Leading scientists determine the Sun puts out dangerous levels of radiation.

The sun puts out radiation across the entire spectrum from radio waves to microwaves to infrared to visible light to ultraviolet to x rays to gamma rays at rates far exceeding a person's cell phone.


If you would like to help put a stop to dangerous solar radiation please go here to sign our petition to ban the sun:

http://www.petitiononline.com/ab343f/petition.html

It turns out that the average intensity of the sun in terms of visible light alone is approximately 1 kilowatt per square meter at the equator at local noon on a clear day.

By comparison the peak power of a cell phone is a measely 300 milliWatts when transmitting at its peak power (which it rarely does).


Cell phones by comparison to the dangerous Sun only transmit in the 800-900 MHz range or 1.8 to 1.9 GHz range which poses an orders of magnitude lower risk of ionization effect than even ordinary sunlight.

The typical glass tube monitor (TV or computer monitor) by comparison actually generates a low level of X-ray radiation which is why these monitors are so heavy - they have lead shielding to protect you from them.

The typical microwave oven operates at between 800 to 1500 Watts of power and even if if leaks only 0.1% of its rated power will leak between 800 mW to 1.5 Watts of power.

Often forgotten are the wireless router and the cordlesss home phone which operate at comparable power levels to cell phones but at higher frequencies (2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz).

It is utterly mysterious how the CELL PHONE is repeatedly singled out for repeated junk science attacks which have no basis in reality.

:argh:

Doug D.
Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering,
Georgia Institute of Technology

Unless mom made dinner.

And make sure Mom isn't holding a butcher knife.

:rofl:

Unless we do it at night.

Any harmful radiation emitted from the sun is nullified by healing rays given off by the moon.

But even then, there's the werewolf danger.

of dihydrogen monoxide kills more people every year than auto accidents, cancer, war, and suicide combined.

what a crazy world

Never heard of Ray-Ban?

It's a pity that science is scorned in favor of faith even here in the supposedly reality based community.

is that allowed?

Or maybe its the scientific method that I have faith in...
but I'm watching my methodology here and its not doing anything. Its just sitting there.
Maybe its scientists that I have faith in!!
Wait...no...I know some scientists, and I'm sure not making a broad statement like that.
Now engineers is a different story...
Maybe it is technology that I have faith in.
Now I am confused.

or rather, dispersion?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that scientists don't usually petition anything unless they're getting paid to do it.

I don't disagree with any of the facts, just the absence of mitigating circumstance. For instance, I don't normally put the microwave up to my ear or carry it around while on in my front pocket next to my gonads.

I understand that there are some pretty basic physics calculations that basically mean that a single cell phone transmitting in the 800 mW (corrected sp) power level isn't as crazy as 1000 cell phones doing that and also that if it those physics are wrong we probably only need single cell phone tower for anywhere on the planet.

This OP is a tactic, and is itself junk science, moreover the flavor of "common sense" junk science that we see underwriting creationism; pay no attention to the speed of light in a vacuum and everything else will make perfect sense.

Really. Science takes into a account a lot more than important sounding numbers, by the way. Observations, correlation is not causation, but if it's repeatable, is indeed correlation, that's a lot more important than blathering about microwave ovens.

This OP was written to ridicule people who don't understand anything about science or engineering who go around pretending they do. Correlation is NOT causation and IS JUNK SCIENCE. If you can't establish CAUSATION, you are very likely just committing a post hoc ergo propter hoc error courtesy of statistics.

FYI: mW means milli Watts - it is a power measurement. NO cell phones transmit at 800 mW levels.

If you capitalize the M it means Mega NOT milli and the W should be capitalized because it is someone's name.

800 MHz means the FREQUENCY of the RF radiation in question, NOT its power level. In THIS case the M SHOULD be capitalized because because the frequency is INDEED 800 Mega Hertz and NOT 800 milli Hertz. By the way, Hertz is ALSO someone's name and should be capitalized as well.

Once you learn the difference between frequency and power level and the basics of the SI (metric) system come back and we'll talk.

That's why I unrecced your ass.

Loathsome, mocking bullshit not welcome in my book.

:shrug:

:shrug:

See, "liars" requires proving intent.

I said that an article that goes out of its way to promote anti-science might have an ulterior motive, but even that's not an accusation of "lying", which is frankly childish and disruptive.

fools? Who uses that word? Grannies? Imperious queens in wonderland?

Good grief.

The article in the OP of that other thread uses the old "some folks say cell phones cause brain cancer." It doesn't mention those people are wrong and have been debunked.

