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Getting your radiation RDA with your technology.
IainB:
(RDA = "Recommended Dietary Allowance")
There's a post on the DC forum here:
$50 (shipped) Powerlink 802.11n Wireless Router with 1.24-Mile Range e Range
When I read about it, I immediately wanted one of those wireless routers - and then I noticed that someone had queried the transmission range of this device, so I commented:
Wow.
Well, it does say the range is "Up to 2000 meters (Depending on surrounding environment)".
--- End quote ---
And then I thought about that word "environment" and then about my environment and how it was proliferated with technology and its often necessary attendant radiation - radiation that was almost inescapable in our tech-driven world, unless you walked around wearing tinfoil garmets covering most of your body.
Advice for prudent caution from Naval safety standards makes me say that I'm not too sure whether it would be a good thing to be sat near to as powerful a transmitter as the wifi router has - for any transmission frequency - for too long.
Generally speaking it might be a good idea to avoid any potential risks to yourself or your family from being too closely involved in a "new" experiment in evolution.
Whilst we are in the womb and for all our lives after that, our natural environment means that we are continually bathing in a virtual sea of invisible radiation - most of it from the sun or elsewhere outside the earth.
However, we did not evolve in the sort of radiation-polluted (e.g., including extra X-rays and radio frequencies) environment that we have created for ourselves using technology, so we are the experiment, and we have not always understood the potentially dangerous effects of radiation until it causes harm or loss of life.
"We noticed and did wonder why it was always warm in the radar transmission room, and we would sometimes go in there to warm up on a very cold day."
(Comment from one of the radio engineers who had served on board British warships during WW2 when they were trialling new radar technology - which uses microwave frequencies.)
--- End quote ---
"WARNING: Never stand in front of a Radar's antenna - the radiation emitted from it can cause sterilization or even cancer." (Standard warning on ship's radar).
--- End quote ---
"Do not approach beyond yellow line when red light is flashing"
On the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible there is a thick and highly visible yellow perimeter line drawn on deck around the radar transmitter zone, accompanied by the above warning words in yellow (the red light flashes when the radar antenna is transmitting).
--- End quote ---
Most defence/security equipment is crawling with high-tech and emits radiation covering a large part of the electromagnetic spectrum. For example, tank armour-piercing missiles made with depleted uranium; radar; satelite tecoms systems; gun/missile-sighting systems.
Many of the common civilian tech applications were derived from earlier defence/security/space applications. For example, encryption algorithms and technology (used in telecommunications as standard in modems/routers); police speed-checking devices (which use radar or infrared); face-recognition technology for images (e.g., as now used in Google Picasa); digital infrared tape measures; computer CPUs; GPS devices (which pick up transmissions from GPSO satellite transponders; satellite map systems; and of course there is also saturation satellite and terrestrial wireless broadcasting of radio/TV channels. A great deal of the civilian applications use electronic devices that either receive or emit electromagnetic radiation during operation, either by design or as a byproduct of their function.
Following the USS Texas' visit to New Zealand in 1983, the potential for ships' radar to damage unshielded electronic equipment was recognised and resulted in an unenforceable local bylaw being passed in Wellington, requiring ships to turn off their radar before they entered the harbour. Wellington city is based around a large and beautiful semicircular harbour, and most of the city extends around the docks for large ships. The Texas' radar knocked out some of the main telecoms exchange equipment in Wellington, causing major disruption in the PSTN for an extended period.
At my home approx. 40 kilometres away, my old QUAD electrostatic speakers picked up the Texas' radar quite clearly.
When the HMS Invincible visited Wellington on a world tour following the Falklands war with Argentina (where the Invincible had been the battle command centre), my QUADs picked up the radar again, and when I was given a tour of that ship I was shown around the deserted battle action command and control deck, and I saw that their radar was still operational and that the image of the harbour with its ships was being displayed and was refreshing on a large monitor screen at a desk nearby.
The CPO (Chief Petty Officer) giving me the tour explained that the radar was always "ON" as it was being continually used by the automatic defence systems that could take out a high-speed missile aimed at the ship. The business end of this defence system was housed in what looked like giant pepper-pots with white-domed tops, located on the fore and aft decks. The system had been hastily fitted to the ships in the Falklands war, after two British vessels had been taken out with French-made Exocet missiles launched by aircraft at a distance of 70-odd nautical miles away.
No prospect of more Falklands or Pearl Harbour-type losses now.
The CPO then demonstrated for me how the radar could be used to target a vessel some distance away in the harbour. I was allowed to roll a mouseball embedded into the desk top, and crosshairs moved on the radar screen. By placing the crosshairs over a vessel blip and pressing a button nearby, the vessel was targetted by GPS and linked in via satellite with a remote database of shipping registers and shipping manifests describing known vessel movements. This identified the vessel by likely name, type specification, owner, insurer, flag and friend/foe status, etc. - these target details all appeared rapidly on the radar screen after a slight lag. If, during war status, the vessel was determined to be a foe and was to be engaged, then one press of a big red button to the right of the desk could unleash all hell and the vessel would be blown out of the water by various means. (The CPO told me not to worry about this because the red button was always disabled except when there was a war engagement status.)
The rate of technological development over the last 75 years or so has been astounding and seems to have been continuously accelerating. We now rely on that technology to an extent where we dare not switch it off. We are dependent on it for our entertainment, our communication, our health, for restarting our hearts, piloting our aircraft, trains and cars, running our computers and IT networks - the list is endless. At the same time, the amount of electromagnetic pollution caused by this technology will have necessarily grown at a great rate. Yet we keep on adding to the pollution, saturating the ether with electomagnetic radiation without knowing for sure whether or how it will adversely affect us or our property in any way (e.g., gamma irradiation of foodstuffs; satellite and wireless radio/TV broadcasts; satellite telecoms; satellite imaging; mobile telephone systems; offshore ships' radar) or cause genetic destruction (e.g., X-rays at the dentist and now at the airports).
Rather than kill or sterilise the planet from chemical pollution, who knows but that we may kill or sterilise ourselves first through electromagnetic pollution?
How will we know whether we have had sufficient or too much?
app103:
So, if we get a lot more technology into the hands of people living in overpopulated 3rd world countries, we may be able to raise their quality of life and reduce their populations all in one shot? :huh:
40hz:
So, if we get a lot more technology into the hands of people living in overpopulated 3rd world countries, we may be able to raise their quality of life and reduce their populations all in one shot? :huh:
-app103 (October 23, 2011, 05:00 AM)
--- End quote ---
Hmm...Doesn't seem to be working in any of the overpopulated industrial nations. Guess that would require a two-pronged approach. First, continue to skyrocket the cost of medical care until only the upper 10% of the population can afford it - then, bring on the rads!!!
:P
;D
IainB:
@app103:
So, if we get a lot more technology into the hands of people living in overpopulated 3rd world countries, we may be able to raise their quality of life and reduce their populations all in one shot?
--- End quote ---
Well, I hadn't thought of it that way... (shakes head at such cynicism).
mahesh2k:
So, if we get a lot more technology into the hands of people living in overpopulated 3rd world countries, we may be able to raise their quality of life and reduce their populations all in one shot?
--- End quote ---
Take a look at this ad. It's already going that way. (it's not in english but y'll figure out somehow)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqtB-IaeEo8
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