School experiment finds cress won’t germinate near router (Danish)
dr.dk
dr.dk
The mantra that we always hear is that if the radiation isn't ionizing it's harmless. While this mechanism for worrying about non-ionizing radiation doesn't directly cause harm, it's not quite 'harmless' either.
This mechanism would render quite a few results not surprising. Biologically, there are many stages where not having DNA error correction could be more catastrophic than usual. It makes sense that seed germination is one of these; temporarily decreased sperm count in human males would be another.
The experiment to check this hypothesis is pretty obvious, and I'll probably be doing it sometime in the next few years, especially if I can get my nonprofit research org. up and running.
Edit: Footnote [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Barton
They do crowdfunding for science stuff like this.
It would be a rather bad thing if this were the case, though what I'd want to know is: what's the required dose? Radiation diminishes with the square of the distance, so do you have to be right next to the emitter? Or will just having WiFi within, say, 10ft do it?
That being said, there is a solution: use lower frequencies. The frequencies used by WiFi are very high largely because all the lower frequencies are being squatted on. In particular, many devices uses the 2.4ghz band because this is the wide-open "water absorption band" that is only lightly regulated by the FCC. This band also turns out to be the band most likely to be biologically active, as it resonates with the hydrogen bonds in water.
At the point where the wavelength of the EM radiation is small enough to get detected by DNA-scale antennas, it's probably already classified as ionizing radiation.
Or we could explain how a bunch of scientists are crackpots for even thinking such a thing.
Also, that education is not news to post here in the first place. This is not a website where children are learning about science. There are tons of "discoveries" made as school experiments: I don't expect to see them on the front page of Hacker News (unless, like, there is some kind of serious interest in the larger science community). ;P
On a website this size such assumptions are almost invariably false.
Over the weekend, I rearranged the furniture in my computer room in my home, and had just settled in to this new layout. Everything was working fine: my computer and my internet connection were all good to go. I booted up Counter-strike to play some rounds. However, the in-game server browser failed to find any servers. I closed the game and checked my internet connection: everything was fine. Maybe the master server was down? I went to bed.
The next day, I tried it again, and the same thing happened. No one else reported an issue. I tried playing TF2, and the same thing happened: all online functionality was nonexistent. It seemed like it must be a router configuration issue, but I hadn't messed with that in a while, and my games all worked fine last week.
I was able to play the same games on other computers without any issue. But as soon as I loaded up a game on my primary computer, I noticed the internet would go out for every system in my room. Maybe it was something with Source engine games? I tried a completely different game (some 2D indie puzzle game), and the same thing happened. Every game! The internet would go out, and turn back on as soon as I closed the game. It wasn't Steam either: non-Steam games did the same.
And it ONLY happened with games. Almost every other application worked fine. I was about to reformat, but I first tried booting into a separate OS on my computer and the SAME THING happened.
Finally, I noticed it failed with Unity and also with Photoshop. These programs all had one thing in common: they were GPU accelerated. How did that affect anything? Well, it only started happening after I rearranged my furniture. I had moved my router to sit on top of my computer. I moved it away by 1 foot, and then everything worked fine. It turns out, my laptop has Nvidia Optimus, which toggles between the discrete GPU and integrated graphics chip. When I launched a GPU accelerated program, my GPU would kick in, and I guess its operation emitted some electromagnetic field that interfered with my router.
Most new fans use brushless DC motors which have much less EM noise than most older brushed ones (also tend to be quieter). If the motor of the fan is brushed that would explain another source of EM interference.
I am sure if I made games the last thing I'd want to do is play them in my spare time.
The router is cheap though.
At the end of the year, I gave back the loft. The next time I turned on my monitor, the screen was messed up. Distorted with purple waves. I stared at my monitor for a few moments, baffled.
Then I hit the degauss button, and everything was fine. My monitor had been normalized to the presence of a metal frame around it, distorting the magnetic field.
I'd say the metal frame had ferrous metal in it which is magnetic your monitor was affected by it, I can't see if fixing it. Once removed the source caused your monitor to require degaussing because a large source of nearby magnetism was removed.
As to why it wasn't affected right away when it was new my guess is a lot of monitors have built-in degaussing each time it is powered on, so gradually the metal nearby was affected by the degausing coil in the CRT monitor. When metal bed frame was removed the loss of such a large piece of nearby magnetism was too much for the normal start-up automatic degaussing to handle.
On a serious note; how different can this be from the research for mobile phone interfering with nature??
I think mainstream media (reaching billions) should only publicize replicated scientific experiments. HN (reaching tens to hundreds of thousands) is not exactly mainstream though, at least not yet.
EX: Faster-than-light neutrino anomaly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anom...
PS: And yes having a normal router having significant effects on plant life though EM radiation is about as likely as neutrino's going faster than light. Heat, contamination, or bad seeds etc is a far more likely culprit.
Your only judgment about likelihood of this is based on your limited mechanistic explanation, biased by the scientific dogma that nonionizing radiation is harmless. If you look above, I posit a quite reasonable (and testable!) mechanism for this to occur.
Why such attention? Well in most cases the radiation needs to go through your freaking leg which if your cells are absorbing this em radiation should act as significant shielding for some vary weak radiation.
Compare this to this plant experiment which is blatantly obvious.
PS: And just for fun, compare with the unharmed levitating frogs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E
There is a very easy solution here. Reproduce it and control all the variables. I cannot fathom why anyone would take issue with this request.
But the post I responded to did not request a repeat, it totally dismissed it by saying it was "almost guaranteed" that other factors contribute, and that's what I take issue with.
To analyze a completely different example, to proclaim that a new elementary particle has been discovered, the community ask for a 5-sigma (i.e. if they are only measuring noise, the probability that the noise generate a similar signal is only 1/2000000.) The problem is that there are many many many running experiments and a 1-sigma and 2-sigma "discoveries of particles" are usual, but most of the just disappear when more data is collected. And that is done by experts, so the probability of a mistake or error in the design is smaller, but not 0 (remember to check the wires.)
The problem to give too much importance to a not reproduced, not peer review result is that many times it's interesting and feed the people's fears. Probably someone will propose to ban the wifi near the botanical garden and kindergarten because everybody knows that they kill seeds!
It could be good to discuss about these preliminary results, but with a very big warning signal that sais "STILL UNCONFIRMED". The problem is that in most of the press releasses and discussions the warning is just dropped.
As a high school junior, I conclusively proved the strength of Earth's gravity field was ~6.1m/s^2, give or take .2m/s^2. Or at least, if you're willing to take this story and the experiments of high school students at face value, I conclusively proved it.
This isn't a science story. It's a human interest story with delusions of being a science story.
The RF shielded group evidenced more vigorous growth,
producing 74% more total leader length and 60% more leaf
area than the mock-shielded group, though the number of
leaves produced by both groups was nearly the same.
Leaves on active leaders in the shielded group were
substantially free of leaf tissue lesions (Figure 7), but
unshielded and mock-shielded leaves were all affected to
some extent by leaf tissue necrosis (Figure 8)
Just like in the electronics-on-airplanes issue, it concerns and wonders me that there isn't more research being done in such basic areas.
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Andre_sprog/English/2013/05/17/1309...
Granted the energies involved are not comparable, but a router is active much of the time. Also remember you deal with inverse square law here, the effect likely fades out quickly with distance.
The interesting part was that I didn't use oil or something else, but only minerals available in a cheap chemistry-kit. My chemistry teacher was excited to find that out, showed it to my class, but didn't understand how it worked.
(No reason to get your panties in a bunch before the results can be reproduced and a cause has been isolated)
Dr. Adair was indisputably an innovator in studying microwave radiation, work she began in the mid-1970s while a fellow at the John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven. First with squirrel monkeys and then with human volunteers, she placed subjects in a chamber into which she released relatively high levels of microwaves for about 45 minutes, followed by a cool-down period. She focused on what impact the heat generated by microwaves might have — and she said she never found much more than perspiration. She said the monkeys and the people mostly enjoyed the experience.
“Particularly if the environment is cool, they love it when the field comes on,” she told The Times. She said: “It is very easy to sense it and it feels good. If they are in a warm environment, and the field is strong they may start to sweat and they may feel quite uncomfortable. They always have an option of getting out of the chamber at any time, saying, ‘I’ve had enough.’ ”
If you're male and put it in your lap, then this would reduce your sperm-count temporarily, because of the heat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen_quality
I don't know if the signal can affect your DNA, your cells or anything else in any way or not. This or the opposite has to be shown in studies. I think the study with cress is just the beginning.
Though, before you freak out that you are cooking your family, consider that a microwave oven outputs 600-1200 watts, while a WiFi antenna is typically 0.5-1 watt.
It's also one reason why 2.4GHz systems can have problems outdoors.
During rainstorms, the range drops to nothing as the water grabs all the energy.
Also any foliage (leaves w/ moisture inside) blocks the signals more than at other frequencies.
From Wikipedia: "Sometimes, microwave heating is explained as a resonance of water molecules, but this is incorrect; such resonances occur only at above 1 terahertz (THz)."
That doesn't mean it isn't true. I would not be especially surprised if 2.4GHz interacted in some special way with plant cells.