Is Radiation Necessary for Life? | Hacker News Reader

Is Radiation Necessary for Life?

forbes.com

24 pointsrms9 comments

Well I seem to recall that in photosynthesis radiation plays a key role :-)

You are confusing ionizing and non-ionizing radiation...

   Well the article title and the HN headline did not specify that.
   In fact after a quick reread the whole article never said what type of radiation.
   What are they talking about? Alpha radiation, Probably not it is mostly harmless unless you eat a radiation source or it gets stuck in your lungs. Betaray imitations? Maybe gamma radiation but wouldn't want to mess with that. UV is ionizing but most people don't think of it.

Unless ingested in the case of alpha

So any ideas about the cause of this phenomenon?

Although I can't directly answer your question, I will suggest a similar phenomenon in humans. Many human cells contain functional units which work to repair broken DNA/RNA [0]. Furthermore, these repair mechanisms are enhanced/stimulated by increased levels of background radiation [1]. Thus, if human cells contain DNA repair mechanisms which are stimulated by DNA damage (from radiation or any other source), and we live in a constant background of damage inducing radiation, then we constantly have DNA repair mechanisms working in our cells. If we remove a source of DNA damage, then it is not unreasonable to guess that a lower number of DNA repair mechanisms are present in cells. In something as complex as the human body, I would guess (baselessly), this probably has secondary effects which could include growth/cell reproduction/health.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_repair [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_repair#Global_response_to_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis has some guesses.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/09553002.2015.10...

Not quite what the article is about, but I just re-read Robots and empire by Asimov and the idea that natural radiation in the crust from the theia impact (churn heavy elements out of core) is a cause of the degree of biodiversity on earth is core to the story.

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