Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: little jeremiah
Here’s what a Professional Pilot’s website has to say about the scanners:

Thanks for the links. Back in physics grad school we used to calculate (as homeworks) cross sections for such interactions, so I knew right off that comparing soft X ray photons of the scanners to hard gamma ray photons (such as the cited 2 minute flight equivalence TSA claim) is comparing apples and oranges, as explained earlier. The cross section decreases with third power of photon energy (see Klein-Nishina formula, the main term P^2 * P ~ P^3, where P ~ 1/E_gamma; E_gamma is the photon energy), so a 1000 times greater energy of cosmic ray gamma photon vs soft X-ray photon will mean billion times smaller cross section for cosmic ray gamma. Since either photon will damage/ionize a molecule upon inelastic scattering (they are both well above ionization threshold), the molecular damage risk of equivalent energy soft X-rays from scanners are many orders of magnitude greater than those of cosmic gamma rays with the same total energy.

54 posted on 11/21/2010 6:20:30 PM PST by nightlight7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies ]


To: nightlight7

There’s a link right above your comment to me about this as well.

I’m a science-tard but I still limp along trying to get a tiny grasp of it all.


56 posted on 11/21/2010 6:35:17 PM PST by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.CSLewis)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 54 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson