Re: Thundercloud "accelerator" fires gamma-ray beam?

On Sep 13, 10:12 am, Sam Wormley <sworml...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Bob Cain wrote:
Sam Wormley wrote:

Tsuchiya says that bremsstrahlung at MeV energies would be focused
into a beam that only illuminates a small area on the ground, which
could explain why so few long-duration pulses have been seen. The
team plan to verify this by placing many radiation detectors over a
wider area.

Could this radiation have an effect on the genetic material in the balls
of a critter under such a beam?

In other words, can gamma radiation, at these measured levels damage DNA
in vertebrates?

Gammas in the MeV range can certainly disrupt
organic molecules. The effects are known to
include cancer, cell death, and at very high dose,
death of the organism. There are other possible
health effects as well, depending on the dose and
the exposure method.

Mutation is a much more difficult thing to prove.
Mutations have been observed in test animals
exposed to large doses of gammas. Particularly
fruit flies. Biologists love to zap those fruit flies.
That's because they can prepare a huge population
of genetically similar test subjects, and zap them
all at the same value. Then anybody who shows
up with an unusual feature is a good candidate for
testing for genetic issues.

There has been no confirmed case of mutation in
humans. However, it seems mighty unlikely that
humans are significantly different in this way. It is
most likely that humans have simply avoided the
dose whenver possible, and so the statistics are
such that we have had a reasonable chance of
dodging the bullet. And, the usual variation in
humans masks to some extent any mutations
that might exist. Plus, when guys get zapped by
some accident, they tend to be told not to breed.
And for some types of radiation, it can cause
sterility anyway.
Socks

.

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