Cell Phones and Lightning

[NEOWatcher]

Another story from the "What do scientists know" catagory.

Gadgets blamed as lightning strikes dozens (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/18/russia.lightning/index.html)

Leonid Tarkov, of the weather observation center FOBOS, told CNN that he believes the surge in lightning strikes may be connected to the increased use of portable electronic technology, such as cellular phones or music players.
"These things are electro-magnetic field carriers," he said. "That makes them, in essence, conductors. Thunderbolts are frequently attracted to such things, and hits are often connected with a lethal outcome."

And who is this Tarkov...the janitor?

Even though the say this...

The idea that lightning can follow the weak electro-magnetic fields of such devices is rejected by virtually all scientists, although there is evidence that a lightning strike is more likely to be fatal for a person carrying any object with metal in it.

And this...

And Tarkov himself pointed out another explanation for the surge in lightning strikes in Russia this summer -- the country has been hit by an unusually high number of storms.


And let me throw my theory into the mix.
More people have cell phones, and people on cell phones tend not to pay attention to good judgement and get out of the storm.

[samkent]

You are assuming people with cell phones are being struck more frequently than those without.

I say it's underware! Almost all of the people struck were wearing underware therefore it must be the undergarments. So ladies if you want to reduce your chances of being hit please remove your undies!

[Moose]

Mythbusters busted that a while back in a lightning lab somewhere. They never got the electricity to strike the cellphone or the piercing itself unless it was ridiculously over-sized, but when it did, it did considerably more damage to the ballistics gel head than any other electrical strike.

[NEOWatcher]

Mythbusters busted that a while back in a lightning lab somewhere. They never got the electricity to strike the cellphone or the piercing itself unless it was ridiculously over-sized, but when it did, it did considerably more damage to the ballistics gel head than any other electrical strike.
I don't remember a cell phone in that one. I though it was only piercings, and that it took a door knob as a nose ring to attract the bolt.

I think the question here would be the EM, not just a wad of metal.

[Ilya]

You are assuming people with cell phones are being struck more frequently than those without.

I say it's underware! Almost all of the people struck were wearing underware therefore it must be the undergarments. So ladies if you want to reduce your chances of being hit please remove your undies!
I sense an ulterior motive in this post...

[Swift]

I think the question here would be the EM, not just a wad of metal.
I think you are correct about the question, that the supposed effect is from the EM field around the phone, versus a "hunk" (I like hunk more than wad) of metal.

But I can't imagine why the tiny EM field around a phone would actually have any effect. There are lots of devices that create a heck of a lot more EM than that.

[tdvance]

Well, people with cellphones often go outside for better reception...that could do it.

Also, population is generally increasing--so more people will be struck by lightning than in the past.

People are also more likely to live in a densely populated area today than decades ago, so are more likely to have lightning victims in their neighborhood than before--and it's probably more likely to be news too as a result--especially since news seems to go in waves or fads, everybody reporting the same kind of thing at a given time.

As for "lightning strikes dozens"--it's more than dozens in a year for the whole US and I'd imagine Russia too. I can't remember the number but it's at least several in a million, making it hundreds.

[Whirlpool]

You are assuming people with cell phones are being struck more frequently than those without.

I say it's underware! Almost all of the people struck were wearing underware therefore it must be the undergarments. So ladies if you want to reduce your chances of being hit please remove your undies!

Say what?

:neutral:

[Moose]

I don't remember a cell phone in that one. I though it was only piercings, and that it took a door knob as a nose ring to attract the bolt.

I might be remembering the phone hookup they did for the house strike experiment.

[samkent]

http://http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2005/s1497922.htm

68 dairy cows killed by lightning.

I wonder how many of them were on the cell phone?

[Whirlpool]

I received an email about celphones radiation and I don't know if it's true.

They placed a covered bowl of popcorn in the middle of 4 cellphones and they simultaneously rang those and it cooked the popcorn.

It shows how great is the radiation that comes out of a cellphone.

And I don't know if this is true. It's a forwarded mail .

http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/106.gif

[Neverfly]

I received an email about celphones radiation and I don't know if it's true.

They placed a covered bowl of popcorn in the middle of 4 cellphones and they simultaneously rang those and it cooked the popcorn.

It shows how great is the radiation that comes out of a cellphone.

And I don't know if this is true. It's a forwarded mail .

http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/106.gif

Umm. No. Not true.

Wish it was though. All I would need camping is a Good Cell phone. Kill my prey and cook it at the same time:)

[suntrack2]

In my opinion one should not be talk on the open terrace of your home along with the cell phone. Lightening always in the search of medium, if it receives appropriately the person may suffer from unncessary trouble, hence cell phone talking must be ban during the lightnings.

