140
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 ...
- 8,517
92
votes
Antistatic bracelet without a ground connection
No, it is not true
On the Wikipedia page on "Antistatic Device" there were several references to these kinds of things having been examined in a serious manner.
ESD Journal
It is our ...
- 11k
64
votes
Accepted
Do Rife machines kill viruses and bacteria?
Partially true, but...
If we examine only part of the claim, the bit that says...
"Virus and bacteria can be killed by irradiating them with electromagnetic emissions at the right frequency"...
- 11k
53
votes
Accepted
Did Benjamin Franklin perform an experiment by flying a kite in a lightning storm?
There is Frankin's letter of Oct 1 1752 saying that the kite experiment was performed successfully in Philadelphia, which was read to and published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal ...
- 13.3k
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 ...
- 4,668
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 ...
- 320
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 ...
- 918
16
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 ...
- 6,972
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.
...
- 6,972
16
votes
Accepted
Are birds magnetically repelled from high-voltage power lines?
The premise of the question is wrong and the science of electromagnetism suggests why
A simple google search for images using the term "birds power lines" will show many pictures revealing birds ...
- 54.7k
15
votes
Do cellphone towers cause health issues?
Link between Cell Towers and Cancer Elusive
A quick search on cell phone towers and cancer provides many results, some state cell phone towers are dangerous because it can cause cancer, while some ...
- 253
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-...
- 268
14
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 ...
- 12.3k
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 ...
- 6,219
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 ...
- 235
11
votes
Accepted
Does a deep freezer use more energy when there is a layer of ice in it?
In general, frosting has generally a negative effect on cooling. How much depends on the air flow in the freezer, as cold air has to reach every part of the contents easily.
Frost formation
...
- 78k
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 ...
- 1,798
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 ...
- 1,037
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 ...
- 11.4k
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 ...
- 180
8
votes
Accepted
Can an electric chair shock raise your hair?
The Death Penalty Information Centre describes the process (which is no longer used in the United States):
For execution by the electric chair, the person is usually shaved and strapped to a chair ...
- 132k
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 ...
- 4,040
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 ...
- 11.1k
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 ...
- 22.4k
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 ...
- 22.4k
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 ...
- 96.4k
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 ...
- 49.3k
5
votes
Do solar flares and/or geomagnetic storms affect human health?
I'll get this out there before I go on: people in aircraft (and spacecraft) are susceptible to harmful radiation from solar activity, because Earth's atmosphere does not provide significant shielding ...
- 11.1k
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 ...
- 12k
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 ...
- 15.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible