The above is the title of an article in the November 1996 issue of Physics World. Its authors are John Swanson, David Renfrew and Nigel Wilkinson, who belong to the Technology and Science Division of the National Grid Company in U.K.
They conclude that, though it would be:
'arrogant and rash of physicists to argue that, because we have not yet been able to think of a possible physical mechanism, it is impossible for there to be an effect.. however, the absence of a mechanism and reproducible laboratory results inevitably means .. scepticism'.I note that in their article they say that various resonant mechanisms involving the Earth's static (magnetic) field have been proposed, for example ion cyclotron resonance of the calcium ion. Of this they declare that such cyclotron resonance cannot actually occur in a cell as the orbit of the ion would have to be more than 1 metre (in radius).
This shows that they have not understood the physics of cyclotron resonance as applied to ionised liquids. To pump energy from a pulsating electric field into a system of ions moving in a magnetic field the only governing condition is that the pulsating frequency is in or near to resonance with the natural frequency of the ion in orbit in that field. The cyclotron as used in high energy particle physics pumps energy into an ion by increasing its speed and so it orbital radius. If we are not seeking to put that energy exclusively into an ion output stream, it matters not if there are collisions limiting the mean free path to sub-micron-sized dimensions. There is still energy transfer from that field to the ion system.
To understand this it may be that a mathematician will be required to supplement the "skills of physicists alongside those of biologists, epidemiologists and engineers" (quoted as the last words in the referenced article). You see, if there were no magnetic field, the ions in collision in the fluids in our body cells would merely move in straight lines between those collisions. A straight line is a curve of infinite radius! If, however, a magnetic field is present, then that same rectilinear motion would apply if the system of ions in motion could be viewed from a reference frame rotating about the magnetic field axis at the cyclotron frequency. Each and every positive ion would share a motion as if the whole of the fluid in the cell were rotating at the same angular velocity. Collisions would not cause a clockwise moving ion to take up anti-clockwise motion.
It follows therefore that the superimposition of a 50Hz or 60Hz pulsating electric field attributable to an overhead power line will act selectively in pumping energy into those ions moving with the field. The ions on one side of a cell will gain in speed in their cyclotron orbit (or rather, minute arcs of such an orbit), whereas those on the opposite side of the cell will reduce in speed. However, owing to the rotation, if there is a match between the cyclotron frequency and the frequency of the pulsating field, the ions on one side of the system which gain energy will have moved around to the other side as the field reverses direction and so will continue to gain energy. This is an escalating effect in which the ions gaining in speed acquire more energy than is lost be those losing speed. Overall, there has to be energy transfer and a net heating effect concentrated by the cyclotron resonance process. Note further that, if a mathematician amongst those ions were to run around in circles, speeding up on one side of the orbit and slowing down on the other side, but yet keeping a steady angular velocity about a central point, his mean position would have to be displaced in the plane of motion owing to that constraint of a fixed angular velocity.
Cyclotron resonance ensures that the angular motion has a constant rate, notwithstanding any changes in kinetic energy. Angular momentum of ions is not conserved in a cyclotron situation, because as the ions are accelerated to faster speeds they spiral outwards.
Now, there is research in new energy physics which points to anomalous energy inflow from the field environment if electric charge can be held displaced in stable concentrations inside an electrically conductive medium. This is found in systems involving rotating magnets and in plasma discharge devices. There is clearly a scientific mechanism by which one can predict the setting up of electric fields in human body cells primed by the pumping of energy by cyclotron action. For my part I have, some years ago, addressed the more difficult question of why there can be similarly-harmful cyclotron resonance in U.K. and U.S.A. where the power frequencies are 50Hz and 60Hz, respectively. Explaining that is the primary question, but there is an explanation based on the dual presence of positive and negative ions of different molecular masses. Understanding how the cyclotron frequency adapts over a limited frequency range in such circumstances raises fascinating questions of basic importance, but directly connected with the gyromagnetic reaction phenomenon found in ferromagnetic substances.
I shall be writing more on this subject in due course, but I emphasize here that the authors of the above Physics World article have not understood the cyclotron mechanism as it can apply to human body cells and they must rethink their views on the way in which weak electric fields from power lines can interact with a weak geomagnetic field to pump energy into the resonant ions in our body fluids.