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    electromagnetic field applied to lab rats over time resulted in broken strands of DNA in the brain. Not just

    anywhere - the brain specifically. It's possible that this DNA damage is the cause of brain tumors, and the

    reason why people don't just walk around with brain-boosting electromagnetic hats all the time.

    9. Stimulate its Growth 

    Oh, electromagnetism! It's such a trickster! One moment its ripping through DNA strands like a pit bull

    through an old sock, the next minute it's tenderly nurturing the growth of neurons. Scientists found that

    brains subjected to regular transcranial electromagnetic stimulation for only five days showed an increase in

    stem cells in the hippocampus. This is the part of the brain that governs memory, making electromagnetic

    stimulation a possible treatment for Alzheimer's and stroke patients.

    8. Train you off food and water 

    Rats who had been deprived of water were placed in a strong electromagnetic field and offered a sweetened

    solution. Although they did drink, they drank less than those given the solution without exposure to the

    electromagnetic field. When rats were given the solution and later exposed to the field, they developed anaversion to the solution over time. Enough electromagnetism may turn you off your favorite food.

    7. Make you spin in circles 

    Other rats (who have a terrible time of it during experiments like these) were found to walk in tight circles

    under the influence of an electromagnetic field. Scientists think that the field takes out the rats' sense of

    balance, making them lurch in circles. The lack of balance also may have induced nausea, which causes

    lethargy and could be one of the reasons that rats go off their feed.

    6. Pacify you completely 

    Transcranial electromagnetic stimulation - subjecting people to strong electromagnetic fields aimed at

    specific parts of the brain - is sometimes used as a treatment for bipolar disorder or clinical depression.

    Some patients find an immense relief in this. Other people, who don't suffer from depression, have reason

    to worry about it. People without any diagnosed medical illness while under such stimulation can be relaxed

    to a state where they can't think of anything, at all, that bothers them. If that kind of relaxation can be

    induced at will, it could be used to pacify large parts of the population.

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    5. Alter your morality 

    All that relaxation has a price. Sometimes we're meant to fret. For example, if someone is about to cross a

    dangerous bridge, and we're aware of the chance it can collapse, and they aren't. Those without a magnetic

    field dancing around their brain, think that allowing the person to cross the bridge would be immoral. Those

    with a field gaily capering through their neurons think that, as long as this hypothetical person made it to the

    other side in one piece, there's no real moral problem. Judging the morality of a situation strictly by the

    outcome makes any crimes with 'attempted' in their description no longer crimes at all. It takes away a

    person's intentions and bases morality entirely on what happens to occur. Morality becomes a matter of

    chance.

    4. Take out your power of speech but leave your ability to sing 

    Broca's area in the brain controls the ability to speak. A large electromagnetic field applied to the area takes

    out that ability entirely. Subjects under this kind of stimulation simply stop speaking the moment the field

    disrupts that part of the brain, while the rest of the functions are unimpeded. One of those other functions is

    singing. Although many people think that singing words and speaking words are much the same function,

    the ability to perform each action is housed in completely different parts of the brain. So people who are

    unable to talk will sing perfectly normally.

    3. Induce panic, disorientation, and deep fear 

    Although some kinds of electromagnetic fields, applied to certain areas of the brain, pacify people and put

    them in a good mood, others are said to induce fear. Sometimes people report a persistent, if mild, sense of

    unease. Others have a more visceral response, feelings of despair and paranoia, sliding into overwhelming

    terror.

    2. Cause Seizures and Death 

    Under the worst circumstances, exposure to electromagnetic fields can cause a number of serious effects in

    the brain. Studies have shown that it can change the flow of blood in the brain, and turn off neuron groups.

    Some people, under the influence of high magnetic fields have caused people to have violent seizures, andeven lose consciousness, slip into comas, and die. This is one of the reasons why houses under high

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    electromagnetic fields have ghost stories associated with them. In conjunction with the deep feelings of

    unease, mysterious seizures and deaths start all kinds of rumors. Of course, those rumors aren't as bad as . . .

    1. Make you see ghosts 

    Electromagnetic fields, or electric shocks, have induced specific hallucinations in people. Those who are

    exposed to them, even in laboratory settings, have caused people to complain about a feeling of people

    following them, talking to them, or watching them. This is not always an uncomfortable sensation. Some

    people interpret this presence as a malevolent presence, especially if it's coupled with a feeling of unease,

    but others say they felt an inspiring or comforting presence. Ghost hunters will sometimes say the reverse -

    that ghosts cause a high electromagnetic field, or sometimes that a high electromagnetic field will allow

    ghosts to appear. Nobody is sure, yet, what these fields do to ghost brain DNA.

