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Would you mind explaining for those of us who are less knowledgeable about physics why you don't believe that there is no known physical mechanism for the suppo

by ekiru 17y ago

Would you mind explaining for those of us who are less knowledgeable about physics why you don't believe that there is no known physical mechanism for the supposed phenomena?

carbocation 17y ago
(Ignoring the Boltzmann distribution for a moment...) There are a couple of key things to keep in mind: 1) A photon's energy is proportional to its frequency. 2) It takes a specific amount of energy to induce a potentially carcinogenic effect. For the rest of this post, I will assume that 1 keV is required to break a DNA backbone bond in one strand. Now, let's say you put your cell phone to your ear and start firing off ~uncountable photons, each of which are in the GHz range. Billions upon billions of these photons will enter your brain. Imagine - if they were all energetic enough to be ionizing, then you would be experiencing strand breaks all the time while talking on your phone! But in fact, recall our (arbitrary) cutoff of 1 keV required to break a strand. Well, a 1.7 GHz phone is only emitting photons with an energy of around 7 micro eV. Such photons would be billions (10^9) of times too weak to cause a strand break. Recall also that photonic energy is generally not additive. Think about pebbles being thrown at you. A 1-ounce pebble hitting you in the chest doesn't hurt. 160 1-ounce pebbles hitting you in the chest over the course of a few seconds might be annoying, but it's nothing like having a 10-pound rock thrown at your chest. Likewise, trillions of low-energy particles bombarding your DNA doesn't phase it at all. Similarly, whereas one photon with 1 keV (again, that number is for sake of argument) might break your DNA, billions of photons with 0.1 keV wouldn't do a thing. This is why it is an odd proposition that low-energy, non-ionizing cell phone radiation should cause cancer. As an aside, the pebble throwing analogy leads to one other possibility: imagine that all 160 pebbles hit your chest at precisely the same moment (to an accuracy of nanoseconds) at nearly exactly the same place. It would certainly feel as if you had been struck by a 10 pound rock. Likewise, if two photons hit the precise same place at precisely the same time, they will impart equivalent energy of one photon with double their frequency. This is rare, and at any rate the energy of one cell phone photon is so low that two together is still effectively nothing, as well.

by ekiru 17y ago

Would you mind explaining for those of us who are less knowledgeable about physics why you don't believe that there is no known physical mechanism for the supposed phenomena?

carbocation 17y ago

(Ignoring the Boltzmann distribution for a moment...) There are a couple of key things to keep in mind: 1) A photon's energy is proportional to its frequency. 2) It takes a specific amount of energy to induce a potentially carcinogenic effect. For the rest of this post, I will assume that 1 keV is required to break a DNA backbone bond in one strand. Now, let's say you put your cell phone to your ear and start firing off ~uncountable photons, each of which are in the GHz range. Billions upon billions of these photons will enter your brain. Imagine - if they were all energetic enough to be ionizing, then you would be experiencing strand breaks all the time while talking on your phone! But in fact, recall our (arbitrary) cutoff of 1 keV required to break a strand. Well, a 1.7 GHz phone is only emitting photons with an energy of around 7 micro eV. Such photons would be billions (10^9) of times too weak to cause a strand break. Recall also that photonic energy is generally not additive. Think about pebbles being thrown at you. A 1-ounce pebble hitting you in the chest doesn't hurt. 160 1-ounce pebbles hitting you in the chest over the course of a few seconds might be annoying, but it's nothing like having a 10-pound rock thrown at your chest. Likewise, trillions of low-energy particles bombarding your DNA doesn't phase it at all. Similarly, whereas one photon with 1 keV (again, that number is for sake of argument) might break your DNA, billions of photons with 0.1 keV wouldn't do a thing. This is why it is an odd proposition that low-energy, non-ionizing cell phone radiation should cause cancer. As an aside, the pebble throwing analogy leads to one other possibility: imagine that all 160 pebbles hit your chest at precisely the same moment (to an accuracy of nanoseconds) at nearly exactly the same place. It would certainly feel as if you had been struck by a 10 pound rock. Likewise, if two photons hit the precise same place at precisely the same time, they will impart equivalent energy of one photon with double their frequency. This is rare, and at any rate the energy of one cell phone photon is so low that two together is still effectively nothing, as well.