Public Meteorological Agency (AEMET) he reminded usIn the last few days, a significant amount of suspended dust from the Sahara Desert will significantly affect the Canary Islands. Ibero and the Peninsulaeven if to a lesser extent. Some Spanish media report that it has the ability to dust Sahara deposit burning elements on Spanish soil. Indeed, it is true.
In July 2023, a team of French researchers reported Earth Science Data Systems A very interesting scientific article, in which he confirmed that indeed the dust of the Sahara, which sometimes reaches Europe, contains particles of radioactive elements, such as cesium or beryllium, which are finally deposited on the ground. Moreover, this analysis revealed a great variety in the properties and amount of dust. And the larger and heavier ones are stored closer to their origin than the smaller and lighter ones.
These French scientists have verified that certain radioactive elements, such as cesium, beryllium or lead, are likely to come from it. nuclear tests they were carried out by France in the Sahara in the 1960s. However, they found traces of plutonium linked to nuclear tests by the US and the Soviet Union at the same time. There is still a long way to go to understand exactly what impact these radioactive particles have on our ecosystem, however This is what scientists recommend which can alter the Earth’s radioactive balance, cloud formation or solar energy production. They could also affect people’s health.
That radioactivity
Radioactivity is a naturally occurring process that explains how nuclear core the unstable loses energy in an attempt to reach a more stable state. And in order to achieve this, he sends out a femper. Around the nucleus orbit one or more or much smaller elementary particles with a negative electrical charge, which we call electrons. The nucleus, in turn, is made up of one or more protons, which are particles with a positive electrical charge. A simple atom what we can find in nature is protium (hydrogen-1), an isotope of hydrogen that has a single proton in its nucleus and a single electron orbiting it.
The problem is that matter is composed not only of protium, but also of many other more complex and heavier chemical elements, which therefore have more protons in their nucleus and more electrons around them. How is that possible? more than one proton into the nucleus If they all have a positive electric charge? It is reasonable to think that they cannot be very close, because elements having the same electric charge repel each other. And so this opinion is coherent. Those responsible for solving this dilemma are neutrons, the particles that bond with the protons in the atomic nucleus.
The Higgs field is a fundamental interaction that explains how particles acquire their mass
Unlike protons, neutrons have a neutral overall electrical charge, so they “feel” either the electromagnetic repulsion or attraction to which protons and electrons are exposed. The function of neutrons is nothing more than to stabilize the nucleus, allowing more protons that would otherwise coexist with each other. And they do this through the action of one of the four fundamental forces of nature: the strong nuclear interaction.
The remaining three forces are the electromagnetic interaction, gravity and the weak nuclear interaction. Doctors usually put this on the same level in the Higgs fieldwhich is another fundamental interaction that unfolds than particles as a massbut to make it easier to understand, the four texts that I mentioned a little bit above include the basic forces because they are somehow familiar to us all.
the nucleons, which are the protons and neutrons of the nucleus of the atom, manage to stay together and overcome the natural repulsion that the protons pose, because the presence of neutrons allows the strong nuclear force to act as a glue capable of imposing itself electromagnetically. force Strong nuclear interaction is very limited, but at short intervals the intensity is enormous. The important difference between these is that neutrons, as I said a few lines above, act by stabilizing the atomic nucleus, so that when an atom has more protons, it needs even more neutrons in its nucleus to ensure a strong attractive force. the force of electricity overcomes repulsion.
Interestingly, the balance between the number of protons and neutrons is very delicate. An atom is stable if its nucleus has a certain number of nuclei and the distribution of these between protons and neutrons allows a strong nuclear interaction to act as a “glue”. That is why we can only find it in nature finite element chemistryincluded in the periodic table, in which we are all more or less familiar. Any other combination of protons and neutrons would not allow this optimal balance to be maintained, resulting in an unstable atom.
What distinguishes a stable atom from an unstable one is that in the nucleus of these strong nuclear interaction and the electromagnetic force are not in equality, so the atom must change its structure to adopt a state of lower energy that allows it. a more stable figure. A stable atom is “comfortable” with its existing structure and there is no need to do anything, but it is unstable to give up some of its energy in order to reach the lower energy state that we just talked about.
An unstable atom has four different mechanisms at its disposal that help it change its structure to take a stable shape: alpha, beta, inverse beta and gamma radiation.
So how does an atom manage to remove its energy? The answer is surprising: as for the mechanism known as the “tunnel effect”, which allows you to do something that seems impossible at first, and which is nothing more than to overcome the energy barrier. This is a very complex and very complex effect, but it is important that we don’t need to go into it in order to clearly understand how radio works work. This is important because we know that an unstable atom has four different mechanisms for its arrangement that can help to soften its structure to take a stable shape: alpha, beta, inverse beta and gamma rays.
The first of these mechanisms, alpha radiation, allows a part of the nucleus to be removed, emitting an alpha particle, which consists of two protons and two neutrons. The next mechanism is beta radiation, which requires the transformation of a neutron from an atomic nucleus into a proton, and in this process also emits an electron and an antineutrino. Inverse beta radiation does just the opposite of beta radiation: it transforms a proton into a neutron, and this process emits antielectrons and neutrinos, which are the antiparticles of electrons and antineutrinos emitted by beta radiation.
And finally, gamma radiation, which is the most intense and penetrating of all, requires the emission of a high-energy photon, commonly known as a gamma ray, thus. the nuclear core preserves the original structure. Some high-energy photons can pass through thick concrete walls and lead sheets, making this form of radiation the most dangerous of all.
As we saw earlier, it allows unstable radioactive atoms to shed some of their energy to reach a less energetic and more stable state, but what actually happens to that energy? The principle of conservation of energy says that it cannot decay, so it must necessarily be removed by particles emitted by an unstable atom due to the four forms of radiation that we have just mentioned. This force causes the particles to be ejected like tiny bullets, which have the ability to interact with matter in their path.
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