4 ms·

At the molecular level, basically all photon modes associated with the thermal energy (or lower) will be already thermally occupied. E = hf = k_bT/2. This frequ

by rndphs 4y ago

At the molecular level, basically all photon modes associated with the thermal energy (or lower) will be already thermally occupied. E = hf = k_bT/2. This frequency at room temperature is about 30THz. So on the microscopic level, any frequencies under 30THz are constantly irradiated by thermal fields anyway. Edit: Furthermore, the Gibb's free energy of any molecular process determines the reversibility of the process at a given temperature. Any molecular process with Gibb's free energy that is lower than the thermal mean energy is going to be essentially a reversible equilibrium process, and stimulating it with radiation will only shift the equilibrium very slightly I believe. I think it's for this reason that we don't see radio catalysed reactions in chemistry, unlike photocatalysed reactions.

ncmncm 4y ago
I.e., at random: thus not inducing any coherent electric current, so irrelevant to the discussion. The only other subjects that induce such confident statements of fact from the profoundly ignorant are economics and politics.
- rndphs 4y ago
  But the only electric current on the molecular level is coherent current...? Chemical reactions are not macroscale phenomena, and so it shouldn't really matter if the energy comes from a random distribution or not. Also please don't insinuate that I'm "profoundly ignorant", that certainly isn't relevant to the discussion.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Profound ignorance is insistence of certainty in the entire absence of knowledge of a subject. Microwaves absorbed in tissue induce electrical currents carried by ions in solution. Just about everything that happens in your body involves ions moving in solution, one way or another. Details matter.
    - rndphs 4y ago
      But the movement of ions in solution is almost completely dominated by thermal motion. Your signal doesn't matter if the signal to noise ratio is essentially zero.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        In other words, life is impossible? That will be surprising to those of us who, you know, exist.
        rndphs 4y ago
        No, the molecular machinery of cells uses energy level differences that are far above the thermal energy level at body temperature, which allows them to actually make changes to things irreversibly. Enzymes are a great example of this. Try to use microwaves to move ions from one side of a container of salt solution to the other and then get back to me on the ability of microwaves to control ion movement. Hint: you basically can't without obscene levels of radiation. The thermal "pressure" due to the diffusion of ions is enormous. For a sense of scale, the thermal velocity of water molecules at room temperature is about 500m/s. The drift velocity(average movement of charge carriers, i.e. coherent current) of typical electric currents is on the order of 1mm/s.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        For microwaves to produce currents that could plausibly have an effect, there would need to be rectification and resonance, so that current could ratchet up. Unfortunately, both are known to occur in living tissue, as may be observed in people whose dental fillings enable them to pick up AM radio broadcasts. On top of rectification and resonance, the signal would need to be carried in a place where its current has a persistent effect, and the nature of the signal itself, the modulation, would need to be such as to drive some cellular-scale electrochemical process. It is not possible to predict what that would be for the signal in question, if indeed there are any. We appear to have got lucky with previous generations, but that tells us nothing about the next.
amelius 4y ago
I'm not talking about noise. I'm talking about a spike in the frequency spectrum. If you can build a protein that can tune to e.g. 3GHz (or whatever frequency a phone uses), thus behave differently at that frequency, then basically that proves that radio waves can theoretically alter the reactions in the molecular soup that is a cell. All I'm saying is that I'm not so sure that this can't be done.
- rndphs 4y ago
  I think though that any biological process using these sorts of energies on the molecular level will be swamped with noise and therefore wouldn't be a useful mechanism. 3GHz is like 0.00001eV. A process with Gibb's free energy change of 10ueV has an equilibrium constant of essentially 1 at room temperature, and so is almost completely reversible. The reason why we can make things interact with radio waves at all is essentially because electrical conductors provide coherent modes for low energy photons to couple to. Without conductors and their free electron cloud we would have a very hard time building anything to receive or transmit radio in any way that isn't thermal. It is true that there is some degree of conductivity in cells but without a non-thermal way of coupling between current and molecular processes I don't see how radio waves could affect cells in a non-thermal manner Edit: I guess nerves have a non-thermal coupling mechanism from low frequency currents to molecular mechanisms, so it must be possible. But the machinery for that has been highly evolved for that specific task, I'm not sure if it follows that such machinery would appear commonly in cell processes.
  - Gnarl 4y ago
    Are single-photon models even useful here? What about aggregate photon effects? The sheer amount of photons hitting you from a cell-tower is enormous. Perhaps an "optical tweezer" type effect could happen? And for the non-thermal effect discussion, have you considered voltage-gated ion-channels in cell-membranes?
    - nuvious 4y ago
      You're gish galloping. Rather than continue to propose arguments without evidence of actual risk, find a citation that has a salient hypothesis that's tested that shows risk. We aren't your Google-scholar and you're just promoting FUD by asking into the ether "but couldn't X cause Y". Me typing this message COULD cause a butterfly effect that leads to an earthquake. In any "does X cause Y" scenario you have two answer what the probability is that X causes Y and what's the impact of X does cause Y. In RFR exposure terms it's what is the probability that RF below ionizing levels cause damage to DNA to promote cancer. The vast majority of the research says no and theoretical mechanisms for harm of RF below ionizing levels has never been proven to anything close to a statistical significance or in ways that are reproducible. Even if you did you'd have to assume impact. The OP study is basically assuming there's some impact and studying the population broadly and observed none. Low probably, low impact, low or no risk. Please present evidence that presents a high risk argument that is backed by some research showing an increase of the probability and/or impact or rfr exposure to DNA damage. Until you do that, you're gish galloping. Please respond to our arguments (or consider if we're right) instead of declaring new ones with no references.
jlokier 4y ago
Last time I had an MRI scan, I had strong sensations throughout my body where exposed to the MRI's radio emissions. I rather enjoyed the sensation, it felt like a massage and I would have enjoyed it for longer. I was surprised, as they didn't mention this before the scan. After, I asked about it, and they told me most people don't feel anything, but some do like me, and for a few it's so painful they have to stop the scan. They told me it was my peripheral nervous system interacting with the radio emissions, not a physical (non-signal) effect as it felt like. From that conversation I learned there was about 10kW transmitted through my body during the scan. MRIs have been studied for dangerous effects, of course, and all the evidence shows them to be extremely safe... provided there is no metal in the body which can heat up or be displaced by the field, and not counting risks from the contrast agents which are sometimes injected, which some people are more susceptible to than others. I was never convinced by dismissive arguments that non-ionising radiation "can't" have any biological effect other than localised heating, or that the thermal background spectrum means infrared and below can't have an effect. (I know the physics pretty well; it's not lack of understanding.) But after those sensations caused directly by the emissions, I'd experienced a biological, non-thermal effect from radio in the microwave-or-below frequency range directly and clearly. That was really interesting. The body clearly does a lot of things based on countless subtle signalling pathways. Pretty much anything any pathway can sense could have an effect, even if it's not a conventional chemical reaction. One of the more interesting technological ideas around this is the use of high coherence terahertz signals that resonate with DNA molecular dynamics.
- rndphs 4y ago
  Oh yeah I don't doubt it. I think though that there is many orders of magnitude difference in the field strengths between cell phone radiation and MRI, and this makes all the difference. THz radiation is a different story too as it has about enough energy such that it could influence irreversible processes.

