Comment by mangeletti | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mangeletti | Hacker News Reader

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Conjecture:

There is no such thing as "non-ionizing" radiation. There is just a continuum that ranges from "barely a chance for this to ionize a molecule" to "this will ionize something in the first nanometer". I mean, what's the point of understanding EMR as a continuum of wavelength, if we're going to create arbitrary distinctions therein and presume to know everything about those distinctions.

Another way to think about this is with an analogy: "non-lethal weapons"... but then see https://mic.com/articles/123410/nonlethal-weapons-are-much-m.... It would seem smarter to start thinking about things as "less" and "more" of something, rather than "non".

If you find some wavelength in the middle that seems to be safe, perhaps it is safe in the near term, but when put in terms of "less ionizing than we can notice" it doesn't sound like something I want to hold next to my brain for the next 15 years.

Also note, it's already known that Bluetooth and WiFi cause the blood brain barrier to become 10-100x more biologically leaky[1], letting more chemicals into your brain.

Edit: apparently, this Bluetooth / WiFi point is moot.

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8012056

Also note, it's already known that Bluetooth and WiFi cause the blood brain barrier to become 10-100x more biologically leaky[1], letting more chemicals into your brain.

No, it is not.

Your source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8012056

No similar effect found at 1439 Mhz: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16142770

Replication of experiment at 915 Mhz sees no effect on blood brain barrier: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19580497

Do you have any other evidence? So far you are shooting blanks.

It's been a while since I took chemistry and physics so I could be wrong, but I think you may be incorrect due to quantum effects. Specifically, the quantum in quantum mechanics refers to various phenomena which are quantized, a very common example of which is an electron moving to a different energy level. It's entirely discrete what energy levels an electron may orbit an atomic nucleus at, it's not a continuum, and for an electron to receive enough energy to be free of the nucleus (causing the atom to become an ion) requires some minimum energy level. Energy is directly proportional to wavelength in the case of em radiation, so there in fact is some minimum energy required for something to be "ionizing".

It is possible that other mechanisms cause cancer, but your conjecture is almost certainly false. Someone who does this for a living please let me know if there's clarification needed.

What about wave interference[1]?

1. http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/waves/Lesson-3/Interfe...

You are somewhat correct. In principle the system is quantized but due to the sheer number of degrees of freedom (or quantum states) the spectra may still appear continuous.

Take for example a single water molecule in vacuum: If you calculate the QM vibrational (motion of the nuclei) and electronic frequencies you would conclude that there is no way that microwave radiation can excite a water molecule. This is because the nuclei interact with three discrete (quantized) frequencies in the infrared (IR light), whereas the electronic degrees of freedom only interact with much higher energy photons (UV and above).

However, if you now move into the bulk, you will notice that there are is also an interaction energy between the water molecules which causes rapid changes in the water conformation at room temperature. From the quantum mechanical perspective, you now get an explosion of possible states including states which excite the hydrogen bond network between the water molecules. You can now induce translation and rotation of water with respect to each other. This is why water absorbs across a large spectrum of frequencies including radiation in the microwave region.

For DNA, the situation is similar. You will also find a continuous broadening of states. BUT how well you absorb energy at a given frequency still varies. Cell phone bands do not carry enough energy to break electronic bonds directly (unlike UV light). Instead, you can only induce thermal motions of the nuclei (heat). Luckily, our DNA transfers excess heat very rapidly (~picoseconds) to its environment, so no danger of local heating to the point of bond breaking if you don't climb up a massive cell phone tower.

In the end, its very unlikely that cell phone radiation alters chemical bonds in our DNA. However, beware of the sun while talking on the phone! I would guess that outdoor usage of cell phone significantly increases the dangers of cell phone usage. ;-)

If a photon doesn't have enough energy to knock an electron out of it's orbital, then it won't. This is not a probabilistic thing.

Do you have a source for the blood-brain barrier thing?

See update (added footnote).

It is a probabilistic thing. If your photon arrives at the same time as another photon, then you can have two-photon absorption (which wouldn't have occurred without your photon). Ditto if your photon arrives at the same time as a thermal vibration or any other carrier of energy. This is why semiconductors can still occasionally absorb photons with energy below their bandgap. Anything in a thermal environment has some chance of being excited, and adding extra radiation will only increase those chances.

Furthermore, if we want to get really technical and into even lower probabilities, photons don't have single well defined energies. Wavelengths are not singularly defined for waves that don't extend to infinity. Therefore, even radiation that is emitted around, say, 500 nm, still has a small of chance of being absorbed by a 499 nm transition. Obviously these probabilities get tiny as the difference gets large, but they never drop to 0, technically.

I'm not saying any of this is medically relevant, but practically everything that is quantum mechanical is probabilistic.

(I have a PhD in physics, focusing on experimental quantum mechanics)

It's exhilarating to have a long-held belief broken. Thank you!

Two-photon absorption becomes an important effect at high intensities (if I understand the wikipedia article). How do "high intensities" compare to the intensity of radiation from a phone?

WiFi and Bluetooth do not operate in the 900 MHz band.

> Bluetooth and WiFi cause the blood brain barrier to become 10-100x more biologically leaky, letting more chemicals into your brain.

Can you recommend a good source on this? It seems like 10-100x more "leaky" BBB would have some pretty serious consequences.

See update (added footnote).

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