Under what circumstances does radiation cause things (the air, people, plants, etc.) to glow?

Submitted by ForsakenWedding8062 t3_zqc943 in askscience

Context: I'm writing a sci fi book and want to include some radiation, as one does. My dramatic brain wants there to be a glow but my rational brain knows this isn't how radiation works. Putting aside for the moment the fact that anyone exposed to this level of radiation would die (there's the fiction element, folks), what sort of radiation would make nearby objects/people glow? And what would it look like? And why/how did the radium girls glow?

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ArtofWASD t1_j0xza72 wrote

So glowing from radiation is kinda just a holywood myth. Excluding the actual reactions itself (cherenkov radiation. A beautiful blue). Radium is (as you know) a radioactive material. What they do is mix radium with a phosphorescent substance/pigment. The radiation from the radium causes the pigment to glow as the electrons exite it. The only way radiation makes people or other objects glow is by super heating them to a charred husk.

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Calixare t1_j0xziuj wrote

Radiation doesn't glow itself, that's a popular stereotype. It can activate some luminophores. Usually, such luminophores contain metal salts and it is easy to introduce them into glass. For example, you can imagine that due to bad ecology living species are intoxicated by some metal (Barium or Zinc), and this is a luminophore.

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Hk-Neowizard t1_j0xzlpy wrote

Radiation won't make you glow.

The glow associated with radioactive elements is actually phosphorescence and fluorescence.

Want something to glow, mix it with phosphor. The emitted particles will make the phosphor glow in that green glow falsely associated with radiation

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Titan9312 t1_j0xzoay wrote

There are certain types of fungi that glow. They almost look like the radioactive trope you’re looking for.

Radiation mutates the cells of a living organism. Perhaps you can have a side effect of cell mutation result in a glow.

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Local_Seaweed_9610 t1_j0yl0d4 wrote

I think this might be a great solution for OP. Somehow they don't die of the radiation (highly fictional), but their mutating cells (which does happen when exposed) do cause a glow that just isn't really a thing as OP describes it. Just gotta learn the basics of mutations as described by real Biology a bit and add some weird fictional protein/amino-acid that "turns on" and makes the fictional character glow, making it clear they have been exposed. So many places you could go to from that

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jawshoeaw t1_j101arl wrote

Cherenkov radiation is probably the best real life Hollywood-like radiation glow. I think a good way to think about this is to remember that for our eyes to see something “glowing” it has to be emitting by definition visible light. But why would radioactive material emit viable light or trigger the emission of visible light when again by definition it’s emitting “radiation” , meaning either neutrons, gamma rays, electrons, or other high energy particles? None of those radiated particles are visible. However , there is a phenomenon called “phosphene” where radiation triggers the perception of light, or where the radiation causes Cherenkov light to be released within the eye itself. Radium for example, while not making girls actually glow, does appear to glow faintly blue in the dark. This is from high energy electrons striking nitrogen in the air. Maybe you could use that .

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karrelax t1_j0xzrt1 wrote

Depens on the molecules of the thing.

Usually you shine radiation over something, and what happens is that the molecules of that thing will first absorb the energy (unlesd the thing is transparent to that radiation) and inmediately will re-emit it. The re-emision can be the same (a mirror reflects your image) or maybe part of the energy remains on the material (as heat) so the re emission is shifted. Those materials that you ask just absorb the radiation, take part of the enery as heat, and the rest they emit it again..as glowing light.

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GalFisk t1_j0yetpn wrote

Radioactive cesium chloride can sometimes glow blue in the dark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident#Opening_the_capsule

Plutonium RTG sources don't glow, but they have attracted fatal attention by being hot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident#The_accident

If alien biology is present, I think bioaccumulation of radioactive substances, as suggested in another post, is an interesting direction to take.

People frequently survive radiological accidents. If you want to make it realistic, read up on the above accidents and others, decide source type and strength, exposure time and technology level of medical treatment, and wrap your drama around that.

Have you read "The Martian" by Andy Weir? >!He wanted to include a radiological accident with an RTG, but couldn't find a way to make it realistic without killing the protagonist.!< He does his best at making the science realistic, and I think his stories, and especially the world-building, are all the better for it.

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frozenhelmets t1_j0ywapo wrote

I was confused by by your statement "Plutonium RTG sources don't glow, but they have attracted fatal attention by being hot" as plutonium RTG's are actually safe to hold in your hands (The Martian treated it wrong) and are NOT a strong source of external radiation. Your link is to a Strontium-90 RTG which is very radioactive indeed!!

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Allfunandgaymes t1_j0zh3j9 wrote

None. Wavelengths of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation are outside of the visible spectrum and thus produce no visible glow of their own.

A radioactive substance can glow if it's so radioactive it generates enough heat - known as decay heat or heat of decay - to excite atoms to give off infrared / red light, like a hot stovetop. That is the sort of radioactivity that would scramble your DNA like eggs if you got anywhere near it, though.

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PerspectivePure2169 t1_j129e1o wrote

It works quite well for sci fi that there's something called the blue beam of death. That unshielded shine directly from a high intensity radiological source, if one is unwise or unlucky enough to look at it, causes the human eye to perceive it as blue.

And when you see that blue - you're doomed.

I worked on nuclear waste remediation with some quite nasty tanks of stuff, and we considered shine from the tanks when they were opened. No worker or part of a worker could cross the shine from that opening.

If I recall the perception of blue came from some of the criticality accidents in the 40s and 50s, things involving the death of physicists, the demon core.

There's a lot to dive in to for sci fi in all that.

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Abdiel_Kavash t1_j16y2nl wrote

> It works quite well for sci fi that there's something called the blue beam of death. That unshielded shine directly from a high intensity radiological source, if one is unwise or unlucky enough to look at it, causes the human eye to perceive it as blue.

Is it actually blue (as in, if you let it shine on a white wall, and you look at the wall from behind a sufficiently shielded, but transparent partition, would you see the wall as blue), or does it just literally burn your ocular nerves and your brain trying to make some sense of it interprets it as "the color blue"?

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PerspectivePure2169 t1_j1723hk wrote

It's just that - if you are unlucky enough to look at the source, the interaction of high intensity radiation with your eyes is perceived as blue. You wouldn't see it looking at objects within the shine without being in it yourself. You wouldn't see it with sufficient clear shielding, though that's not possible with any materials we know of, except water perhaps.

As a side note, high radiation levels degrade regular glass transparency quite quickly. When we used to specify remote cameras, everything had to be nuclear grade and have particularly pure glass so the lenses wouldn't cloud.

Both are useful nuggets for sci fi on radiation I would think.

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drhex t1_j12yvrl wrote

Some folks here suggested that a biological glow might be better for your fiction. I agree. There are not many real radioactive things that glow green like in the movies. But there are green glowing creatures (jellyfish and others).

Some real radioactive things glow blue - you can google "TRIGA reactor startup" to see some cool Cherenkov radiation light.

But there was an incident where someone managed to open a heavily shielded container of highly radioactive cesium-137 chloride. They said it glowed blue. It killed several people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

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