Covid-19 Discussion (moderated)

Yeah, of course, but it's not some mystical "who knows how much is harmful" it's a very simple calculation.

It's like saying vaccines are harmful because the ingredients list has words I can't pronounce and that's scary... although even that is much more complicated than 5G because 5G is very simple: higher frequencies increase bitrate. That's it.

So why didn't we use 5G in the past? Because radio waves (essentially) ignore buildings and terrain, but higher frequencies don't behave as nicely.

Here's a test you can do at home. Place your hands over your ears while a song is playing. Can you still hear the song? It's harder to hear, but of course you can still hear. Now do the same for your eyes while watching a movie. Can you still see? Of course not, it's as if you're blind. Light is very high frequency. Sounds is low. Low frequency is easier to use for transmission.

Having a city with tons of transmission towers is just as harmful as having a city with tons of flashlights... of course the power output matters though, because a very powerful flashlight will burn you... but like I said in the beginning, it's a very simple calculation.

I have to say that is an awesome way of explaining this that I will "borrow" and use in the future .

Thanks, I came up with it myself

What's interesting is that research is also being done for frequencies beyond 5G, lets say you want to transmit in the terahertz band, it's not only about traditional obstacles anymore, you have to take into account things as small as moisture in the air... and I don't mean clouds or fog, I mean just "normal" air.

Sure, I know microwave frequencies "cook" things... but if you want to be scared of waves going "through" you then you shouldn't be too worried about really high frequency. Like light it will just bounce off of you (it only hurts you when the power output is high, think like a sunburn).

I still want to also make it clear that the band that 5G uses now was a lot more expensive to operate devices in in the past.  I worked at a gallium arsenide chip design firm in the early 90s, and 24gHz was about the limit for practical applications back then (Sidewinder missile guidance being the highest speed application I can recall), and silicon was not able to effectively operate in those frequencies.

Put very good wax ear plug and.....because your hands are very thick

Better example will be to talk about the wave length of low frequencies and the size of the objects(like houses or buildings or mountains) and the wave length of high frequencies that cannot go around the objects like the low frequencies can.

Be careful talking about microwaves .  It's taken me decades to convince some people by constant reminders that microwave "radiation" is not the same as nuclear "radiation" and that they cannot get a Chernobyl style "radiation leak" from their kitchen microwave. 

Well just think at the microprocessor that started the revolution of the PC 35 years ago,their max frequencies was for the 6520 chip 1 Mhz.

Then you lose the layman, though.  This example is something anyone can understand.

(OMG, it is really, really difficult not to make a bleach injection joke here ...must...resist...)

Yep, I learned assembly language on the 6502 (I think you meant the 6502, not the 6520).  Easier to learn with only the accumulator and an X and Y register .

I don't think so;it's all about size

longer wave like one when you trow a rock in the water go around a little obstacle (longer ware go around a skyscraper  but a smaller wave hit it and is no longer transmitting anything...

Oh yeah, that's an interesting point, I didn't think about how that would be another practical limitation, the semiconductor. I know they use gallium arsenide chips to sample frequencies much higher, but it's a slow process that requires a lot of equipment (and it's just sampling).

I've heard they're looking into li-fi (wifi but with visible light as the carrier). Obviously you need line of sight to keep your connection, but in something like a coffee shop it's conceivable... but I always assumed that would be, you know, 1000 or one million times faster than what we have, but I wonder what kind of semiconductor they use. I honestly don't know the... maybe you'd call it frequency response limits of materials.

it was a typo 6520 never existed...

Wait... but if they thought microwaves cook with nuclear radiation and then they eat the food... lol

it's the switching speed of the transistors.

Your processor chip builds up heat as it changes states, limiting speed. ...

Logic was not their strong suit.  They thought microwaves were powered by "radiation" but somehow not that the radiation directly cooked their food .

"The microwave is overheating, Mom!  Pull the rods out of the core!"

Transistors—tiny electrical switches—are the fundamental unit that drives all the electronic gadgets we can think of. As they get smaller, they also get faster and consume less electricity to operate.

Today’s transistors are about 70 silicon atoms wide, so the possibility of making them even smaller is itself shrinking. We’re getting very close to the limit of how small we can make a transistor.

Microwaved meals often taste like an elephants foot in fairness. 

   A link was posted in #584 about how air pollution is enhancing the virus...  I heard just the opposite. The fact that the whole world is under lockdown.....air pollution is not as bad. In Paris, you can actually see the Iffel Tower......and in India, you can see the Himalayan mountains.

Well, it looks interesting, I'll read it... but it's a little annoying. Randomly scrolling through I see it says beam forming and MIMO are new technologies that will make it difficult to measure exposure... they're absolutely not new, and I don't know why this wouldn't be easy to model.

I saw some other odd sentences... I looked up the author, his masters and PhD are in Psychology. I don't know why I should think this man knows anything about the physics and engineering of wireless communications... but sure, I mean, I'll read it later.