Wow, the oxygenated iron in our blood does this in a monster magnetic field... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2017, 09:24:59 pm
content: See here:

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 10:55:31 am
content: Wow I knew blood isn't attracted to a magnetic field but didn't know it's diamagnetic i.e. repelled by magnets.

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 11:03:22 am
content: I somewhat doubt it is the iron in the blood. Other elements also react to magnetic fields at that level. A striking example is some carbon compound levitating over a strong permanent magnet.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 11:27:13 am
content: Blood is 90% (or whatever) water, and to a great extent does not contain obscure electronic configurations (unpaired electrons), so this should be not at all surprising!Tim

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 12:55:29 pm
content: Diamagnetism is pretty cool. I had never read about that before, which is surprising for me that I could have missed something as interesting as that.Evidently, using diamagnetism and huge magnets they have successfully levitated tiny frogs.

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 07:25:35 pm
content: If you had a large enough superconductor electromagnet, could you levitate yourself? Assuming you could surround a room with these could you (safely) float in the middle?

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 09:02:41 pm
content: I guess in theory. It has been done with small animals here:

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 09:21:34 pm
content: Quote from: Cyberdragon on October 29, 2017, 07:25:35 pmIt gets more tricky with larger objects, as the force is proportional to the field times the field gradient. A physical larger magnet tends to have less gradient and thus will need a stronger field. So there might be technical problems coming up.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 09:24:29 pm
content: So, your blood is mixed in an MRI?

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 09:49:45 pm
content: I once volunteered in a lab where we used a dilute blood sample in a very strong magnetic field to check for the presence of the Malaria parasite. The parasite leaves behind waste in the form of a iron molecule that will rotate the polarization of an applied deep red laser beam as it is transmitted thru the sample. By rotating the magnets while watching the photodiode signal with a lock-in amplifier we had an amazingly sensitive test to see if a parasite is active.Lab tests indicated this technique could detect parasite up to two weeks before the conventional test showed any presence. This only took a few minutes. The conventional test is a five hour long process that is not easily automated. If you can test carriers for the periodic activity of the parasite, you can give them medicine to suppress the parasite activity during the contagious period. This reduces the parasite titre to the point that if a mosquito bites the carrier, the mosquito is unlikely to be able to pass on the disease to another potential host.The process is by no means a cure, but it would work well to prevent further transmission.I'm proud of helping refine that project's handheld prototype. It's in preliminary clinical trials right now.Steve

author: Mjolinor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 10:11:02 pm
content: Gotto love that. A microscopic poop detector.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 10:46:13 pm
content: Quote from: Kleinstein on October 29, 2017, 09:21:34 pmYeah, I want to say I read an article about that and it would take over 100T or something to levitate a human -- over the volume of a human as well.If nothing else, even just the 30T field, in the space of a human body, is a truly immense amount of energy density. It's like swimming inside dynamite!At those levels, you really do start to get into trouble as molecular dynamics are subtly changed (or at 100T+, not so subtle, perhaps). I wonder if the impact would be similar to the effect of heavy water (if you consume it chronically until a large fraction of your body mass becomes deuterated), at first.Tim

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 11:00:32 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on October 29, 2017, 10:46:13 pmWould it be deadly or just sickening after a while?

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 11:44:04 pm
content: Well, if you had metallic fillings, a 100t field would yank them through your teeth/bone/skull/body at a multitude of the speed of sound.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2017, 11:56:43 pm
content: Quote from: Cyberdragon on October 29, 2017, 11:00:32 pmI would guess, as you go up in field, the effects become more severe, and more immediate. Much like ionizing radiation, without the post-exposure effects. Heh, well, I don't know, maybe proteins will fold wrong and DNA will get scrambled at a high enough field strength, and then you're kind of screwed?At a glance, I don't see much about high-field effects. Apparently 18T magnets are being used to help grow better protein crystals, for crystallography and x-ray diffraction purposes. Can't be too bad at that level, I suppose.On that note; the mind boggles to even conceive of 100T+ fields, both to experience, and to attempt to generate, such a feat! The Maxwell stress from that flux density is already greater than any known steel can withstand.Speaking of "swimming in dynamite", 100T is merely half the energy density of TNT (1001 ksi equivalent, hey, that's easy to remember!), not at all a bad SWAG!I'm not up on my high-field molecular dynamics to know what kind of effects occur at such high fields, but it's entirely possible that different electronic configurations (orbitals), binding and ionization energies, spin couplings, and so on, would become relevant. Let's see, there is such a thing as strong-field Zeeman splitting, so the atomic case is well studied. In short, around 30T, chemistry probably isn't too different, but it might be different enough that you feel it, perhaps immediately (neural effects?), perhaps over continued exposure; and different enough that perhaps life-as-we-know-it cannot reproduce without additional evolution to fix things (much as life in space is already know to be a bit weird). At fields over 100T, it wouldn't seem possible for any solid material to exist anymore, as we know it: it would be torn apart, or crushed into electron-degenerate matter. The latter, of course, is the only sort of environment we can theorize about (and observe, from very great distances, of course): astronomical objects like white dwarfs and neutron stars. Environments so extreme, so utterly hostile, and so alien that we have no hope of recreating their environments in the laboratory...Tim

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 04:03:45 am
content: 100T is puny compared to some of the strongest observed Magnetars at 100000000000T. Yes 1011T.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 09:03:38 pm
content: Quote from: BrianHG on October 30, 2017, 04:03:45 amYup. I suppose it would figure that such extreme fields aren't created by matter-as-we-know-it, at all. (It seems unlikely to me that atoms and molecules could even exist in such a field.) Neutronium is a strange substance, to be sure!Tim

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 11:45:14 am
content: Here is a question; Assuming you had zero metal in your body, no fillings, or metal anything, would you let them do that to you?For science's sake?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:05:39 pm
content: I haven't done the calculations, but at that field strength, I'd suspect there's a risk of electrocution, if one moves around too quickly, due to the eddy currents generated in their body tissues, as they move through he field.

author: Mjolinor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 04:46:18 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on October 31, 2017, 11:45:14 amI tend to think you would be dead anyway if that were the case.

author: innkeeper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 05:32:41 pm
content: I'm diamagnetic ... who knew

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2017, 01:32:16 pm
content: Quote from: innkeeper on October 31, 2017, 05:32:41 pmFaraday (~1850), since he cataloged pretty much everything he could get his hands on. I don't know for sure if that included flesh, but it seems likely.Tim

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2017, 11:47:41 pm
content: This guy obviously claims that being close to a magnatar would straighten out all your atoms into straight lines and stop all biological functions & stretch you out, but, he does not say whether you would be attracted or repelled to the actual magnatar.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 19, 2017, 01:27:34 pm
content: Quote from: Cyberdragon on October 29, 2017, 07:25:35 pmApparently, for a human, you would only need a 45 tesla magnet to do the job..... See here: