[HN Gopher] Underwater power cables make lobsters larvae bad swi...
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Underwater power cables make lobsters larvae bad swimmers
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 87 points
Date : 2022-04-30 16:53 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hw.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hw.ac.uk)
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Meanwhile people in the UK who live near electric pylons are at
| an increased risk of developing cancer.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| What's the mechanism?
| aeternum wrote:
| The mechanism could be epigenetic signaling. Recently
| scientists have been able to control and influence cell-
| differentiation via long-lifetime electric fields. (Although
| the electric potential was created chemically via ion pumps
| rather than externally).
|
| Still they showed pretty crazy results like being able to
| create a worm with heads on both ends.
|
| It's looks like this kind of electrical signaling is likely the
| primary mechanism by which your cells know what to become and
| in which direction to grow.
|
| A super interesting paper that I'm surprised isn't more famous:
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523124219.h...
| superkuh wrote:
| Cherry picking data and bias in setting up an unrealistic,
| unphysical experiment. There is no mechanism.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| I'm betting you wrote that without even reading the paper.
| hatware wrote:
| At least they used a few big words
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's pretty easy to establish a potential mechanism for this
| so I'm not sure why you would throw this result out without
| further investigation.
|
| Plenty of animals have a sense for the earth's magnetism and
| this is well documented:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoreception
|
| Putting cables carrying strong electric currents which in
| turn generate magnetic fields around those cables would be
| almost sure to have some effect, the question then becomes
| how much of an effect rather than whether or not such an
| effect is possible.
| chris_va wrote:
| This is an interesting lab setup, but...
|
| Are underwater cables ever not paired? HVDC are always coaxial,
| so... No field.
|
| Edit: paired but not always coaxial, so it's possible to get a
| small field.
| ncmncm wrote:
| I strongly doubt they are paired. A single conductor with earth
| return works as well, at half the cost.
| herpderperator wrote:
| Title was modified without adding apostrophe. Can it be reverted
| or fixed?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| NikhilVerma wrote:
| Issues like this and micro-plastics in our bloodstreams will be
| causing so many issues in our lifetimes. Future generations (if
| there are any) will be appalled that we used to be so unaware of
| the impact of our own existence.
|
| It's akin to people relieving themselves in their own water
| supply.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The article doesn't say, but the paper abstract says this is from
| an unchanging DC magnetic field, which is somewhat surprising, as
| it, unlike an AC field, does not generate electric current within
| the animal's body.
| refurb wrote:
| _"Chronic exposure to 2.8 mT EMF throughout embryonic development
| resulted in significant differences in stage-specific egg volume
| and resulted in stage I lobster and zoea I crab larvae exhibiting
| decreased carapace height, total length, and maximum eye
| diameter."_
|
| 2.8mT at 1 meter requires 14,000 amps of current, which is far
| beyond most under seas cables (except the largest).
|
| So suffice to say any lobsters more than 1-2m away will be just
| fine.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I remember some other study in which crabs were actually EM
| sensitive and were attracted to power cables underwater.
|
| If this also holds for lobsters it could be a similar
| phenomenon with lobster larvae or the lobster adults settling
| to reproduce a few centimetres away from the cables because
| they are attracted to the EM field.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Far beyond most undersea cables, and even then the article is
| concerned not with the largest long-distance high-voltage/high-
| current transmission lines, but with individual wind turbines.
|
| Power loss scales with the square of current (P=I^2 x R), and
| copper is already expensive, so they typically use step-up
| transformers to reduce the current in a wind farm to something
| on the order of a hundred amps.
|
| I've pushed 40,000 amps for a distance of a couple hundred
| millimeters, using some giant water-cooled electrodes for a
| resistance welding application...but there's zero reason to
| have 14 kA as a distribution line in a wind farm, that's
| absurd.
|
| Yes, some lobster and crab larvae will probably also exhibit
| decreased carapace height if they're squished by the wire as it
| is fed out onto the sea floor...but that's about the same
| distance as the region in which they'll be affected by magnetic
| currents.
| aaron695 wrote:
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > "One potential solution is to bury the cables in the seafloor.
| This is already done for many marine renewable developments but
| can be expensive and difficult to maintain. It will be important
| to ensure its continued inclusion in the consenting process for
| future projects.
|
| That's a great way to make renewable projects more expensive and
| thus less likely to happen, the effects of which may be worse
| (even for those crabs) than a couple cables in specific
| locations.
