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Asked by anon-244766 to Ondrej, Jordan, Eleanor, Ed, Christine, Alice on 17 Mar 2020.
Question: Is it possible that there are more types of electromagnetic radiation than the types that we know of?
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Edward Banks answered on 17 Mar 2020:
The divisions in the EM spectrum are something that humans have defined rather than discovered- there is no hard and fast boundary between low energy infrared and high energy microwaves, for example. The two overlap. At the very highest end of the spectrum, anything above a certain frequency we just call gamma rays- no matter how much more energy it gets, it’ll still be a gamma ray because that’s what we’ve called it. Similarly at the lower end, you just get radio waves with lower and lower frequencis.
So we’ve neatly organised the entire EM spectrum into these types, and covered the whole spectrum. There’s nothing left to be discovered there! It is however entirely possible that our definitions of these groups will change over time; we might add new types. But it’s important to realise that these are descriptions imposed by humans rather than fundamental differences.
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Jordan McElwee answered on 17 Mar 2020:
As Ed said, the electromagnetic spectrum that we have is mostly defined from human perspective. So visible light is defined because of (surprisingly), what we can see, and then everything else is somewhat arbitrary. At the longest wavelength you have Radiowaves, and at the highest energies you have X-rays/gamma-rays (the way they are created changes what we call it!). But I think since we’ve kind of defined these, we can’t ‘discover’ any more.. just redefine.
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Eleanor Jones answered on 18 Mar 2020:
As both Jordan and Ed have said, since the EM spectrum is something we’ve defined rather than discovered, it can change but not because we find something new, just because we decide there is an easier or more suitable way to categorise them for example.
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