by rndphs 4y ago

ncmncm 4y ago

I.e., at random: thus not inducing any coherent electric current, so irrelevant to the discussion. The only other subjects that induce such confident statements of fact from the profoundly ignorant are economics and politics.

rndphs 4y ago
But the only electric current on the molecular level is coherent current...? Chemical reactions are not macroscale phenomena, and so it shouldn't really matter if the energy comes from a random distribution or not. Also please don't insinuate that I'm "profoundly ignorant", that certainly isn't relevant to the discussion.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Profound ignorance is insistence of certainty in the entire absence of knowledge of a subject. Microwaves absorbed in tissue induce electrical currents carried by ions in solution. Just about everything that happens in your body involves ions moving in solution, one way or another. Details matter.
  - rndphs 4y ago
    But the movement of ions in solution is almost completely dominated by thermal motion. Your signal doesn't matter if the signal to noise ratio is essentially zero.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      In other words, life is impossible? That will be surprising to those of us who, you know, exist.
      - rndphs 4y ago
        No, the molecular machinery of cells uses energy level differences that are far above the thermal energy level at body temperature, which allows them to actually make changes to things irreversibly. Enzymes are a great example of this. Try to use microwaves to move ions from one side of a container of salt solution to the other and then get back to me on the ability of microwaves to control ion movement. Hint: you basically can't without obscene levels of radiation. The thermal "pressure" due to the diffusion of ions is enormous. For a sense of scale, the thermal velocity of water molecules at room temperature is about 500m/s. The drift velocity(average movement of charge carriers, i.e. coherent current) of typical electric currents is on the order of 1mm/s.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        For microwaves to produce currents that could plausibly have an effect, there would need to be rectification and resonance, so that current could ratchet up. Unfortunately, both are known to occur in living tissue, as may be observed in people whose dental fillings enable them to pick up AM radio broadcasts. On top of rectification and resonance, the signal would need to be carried in a place where its current has a persistent effect, and the nature of the signal itself, the modulation, would need to be such as to drive some cellular-scale electrochemical process. It is not possible to predict what that would be for the signal in question, if indeed there are any. We appear to have got lucky with previous generations, but that tells us nothing about the next.