|
| OTOH, it shows that electromagnetic fields, even static (DC)
| ones, can have significant biological impacts. Was this already
| known or is that a new discovery that could have impact beyond
| protecting crabs?
| ncmncm wrote:
| There is a book, "The Body Electric", by Robert Becker, about
| his investigations of electromagnetic effects on, mostly,
| salamanders.
|
| During the time he worked, and for long after, such
| investigation was effectively forbidden in the US, on threat of
| losing grants and invitation to present at conferences. Becker
| had a free pass based on a relationship with the US Veterans
| Administration, which hoped he would be able to find a way to
| regenerate severed limbs, a topic of some interest.
|
| The mode of action he found was orchestration of development
| and growth by way of sub-nanosecond electric currents. He was
| able to control healing and regeneration -- turn it off and on
| -- by applying these small currents in different directions.
|
| AC fields, from 60Hz up into microwaves, can be persuaded to
| induce such currents by modulation. So, with no or with one
| modulation, exposure may have no effect, but with another you
| get a pronounced effect. You cannot generalize from one
| exposure to another, one modulation to another. The effect
| observed in this study might easily not be replicated in
| another, according to some apparently trivial variation in
| their setup.
| ncmncm wrote:
| *"sub-nanoampere electric currents"
| [deleted]
| cr1895 wrote:
| I'm a bit puzzled by the methodology. I didn't notice any
| mention in the paper if the exposed EMF was meant to be similar
| to a surface-laid cable, or one that is buried.
|
| In any case, it is certainly the case that subsea power cables
| for offshore wind farms are buried (up to meters deep) or
| otherwise overlaid by rock or other materials to protect them
| from damage, scour, anchor strikes, etc.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I'm not sure how they could possibly control against
| confounding chemical explanations, either. Surely high
| voltage lines warm the nearby water, which undoubtedly leads
| to chemical changes that could affect small larvae.
| ncmncm wrote:
| They must have had a control tank with the wire in, but no
| current in it.
|
| Of course aquarium heaters are a familiar feature
| everywhere, undoubtedly there too, with temperature held
| constant.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The control for heating would have to be a wire with a
| much higher resistance and thus smaller current but same
| heat dissipation.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >OTOH, it shows that electromagnetic fields, even static (DC)
| ones, can have significant biological impacts. Was this already
| known or is that a new discovery that could have impact beyond
| protecting crabs?
|
| There have been concerns about high voltage power lines for as
| long as I can remember. There's been NIMBY activism regarding
| them for awhile. So I guess it depends on what you mean by "a
| new discovery". The problem is that the people complaining
| about the EMFs from power lines get lumped together with people
| saying cell phones are mutating human DNA.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I know that people have been complaining, I'm wondering if
| there is any scientific backing for those complaints.
| [deleted]
| abledon wrote:
| very little right now, this study is a pebble needed in the
| mountain of evidence required. Maybe in 2055 our scientific
| tools will be more advanced/sensitive to measure this
| stuff.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| That tech is here. Protein folding is sensitive to much
| lower than ionizing frequencies.
| linux2647 wrote:
| Source?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Interested as well
| capitainenemo wrote:
| This came up several times on HN and I've been curious
| about it ever since, esp the opinion of researchers.
|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21457072
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Blank+M&cauthor_id=
| 214...
|
| https://www.physiology.columbia.edu/MartinBlank.html
|
| This professor, now retired, did a number of papers on
| this theory claiming to find evidence of sensitivity.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| You know I actually talked to someone talking about cell
| phone radiation?
|
| But like hardcore. I actually listened. Super consistent and
| scientific about it, was getting radar-blocking paint
| designed for stealth fighters delivered to her in her
| beautiful house so she could paint the outside of her house
| with it. That's hardcore. All the science checked out, except
| for the conclusions of medical cancer trials, which proved
| her wrong.
|
| My conclusion is their suffering was real, but it wouldn't
| happen to me. Mostly because many of my ancestors worked with
| electricity, signals, et cetera. So it stood to reason it
| wouldn't affect me. I still think it won't.
|
| But the frequencies keep getting higher. Now 5G is like
| 6GHz...and you know something nobody actually liked the cell
| phone tower near my house growing up, it was considered a
| necessary evil, like a dumpster. Nobody truly bought into the
| media science about it being wholesome and harmless, you
| never wanted to get close to it at a visceral level.
| Everybody had that dread of it, they just didn't talk about
| it.
