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> “One potential solution is to bury the cables in the seafloor. This is already done for many marine renewable developments but can be expensive and difficult
by tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
> “One potential solution is to bury the cables in the seafloor. This is already done for many marine renewable developments but can be expensive and difficult to maintain. It will be important to ensure its continued inclusion in the consenting process for future projects.
That's a great way to make renewable projects more expensive and thus less likely to happen, the effects of which may be worse (even for those crabs) than a couple cables in specific locations.
OTOH, it shows that electromagnetic fields, even static (DC) ones, can have significant biological impacts. Was this already known or is that a new discovery that could have impact beyond protecting crabs?
- ncmncm 5y agoThere is a book, "The Body Electric", by Robert Becker, about his investigations of electromagnetic effects on, mostly, salamanders. During the time he worked, and for long after, such investigation was effectively forbidden in the US, on threat of losing grants and invitation to present at conferences. Becker had a free pass based on a relationship with the US Veterans Administration, which hoped he would be able to find a way to regenerate severed limbs, a topic of some interest. The mode of action he found was orchestration of development and growth by way of sub-nanosecond electric currents. He was able to control healing and regeneration -- turn it off and on -- by applying these small currents in different directions. AC fields, from 60Hz up into microwaves, can be persuaded to induce such currents by modulation. So, with no or with one modulation, exposure may have no effect, but with another you get a pronounced effect. You cannot generalize from one exposure to another, one modulation to another. The effect observed in this study might easily not be replicated in another, according to some apparently trivial variation in their setup.
- ncmncm 5y ago*"sub-nanoampere electric currents"
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 5y ago>OTOH, it shows that electromagnetic fields, even static (DC) ones, can have significant biological impacts. Was this already known or is that a new discovery that could have impact beyond protecting crabs? There have been concerns about high voltage power lines for as long as I can remember. There's been NIMBY activism regarding them for awhile. So I guess it depends on what you mean by "a new discovery". The problem is that the people complaining about the EMFs from power lines get lumped together with people saying cell phones are mutating human DNA.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoI know that people have been complaining, I'm wondering if there is any scientific backing for those complaints.
- abledon 5y agovery little right now, this study is a pebble needed in the mountain of evidence required. Maybe in 2055 our scientific tools will be more advanced/sensitive to measure this stuff.
- daniel-cussen 5y agoThat tech is here. Protein folding is sensitive to much lower than ionizing frequencies.
- linux2647 5y agoSource?
- ramesh31 5y agoInterested as well
- capitainenemo 5y agoThis came up several times on HN and I've been curious about it ever since, esp the opinion of researchers. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21457072 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21457072 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Blank+M&cauthor_id=21457072 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Blank+M&cauthor_id=214... https://www.physiology.columbia.edu/MartinBlank.html https://www.physiology.columbia.edu/MartinBlank.html This professor, now retired, did a number of papers on this theory claiming to find evidence of sensitivity.
- cr1895 5y agoI'm a bit puzzled by the methodology. I didn't notice any mention in the paper if the exposed EMF was meant to be similar to a surface-laid cable, or one that is buried. In any case, it is certainly the case that subsea power cables for offshore wind farms are buried (up to meters deep) or otherwise overlaid by rock or other materials to protect them from damage, scour, anchor strikes, etc.
- ramesh31 5y agoI'm not sure how they could possibly control against confounding chemical explanations, either. Surely high voltage lines warm the nearby water, which undoubtedly leads to chemical changes that could affect small larvae.
- ncmncm 5y agoThey must have had a control tank with the wire in, but no current in it. Of course aquarium heaters are a familiar feature everywhere, undoubtedly there too, with temperature held constant.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoThe control for heating would have to be a wire with a much higher resistance and thus smaller current but same heat dissipation.