Reflections

RevMike writes "The New York Times (reg required) is reporting that Bell Labs/Lucent has developed a method to multiply the bandwidth of cellular networks by using multipath. Robert Lucky developed the system called Blast. He claims that it should multiply the data rates in existing spectrum 300% to 400%. One prototype took a network from 2.5Mb/s to 19.2 Mb/s. Interestingly, the system works better in cluttered environments." And on a related note, Kimberley Burchett writes "The latest Physics News Update mentions that skyscrapers could actually help wireless communication. 'The more scatterers between the transmitters and receivers, the more channels that are available. For the time being, the communication technique is limited to ultrasonic communication - the electronics necessary for exploiting scatterers with wide-band time-reversal antennas at cell phone frequencies simply don't yet exist.'"

Comments

Cell Phones = Cancer is BULLSHIT

[siskbc]

Does anyone have any updated statistics on cellular safety? I wonder if this technology will affect that aspect of cellular use?

OK, I'm a physical chemist, and this junk drives me up the wall.

All these journalists assume that the wattage is what matters, and that being 1 cm from a 4 watt transmitter could be unhealthy. However, the wattage is irrelevant - Einstein showed this with the photoelectric effect. Basically, it is the frequency of the radiation that is dangerous, not the wattage, because one photon interacts with one electron - so the number of photons is irrelevant. For example, which would you rather be near - a 100W light bulb, or a 1W gamma ray emitter? Thought so...;)

To give you a baseline, cancer due to radiation occurs because photons of succicient energy actually break chemical bonds in your DNA. This requires low-UV or better to accomplish. That's why sunburn gives you cancer. Now, compare this to radio waves, which are far, FAR to low in energy to accomplish anything of the sort. In fact, radio waves are even to low to excite the vibrational or rotational states of a molecule (which is how a microwave oven works), so there is no risk of "cooking" your brain, either.

Ultimately, when pressed, these cell-phone-cancer freaks point at two cases where some habitual cell-phone user got cancer on the right side of his brain. Ergo, it was the cell phone. These "doctors" (and I use the term loosely) have never proposed any sort of mechanism or ANYTHING to explain how it could occur. Because it can't.

Bottom line, you have a better chance of getting cancer from your own body heat (you emit infrared radiation) than you do from a cell phone.