In the vicinity of the Earth, where we use orbiting satellites for communications or to predict the weather, solar panels are the primary source of energy. The system then detects the gamma rays emitted by the patient. To achieve this, the patient ingests a radioactive drug with a very short life in order to avoid radiation damage. This system allows for the reconstruction of images of what is happening inside the body. One example is positron emission tomography (PET). Nuclear technology, as well as serving to treat disease, has become a valuable diagnostic tool. This is why the source of radiation is being replaced by particle accelerators that can emit radioactivity only when needed. This feature means that it must always remain isolated and that handling it is hazardous. The origin of these gamma rays is cobalt 60, a radioactive element that continuously emits photons. Just as people exposed to radiation may get cancer because these rays damage their cells, the application of this device focused on the harmful tissues end up destroying them in a selective way. These machines use the ability of these rays, made of ultra energetic photons, to destroy living tissue. Since the late 60s, what are known as gamma knives have been used all over the world. Many people have in their heads that radioactivity causes cancer, but perhaps not as many know that it also cures it. The atomic age has had significant benefits for humanity. The atomic bomb was, possibly, the worst publicity that has ever been given to science, but not all the practical fruits of the work of the physicists have been used for evil, far from it. Those artifacts of death and destruction were the culmination of the Manhattan Project, the first major plan of applied science in history, designed to convert into pure power the knowledge obtained on the subject during the previous decades. The Trinity test began the era of nuclear weapons that would have its world premiere in Hiroshima, Japan, less than a month later. On July 16, 1945, in the Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico, the explosion of the first atomic bomb in history took place.
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