So it's a half-truth. And a half truth is a full lie.

"fools? Who uses that word? Grannies? Imperious queens in wonderland?"

Would you prefer something more aggressive to apply to these people? Woo woos? Shitheads? Shit-for-brains? Tards?

I thought we were spewing at each other.

Sorry. And as posted below, I never clicked the link and therefore didn't connect this to parody and mockery. And my dudgeon was/is in orbit from that nasty-gram higher up.

I imagine most people think they have absolute knowledge of "who has it coming." I'm neither clever enough nor young enough to pull that particular bit of fiction off.

till your unicorn gets gored. :3

why all the nastiness, I have no idea. children.

:rofl:

let's see. Within my company I have 18 Masters/PhD level employees (two with double PhDs) with various disciplines from statistics and math to economics and risk management, that are direct reports to me. You?

Have fun with the pretty tin foil. You can't even get your web page to work. Lesson #2: not everything that's shiny should be licked; that's how you ended up that way.

and what web page? I just googled up "ban the sun" - not my page.

Reading is fundamental - go disrupt elsewhere.

Move along dippity doo.

Still waiting to hear what the degree is in...

You can move along friend, this is my OP and my verbal SAT was 660 and my math was 750 so you know where you can file the "RIF" comment pal.

jesus guy. Many friends? edited to add 98th percentile in every fucking thing I've ever done. At least I am consistent.

Unless you're a rara Avis. ;-)

to make a point that could have been shared or used to modulate mine, imbecile.

could you have made your point with a little less vitriole?

Oh well, your pathology speaks for itself. Once you learn the basics of some manners feel free to talk to me again.

Anyway, sounds like I've been school marmed by a school marm, sorry about the capilatization. I had NO IDEA it would cause you to have a schizoeffective break.

I never opened the petition link; links in quoted text are tiresome. My bad.

:P and thanks for making me read it again, BUT

the idiot who spewed at me really can go suck it. You were able to point it out without nastiness, and thank you for that.

And sadly, I have seen worse things that people right here got behind, or I wouldn't have jumped in as half baked as I did. :blush:

Jus' asking......

Can't we vote to not orbit closer part of the year?

I keep a fog of imperturbium sulfate around me after onions, which sunlight and other forms of solar radiation are unable to penetrate.

Now, we need to get to work on banning dihydrogen monoxide.

This will help protect them from solar radiation.

Left out of the post were things like the inverse square law, the fact that direct exposure to sunlight does cause cancer and CRT TV's are heavy because they are huge pieces of glass(lead accounts for about 5 lbs in large tubes). I'm not sure the science is really in on this subject yet; so why all the demonization?

Jay

I can't figure out why the cell phone woos think the inverse-square law has anything to do with anything.

Even holding a cell phone up to an ear doesn't cause any heating of tissue.

Last time I checked, cell phones didn't omit x-rays. Microwave ovens are Faraday cages that keep the microwave energy energy in the cooking area. Try removing the mesh encased in the microwave door and see what happens when you use it. The inverse square law applies only in the fact that when you use a wireless router you generally don't have it up against your head and neck.

Jay

And if you think your microwave leaks nothing at all then you are fooling yourself. You don't normally hold your wireless router to your ear but you certainly hold your portable wireless home phone to your ear and guess what it operates at higher frequencies and comparable power levels to your cell phone.

I didn't say microwaves don't leak and I don't hold my cordless phone up to my ear because I don't have a land line. Also, I believe that the recently released study, that has everyone up in arms, included cordless as well as cell phone use.

Jay

Yeah, that's one of the reasons why microwave ovens heat things up and cell phones don't.

"The inverse square law applies only in the fact that when you use a wireless router you generally don't have it up against your head and neck."

And?

and they work by thermally exciting (not ionizing) water molecules through magnetic resonance.


If a cell phone operated at 1200 Watts it too would heat food.

Since it operates at 0.3 Watts maximum it simply cannot generate any significant heat faster than it would be disippated.

For radiation to cause cancer it has to be IONIZING radiation that can cause damage to DNA. Microwaves just don't have the necessary energy. Some people need to learn about Max Planck and learn why Albert Einstein actually won his Nobel Prize, it was NOT for E=mc2 it was for his study of the photoelectric effect.

I thought I was silly for taking the article literally - dumber things have been posted here. But the fact that you're using this to be a shit to your fellow DU'ers is pathetic, and disruptive, oh Google Genius (tm). SOME PEOPLE should use google more.

