139
votes
Accepted
Does Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) exist?
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is believed to be an example of a nocebo. A nocebo is a reverse placebo - one's negative expectations cause harm.
EMF exposure hasn't been able to cause symptoms in ...
37
votes
Accepted
Does the amount of land needed to get the USA to zero-carbon electricity correspond to a small area of Texas?
Summary: yes, the area shown is reasonable, as a visualisation of the surface area of panels required to generate electricity equal to total US electricity consumption, on a multi-year average: that ...
22
votes
Does Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) exist?
Yes there are people that believe they have the problem but it does not come from physical exposure from electric fields.
It is usually classified as Psychogenic pain, also called psychalgia and can ...
17
votes
Do crystals protect against EMF
No. The types of crystals advertised as "EMF blocking" are typically inert minerals which basically have no EM-field by themselves (not magnetic and having no net charge). There is nothing stopping EM ...
16
votes
Accepted
Could a single nuclear EMP kill 90% of Americans within one year?
That number was mentioned in the statement of Dr William R Graham and Dr Peter Vincent Pry, chairman and chief of staff of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP attack.
...
15
votes
Accepted
Does the EM drive (electromagnetic drive) work despite the apparent lack of propellant?
From the EagleWorks paper:
The test campaign included a null thrust test effort to identify any mundane sources of impulsive thrust; however,
none were identified.
They are not lying, they did ...
15
votes
Can magnetic resonance through TV and cell phones control your mind and emotions?
There's a bunch of claims and half-truths combined with some misapplied truths.
First: Yes, electromagnetic waves can influence the nervous system. There are, for example, highly experimental ...
15
votes
Accepted
Do tinfoil hats protect against any sort of radiation?
Though tin foil hats do protect you from electromagnetic radiation and from some forms of ionizing radiation, they do not protect you from all possible electromagnetic radiation:
In a not-too-serious-...
13
votes
Accepted
Do recent images from the JWST pose a major crisis for Big Bang cosmology?
Some of Lerner's previous complaints about the state of the art did and still do have validity, but his claims about the JWST are wildly out of proportion.
Lerner's ideas were presented in a 1991 book,...
13
votes
Do recent images from the JWST pose a major crisis for Big Bang cosmology?
No.
Mr. Lerner provides no evidence for the new JWST data causing a major crisis in cosmology, nor that "The Big Bang didn't happen"; other cosmologists disagree with his conclusions. The &...
12
votes
Does aluminum foil safeguard your credit card from RFID attacks?
Yes.
Duo labs (security vendor) says on https://duo.com/decipher/labs-presents-whats-happening-with-rfid-blocking-gear
It turns out standards for testing these RFID-blocking devices actually ...
12
votes
Can Dubai make it rain with drones that emit electric charges?
Yes. Some articles: one, two, three, four.
In essence, chemical cloud seeding uses something like salt or silver iodide as a nucleus. Water vapor collects around such particles, eventually growing to ...
11
votes
Accepted
Is keyless theft/relay theft a practical threat for vehicles with fob/keyless entry?
Is keyless theft/relay theft a practical threat for vehicles with fob/keyless entry?
Are videos demonstrating it happening practical enough?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR8RrmEizVg
Police in ...
10
votes
Does using BlueTooth devices cause leakage of the blood-brain barrier?
No, it seems that low power electromagnetic fields(such as from BlueTooth devices) do not cause any significant increase in the permeability of the blood-brain barrier.
Research regarding effects the ...
10
votes
Accepted
Death by electroshock from 12V battery
No, you can't get an electric shock from a 12V power source.
The Underwrites Laboratory which regulates product safety in the US defines "hazardous voltage" as
Hazardous Voltage Any voltage ...
9
votes
Was an invisible electrostatic wall generated at a plastic tape factory in August 1980?
A primary source for this is Wide Polypropylene Web Static Charge - A Phenomenon Worthy of “Star Trek” ANTEC '97 Conference Proceedings, CRC Press, pages 1310-1313.
A web of polypropylene plastic, 21 ...
8
votes
Can 'resonant frequencies' kill cancer cells?
Short version
This is a partial answer, as I've traced this back far enough to find significant connections to pseudo-science and basis for doubt, but I haven't found any sources that directly refute ...
8
votes
Was this video of a home made phone charger faked?
Any basic introduction to how wireless charging works and what it requires should make it immediately apparent that none of those elements are present. For example, here's a writeup on Qi with the ...
8
votes
Accepted
Did an asteroid impact in 2000 cause widespread power outages in Yukon, Canada?
Notably, the body that created the fireball was initially only ~4 meters in diameter with a mass of 200,000 kg prior to atmospheric entry, traveling around 16 km/s (Brown et al. 2000). This is ...
6
votes
Is electric muscle stimulation (EMS) training safe and effective?
EMS is also called as Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES) or “electromyostimulation". Muscles which perform different tasks, in addition to having different muscle architecture, respond to ...
6
votes
Accepted
Do solar flares and/or geomagnetic storms affect human health?
Yes, geomagnetic activity affects health.
Yes, geomagnetic activity has been found to cause strokes:
Geomagnetic storms can trigger stroke: evidence from 6 large population-based studies in Europe ...
6
votes
Subway magnetic fields and laptop hard drives
No, subway magnetic fields might not cause hard drive data corruption and erasure based on the measurements taken for magnetic field strengths on the electrically powered trains which operate on ...
6
votes
Can 'resonant frequencies' kill cancer cells?
The FDA approval is confirmed in FDA's press 2015 release, which mentions a trial, because it would have been absurd for the FDA to give apporoval otherwise:
In the clinical study used to support ...
5
votes
Accepted
Do the mountains around this Norwegian valley act like a giant battery?
The scientific literature has almost entirely ignored this theory
The episode (9:54) doesn't present the battery theory as conclusive fact.
It is just a theory. They still need to work out how the ...
4
votes
Can high-frequency coil radiation kill disease? (e.g., Lakhovsky's multiple-wave oscillator [MWO])
What specific claims are considered quackery, and why?
Pretty much all of it. The referenced page from "Altered state newsletter" is solid woo. The trouble with confronting woo is that it sounds ...
4
votes
Accepted
Do we have enough renewable energy for a humanity only using electrical cars?
Using Tesla's Model 3 electric car and American driving patterns as an example, it is entirely possible that electricity needs for every driver could be met with renewable energy.
In short, if every ...
3
votes
Do electromagnetic fields affect stress and the fight or flight response?
It may be helpful to look at different regions of the EM-spectrum one by one to attempt an answer.
The spectrum ranges from static fields, over very low frequency and radio waves to high and ultra ...
3
votes
Is the Infinity MG10 a working generator that consumes no fuel?
No
Perpetual motion machines are impossible - move along. Once a claim of "free" energy is made, the claim is false - the second law of thermodynamics says so.
With a sufficiently large ...
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