IUBio

Question on the human body compared to an electromagnetic device

Richard Norman rsnorman at mw.mediaone.net
Wed Jan 20 22:06:20 EST 1999


Bob Cob wrote in message
<7861cb$a8e6$1 at newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>...
>Ok, You'll have to excuse me cause I know near nothing about neurology
>except for a little Neural Networking, however, I know a great deal
about
>electronics.  I was thinking one day after watching some wierd stuff on
>auras and all that and I thought something.  In anything with an
electrical
>current, a magnetic field is induced.  If the frequency is high enough,
>differnet parts of the spectrum are radiated.  If it was possible, the
>frequency of an AC waveform could become great enough to generate
light, but
>as of now, no induced electrical current has a short enough wavelegnth
for
>this to occur.  I was wondering if in chemical reactions, this sort of
>induction occurs.  I am wondering because if it is so, and any sort of
>'transmission' from these reactions could possibly be what is
supposedly
>seen as 'auras'.


Nerve and muscle cells produce electrical fields and the associated
currents produce magnetic fields.  In the heart, many cells are active
simultaneously, and the summed effect is enough to produce signals
detectable outside the body, provided your equipment is very sensitive.
In the brain, the cells are not synchronous and the helter-skelter
geometry
results in even tinier signals that require special techniques to record
against the ambient random noise levels.  In any case these are "audio
frequency", up to perhaps 10 kHz or 20 kHz bandwidth.  These electrical
effects are totally out of the range of radiation.

In all cells that metabolize aerobically (i.e., most all except red
blood cells)
the mitochondria have an electron transport system that constantly pump
a totality of some 100 amperes of current (totalled over all the cells
of
the body).  This tends to be "DC", and the mitochondria are arranged
in a random fashion so any fields will cancel out.  I have never heard
of
any physical phenomena associated with this type of electrical current.

There are no significant biophysical effects that occur with frequencies
in
the radio to microwave range, suitable for radiation -- physical
phenomena
with relaxation times in the microsecond to nanosecond period are so
isolated, asynchronous, and randomly oriented so that individual
molecular
events cannot summate significantly.

The major way in which radiation occurs biologically is by having an
excited
molecule fall down an energy gap, whose size corresponds to some
interesting wavelength.  The energy levels associated with molecular
vibrations tend to be in the microwave and infrared region.  Energy
levels associated with chemical reactions can be in the visible spectrum
(that is how fireflies and other luminescent organisms shine), and
energy
levels associated with ionization can be in the X-ray range.  These
phenomena are used in the reverse direction -- expose the chemistry to
radiation of the right energy level/wavelength and see how much is
absorbed.  Theoretically they can run in the forward direction -- use
metabolic energy to excite the molecule and let it radiate.  However,
except in the well described cases of bioluminescence (which is now
well understood), this does not occur.

And, of course, every warm object exhibits "black body" radiation -- the
human body radiates in the infrared.

There is no accepted biophysical method of producing "auras", especially
if you mean radiation emitted from space around an object and not from
a specific and readily identifiable source.











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