Maybe if you were for real your so called "dem" web page would actually work, if it was real.

Just out riding fences looking for bloated trolls.

What the heck are you talking about?

I keep a website around these days merely as a convenient place to store pics in case I want to link to them on DU. I don't really care what's on my web page right now.

Look, you swung in from the rafters being a complete dick head to your fellow DU'ers. I know you don't care who you stomp on, and it's evident, but simply pointing out that it was a spoof would certainly have been more friendly, and in the spirit of DU.

I'll be big and apologize for letting you get under my skin, realizing I've had those days here myself. This was stupid, from the get go up top.

I do have a company to run - and my credentials are not in question, just my ability to multi-task well. For the record, I started in biochemistry at 14, finished pre med at 17, and another 8 years of education after that, if it matters at all.

Peace for now.

Turnabout is fair play? :*

Jay

good thing we all have ddickitydoo to think for us.

:rofl:

maybe we should get a room.

I mean, there's nothing nice about people spreading bad information here. It brings down the credibility of the whole site when people take anti-vaxers and moon landing denialists seriously.

As far as anti-science goes, it isn't as damaging as global warming denialism, but that isn't saying much.

Would you let it go if someone posted OPs all the time about how "This is a Christian nation according to the Constitution" or "The Laffer Curve, not such a bad idea" and so forth?

is that I read the post wrong. I've admitted to that, abashedly, but he went on a direct warpath intersecting me instead of the topic.

That made it not informative, but personal, for whatever reasons. Maybe he doesn't like my tagline, not that I care.

Albert Einstein did not win a Nobel prize for either E = mc² or E = MC2

:rofl:

Jay

Even while holding a cell phone up to your ear, you're receiving a trivial amount of radio waves.

So the inverse square law is irrelevant to the discussion.

your head or keep in your pocket with a device in another room then the inverse square law is most certainly relevant. Let's say you have a cell phone and a wireless router. Both emit 1W of power at 1ft. The cell phone is 1ft away from a detector and the router is 25ft away from the same detector. The energy reaching the detector from the cell phone is 1W. The energy reaching the detector from the router is .04W ...same goes for microwave oven leakage and solar radiation.

Jay

ON EDIT: I did a little digging and got some numbers for a typical cell phone(300mW) and the popular Linksys WRT54G router(63mW). If I plug those numbers into my example above. The Linksys delivers .1mW to the phones 300mW.

NOT relevant. See Einstein, photo-electric effect.

The comparison is even sillier.

Their power levels are actually commanded dynamically by the cell to which they are connected for two reasons:

1) To reduce cochannel interference / increase cell density.
2) To increase battery life.

Just so you know it is in the cell phone company's best financial interest that your cell phone emits as little power as possible because it means they can have more cells closer together and have more users using their network so that they can bill more people more money. They didn't decrease cell phone power to "protect" you from "radiation" - there really isn't anything to worry about there - they did it because they can make more money that way.

...and microwaves are not always on, routers are further away, etc. Whether phones cause cancer or not; can we just agree that the comparisons in the OP are not valid and be done with it or are we going to go round and round on this all night?

Jay

They are not comparable.

Jay

They are comparable in the following way:

Higher frequency more dangerous.

Lower frequency less dangerous.

Cell phones have LOWER frequencies (800-900 MHz or 1.8 to 1.9 GHz) than either routers OR portable wireless home phones. which operate in the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands.

Until you get to at least ultraviolet wavelengths (many orders of magnitude smaller than microwaves) however, power is NOT relevant in terms of causing cancer because the photons have to be capable of ionizing bonded electrons in DNA molecules. Ionization potential is a function of individual photon energy according to Einstein's photoelectric effect, NOT the overall power of the source.

With the exception of actually being INSIDE of your microwave, none of these devices put out any meaningful amount of power whatsoever compared to the sun.

As I said, sorry for your comprehension difficulties.

You are arguing that cell phones don't cause cancer. For some reason, perhaps due to the comprehension issues you cite, you’re under the impression that I’m arguing they do. Sorry, but I'm not. I'm saying that to cite that OP as an example of sound science is not advisable. If you had kept it to Sol it might have been a better post but you didn't. You thought you'd be cute and added wireless routers, microwave ovens and televisions to the mix. And no, you weren't comparing them to the sun. You were comparing them to cell phones in order to say "well golly, if all these other things are harmless then you're foolish not to think cell phones are too". That seems pretty logical because short-term exposure to low-power, non-ionizing radiation is harmless. The problem is that the same cannot be said definitively about the cumulative effects of long-term exposure. The science is not settled. That being the case you must include frequency, power levels and length of exposure in your considerations. You already demonstrated that these devices are not comparable because they operate at different frequencies. The power levels for wireless routers are below those of cell phones to begin with and when you apply the inverse square law they are even lower. Exposures to emissions from leaky microwave ovens are short term and also fall prey to the inverse square law. Televisions? Shielded against X-ray leakage and where RF is concerned the inverse square law applies again. Sorry, but the only similarity these items share is that they emit some form of radiation.

