So there you go: even if you live your whole life inside the protective layers of an earthlike planet, you still get an extra dose of radiation from the cosmic rays, equivalent to an extra X-ray exam every few years. Usually when we do X-ray exams, we balance the risk of slightly increasing your cancer risk with, I don’t know, figuring out what the heck is wrong with you right this very instant. But this is an X-ray exam that you didn’t ask for and you don’t need. It adds up, year after year: there’s an extra chance that a random cancer on Earth was caused by a star dying on the other side of
...more