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    https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/how-strong-would-a-magnetic-field-have-to-be-to-kill-

    you/ 

    How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?

    January 12, 2015

    by Brian 

    There’s a great joke in Futurama, the cartoon comedy show, about a horror movie for robots. In the movie,

    a planet of robots is terrorized by a giant “non-metallic being” (a monsterified human). The human is finally

    defeated by a makeshift spear, which prompts the robot general to say:

    “Funny, isn’t it? The human was impervious to our most powerful magnetic fields, yet in the end he

    succumbed to a harmless sharpened stick.”

    The joke, of course, is that the human body might seem much more fragile than a metallic machine, but to a

    robot our ability to withstand enormous magnetic fields would be like invincibility.

    But this got me thinking: how strong would  a magnetic field have to be before it killed a human?

    Unlike a computer hard drive, the human body doesn’t really make use of any magnetic states — there is

    nowhere in the body where important information is stored as a static magnetization. This means that there

    is no risk that an external magnetic field could wipe out important information, the way that it would for,

    say, a credit card or a hard drive. So, for example, it’s perfectly safe for a human (with no metal in their

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    body) to have an MRI scan, during which the magnetic fields reach several Tesla, which is about times

    stronger than the normal magnetic fields produced by the Earth.

    A computer hard drive stores information in a sequence of magnetically aligned segments.

    But even without any magnetic information to erase, a strong enough magnetic field must have some 

    effect. Generally speaking, magnetic fields create forces that push on moving charges. And the body has

    plenty of moving charges inside it: most notably, the electrons that orbit around atomic nuclei.

    As I’ll show below, a large enough magnetic field would push strongly enough on these orbiting electrons to

    completely change the shape of atoms, and this would ruin the chemical bonds that give our body its

    function and its structure integrity.

    What atoms look like

    Before I continue, let me briefly recap the cartoon picture of the structure of the atom, and how to think

    about it. An atom is the bound state of at least one electron to a positively charged nucleus. The electric

    attraction between the electron and the nucleus pulls the electron inward, while the rules of quantum

    mechanics prevent the electron from collapsing down completely onto the nucleus.

    In this case, the relevant “rule of quantum mechanics” is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which saysthat if you confine an electron to a volume of size , then the electron’s momentum must become at least as

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    large as . The corresponding kinetic energy is , which means that the more

    tightly you try to confine an electron, the more kinetic energy it gets. [Here, is Planck’s constant, and is

    the electron mass$.] This kinetic energy is often called the “quantum confinement energy.”

    In a stable atom, the quantum confinement energy, which favors having a large electron orbit, is balanced

    against the electric attraction between the electron and the nucleus, which pulls the electron inward and has

    energy . [Here is the electron charge and is the vacuum permittivity]. In the balanced state,

    these two energies are nearly equal to each other, which means that meters.

    This is the quick and dirty way to figure out the answer to the question: “how big is an atom?”.

    The associated velocity of the electron in its orbit is , which is about m/s (or about a

    million miles per hour). The attractive force between the electron and the nucleus is about

    , which comes to ~100 nanoNewtons.

    Who pulls harder: the nucleus, or the magnetic field?

    Now that I’ve reminded you what an atom looks like, let me remind you what magnetic fields do to free

    charges.

    They pull them into circular orbits, like this:

    The force with which a magnetic field pulls on a charge is given by , where is the strength of

    the field. For an electron moving at a million miles per hour, as in the inside of an atom, this works out to be

    about 1 picoNewton per Tesla of magnetic field.

    Now we can consider the following question. Who pulls harder on the electron: the nucleus, or the external

    magnetic field?

    The answer, of course, depends on the strength of the magnetic field. Looking at the numbers above, onecan see that for just about any realistic situation, the force provided by the magnetic field is much much

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_force

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    smaller than the force from the nucleus, so that the magnetic field essentially does nothing to perturb the

    electrons in their atomic orbitals. However, if the magnetic field were to get strong enough, then the force it

    produces would be enough to start significantly bending the electron trajectories, and the shape of the

    electron orbits would get distorted.

    Setting from above gives the estimate that this kind of distortion happens only whenTesla. Given that the strongest static magnetic fields we can create artificially are only about 100

    Tesla, it’s probably safe to say that you are unlikely to experience this any time soon. Just don’t wander too

    close to any magnetars. 

    Distorted atoms

    But supposing that you did  wander into a magnetic field of 100,000 Tesla, what would happen?

    The strong magnetic forces would start to squeeze the electron orbits in all the atoms in your body. The

    result would look something like this:

    So, for example, an initially spherical hydrogen atom (on the left) would have its orbit squeezed in the

    directions perpendicular to the magnetic field, and would end up instead looking like the picture on the

    right. This squeezing would get more and more pronounced as the field is turned up, so that all the atoms in

    your body would go from roughly spherical to “cigar-shaped,” and then to “needle-shaped”.

