The tin foil hat, while fashionable, is an ineffective way of keeping the government’s radio waves from infiltrating and manipulating your mind. In fact, the hat may boost certain radio frequencies, which is OK because there’s no such thing as mind-controlling waves anyway.
The tin foil hat, while fashionable, is an ineffective way of keeping the government’s radio waves from infiltrating and manipulating your mind. In fact, the hat may boost certain radio frequencies, which is OK because there’s no such thing as mind-controlling waves anyway.
But you might have heard that you should really worry about the radio waves that spew out of your cellphone—that they can cause brain cancer. That too, I’m happy to report, probably isn’t true. At least, no one has yet proven a solid link between cancer and phone use. But that’s where things get complicated.
First off, radio waves are indeed a form of radiation. But they’re relatively low-frequency waves, and are therefore low energy. High frequency, high energy waves like X-rays can damage your DNA—radio waves cannot. (What radio waves can do, though, is heat up your flesh. But again, the energy is too weak to do any damage to your ear, much less your brain.)
Still, beginning in the 1950s, researchers began speculating that radio waves might cause cancer. “But that was just speculation,” says Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. “We really still don’t have definitive answers as to whether they do cause cancer.”
Read more at Wired
Photo credit: Tim Parkinson via Wikimedia Commons
