A Beginner's View of Our Electric Universe - New

These are all examples that involve the influence of the energy represented by the EM spectrum. Its range is
enormous and the EM radiation it represents influences and is responsible for so many things and events in our
everyday lives; many of which we take for granted and therefore have no idea of what lies behind them.
Not too long ago I saw the EM spectrum described in a very thought-provoking way in a television science
documentary. An estimate for the length of the total Electro-Magnetic Spectrum (EMS) was represented by the
distance between the Earth and the Sun which is 93 million miles. It turned out that the length within this EMS
representation that would be the section of visible light our eyes can detect, would be only 8 inches long. Think
about it, 8 inches out of 93 million miles. Wow! In terms of the full EMS this is a very insignificant fraction
that represents absolutely everything that our eyes are limited to seeing! What if our eyes could see more of the
EMS than they do, what would it be like if our vision went beyond that tiny ‘visible light’ portion? Thinking
about this lets us appreciate that there exists all around us much more invisible EM information, which if we
could see it, would reveal a very different picture of our world and our surroundings in space than we are used
to. Remember the old film … “The Man with the X-ray Eyes”? Well, science and technology has provided the
means to give us what that science-fiction adventure suggested, so we are now able to see (observe) with our
equipment, much more than our eyes alone are capable of, not just on Earth but out in the universe too.
The EMS stretches from the lowest form of radio signal right up to the most energetic and deadly gamma rays
that mostly come to us from deep space. Although high-energy radiation is harmful for us, we generate it here
on Earth with equipment we build for medical, scientific and commercial uses. In our everyday lives we are
constantly exposed to some form of EM radiation to some degree or other. Most of the frequencies (wavelengths)
of radiation with their typical power levels, are harmless to us here on the surface of the Earth. However some,
like ultra-violet light, X-rays and gamma rays, will in certain circumstances destroy human tissue.
The EMS has a fundamental link with frequencies at the sub-atomic level for all elements and with the energy
levels these frequencies represent. The thing to keep in mind here is this fundamental link between frequency
and energy, where the way this works in everyday life is that we have low frequencies with low energy and
high frequencies with high energy. As an example from both these extremes, we have sensitive radio receivers
capable of picking up weak low frequency radio signals at the bottom end of the spectrum, then we have gamma
rays at the high end that would smash the atoms in our bodies apart if they were to strike them.
Another term, which for the sake of being complete I will now say more about, is ‘wavelength’. This is directly
associated with ‘frequency’ where one complete wave (one wavelength) is the same as one complete cycle of
frequency, or to bring in another term, one full ‘oscillation’. The most common form of a wave is a sinusoidal
wave or ‘sine wave’. Sine waves normally occur in a constant series of complete cycles or wavelengths, the
distance between any two similar points being termed the wavelength of the cycle.
75 | Some basic theory that will help