My knowledge in this area is very limited. Let's suppose we are cranking out more and more energetic gamma rays, as in we try to go far beyond one million electronvolts.
What happens when it interacts with an atom? I assume it's going to interact with the electron, but what about the protons and neutrons? I've seen the ionizing effects, but can high enough energies do something to the protons and neutrons themselves? With enough electronvolts, could it have effects on the atomic core, such as ripping it apart? Does it break a nucleon into quarks?
I thought that a gamma ray would strip electrons away, and not raise the temperature of the component(s) it hits.
This topic comes about because a friend of mine was telling me how a powerful enough gamma ray would turn a rock in space into glowing plasma. I said I don't know if this would happen, and a (friendly) argument ensued. He started talking about gamma ray bursts from stars doing things, but the discussion went over my head because I am not a trained physicist.
After the discussion, I went online looking for the answer and two things arose: First, Google's results were very poor (there was some stuff talked about the Compton Effect, Photoelectric effect, and electron-positron pair production but it never helped me answer my question), and second, I want to understand the physics behind what would happen here. It made me wonder "what does happen if higher and higher energies are used?"