|
| Microwave starts at 1GHz, and microwave ovens which we all
| know are dangerous (don't argue, it's too prevalent in the
| culture that they're dangerous, the South Park time they all
| left the microwave door open deliberately just in order to
| get cancer) interfere with 2.4GHz wifi (same frequency). (I
| turned wifi off and did what this person said to do to
| connect to the internet, ethernet, as I wrote this). So wifi
| is the same kind of radiation as a microwave, just less of
| it. But a mutation can be caused by a single photon in the
| right place at the right time. Like protein folding, that is
| so so so sensitive we have no idea how sensitive that is.
|
| And now they want to do 5G so we can all stream our personal
| Netflixes on our phones all the time? More bandwidth requires
| higher frequency, 5G is I think 6GHz. More energy for more
| signal too if you want 4K video, more photons at higher
| energies. There's tons of opposition.
|
| I didn't recall that person that well, didn't really believe
| her or care about her.
|
| You know you totally pulled a 180 on my attitude on cell
| phones with your scorn.
|
| EDIT: what forums are you talking about that talk about this
| stuff about the cell phones? You have a link to the paranoid
| conspiracy theory blog? Just so I can see for myself how
| stupid that woman was, so I can laugh with you.
| serf wrote:
| other hogwash aside , the most interesting thing you
| mentioned was a civilian being able to buy 'radar-blocking
| paint designed for stealth fighters'.
|
| I'd love that (probably ficticious) contact; EM blocking
| paints would be mega useful in a home RF lab -- all the
| ones I know of are super toxic, unfortunately i'm sure the
| military ones are even more-so.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Probably paint from the late 70's, still military grade,
| just not the cutting edge. And chemistry doesn't work
| that way, there are some environmentally sound compounds
| that come up, sound enough not to poison her beatiful
| garden, and she wasn't the only RF hater in the entire
| planet, like you think it's just her sockpuppeting in
| those forums? But it's not like I was the second, I plain
| don't care about RF, total immunity from natural
| selection. So I only care about pain she felt and still
| feels.[1] For me it's putting myself in her place, if she
| complains that's _noble_ , it's _noble_ to complain
| because then others can reason about their own pain with
| a better sense, better words, _when the complaint is
| true_ , and say, I feel that same pain. Something is
| wrong.
|
| She had access because of her conviction to her crusade,
| because she was smart, knew all about the spectrum, like
| I said it all checked out medical studies
| notwithstanding. Actually answered the question of tin-
| foil hats, said they're harmful because they end up
| acting as like as an analog to a parabolic antenna to
| focus the RF into the center of the skull irregularly,
| with hot spots.
|
| If it is hogwash, I want to hear all about it! Answer
| point by point, for instance by arguing whether it is
| wise to hack a microwave so it cooks with the door open,
| with you in front. I'd love to hear your experimental
| results.
|
| But to interpret "your" comment in the best possible
| light, per the site's guidelines, and something I did
| want to get around to because I like that question. No I
| think you actually could find stealth fighter paint for a
| mega useful use in your home RF lab, if you were as
| tenacious as she was. And as rich, and as smart, and as
| connected, and with a community of people like you, and
| had as persistent a microwave migraine, I mean if you
| actually needed to. She didn't hate all radio, no problem
| with DC or daylight, mostly certain specific parts in
| between, especially...from the way she told it...she
| objected to VHF (30MHz roughly) til infrared, and then
| UVB and UVA, and from ultraviolet on out she hated all of
| it. She hated it with perfect hatred, she called them her
| enemies.
|
| It had a psychosomatic component but it wasn't purely
| psychosomatic, and you must understand headaches are
| never purely non-psychosomatic.
|
| So what's your budget for your RF lab, $100? You do have
| a home RF lab, don't you?
|
| [1] And then maybe she'll sympathize with my hatred of
| the F atom in the water and toothpaste. I fight for her,
| she fights for me.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Cell towers near the house a great, because your phone
| radiates less RF power when you use it right next to your
| head... and also uses a lot less battery.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| It's all a matter of spectral density. Frequency is
| meaningless. The lightbulb over your head is currently
| irradiating you at a rate something like 100 times more
| energy than your cell phone. Yes microwaves are dangerous
| at high power. But the inverse square law means that anyone
| not literally holding their head up against a 5G tower
| transmitter is not going to be affected in any way.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| This isn't really right, frequency definitely matters.
| The same energy content of a sievert of ionizing
| radiation in visible light wouldn't damage you nearly as
| much.
