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Comment by jacurtis | Hacker News Reader

There is a video of it floating around for the morbidly curious. I won't link it here. It is very NSFL. I was accidently shown it while scrolling instagram and wish I hadn't seen it.

He is able to talk, you can make out his words, but he is clearly choking or being strangled. He was fully sucked into the machine. There was a very strong guy trying with everything to pull him out. He made some pretty sad and harrowing words when he realized he wasn't going to make it. Again, the video is out there if you really want to see it. I do NOT recommend it though.

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Here's a well known and SFW training video about MRI magnets. It'll put the problem into perspective without needing eye-bleach.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=kLjxhuybFWo

That seems to be very strong. What's the effect of this type of magnetic field on the iron in our blood?

Apparently, oxygenated hemoglobin and blood plasma are diamagnetic, while deoxygenated hemoglobin is paramagnetic. Meaning, magnetic properties are determined by the molecules, not its elements. I assume that whatever attraction or repulsion caused by even the MRI magnets are weak compared to the forces involved in Brownian motion. So don't expect anything substantial.

That's not so surprising. Iron isn't magnetic in all its oxidation states.

Why were you downvoted? I was going to read more on it later. So far, I know that Iron III oxide is magnetic. I don't know anything about the other oxides, ions in other oxidation states or iron in other compounds. I wish the people explained the reason why they downvoted.

This reminds me of something I've always thought that Toph – spoiler about Avatar: The Last Airbender – should also be able to blood bend since she created metal bending and the blood is full of iron.

There is a scene in one of the X-men movies where Magneto escapes a completely non-metallic prison by extracting iron from a guard's body. I initially thought that Raven had injected him the previous day with something to increase his iron content. But realized later that she had injected metallic iron as a suspension.

That aside, you don't need ferromagnetic substances for it be manipulated by magnetic fields. Anything conducting can be moved around by fluctuating magnetic fields. Even non-conducting paramagnetic or diamagnetic substance will eventually respond to very high strength magnetic fields - just not at the 'feeble' strengths of an MRI machine's superconducting magnets. Here is something I collected previously on the same fun topic: https://phanpy.social/#/fosstodon.org/s/111504060685437481?v...

FYI: MRI magnetic fields are also incredibly predictable/uniform. Very interesting tech, dumping a 100-200 watts of RF energy into somebody, and listening to the results. Then somehow turning that into a 3d spacial image. Truly makes CT scanning look like easy mode.

The video is a fake.

Or real, but a different situation? It feels kinda hard to do a fake MRI setup like that?

I've seen a lot of gruesome stuff so I'm not bothered by that, but curious how someone got a camera, presumably with ferrous parts, in there without it also getting pulled into the magnet.

Phones now days don't have a lot of ferrous stuff in them they are pretty much all battery, copper, silicon, glass, plastic and maybe aluminum. Your keys probably have more steel on them than your phone.

People have gone in MRIs with phones with no adverse effects, except maybe damaged speakers. It's more likely that the MRI is going to damage the electronics than it will physically rip it off you.

It's all about the amount of ferrous material involved. It can take your keys of your pocket, but I doubt you can't peel them of it.

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