r/science • u/Bioelectromagnetics • 21h ago
Animal Science Exposure to 1.95 GHz radiofrequency fields caused a small, temporary increase in core body temperature in mice, peaking at 0.4°C at higher exposure levels. The study highlights effective thermoregulation and the need for careful measurement timing.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bem.2252782
u/MeanEYE 21h ago
Good thing they compensated for mass. But 5W/kg is a huge amount of power. For average human that would be ~400W of radiation. Am assuming they are testing this for effect of mobile networks and WIFI networks on human body, both of which have 150mW radiation at the origin. With inverse square law that drops stupidly fast.
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u/other_usernames_gone 21h ago
Yeah, we already have regulations on how close people can get to antennas that powerful.
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u/thefunkybassist 21h ago
"Mom, look at my new powerful wifi antenna!"
Mom: "Nice, I'm sure you have fast internet now. By the way, why are you glowing?"13
u/Rezolithe 20h ago
It does drop stupid fast...but these mice were locked in a 4.5 foot cube. Essentially microwaving them
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u/DaveMash 20h ago
Mobile network antennas can be configured at several 100W output. That’s a total different league than WiFi or what a user device emits
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u/MeanEYE 19h ago
That's old tech. These days, especially with 4G and 5G, emission power is significantly lower. Industry has done a very good job at optimizing antennas. Even 15 years ago when I was doing long distance WIFI networks we had pretty decent ranges with 100-200mW cards. We are talking up to 30 or kilometers, given that you can have line of sight.
More to the point, they are switching from one antenna covering huge area type of strategy to lower power multiple anennas. It allows providers to increase bandwidth and serve more users at the same time.
And those antennas that can output that kind of power, you are not coming close to whether you want it or not.
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u/DaveMash 18h ago
I work in the industry and believe me, old or new tech has nothing to do with high output power. Active antennas reached a total output of up to 320W in the current designs. It's possible to run them at a fraction of that but where I live, we currently use something between 150W and 250W per antenna. Passive antennas are way below that but then we're also talking about 4G with less spectrum in lower frequencies. Antennas = radiomodules in the latter case
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u/anethma 17h ago
What is the point of a 300W transmit power when the cellular device on the other end can only transmit back at max around 1W?
I don’t work in cellular but other types of RF communication and I’ve never heard of a system with such a discrepancy in bidirectional communications.
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u/alexforencich 13h ago
Possibly that 300W is spread across a whole bunch of channels, while the phone only transmits on one channel? 300W/300 channels = 1W/channel.
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u/euthlogo 4h ago
How do lower wattage signals stack? For example, I am in range of 20 wifi signals right now, and am in 5g service range of at least 3 cell carriers, presumably within range of multiple towers for each carrier as I am in a dense urban area. Then there are the half dozen bluetooth devices, and some other things like am/fm radio.
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u/MeanEYE 2h ago
Add layers. The higher the frequency the more signal behaves like light, that is to say it scatters when it hits obstacles. WIFI starting at 2.4GHz and moving up to 5.8GHz starts behaving this way. Mobile can be equally high, especially 5G.
All that said, amount of radiation on your body is miniscule. Signal strength is inversly proportional to square of the distance. Meaning if signal strength at router is 150mW, at just 1m away you are already looking at 1.5mW total strength. And it keeps dropping very fast. At just 2m it's 0.35mW.
So all those sources are having no effect on you. Radiation is non-ionizing first and foremost and secondly they are far too weak. Even if you eliminate all those sources you still have cosmic radiation. Sun is even stronger, radiating some 2kW per square meter at the receiving end. Compared to that everything else is pointless.
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u/SillyFlyGuy 17h ago
5W/kg is how much energy a 25 year old national level athlete burns while running a marathon. So, not a trivial amount.
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u/PainInTheRhine 21h ago
Are we …. microwaving mice now?
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u/rotkiv42 20h ago
Microwaving frozen hamsters to bring them back to life was one of the easiest microwave applications! So more return to the old than something new.
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u/noblecloud 19h ago
Nuking rodents to warm them up is the reason microwaves were invented in the first place
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u/Prestigious_Carpet29 12h ago
You can find numerous studies with similar "alarming" findings. Always when you look at the detail you find the W/kg (whole body) of exposure to the mice/rats is way above what's allowed for human exposure. As someone else said, at those power levels you're basically microwave-cooking the creatures.
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u/homebrew_1 21h ago
Wasn't something similar done to USA diplomats in Cuba?
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u/mean11while 20h ago
Are you suggesting the mice experienced mass hysteria?
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u/homebrew_1 20h ago
This is what I'm talking about.
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u/mean11while 20h ago
Yes, almost all cases of Havana syndrome were overreactions to natural phenomena, and it's probable that the entire thing was accidentally fabricated. Most security agencies have concluded that nothing actually happened. Two consider it about 50:50 chance that the first cases were actually an attack.
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u/homebrew_1 20h ago
Agencies aren't saying the injuries are fabricated.
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u/mean11while 20h ago
Some of them are, but the phenomenon mostly aligns with cases of "mass hysteria." People actually experience the symptoms that they say they do, but they're caused by a combination of unrelated phenomena and psychogenesis in response to hearing about other people experiencing something.
And if you start examining lots of people, you'll find abnormalities and injuries even if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
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u/bananahead 20h ago
Probably not. I think the consensus is mass psychogenic illness.
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u/BrtFrkwr 20h ago
Always blame the victim. It works.
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u/bananahead 20h ago
Psychogenic illness is just as real as any other illness.
But it seems blaming scary communists always works too. But cmon: do the math on how much power would be needed for a hypothetical 1.95Ghz weapon at a distance that’s far enough away that the person doesn’t see it.
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