Gah. The very thought of that film boils my piss.
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Everything relates to the wavelength of the EM waves produced. Just to give you an idea, the size of an antenna is related to the frequency. Typical antennas are about 1/4 to 1/2 wavelength long. This is why a cell phone antenna can be about an inch long or less, but an FM radio uses a thee-foot rod.
Of course, there are ways around this, but that involves tricks. For example, AM radio would require a rod on the order of a mile or so (too lazy to do the actual math right now). The get around that by taking a very LONG antenna (technically Litz wire) and wrapping it around an iron bar.
At 60 Hz, an effective simple dipole antenna would need to cover a good portion of the length of some of the larger states. The size of a human body is simply way too small to be anywhere near an effective antenna.
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Donāt go bringing engineering into a discussion of woo!
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Not really. First of all, AC power is VERY clean. Well, as it comes from the power plant, it is very clean. I would imagine that the large transformers that step down the voltage also act as resonant filters, so that would reduce the harmonics even more.
Modern life has given us switching power supplies, and THOSE introduce all sorts of horrible harmonics. If you remove all of those from your neighborhood, I would be surprised if any harmonics were detectable above the noise floor.
Since the 1/4 wavelength of 60 Hz is sill almost 800 MILES you would need to get a LOT of harmonics to make anything detectable to people, even assuming that electrosensitiviy exists.
Even the 1000th harmonic would still be in the AM radio band, and I do not recall anybody being electrosensitive when AM radios came out. FYI: 1/4 wavelength for 60 KHz is still almost a mileā¦
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There are SO many things wrong with this story.
First, if you are an electrosensitive, it is unfair to force OTHERS to change their way of life for you. Donāt like the wireless microphone at church? Find another one or donāt go. If they want to accommodate you, well and good. If not, donāt get all pissy about it. Your problems are not their problems.
However, even MORE disturbing is that the telescope may close in 2017. This is truly sad, since the article mentions that they have four times as many requests than they can handle. Canāt we skip buying a fighter jet or aircraft carrier or something to keep this place open?
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Oh Iāve heard stories about the border blasters in northern Mexico that operated at power levels up to and including 1 MWā¦ Chainlink fences sparking like wild. Even the old saw about receiving broadcasts through your dental filings may have some basis in reality from those days. Iād be electronsensitive too if it was actually making my teeth buzz! This was 40s and 50s if Iām not mistaken, and it happened in the border towns that were really close.
Exactly (my emph). Once youāve got it out onto cables and wires under the ācontrolā or ordinary people who arenāt at all concerned about frayed cables, bodge-up joins etc.
Oh good grief I wasnāt talking about magical disturbances to electrosensitives. Just plain RF interference from domestic power, like the person to whom I was responding.
So if this did exist, then as far as youāre concerned, these people wouldnāt have the right to exist?
I think itās way more unfair to force people into an unliveable situation than it is to force people to stop forcing people into an unliveable situation. I have sensory issues including severe hyperacusis, and the sensory bombardment often makes me want to die, but the scorn and the harassment make me want to live, or to die in some way directly attributable to the ableism and the lach of accommodations, just to spite the harassers.
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Flourescent lights can also be painful for people who are sensitive to the gorram strobe.
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Thereās two sides to this. One is that if it is a genuine ailment, then yes, it would be fair to expect something of others. public places may even find itād come under the āAmericans with Disabilities Actā or similar. But itād basically be common decency - the same as me keeping my noise down at antisocial hours because I know my neighboursā sleep can be negatively affected by audio waves.
On the other hand, if my neighbour claims his sleep is being impacted by my poor feng shui, then he can go - himself.
Expecting due consideration isnāt the question. Itās the huge āifā that predicates it.
(Totally with you on the budgetary gap. We all dream of what NASA could do with the DoDās pocket change, but the NSF donāt even have this mindshare. Iām pretty certain weāre not the only ones who question our priorities here. The good news is that if thereās a queue of applications waiting for time on the 'scope, hopefully they also present a queue of interests waiting to fund their time.)
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> [\[If all the blood vessels in your body were laid end to end, they would reach about 60,000 miles\]][1][1].
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I have been there and lets make sure everyone realizes that the no spark plug rule is only for the actual site. You can pull up in your gasoline power car and park at the visitor center. You can then climb aboard a diesel minibus that drives you out to the antennas, where you are almost under the antennas. There are no spark plug restrictions on any roads down there. Yes, your cell phone does not work in the surrounding area, but I enjoyed that part. There is also a very nice steam railway in Cass WV, right around the corner with working Shays.
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One town over in the same exclusion zone is Sugar Grove. Thatās the site of an NSA listening station that as part of ECHELON that listens in on communications satellites. Though reportedly it will shut down later this year.
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even if tests have been done, it would be nice for the mythbusters
to tackle it. bicycle around the town on a designated path once a
day at the same time for several days. the bicycle rider would be
blinded about the contents of the mysterious box attached to the
bicycle. Contents could be a wifi/radio emitting device or a dummy
device with flashing lights.
What the hell is a āfake electromagnetic fieldā?
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A big show of pulling the lever, and pressing the button, but without any electromagnetic effect.
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yeah, i had a relative who did that to me to test my very real food allergy. good times.
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Was an EpiPen involved?
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no, thank goodness! but, to paraphrase @MarjaE, i kind of wish it had just to spite them. there was distinctly not enough apologizing. 
similar experience?
i figure the whole electro-sensitive thing is probably not real, or an expression of something other than what sufferers assume. but, still ā i tend to feel like why not start with taking them at their word?
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Because it sounds wacky, and tests are needed to understand the underlying mechanism and finding response thresholds, and tests shown that there is no such mechanism and it is BS.
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