Hear radar waves
jwill at pacbell.net
jwill at pacbell.net
Thu Nov 5 13:27:25 EST 1998
Minor technical point, unrelated to hearing:
In article <3640DBF3.65587DF8 at ll.mit.edu>,
Mike MacDonald <mmacdon at ll.mit.edu> wrote:
> [headers rejiggered in the hope that removing the new-theories group and
> adding the tinnitus group may accomplish something useful]
> I've decided to add my two cents for the following reasons:
> 1. I would like to think that my doctorate grants me some pretense of
> expertise in the area of electromagnetic fields, waves, and the probability of
> directly detecting these in the ear or brain.
> 2. I have tinnitus
> What does it sound like? In my case, a lot like what the ringing in my ears
> sounded like when I'd go to a rock concert in my younger days. Except it
> never entirely goes away. It was unchanged for 10 years until this past
> summer, when it got a bit worse in my left ear. For awhile, it was hard to
> work with it (it's annoying), but I've gotten used to it.
> It isn't a single-frequency tone. It's high-pitched (> 10 KHz), and almost
> seems to sound like "white noise" at the high-frequency end of my hearing.
> Certainly not a simple spectrum - if it is composed of individual tones,
> there's a lot of them.
> It doesn't come from radar. I know of no physical mechanism in the human body
> (other than heating, and most radars use pulses which would minimize heating
> effects due to the small duty-cycle) which is capable of detecting radar
> signals. In any case, wrapping your head in tinfoil (or placing it in a large
> metal pot) would reflect the signal and you'd notice the sound vanish
> immediately. As some have pointed out, low-frequency fields can penetrate
> thin conductors. Radar is not low-frequency. Wrapping a potato in tinfoil
> and placing it in your microwave oven should amply demonstrate its (the
> tinfoil's) lack of transparency.
You probably didn't study the effect of a conductor on the standing
waves in a microwave oven. As Eistein once said (paraphrased
and adapted), "A good explanation should be as simple as possible.
But no simpler."
If you did the above, you'd be lucky just to blow a fuse.
The testimony of a tinnitis victim is worthwhile, though.
> Mike MacDonald, MIT Lincoln Laboratory mmacdon at ll.mit.edu
> ** The views expressed here are not those of Lincoln Laboratory. **
A Lark! A Lark!
A Lark for Mister Bark!
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