FrankM

There is a 2014 paper out of LLNL http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperDownload.aspx?paperID=50035 The Introduction cites a 2005 Russian study and they note a conclusion from that study. "In 2004 Adushkin and Soloviev studied the generation of electric and magnetic fields from above ground, surface and underground explosions [5]; Academician Adushkin concluded that the actual mechanism of RF generation was not known." I want to see the EM power levels at various spectral ranges, but the LLNL study does not provide this information.

The researchers haven't reached a consensus as to the mechanism that creates the broadband EMP. The researchers know that it is the motion of charged particles that create an EM wave; this is the way it is done in a wire antenna. The LANL paper referenced in my paper presents several theories as to what is causing the charged particle motion. The process is complicated by the double EMP noted by several researchers. Even though there is an abundance of ions produced by a chemical explosion, I see no mention of their motion and contribution to the EMP. A researcher published a paper in an IEEE publication in 2010 that identified the spectral characteristics of airborne explosive EMPs, this to assist in designing EMP protection for aerospace electronics. Measurement of electromagnetic pulses produced in a chemical explosion Unfortunately, the bulk of IEEE publications require a fee to read.

There is a difference between the massive current flow produced by a lightning strike and that produced by am EMP. The current produced by a lightning strike is non-selective, it damages many different structures. I am sure there are pathology reports you can read to see the type of damage a lightning strike causes. Think electrocution. The damage produced by an EMP is frequency selective and there will be no obvious entry and exit points.

Now that you mention it, I have never watched fireworks reasonably close where I had an AM radio turned on and it was not tuned to a station. For those that can get fireworks anytime, you can determine if there is a sharp static response when a fireworks goes off; the sound of the fireworks will be delayed depending upon distance. It would be desirable to have enough distance between the fireworks explosion and the radio to be able to note the static in the radio before before hearing the fireworks sound. The LANL report cited in my report discussed the mechanism that creates an EMP. It is the motion of charges particles, electrons and ions, that create EM waves. Oddly, the LANL report did not mention the role of ions, and a chemical explosion has an abundance of both charged particles. The Russian report cited the range of EM emissions detected from an explosion. I was unaware that Andrei Sakharov worked on producing a chemical explosion EMP; his contribution is not noted in the Russian report. The Russian report cited a 1940 paper by a Russian seismologist that detected EM emissions from an explosion; the first citation in the Russian paper. The actual brain damage caused by an explosion is identified in the 3rd reference in my vixra paper. The John Hopkins pathologists did not identify how the explosion caused the unique honeycomb pattern; that is the focus of my paper.

I know what the SAR regulations pertain to. I also know that a brief exposure to a very high intensity EM source will do the same damage that a lower power source would do in a longer time period. Just what part of physics makes my idea impossible?

The FCC Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) regulations are there to limit the human body to EM radiation. The damage to mammalian brains noted in ref.(11) of my vixra.org paper indicates it doesn't take much EM power to cause damage. I would like to know how much of the 20 billion watts per centimeters noted in the LLNL report is within the spectral range of the GSM phones. What is known in specific technical circles may not be known outside these groups. I suspect those involved in nuclear non-proliferation detection know a lot about the EM spectral characteristics of chemical explosions, but their info is not publicly available.

You do not have to have ionizing radiation to damage body tissue.

Every chemical explosion produces a broadband electromagnetic (EM) pulse (EMP). A Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) report states, "The emission of electromagnetic radiation from a chemical explosion is well established." However, it is difficult to find reports that identify the intensities in the various spectral ranges. A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) report states, "In the brief instant of a high-exlosive detonaton, some remarkable events take place: the shock wave produces pressure up to 500,000 times that of Earth's atmosphere, the detonation wave travels as fast as 10 kilometers per second, temperatures can sore to 5,500 kelvins, and power approaches 20 billion watts per square centimeter." I haven't been able to find a report that discusses the effect a chemical explosion EMP has on the human body. To remedy this deficiency, I have prepared a paper titled, "The Electromagnetic Cause of Shell Shock." http://vixra.org/pdf/1502.0196v2.pdf

In 1975, an article was published titled, "Chirality". Many more examples have been found since then. Chirality The article stated there was a left-hand bias. The final paragraph contained the following: "Thus there are indications that the role of chirality in the universe, or at least on this Earth, may be greater than has yet been understood. This accords with the view often put forward that greater attention should be paid to asymmetries as the necessary initiators of processes."

