IUBio

Hear radar waves

wdr at world.std.com wdr at world.std.com
Thu Nov 5 14:20:14 EST 1998


In article <3640DBF3.65587DF8 at ll.mit.edu>,
Mike MacDonald  <mmacdon at ll.mit.edu> replied to Anna:

> > was in my physics lab at tertiary school. there was a piece on radar, it
> > said "some people can hear radar waves directly in their ears, but it is
> > not thought to be harmful." 

Interesting if true.  I'd like to know what was actually observed.

> > 2 I can hear these noises in one of my ears, 2 tones only, very artificial
> > sounding, like sine waves. They switch very fast, and randomly. To me it
> > seems like some kind of data transmission, 

That discription does _sound_ like typical radio data modulations.

> >  maybe I'll find more later, I dont even know its > > radar, 

Right. My first question was going to be, why are we all talking
"Radar" and not other bands of EM?  (Just because someone said "some
people can hear radar" and the general radar-mind-control
tabloid-issue?)  There's lots of data transmissions at much longer
wave-lengths, some of them at frequencies for which a human might be or
have a built-in antenna.  (And those longer wavelengths will not be
stopped by aluminum foil around only the head.)
   Unless someone has debunked the old "my filling gets WBZ-AM" story,
I don't think we can dismiss the possibility of an upper rear molar
filling demodulating a signal being "tuned" by the body, arms, or
head.   And of course just because we can't give an obvious mechanism
for how an ear-canal without a filling could de-modulate a signal
doesn't mean it isn't possible; suitable collections/deposits of
metal-salts or the like in the ear-bones could have odd semi-conductive
effects analagous to fox-hole radios (made from almost any  two of
blued razor blade, rusty steel, pencil, sharp steel pin?).

I'll grant Tinnititus is a more likely diagnosis, but I object to
either engineers or doctors using mere probability rather than
differential diagnosis.  (Even if Kuhn has driven the "falsifiable
hypothesis" out of the center of scientific philosophy, it's a good
guiding principle.)

Some tests:
If the volume drops when the patient sticks her head in a pot / oven /
steel helmet, it's UHF tuned by the head or a part of the head.
 If that doesn't affect it but going into a modern steel-frame building
or the underground does, then it's lower frequencies.  If curling up in
a fetal ball changes the strength, the limbs are part of the antenna.
If changing position changes it, then you're a directional antenna.  
Have someone drive you to the boonies; it may be an urban
transmitter (pagers are ubiquitous, high-power, two-tone, and on UHF
for which your head could be resonant).
If going deep underground in widely separated locations has no effect,
most external sources would be ruled out, and you're left with
tinititus (or someone following you with a portable transmitter, but
you can check for that with standard spy-movie train-changing
maneuvers).

If it's an actual electrical demodulation, either in a broken filling
or in some mineral deposit, there's a chance either a microphone in
contact with the skin or a "telephone pickup coil" will pick up the
message for a tape-recorder.  Or it might require a more sensitive
EEG/EKG pickup and ampliefier to detect what the nerves are detecting.

> 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.

Since you're at Lincoln Labs, I'll grant that your doctorate is
probably related to EM fields.  For Bio-effects, I'm more likely to
listen to someone from Natick Labs.  (For un-explained effects,
however, scientists are notorious for underestimating the likelyhood
that they don't know everything yet; Einstein acknowledged as much,
bless him. :-)


> I know of no physical mechanism in the human body
> (other than heating, 

Stepping aside from the facile assumption that we knew what  if any
band of EM radiation she was experiencing: AM radio has been detected
by dental fillings and braces, according to the folklore.  This is not
implausible, given how easy it is to get inadvertent semi-conductive
behavior at a corroded mechanical joint between two aerial or ground
conductors (and thus have non-linear behavior giving mixing and/or
harmonics and thus spurious signals from an antenna).  Anna could
have a defective filling acting as a detector or antenna/detector.
I suppose she might even have mineral deposits in the inner-ear that
could form a semiconductor -- I've not heard of a calcium/mineral
junction that is, but I'd be surprised if there isn't at least one.

> I should also note that although my own tinnitus is continuous, many cases
> seem to differ from mine, and the pulsing that you hear is a lot likelier due
> to tinnitus than to EM radiation.

Quite likely true that she suffers the same incurable ailment you
do, but just because someone else has suggested "military
mind-control" and "radar" is no reason to reject plausible sources.
Should ask my friend the physical chemist, or is he a chemical
physicist?

> It doesn't come from some horrible military mind-control technology.  

Of course, with your email address, if it _was_ military, you'd have to
deny it anyway.  :-)   (I was a paranoid for your government at the
applied sister company down the street for a while.)  But I agree,
there's a lot of mind-control being broadcast, with the schedule
printed in the newspaper.  At least with the election over for a
while beer and cars will again be the worst of it.

> Civilian
> mind-control is better established, and causes me to think about beer and
> sports cars whenever I watch a sporting event.

:-)   

>   they have no reliable way of measuring the
> effect apart from guys like me who can speculate on whether it's white or 1/f
> noise (I think the former, but I haven't studied it too closely), 

Hmm.  Perhaps you should.  Does Lincoln have a IR&D program that
could fund this?

> frequency
> distribution, modulation (in my case none).  

Lucky you -- apparent but meaningless modulation would probably be
harder to endure.  

Has any work been done to determine whether the spurious signal in
classic tinnititus is arising in the "signal processing" in the brain
or if it is present in the nerve-bundle running to the brain?  This
would probably only be detectable in a patient for whom the tinititus
was intermittent.


-- 
Bill Ricker  N1VUX  wdr at world.std.com  "The freedom of the press belongs 
http://world.std.com/~wdr               to those who own one."--A.J.Liebling



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