EMF: Richard Box's Graphic Demonstrations
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.11.08
It is always a controversial subject here. Are EMFs harmful? Are WiFi routers and cellphones frying our brains? While the scientific consensus in North America suggests we need not worry, the art of Richard Box gives us serious pause.
Box takes several thousand fluorescent tubes and "plants" them under power lines. "The piece is simple yet spectacular, making visible what would otherwise go unnoticed. The FIELD of tubes will flicker in to life across the hillside as the early evening light fades. The performance each evening is hard to anticipate as the daily operation of the electricity supply will differ and is always dependent on the weather."
This is your neon brain on EMF.
From the Guardian: The 1301 fluorescent tubes are powered only by the electric fields generated by overhead powerlines.
Richard Box, artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department, got the idea for the installation after a chance conversation with a friend. ‘He was telling me he used to play with a fluorescent tube under the pylons by his house,’ says Box. ‘He said it lit up like a light sabre.’
Box decided to see if he could fill a field with tubes lit by powerlines. After a few weeks hunting for a site, he found a field, slipped the local farmer £200 and planted 3,600 square metres with tubes collected from hospitals.
A fluorescent tube glows when an electrical voltage is set up across it. The electric field set up inside the tube excites atoms of mercury gas, making them emit ultraviolet light. This invisible light strikes the phosphor coating on the glass tube, making it glow. Because powerlines are typically 400,000 volts, and Earth is at an electrical potential voltage of zero volts, pylons create electric fields between the cables they carry and the ground.
Box denies that he aimed to draw attention to the potential dangers of powerlines, ‘For me, it was just the amazement of taking something that’s invisible and making it visible,’ he says. ‘When it worked, I thought: ‘This is amazing.’’
Stuart Bunce
Well, he may not have done it to draw attention to the dangers, but my first thought was that if it can excite those mercury molecules at that distance to that degree, it probably isn't smart to put your brain anywhere near it. Wow. ::Richard Box, via ::Tropolism and ::Pruned
See TreeHugger on EMF:
Electrical Smog: More on "Frequency Pollution"
A university without wifi
Let The Power Be With Us: Glow-Tubes Map EMF Exposure
and for fun,
Spray-on Defense from WiFi and Cellphones
New Study Proves EMF Affects Living Things, Discovers Electro-bonsai Effect
Now try doing that next to your router. (Hint. It won't work).
That's a very neat trick.
Good thing people aren't fluorescent tubes, eh?
There is a lot of energy in the fields surrounding some types of heavy equipment, but my understanding of electromagnetism is that this energy won't couple to the human body in any subtle way.
It may cook you, but it won't give you cancer.
Very "Tesla-esque".
I used to have an orange trees that grew under residential power lines. The fruit was always wickedly deformed. Trees away from the power lines grew normal fruit. This is one of those areas that "scientists" declare safe because they can't prove it harmful. Shouldn't that be looked at the other way around?
There has been a lot of research into problems with children raised under Very High Voltage power lines and the results seem to indicate that there is a large problem. it makes sense. These kinds of EMFs are hugely powerful and will quite possibly disrupt the neural development of a growing brain. On the other hand, wifi generates a tiny EMF and would seem to have no effect at all. Far worse to spend 60 mins a day talking on a mobile phone!
Instead of looking at the dangers of this, couldn't we look at the positive possibilities? Obviously these powerlines need drasticly better insulation. If that much energy is wasted over the length of however many thousands of miles of powerlines, simple advances in insulation technologies could save massive amounts of energy.
Or to avoid the reconstruction costs of all those powerlines, maybe some method of harnessing the energy falloff in areas like this in batteries or generators or something. Appears as if you could easily light a giant warehouse under one of those lines.
Another thought for amazement is that they often work on those extremely high voltage lines with the power ON. A repair person will actually be transported up to the line in something that is insulated from ground and then he will short himself to the high voltage. They become energized at the same thousands of volts as the line. Sometimes they do this by being lowered from a helicopter. If they slip in the wrong direction they can generate arcs from another line... then they're quite literally toast.
Think about that the next time you flip on a switch, taking for granted that the light will come on.
The US power grid is the most effecient large grid in the world but it still loses over 7% of all power generated. The total ammount is staggering.
If each house or neighborhood area had systems that covered most of their needs most of the time the loss would be much less.