Radiation

Syaffolee put together a bonfire of science writing called "Tangled Bank" and I submitted a piece I wrote some time ago. After I sent it in, I realized that maybe it wasn't really about science, maybe it was just about technology. I think the reason I originally classified it as science is because it was about radiation, which every one knows is really scary and dangerous and only scientists are allowed to mess with it.

There used to be a lot of science going on regarding radiation, and there may be some still going on. We don't hear much about it any more because all the physics news is about particles and particle accelerators. Radiation has pretty much been reduced to technology, though it is still controlled by the government. Even microwave ovens need to have some kind of government authorization.

I grew up working on cars and farm machinery. I would never take a car to a repair shop, I would fix it myself, or junk it. Many of them were real beaters, but I always had wheels. Back then you didn't need anything more sophisticated than a test light to diagnose and repair just about any problem. If something didn't work, you could take it apart until you found the broken part. You replaced the broken part and then put it back together and it would run. Abstraction was pretty limited: what you saw is what you got.

Then along came computers. Now you can no longer tell when something is broken by looking at it. A part that does not work can look just like one that does. Now our level of abstraction has increased. If you replace a part and the machine starts working, then the part you removed must be broken. It becomes much more of a hand waving operation than real diagnosis and repair. It is even more so when the problem is with the software. No physical parts are replaced. The repairman just waves his hands and everything starts working. Just like magic!

Radiation is even more abstract. There are some kinds of radiation that we can generate by using electricity, like X-Rays and microwaves, and electricity is fairly well understood in our culture. People grow up with it and are taught that it can be very dangerous. How well they learn is a matter of conjecture. Power lines are pretty well insulated, and access points are pretty well restricted. So radiation that is generated by a machine that runs on electricity is not too bad: you can always stop the radiation by turning off the electrical power.

Radiation that comes from radioactive material is another matter. You cannot turn it off. It is in the nature of the material. This is scary stuff. You can't see the radiation. Material that generates ionizing radiation, like high speed neutrons and gamma rays, looks just like ordinary material. You can't feel the radiation. Only after you have been exposed and accumulated a fatal dose are you likely to notice any effects. You cannot control it, that is you cannot turn it off and on. You cannot detect it except with special instruments whose operation is so arcane as to be considered voodoo. All you can do is protect yourself from it with shielding.

So we have different levels of complexity and abstraction. The industrial revolution was achieved mainly by things whose operation could be seen and felt. Then came electricity and the electronics revolution. Here we have things whose action can only be detected indirectly, but were under our complete control. Now we are trying to deal with nuclear power and we are not doing too well. Part of the problem is that we do not have a real solid understanding of what we are dealing with. Another is that it requires belief in something that can neither be seen or touched. It is almost like a religion that way. You have to believe in some abstract concepts in order to have any hope of being able to work with this stuff successfully, which includes not killing yourself.