going through the greek alphabet was perfectly natural from their point of view. They simply didn't know that the letter delta had already been taken, simply because it is rarely used.
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posted
Like tachyon radiation or antimatter radiation? *snicker*
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quote: Although theoretical, tachyons are particles and not energy so they wouldn't be radiation at all.
quote: # Alpha - these are fast moving helium atoms. They have high energy, typically in the MeV range, but due to their large mass, they are stopped by just a few inches of air, or a piece of paper.
# Beta - these are fast moving electrons. They typically have energies in the range of a few hundred keV to several MeV. Since electrons are might lighter than helium atoms, they are able to penetrate further, through several feet of air, or several millimeters of plastic or less of very light metals.
# Gamma - these are photons, just like light, except of much higher energy, typically from several keV to several MeV. X-Rays and gamma rays are really the same thing, the difference is how they were produced. Depending on their energy, they can be stopped by a thin piece of aluminum foil, or they can penetrate several inches of lead.
posted
There's also the theory on wave-particle duality. I certainly don't understand much about it at all, but basically, it tries to address the paradox where we measure light by its wavelength/frequency/etc and yet also classify it as made of photons, which are particles.
Care for some wavicles, anyone?
quote:Although theoretical, tachyons are particles and not energy so they wouldn't be radiation at all.
I just realized what you were saying here, though, and you're even further off than I thought!
Don't you know what E=mc2 means? Particles are matter, which possesses mass. And mass is easily converted to energy, thanks to Einstein.
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