196
6 Electric and Magnetic Fields in Life
sufficient to cause pain in nerve endings, to generate muscle contraction, heart
arrhythmia, and to damage cells. Moreover, uncontrollable muscle contraction may
make voluntary release of a voltage line impossible.
The resistance of surface skin is greater than the subcutaneous tissue. Wet salty
skin can reduce the hand-to-hand resistance by a factor of two or three compared
to dry skin, increasing the damage to the tissue conducting the current. Standing in
salty water, particularly water that has a conduction path to the ground, and then
touching the exposed black end of a 110 VAC power line, is a life ending event.
With smaller voltages, the measurement of resistance across the palms can be
used to gauge the emotional reaction of the individual, such as during questioning,
since second-by-second, the sweat glands on the palms, as well as other locations,
open and close in response to emotional stress. Typically, resistances from one palm
to the other range from several megaohms without sweat to 100,000 ohms or less
after sweating. Measuring this resistance is one of the parameters used in a ‘lie
detector’.
A secondary effect of spark discharge in strong electric fields is the production of
ozone and nitrogen oxides. Continuous arcing in confined spaces can cause a health
hazard through these accumulated gases and free-radicals produced in the air, which
can damage exposed membranes, such as bacteria cell walls and lungs in humans.
Biological cells are diamagnetic materials. Unlike paramagnetic or ferromagnetic
materials, a diamagnetic material tends to exclude external magnetic fields, producing a repulsive force in a field which has a spatial gradient. Using this property, a live
frog has been suspended in a magnetic field of about 15 T, which is about 300,000
times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field. (A tesla is ten thousand gauss.) The
fact that the frog physically survives with no apparent after effects demonstrates
that life systems are largely unharmed by static magnetic fields, even those far
greater than any that occur naturally in the vicinity of planets, and far greater than
those which are typical in laboratories. Magnetic resonance imaging devices use
fields in the range of half a tesla to three tesla between the poles of a magnet. The
danger is not the field, but rather in being hit by stray iron and nickel, which will be
pulled violently toward one pole of such a magnet, or by movement of any foreign
ferromagnetic material buried in the body.
We have found fields near some distant neutron stars reaching 10 11 T. Life as we
know it could not survive in such a field. In a field of 10 11 T, atoms have long needle
shapes aligned with the field. This completely changes chemistry, and molecules
behave as one dimensional objects. It is likely that life needs three-dimensional
structures. Certainly brains do.
6.6 Spin Resonance Devices
Relativistic quantum theory predicts that particles can carry an intrinsic quantized
spin S, with magnitudes given by
√
s(s + 1) ¯
h, where s is zero or a positive half
integer: 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2, · · · , and ¯
h is Planck’s constant divided by 2π. If the particle
6 Electric and Magnetic Fields in Life
sufficient to cause pain in nerve endings, to generate muscle contraction, heart
arrhythmia, and to damage cells. Moreover, uncontrollable muscle contraction may
make voluntary release of a voltage line impossible.
The resistance of surface skin is greater than the subcutaneous tissue. Wet salty
skin can reduce the hand-to-hand resistance by a factor of two or three compared
to dry skin, increasing the damage to the tissue conducting the current. Standing in
salty water, particularly water that has a conduction path to the ground, and then
touching the exposed black end of a 110 VAC power line, is a life ending event.
With smaller voltages, the measurement of resistance across the palms can be
used to gauge the emotional reaction of the individual, such as during questioning,
since second-by-second, the sweat glands on the palms, as well as other locations,
open and close in response to emotional stress. Typically, resistances from one palm
to the other range from several megaohms without sweat to 100,000 ohms or less
after sweating. Measuring this resistance is one of the parameters used in a ‘lie
detector’.
A secondary effect of spark discharge in strong electric fields is the production of
ozone and nitrogen oxides. Continuous arcing in confined spaces can cause a health
hazard through these accumulated gases and free-radicals produced in the air, which
can damage exposed membranes, such as bacteria cell walls and lungs in humans.
Biological cells are diamagnetic materials. Unlike paramagnetic or ferromagnetic
materials, a diamagnetic material tends to exclude external magnetic fields, producing a repulsive force in a field which has a spatial gradient. Using this property, a live
frog has been suspended in a magnetic field of about 15 T, which is about 300,000
times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field. (A tesla is ten thousand gauss.) The
fact that the frog physically survives with no apparent after effects demonstrates
that life systems are largely unharmed by static magnetic fields, even those far
greater than any that occur naturally in the vicinity of planets, and far greater than
those which are typical in laboratories. Magnetic resonance imaging devices use
fields in the range of half a tesla to three tesla between the poles of a magnet. The
danger is not the field, but rather in being hit by stray iron and nickel, which will be
pulled violently toward one pole of such a magnet, or by movement of any foreign
ferromagnetic material buried in the body.
We have found fields near some distant neutron stars reaching 10 11 T. Life as we
know it could not survive in such a field. In a field of 10 11 T, atoms have long needle
shapes aligned with the field. This completely changes chemistry, and molecules
behave as one dimensional objects. It is likely that life needs three-dimensional
structures. Certainly brains do.
6.6 Spin Resonance Devices
Relativistic quantum theory predicts that particles can carry an intrinsic quantized
spin S, with magnitudes given by
√
s(s + 1) ¯
h, where s is zero or a positive half
integer: 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2, · · · , and ¯
h is Planck’s constant divided by 2π. If the particle