Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Your Cell Phone Can Fry Your Brain?
[Thanks DD for pointing this video out]
I'm going to use the above youtube video in my proposed scientific critical thinking course. Watch that popcorn pop from being heated by the cell phone microwave radiation. This is, of course, a complete fabrication. You can prove that simply using your mind and thinking a bit critically.
First, the cell phones were only ringing.....do cell phones transmit microwave radiation when they ring?
Second, the microwave energy output of a cell phone is pretty low - maybe 0.1 - 1 watt at most.
Try this experiment. Put a few kernels of popcorn in your microwave oven and turn it on full blast. Let's say the average full size microwave puts out 1000 watts of microwave energy. How long does it take to pop the popcorn? More than 5 seconds I bet.
Third, the people in that video seem just a little too professional - not like a regular group of stumblebums trying something cool.
In any case, this whole cell phone microwave radiation can cook food thing was debunked a couple years ago by NYT's Paul Adams. He couldn't cook an egg using cell phones as he had been told that he could. Some Canadian skeptics also disproved this theory a couple years ago, complete with pictures.
Now this isn't to say that microwave energy is dangerous. The Raytheon Corp. has made a microwave energy transmitting weapon for crowd control. This to be used when the majority of Americans get fed up with their dysfunctional government and finally decide to revolt. It hasn't been mounted on black helicopters yet, but give them time. The LA County Sheriff can't wait to use this weapon.
But back to my point. It's important to ask questions, experiment and gather evidence prior to coming to a conclusion.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I bet that Ted Kennedy may have wished he use his cell phone a lot less. 20 years just doesn't seem to be enough time to prove that cell phones are as harmless as smoking was 50 years ago.
Lot's of studies already published about the possible effects of cell phone usage on cancer rates.
Schuz et al. 2006, Journ. of NCI; no evidence of increase in cancer
Lonn et al. 2005, Am J Epidem.; no evidence to support the hypothesis
Schoemaker et al. 2005, Brit. J. Cancer; no substantial risk
More recently this review was published "Cellular phone use and brain tumor: a meta-analysis by Kan et al. 2008 in J. Neurooncology. They concluded : No increased risk was observed in analog or digital cellular phone users. CONCLUSIONS: We found no overall increased risk of brain tumors among cellular phone users. The potential elevated risk of brain tumors after long-term cellular phone use awaits confirmation by future studies.
So yeah, let's wait an see. No skin off my nose. I've never smoked and I don't own a cell phone. People can leave me a message and I'll get right back to them.
Post a Comment