[Neverfly]

In my opinion one should not be talk on the open terrace of your home along with the cell phone. Lightening always in the search of medium, if it receives appropriately the person may suffer from unncessary trouble, hence cell phone talking must be ban during the lightnings.

It may seem that way, but really, there is no basis for thinking such.

Lightning will 'seek to be grounded'.

[Stuart van Onselen]

It shows how great is the radiation that comes out of a cell-phone.As Neverfly said, that story is complete baloney. In general, I presume that anything I get in a forwarded email is rubbish. (Excluding work-related stuff, of course!)

But rather than take our word for it, I can show you some ways you can verify it for yourself:

It takes a ~800 watt microwave oven a minute or two to cook popcorn. So we're looking at each of those four cell-phones releasing 200W of power. Yet, if you look at the battery in the average cell-phone, it has a maximum power output of ~0.1W, and an energy rating of just a few milliamp-hours. So it can't possibly deliver 200W, and even if it could, it would be exhausted in (literally) milliseconds.

And why did the phones in the story have to ring? Ringing does not increase the power of the radio signal. The highest output will occur before the phone starts ringing, as the cell-phone station and phone try to find each other. Once it starts ringing, almost no radio energy needs to come from the phone, because it's just waiting. Only once you start talking, so that it has to send what you're saying back to the receiver at the mast, does the output increase - but only to a milliwatt or two!

Come to think of it, I'd like to smack the people who come up with stories like that! It is not funny to scare people with rubbish! Just like those abominable wretches that know that nothing untoward is going to happen in 2012, yet create scares anyway.

Of course, most of the people sending these emails are not to blame for anything worse than a little bit of gullibility. But somewhere, some little sociopath had to write the first message. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest that low-life's crotch! After the tooth-fairy mugs his gums. :(

[Kaptain K]

My brother calls those e-mails "glurgs" and does his best to snuff them out. Snopes is a good starting point.

[Moose]

As Neverfly said, that story is complete baloney. In general, I presume that anything I get in a forwarded email is rubbish. (Excluding work-related stuff, of course!)

I dunno. The overwhelming majority of work-related stuff I got was rubbish, too.

[Weird Dave]

This reminds me of Crichton's State of Fear, in which eco-terrorists try to kill the heroes with a fake cellphone that attracts lightning. It didn't increase my confidence in the rest of the science in that book :doh:.

[Neverfly]

This reminds me of Crichton's State of Fear, in which eco-terrorists try to kill the heroes with a fake cellphone that attracts lightning. It didn't increase my confidence in the rest of the science in that book :doh:.

Yeah. I would have just made cell phones that explode.

[Celestial Mechanic]

The main thing I take away from this story is that Russia's best scientists have all gone elsewhere ... :)

[HenrikOlsen]

I received an email about celphones radiation and I don't know if it's true.

They placed a covered bowl of popcorn in the middle of 4 cellphones and they simultaneously rang those and it cooked the popcorn.

It shows how great is the radiation that comes out of a cellphone.

And I don't know if this is true. It's a forwarded mail .

http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/106.gif
Brainiac tried something similar with 20 cellphones and couldn't get a measurable increase in temperature in the egg they tried.

[NEOWatcher]

Brainiac tried something similar with 20 cellphones and couldn't get a measurable increase in temperature in the egg they tried.
Right; Snopes references that show (http://www.snopes.com/science/cookegg.asp) (with 100 phones actually).
The same article also goes on to show the popcorn hoax and how it was created. It was done by a bluetooth provider. In my mind, it was false advertising.

[Ivan Viehoff]

I say it's underware! Almost all of the people struck were wearing underware therefore it must be the undergarments. So ladies if you want to reduce your chances of being hit please remove your undies!
A couple of women were killed by lightning in Hyde Park in central London on 22 Sept 1999. According to the coroner, (the official responsible for investigating unusual or suspicious deaths) they were struck on the underwiring on their bras, and that this was the second time he had seen such a case. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1999/oct/28/linusgregoriadis?commentpage=1

As the report above makes clear, the pathologist didn't say that they were actually struck on the underwiring, but rather that it made the injuries worse, and he thought they would probably have died anyway. But the general point is that having a piece of metal about one's person, whether coins, keys or a mobile phone, when struck by lightning isn't good for you. A possible reason is mentioned in the wikipedia article (that reliable source) on lightning safety http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_safety To quote: "In a direct hit the electrical charge strikes the victim first. Counterintuitively, if the victim's skin resistance is high enough, much of the current will flash around the skin or clothing to the ground, resulting in a surprisingly benign outcome. Metallic objects in contact with the skin may concentrate the lightning strike, preventing the flashover effect and resulting in more serious injuries. At least two cases have been reported where a lightning strike victim wearing an iPod suffered more serious injuries as a result."