I wasn’t able to find a report of that happening at the Hofn station, but the same story of this happening to an anonymous microwave technician does appear in other locales.
Snopes did a debunking on these and they say it’s false: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nuke-of-earl/
If you got locked in there.. then sure... maybe.... but staying in there and not feeling it (or just feeling "warmer", until you die...) nope.
Note: They are ~900Mhz, so short of "microwave", but pretty close.
(Technically, an Earth-based space elevator would still most likely be beaming from inside Earth atmosphere, but at least it would be pointed approximately straight up and probably be positioned in the ocean or other sparsely-populated area.)
“Even a horn has diffraction sidebands, and unless they're all at least 8dB down in all situations that's bad. The laser trips won't cover this.”
I don’t really understand this. My guess is that they’re saying that besides the targeted microwave band, other high/low frequencies will be emitted (sidebands) and that these will diffract and be way outside of the directional beam that’s protected by the laser trip wire.
I would assume the inventors have at least some explanation for this, but a fluffy article won’t go into those details.
5 seconds of searching would have saved you from looking like a dick.
That may or may not be true, but you're bringing up a point they already addressed.
Another way to say it is 1 kilowatt per square meter. It's a lot of energy. A 1500 watt electric heater can get my entire bedroom quite a bit hotter than with just the central heat running. Put 2/3rds of that energy into your body and there are certainly going to be effects.
This is an urban myth.
http://www.schoolphysics.co.uk/age16-19/Wave%20properties/Wa...
This place is pretty depressing sometimes.
Some of the “negative” HN comments gave me exactly the information I was interested in that the article hadn’t mentioned.
Do you harsh on people who remind you how dangerous it is to work on live electrical outlets or wear long sleeves in a chemistry lab?
A lot.
So every time some topic comes up, no matter how mundane or niche it is, there will inevitably be tons of people tripping over each other to score cheap virtue points by going after obvious trad-offs. "What about safety", "what about the poors", people ask questions like that even though they already know and don't care about the answer because their lizard brain knows that when they do that the number in the top right corner gets bigger.
That's just how modern gamified social media is.
Live wire accidents happen because people operating equipment capable of hitting the wires are looking elsewhere because looking elsewhere is a fundamental part of doing their job. The crane operator looking at the load or the helicopter pilot watching something on the ground is who hits a live wires. Not hitting live wires is caused by knowing where they are ahead of time and planning your work so you don't hit them. Making the wire invisible doesn't really change that. It's not like this tech would be used for residential lines where every Joe schmoe is operating a man-lift.
NZ has a strong system of regulations and licensing around transmitting.
Maximum exposure to non-ionising radiation is set out in NZS 2772.1, which is based on the guidelines from the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection.
All transmitters require approval from Radio Spectrum Management, and any system like this being deployed would require a resource consent from a territorial authority under the Resource Management Act, at which point the Department of Conservation would submit on any adverse effects on local wildlife.
This is such a typical internet armchair thing to do. Point out some Google-able “flaw” and wonder aloud whether the team of scientists and engineers have considered it.
(with or without Near Field considerations)
Why do you think that Radio Astronomy dishes are so humongous?
Surely you do not expect Emrod to discuss in detail the subject matter of its patent applications?
But some guy on the internet says it won’t work.
I believe this was an ad buy bought by marketing at PowerCo rather than some "R&D" department (hint: they don't have those at NZ power companies). It likely didn't get more than a layman's eye.
Have a meeting with a few stakeholders there next week, will ask about it. Also reaching out to Callaghan Institute who funded this.
This setup proposes to use 100mw/cm^2. That's just not acceptable unless you're sure no humans or animals are going to cross the beam (or even it's sidebands!). Even a horn has diffraction sidebands, and unless they're all at least 8dB down in all situations that's bad. The laser trips won't cover this.
This exceeds the safety standards established by the US Navy back when they were dealing with their high powered radars for the first time. They found that anything over 10mW/cm^2 can cause enough heating in animal eyes to cause clouding of the eye. Humans' deep set eyes and brow ridges help (depending on freq) but 10mW/cm^2 can still cause health issues. The measured e-field for that powerlevel, depending on wavelength, will almost certainly be above the electrical field limit for exposure in the USA. I hope that's also true in NZ.