    Needless to say, the molecules that make up your body are only able to hold together when they are made

    from normal shaped atoms, and not needle-shaped atoms. So once the atomic orbitals got sufficiently

    distorted, their chemistry would change dramatically and these molecules would start to fall apart. And your

    body would presumably be reduced to a dusty, incoherent mess (artist’s conception).

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    But for those of us who stay away from neutron stars, it is probably safe to assume that death by magnetic

    field-induced disintegration is pretty unlikely. So you can continue lording your invincibility over your robot

    coworkers.

    UPDATE:

    A number of people have pointed out, correctly, that if you really subjected a body to strong magnetic fields,

    something would probably go wrong biologically far before the field got so ludicrously large fields as 100,000

    Tesla. For example, the motion of ions through ion channels, which is essential for nerve firing, might be

    affected. Sadly, I probably don’t know enough biology to give you a confident speculation about what,

    exactly, might go wrong.

    There is another possible issue, though, that can be understood at the level of cartoon pictures of atoms. Anelectron orbiting around a nucleus is, in a primitive sense, like a tiny circular electric current. As a result, the

    electron creates its own little magnetic field, with a “north pole” and “south pole” determined by the

    direction of its orbital motion. Like so:

    Normally, these little electron orbits all point in more or less random directions. But in the presence of a

    strong enough external magnetic field, the electron orbit will tend to get aligned so that its “north pole”

    points in the same direction as the magnetic field. By my estimate, this would happen at a few hundred

    Tesla.

    In other words, a few hundred Tesla is what it would take to strongly magnetize the human body. This isn’t

    deformation of atoms, just alignment of their orbits in a consistent direction.

    Once the atomic orbits were all pointed in the same direction, the chemistry of atomic interactions might

    start to be affected. For example, some chemical processes might start happening at different rates when

    the atoms are “side by side” as compared to when they are “front to back.” I can imagine this subtlealteration of chemical reaction rates having a big effect over a long enough time.

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    Maybe this is why, as commenter cornholio pointed out below, a fruit fly that grows up in a ~ 10 Tesla field

    appears to get mutated.

    Footnote

    I have been assuming, of course, that we are talking only about static magnetic fields. Subjecting someone

    to a magnetic field that changes quickly in time is the same thing as bombarding them with radiation. And it

    is not at all difficult to microwave someone to death. 

    [Update: A number of people have brought up transcranial magnetic stimulation, which has noticeable

    biological effects at relatively small field strengths. But this works only because it applies a time-dependent

    magnetic field, which can induce electric currents in the brain.]

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    http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/bending-morality-magnetism

    A Magnetic Field Applied to the Brain Can Alter People's Sense of Morality

    Perfect for brainwashing an evil clone army

    By Clay Dillow Posted March 31, 2010

    http://www.princeton.edu/~napl/ 

    Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

    Transcranial magnetic stimulation can impair the brain's ability to make moral decisions based on another

    person's intentions.

    Moral judgments often have less to do with outcome and more to do with intention. Take murder, for

    instance: The U.S. legal system makes distinctions between a crime committed in the heat of the moment

    and one that is planned ahead of time. But moral judgments may not be as sacrosanct as we believe: MIT

    scientists have shown that they can alter our moral judgments simply by magnetically interfering with acertain part of the brain.

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    Studies have shown that the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) lights up with activity when we engage in

    moral judgments like evaluating the intentions of another person, indicating the region is important to

    making moral decisions. But while we like to think we're very consistent in our morality, the MIT team

    showed that an electromagnetic field applied to the scalp impairs our ability to evaluate the intentions of

    others, leaving us with little by which to hand down a moral judgment.

    The study relied on non-invasive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to interfere with the right TPJ,

    temporarily impeding the normal firing of neurons in that region. In one experiment participants were

    exposed to TMS for nearly half an hour then asked to complete a quiz in which they had to judge characters'

    actions based on their intentions. In a second test, subjects were hit with a 500-millisecond burst of TMS just

    as they were evaluating a moral problem.

    In both cases, control subjects were able to evaluate the harmfulness and morality of characters' intentions,

    whereas those exposed to TMS made judgments based purely on outcome. For example, one common

    question asked whether or not it was morally permissible for a man to allow his girlfriend to cross a bridge

    he knows is unsafe, even if in the end she makes it across safely. Control subjects found the intention to do

    harm morally impermissible, but those exposed to TMS largely based their judgment solely on the outcome;no harm, no foul.

