What do radio waves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays have in common?
Answer Hi Dyonna, You’ve just named off all the forms of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum. All of those are massless photons traveling at light speed through a vacuum (186,000 miles per second). The only difference is their wavelength/frequency. (Wavelength is the reciprocal of the frequency). The radio photons have very long wavelengths (low frequencies) and the gamma rays have very short wavelengths (high frequencies). Radio photons from space can’t hurt your skin, but the very short wavelengths are very harmful to carbon-based lifeforms…so you want to avoid UV, X-rays, and gamma radiation photons. Fortunately our atmosphere blocks all X-ray and gamma rays coming from the sun (by absorption collisions with the air), and most of the UV. But it’s transparent to visible light, infrared (fancy name for heat), and radio photons. So that’s the only difference, the wavelength of the photon. (Read that – long wavelenth is low energy photons and short wavelength is very high energy