| tonmoy wrote:
| You know what's higher frequency than 5G? Sunlight
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Thank you, yes, that's exactly right. And it is in fact
| harmful, if you are shipwrecked and getting beaten by the
| sun 14 hours a day, exactly all day, you'll remember this
| comment in this forum. It is in fact harmful. UVA and
| UVB, gives people cancer, Fitsch type 1 people die of
| that all the time, it's brutal. There are OTHER
| frequencies that are visible that are not harmful in
| everyday quantities, and that's specifically because we
| evolved to block them with our skin. But if it's from a
| laser? Not ionizing, but it will blind you.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Most of the points you have there are far detached from
| material reality. I sincerely hope you remedy your
| knowledge and your mindset.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Argue with a single one of them. Quote me on something I
| said that is wrong.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I'm more concerned about "clean cooling " solutions, which
| basically heat up rivers and oceans
| smachiz wrote:
| most of the actual clean cooling solutions have retention ponds
| that are man made to use for cooling.
|
| At least in the US, the EPA regulates water that is returned to
| rivers and streams, including temperature.
|
| Not to say the heat isn't radiated back into the atmosphere
| from those retention ponds, but that heat has to go somewhere.
| Better than the alternatives though.
| pvaldes wrote:
| The design of the experiment makes me wonder a few questions. One
| is why to study the impact of submarine cables that lie at, lets
| say 1000 m deep?, over larvae that live a 2m deep. Eggs, yes,
| could have an effect, but Zoea I that would be kept in pelagic
| cages? they don't share the same space.
|
| If I remember correctly (I could be wrong), The lobsters in the
| article had not settled for the bottom yet.
|
| I assume also that there will be a tank influence. That explains
| why crabs perform better, as expected. Lobster larvae are
| incredibly delicate to cavitation, or impact with aquarium walls
| or bubbles. When they molt is a huge problem to keep them without
| deformations.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| It's OK, eventually their shells will dissolve in the sea
| water^Wcarbonic acid and it won't matter anyway.
| maa5444 wrote:
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Crustaceans are not negatively impacted by adicification.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| This recent literature review[1] disagrees:
|
| > Our global literature review and synthesis of OA [Ocean
| Acidification] thresholds for decapod crustaceans reveals
| that this group is sensitive to OA across multiple pathways,
| ranging from physiological and behavioral responses to
| mortality.
|
| But I'm not a marine biologist, and I'm open to new
| information.
|
| (Also temperature rises is a threat to lobsters, but at least
| they can just keep moving North[2] for the time being, there
| are more lines of latitude to go).
|
| [1]: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.
| 6511...
|
| [2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/lobsters-move-north-as-
| ocean...
| pvaldes wrote:
| > Crustaceans are not negatively impacted by acidification.
|
| Anything with an outer skeleton made of Calcium carbonate
| will die in a high acidic environment, or will be eaten that
| is the same
| wongarsu wrote:
| We certainly have to also consider the damage from not laying
| the cable as well. As ocean acidification from climate change
| is killing lobsters, the cable might be the lesser of two evils
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| That's what I was saying. But I'm sure we'll find a lot of
| people suddenly very emotionally invested in lobsters living
| within 10m of power lines, just like there are people who
| have a sudden overwhelming love for birds near wind turbines,
| but conveniently don't really rate other birds being killed
| by windows, cats, fossil fuel emissions, vehicles, farming,
| habitat destruction, etc.
|
| And I'm _sure_ if you looked, you wouldn 't find any of them
| happen to be astroturfing for fossil energy companies (not
| saying this study necessarily is, but it'll be gleefully
| seized on forever after by those who are).
| adolph wrote:
| > suddenly very emotionally invested in lobsters
|
| Maybe for the 1%, for everyone else it is emotional labor.
| Unlike turbine-chum, lobsters are delicious.
|
| http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
| belorn wrote:
| There is always nuclear which don't kill birds, don't put
| their emissions into the air, don't destroy the habitat for
| animals, and in general has proven to be fairly safe for
| animals even in the case of catastrophic accidents.
|
| Wind power need to consider endangered birds. Hydro power
| need to consider migrating fish (many which are currently
| on the brink of extinction), and now offshore wind need to
| consider the impact on animals living in the ocean. And we
| still need to solve the issue of storage for countries
| depending primarily on a combination of fossil fuels and
| wind and is located too far north to survive on solar
| during low wind conditions. We can't just sweep the
| problems under the rug and present it as the perfect
| solution without any issues.
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