Sunday, May 6, 2012
According to news reports last week: "There is
still no evidence of harm to health from mobile-phone technologies," or
other wireless devices such as Wi-Fi. A study for the UK's Health
Protection Agency (HPA) is said to be the most complete review yet and new
evidence is still being examined, according to Professor Anthony Swerdlow
of the Institute of Cancer Research, who chaired the study. I once had a
rubber stamp made that said: "More research is needed," since its found at
the end of every science paper. The unanswered question is why anyone
thought microwave radiation might be a cancer agent in the first place?
Cancer is linked to the formation of mutant strands of DNA. More than 100
years ago in his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect, Albert Einstein
predicted an abrupt threshold for photoemission at about 5 eV, just above
the lovely blue limit of the visible spectrum, demonstrating wave-particle
duality. He was awarded the 1923 Physics Nobel Prize. Its also the
threshold for the emission of invisible ultraviolet radiation that causes
hideous skin cancers. The cancer threshold, is therefore, 1 million times
higher than the microwaves band. The same enormous mistake was made in the
1980s when epidemiologists falsely warned that exposure to power line
emission can cause cancer. Power lines abruptly stopped causing cancer in
1997 after the U.S. National Cancer Institute conducted a better study.
Its painful to witness this sad history being replayed with mobile-phone
radiation. Aside: My apologies to regular readers who have heard this 20
times before, but it has not gotten through to everyone.
There was a front-page article by Joel
Achenbach in the Washington Post last week about Planetary Resources, the
world's first asteroid mining business, started by space visionary Peter
Diamandis and his colleague Eric Anderson. Deep-pocket investors are said
to be hyperventilating. Why wouldn't they? Untold thousands of asteroids
are whizzing around the Sun right now and they're free. Just leave your
business card on an asteroid and it's yours. But, although asteroids are
free, "whizzing" is not. What are these guys thinking? You must chase
asteroids down to extract stuff like platinum and diamonds, if there is
any, and haul it to Earth. Meanwhile the price of rocket fuel is up and
tiny errors in trajectory could lead to huge damage suits or start wars.
But why bother? Some of the best asteroids are already here; Earth has
been collecting them for eons. Just look for craters and start digging.
Consider the Chicxulub asteroid buried beneath the Yucatn Peninsula. It
got rid of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, clearing the way for the
evolution of Homo sapiens. Mining the Chicxulub asteroid should keep
Planetary Resources busy for centuries. Asteroids already have a really
bad rap, but I think Chicxulub may be seen as evidence that God is a
businessman.
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