amelius 4y ago

I'm not talking about noise. I'm talking about a spike in the frequency spectrum. If you can build a protein that can tune to e.g. 3GHz (or whatever frequency a phone uses), thus behave differently at that frequency, then basically that proves that radio waves can theoretically alter the reactions in the molecular soup that is a cell. All I'm saying is that I'm not so sure that this can't be done.

rndphs 4y ago
I think though that any biological process using these sorts of energies on the molecular level will be swamped with noise and therefore wouldn't be a useful mechanism. 3GHz is like 0.00001eV. A process with Gibb's free energy change of 10ueV has an equilibrium constant of essentially 1 at room temperature, and so is almost completely reversible. The reason why we can make things interact with radio waves at all is essentially because electrical conductors provide coherent modes for low energy photons to couple to. Without conductors and their free electron cloud we would have a very hard time building anything to receive or transmit radio in any way that isn't thermal. It is true that there is some degree of conductivity in cells but without a non-thermal way of coupling between current and molecular processes I don't see how radio waves could affect cells in a non-thermal manner Edit: I guess nerves have a non-thermal coupling mechanism from low frequency currents to molecular mechanisms, so it must be possible. But the machinery for that has been highly evolved for that specific task, I'm not sure if it follows that such machinery would appear commonly in cell processes.
- Gnarl 4y ago
  Are single-photon models even useful here? What about aggregate photon effects? The sheer amount of photons hitting you from a cell-tower is enormous. Perhaps an "optical tweezer" type effect could happen? And for the non-thermal effect discussion, have you considered voltage-gated ion-channels in cell-membranes?
  - nuvious 4y ago
    You're gish galloping. Rather than continue to propose arguments without evidence of actual risk, find a citation that has a salient hypothesis that's tested that shows risk. We aren't your Google-scholar and you're just promoting FUD by asking into the ether "but couldn't X cause Y". Me typing this message COULD cause a butterfly effect that leads to an earthquake. In any "does X cause Y" scenario you have two answer what the probability is that X causes Y and what's the impact of X does cause Y. In RFR exposure terms it's what is the probability that RF below ionizing levels cause damage to DNA to promote cancer. The vast majority of the research says no and theoretical mechanisms for harm of RF below ionizing levels has never been proven to anything close to a statistical significance or in ways that are reproducible. Even if you did you'd have to assume impact. The OP study is basically assuming there's some impact and studying the population broadly and observed none. Low probably, low impact, low or no risk. Please present evidence that presents a high risk argument that is backed by some research showing an increase of the probability and/or impact or rfr exposure to DNA damage. Until you do that, you're gish galloping. Please respond to our arguments (or consider if we're right) instead of declaring new ones with no references.

jlokier 4y ago

Last time I had an MRI scan, I had strong sensations throughout my body where exposed to the MRI's radio emissions. I rather enjoyed the sensation, it felt like a massage and I would have enjoyed it for longer. I was surprised, as they didn't mention this before the scan. After, I asked about it, and they told me most people don't feel anything, but some do like me, and for a few it's so painful they have to stop the scan. They told me it was my peripheral nervous system interacting with the radio emissions, not a physical (non-signal) effect as it felt like. From that conversation I learned there was about 10kW transmitted through my body during the scan. MRIs have been studied for dangerous effects, of course, and all the evidence shows them to be extremely safe... provided there is no metal in the body which can heat up or be displaced by the field, and not counting risks from the contrast agents which are sometimes injected, which some people are more susceptible to than others. I was never convinced by dismissive arguments that non-ionising radiation "can't" have any biological effect other than localised heating, or that the thermal background spectrum means infrared and below can't have an effect. (I know the physics pretty well; it's not lack of understanding.) But after those sensations caused directly by the emissions, I'd experienced a biological, non-thermal effect from radio in the microwave-or-below frequency range directly and clearly. That was really interesting. The body clearly does a lot of things based on countless subtle signalling pathways. Pretty much anything any pathway can sense could have an effect, even if it's not a conventional chemical reaction. One of the more interesting technological ideas around this is the use of high coherence terahertz signals that resonate with DNA molecular dynamics.

rndphs 4y ago
Oh yeah I don't doubt it. I think though that there is many orders of magnitude difference in the field strengths between cell phone radiation and MRI, and this makes all the difference. THz radiation is a different story too as it has about enough energy such that it could influence irreversible processes.