I don't know the actual current across the worms body. I did find that there are two types of worms, those that burrow vertically and those that burrow horizontally, and I do not know which type(s) I have. I did observe some worms exiting vertically but I don't know if that has anything to do with the manner in which they burrow. I don't have a video camera, which would have allowed me to record and replay the worm exits to get counts and their exit points relative to the positive and negative terminals, there seems to be a slight difference. One really needs something like a variac or a variable resistance to adjust the current to a consistent value when the electrodes are moved to fresh areas. I tried to be consistent in the depth I inserted the electrodes but slight variations are inevitable. The actual in-ground current vectors created by seismic action will be different than what one gets from two rather close space electrodes, but I know that earthworms will respond to relatively low seismic generated currents. At the near surface I would expect the current vectors to be mainly horizontal. One would think the worms original orientation to the current vector would be a factor in how much potential would be across their bodies. I do not have any instruments that would be suitable for measuring the electrical resistance of a worms body, just in case anyone is curious about that. What we really need to know is the range of currents that can be expected from seismic events. I have already concluded worms will respond to relatively low current levels, and it requires a period of applied current to stimulate worms to exit from the ground. Now, how can this knowledge be used to detect seismic generated currents?

On the amateur science experiments thread I posted a few of my observations where I subjected earthworms to AC and DC electric currents. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26312 An image of an earthworm responding to an earthquake is available at a USGS site. http://folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu/ew-doc/

I read an article that discussed a Japanese physicists observations about earthworms exiting the ground before one of their big earthquakes. http://animalsandearthquakes.com/ikeya.htm Electric currents have been used for earthworm extraction going back many decades (worm getters), but I could not find any studies where their sensitivity to specific currents levels was measured. I have raised garden beds which are prolific with earthworms so I decided to see if I could get them to respond with fairly low electric currents. I used #12 solid copper wire as electrodes, starting out with 6" length and then later making some 12". I started out with a 38.6 VDC source, an old HP printer transformer, the 6" electrodes vertically in the ground and 10" spacing, this giving me approximately 60 ma no matter where I inserted the electrodes in the garden bed. I had multiple worms exiting the ground within 60 seconds (worms move slow). I changed the spacing to 16" (to a fresh area) and the current was just a few milliamps lower, and the same worm extraction experience was noted. The next day I used two different transformers, a 12 VDC and a 9 VAC and experimented with the spacing. The current at 12 VDC was about 20 ma and that for the 9 VAC, approx. 15 ma current. There was a slight difference between worm exit counts and size AC vs DC, but the current was slightly different. The following day I prepared the longer electrodes, 12", and experimented with various spacings, AC and DC (both 12 and 38 V). I also prepared a 13" insulated electrode where only 1" was exposed and inserted that into the ground so that the current had a somewhat vertical component. The number of worms exiting varied somewhat with the applied current, which depended upon electrode size and insertion depth. In the maximum current area I suspect worms were immobilized, but this is conjecture only because of where I observed worms exiting relative to the electrodes. I did not determine the minimum current at which worms would exit the ground but I could get exiting with a little as 3 ma between electrodes, which means the actual current differential experienced by the worms has to be in the sub-milliamp range. I can conclude the earthworms will exit the ground if there is a sustained current. Worms don't move fast, thus they probably started toward the surface as soon as they experienced a current level that was uncomfortable to them. I also had small garden centipedes (beneficials) exiting from the ground in the same area as the worms, thus they were being irritated by the same in-ground currents as the worms. There were a number of peculiarities noted in where the worms exited relative to the electrodes but more studies are needed with better controls to see if these peculiarities are significant. I also placed some of the worms that had exited and moved away from the current influence directly in between the electrodes and watched their reaction. Size seems to matter, and if they couldn't exit immediately from the area of maximum current influence they had problems. The next day I used multiple electrode configurations and switching the polarity of inner and outer electrodes, this to examine if worms have a polarity sensitivity. From what is known, the earth currents generated before and during earthquakes are more a DC type with variations in magnitude, it is not sinusoidal with plus and minus swings.