Oh, and keep up with the condescension. It's quite endearing

Jay

Let's recap:

1. OP that compares radiation exposure from cell phones to that of wireless routers among other things.
2. Sudopod said "SCIENCE" intimating that the OP was good science.
3. I said "Not Really" and pointed out that they are not comparable. One of the reasons being that typical usage of a cell phone is closer than that of a wireless router.

Jay

Your OP specifically compares routers and cell phones and HFPS is now asking why anyone is comparing routers and cell phones. Who has the comprehension issue?

Jay

Me: Cell phones don't cause cancer. They don't expose their users to enough radiation to concievably cause the slightest DNA damage by any mechanism.

Woos: Oh yeah? Well inverse-square law!

That's what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about a hyperbolic post claiming radiation from wireless routers, televisions and microwaves is the same posing as science. Throw hypocritical in there because the same post complains about junk science.

Jay

Are you infinitely irradiated?

Inverse square law...I don't think those words mean what you think they mean. :3

If you stuck the damn thing up your nose (thereby entirely surrounding it, except maybe for a bit of nostril), and if you absorbed 100% of the radiation the phone emitted, you would be absorbing 300 mW or so. You can't exceed the maximum output of the phone.

The inverse square law is a generalization of the distance relationship between the energy falling on a 2-D surface from an isotropically (that is, equally in all directions) radiating point source. Disregarding the fact that a dipole antenna on a cell phone doesn't radiate like a point source, you can't just take an equation you don't understand and extrapolate it beyond it's governing assumptions willy nilly, because an equation is meaningless outside of the parameters from which it was derived.

Here's something educational that will explain exactly what I'm getting at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_square_law

You must have one of those phones that have to be manually aimed at a tower to make a connection.

Jay

You missed the Princess Bride reference AND you didn't read what I wrote.

Nice :p

And since a cell phone antenna is a point source of electromagnetic radiation I didn't give the remainder much thought.

Jay

Like so:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole_antenna

Seriously, read the article. The fact that it isn't a point source is very important to how the things work. :p

Even if it were, it still wouldn't change the fact that you could never get more than 300 mW of power deposited in your tissues, and that is non-ionizing radiation.

doesn't determine if it's directional or omni-directional. Cell phone antennas are omni-directional otherwise you would have to point them at another receiver/transmitter to send/receive a signal. To all intents and purposes they are point sources.

Jay

at Penn State while he went for his PhD in Materials Science. He mainly taught Engineering 101 to undergrads. After one class he called me up laughing so hard he could barely talk. Finally the story emerged. In his class that morning he had been discussing the engineering behind building electro-magnetic slingshots or rail guns that a Princeton professor had proposed be built to launch things into orbit and also to sling nuclear waste on a collision course with the sun as a way to get rid of it. One of his students became livid with rage when he heard that and began to shout that first we had polluted the earth with radioactive waste and now we wanted to pollute the sun. :evilgrin: To this day Mike laughs when he recounts that story.

...that some of the younger and less read people here might also get angry at that idea.

Idealism sometimes clouds the logical part of the brain...

"We've screwed up and polluted the surface of the Earth, and now we're going to start damaging the pristine surface of the moon!"

But the surface of the moon is already covered in craters!

"That's different. The craters on the moon are NATURAL. This is going to be a MAN MADE crater!"

-----

That's a paraphrase of an actual conversation I had, right here on DU.

:rofl:

I suppose he'll like this:

:hide:

Gotta watch them Aggies.

Remember, A Day without Nuclear Fusion is a Day Without SUNSHINE. :D

:shrug:

:rofl:

Hey, asbestos and carbon monoxide, they're chemicals, just like water!

manufacture and orbit a gigantic tin foil hat to protect us.

:crazy:

It's been PROVEN that exposure to the sun CAUSES CANCER!!1! Why haven't we banned it? Who will think of the chiyilllllllldruuuuuuuunnnn?

Space threads are the best!

Don't hold it up to your head.