    The study not only shows that our morals aren't exactly incorruptible, but also sheds light on the way the

    brain organizes and compartmentalizes moral decision making. It also reinforces something we all know

    intuitively to be true: finding the difference between right and wrong is rarely as simple as it sounds.

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    http://news.mit.edu/2010/moral-control-0330

    Moral judgments can be altered ... by magnets

    By disrupting brain activity in a particular region, neuroscientists can sway people’s views of moral

    situations.

    Anne Trafton, MIT News Office

    March 30, 2010

    To make moral judgments about other people, we often need to infer their intentions — an ability known as

    “theory of mind.” For example, if one hunter shoots another while on a hunting trip, we need to know what

    the shooter was thinking: Was he secretly jealous, or did he mistake his fellow hunter for an animal?

    MIT neuroscientists have now shown they can influence those judgments by interfering with activity in a

    specific brain region — a finding that helps reveal how the brain constructs morality.

    Previous studies have shown that a brain region known as the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is highly

    active when we think about other people’s intentions, thoughts and beliefs. In the new study, the

    researchers disrupted activity in the right TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field

    applied to the scalp. They found that the subjects’ ability to make moral judgments that require an

    understanding of other people’s intentions — for example, a failed murder attempt — was impaired.

    The researchers, led by Rebecca Saxe, MIT assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, report their

    findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 29. Funding for the

    research came from The National Center for Research Resources, the MIND Institute, the Athinoula A.

    Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, the Simons Foundation and the David and Lucille Packard

    Foundation.

    The study offers “striking evidence” that the right TPJ, located at the brain’s surface above and behind the

    right ear, is critical for making moral judgments, says Liane Young, lead author of the paper. It’s also

    startling, since under normal circumstances people are very confident and consistent in these kinds of moral

     judgments, says Young, a postdoctoral associate in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

    “You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior,” she says. “To be able to apply (a magnetic field)

    to a specific brain region and change people’s moral judgments is really astonishing.”

    Thinking of others 

    Saxe first identified the right TPJ’s role in theory of mind a decade ago — a discovery that was the subject of

    her MIT PhD thesis in 2003. Since then, she has used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show

    that the right TPJ is active when people are asked to make judgments that require thinking about other

    people’s intentions.

    In the new study, the researchers wanted to go beyond fMRI experiments to observe what would happen if

    they could actually disrupt activity in the right TPJ. Their success marks a major step forward for the field of

    moral neuroscience, says Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, professor of philosophy at Duke University.

    “Recent fMRI studies of moral judgment find fascinating correlations, but Young et al usher in a new era bymoving beyond correlation to causation,” says Sinnott-Armstrong, who was not involved in this research.

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    The researchers used a noninvasive technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to

    selectively interfere with brain activity in the right TPJ. A magnetic field applied to a small area of the skull

    creates weak electric currents that impede nearby brain cells’ ability to fire normally, but the effect is only

    temporary.

    In one experiment, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before taking a test in which they read aseries of scenarios and made moral judgments of characters’ actions on a scale of one (absolutely forbidden)

    to seven (absolutely permissible).

    In a second experiment, TMS was applied in 500-milisecond bursts at the moment when the subject was

    asked to make a moral judgment. For example, subjects were asked to judge how permissible it is for a man

    to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knows to be unsafe, even if she ends up making it across safely. In

    such cases, a judgment based solely on the outcome would hold the perpetrator morally blameless, even

    though it appears he intended to do harm.

    In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ was disrupted, subjects were more likely

    to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible. Therefore, the researchers believe that TMSinterfered with subjects’ ability to interpret others’ intentions, forcing them to rely more on outcome

    information to make their judgments.

    “It doesn’t completely reverse people’s moral judgments, it just biases them,” says Saxe.

    When subjects received TMS to a brain region near the right TPJ, their judgments were nearly identical to

    those of people who received no TMS at all.

    While understanding other people’s intentions is critical to judging them, it is just one piece of the puzzle.

    We also take into account the person’s desires, previous record and any external constraints, guided by our

    own concepts of loyalty, fairness and integrity, says Saxe.

    “Our moral judgments are not the result of a single process, even though they feel like one uniform thing,”

    she says. “It’s actually a hodgepodge of competing and conflicting judgments, all of which get jumbled into

    what we call moral judgment.”

    Saxe’s lab is now studying the role of theory of mind in judging situations where the attempted harm was

    not a physical threat. The researchers are also doing a study on the role of the right TPJ in judgments of

    people who are morally lucky or unlucky. For example, a drunk driver who hits and kills a pedestrian is

    unlucky, compared to an equally drunk driver who makes it home safely, but the unlucky homicidal driver

    tends to be judged more morally blameworthy.