The title of the .jpg and the character of the circuit board are clues. That was 20+ year old technology and it was a telephone circuit loop control card. The big gold plated contacts are a giveaway to the era. Either way, the +5 or the +42 volts were relatively high current sources. It is not known which one did the major zapping. I believe the individual identified the victim as a "rat snake". Although video cameras can be used to observe critter reactions, there is a problem of constantly monitoring them visually. The Chinese did not note the use of any kind of motion detector, thus when do you watch? The suggestion to use an electro-sensitive fish has the same problem, how do you determine the difference between normal movement and that which results from an electrical current? Do you have to watch 24/7? Putting a couple of wires in the ground sounds good but there is a problem, the direction of the "current vector" from a seismic induced current. For maximum potential the contacts have to be in line with the current vector, if they were at 90 degrees there would be little or no current differential, even though an event created significant current flow. The current will expand outward from the seismic source. For each small segment of surface area the current vectors will be essentially parallel but another segment that is a quarter circle away from the source will have current vectors that are different by 90 degrees. Unlike the "strike point" for lightning, the seismic induced currents do not come from a point source, they come from an extended stress zone which can be kilometers long. Every monitoring station would have to have a minimum of 2 pairs of contacts at 90 degrees. Seismic events are not the only sources that create ground currents. Sunspot activity is one outside source and the intensity of ground currents generated by those events depends upon the earth-sun orientation. Additionally, not all sunspots are created equal and their effects on the earth are not uniform. If ground currents are the source for snakes agitation preceding earthquakes, it would be nice to know exactly what potentials are necessary to get their attention, we could then use that as a threshold.

The lightning safety article stated that you "should not lie down" as this puts you in continuous surface contact, thus you have a greater change to be in contact with "potential points" that are high enough to break-down your resistance, thus creating a damaging current flow. It is simple Ohm's law, a small current across a high resistance results in a high potential difference. This snake crawled across a circuit board until he extended across a potential that exceeded his biological resistance. The individual that took the picture and replaced the board did not note which board potential zapped the snake. There were two voltage sources to the board, +42 volt and +5 volts.

Yes, we definitely have contradictory positions. The action that is creating the in-earth currents is not caused by piezoelectric action. http://www.scec.org/news/01news/es_abstracts/Freund.pdf An underground snake den is just a small cave and is subject to the same "physics" as being experienced in those large enough for humans to enter. http://www.nols.edu/resources/research/pdfs/lightningsafetycavers.pdf I do not know what snakes do when they are exposed to conditions wherein there could be nearby lightning strikes, but humans caught outside in such a condition are supposed to minimize their contact with the ground to reduce exposure. http://www.torro.org.uk/TORRO/research/lightning.php "If caught out in the open with no shelter nearby, move to a place of lower elevation such as a hollow or dry ditch. Crouch down (to lower your height) with both feet close together. Do not place your feet wide apart or lie flat on the ground as this will increase the difference in voltage across your body, increasing the electrical charge you may receive from radial ground currents, if lightning strikes the ground nearby. Tuck your head in and place your hands on your knees." Snakes don't have the luxury of minimizing their contact with the ground. Has anybody been in the field and had the opportunity to observe snake reactions to nearby lightning strikes?