Ray Gun Puts Voices Inside Your Head 517
Sportsqs writes "The Sierra Nevada Corporation claimed this week that it is ready to begin production on the MEDUSA, a damned scary ray gun that uses the 'microwave audio effect' to implant sounds and perhaps even specific messages inside people's heads."
Re:Ha! See! I told you! (Score:5, Informative)
It's more scary than cool.
The article at NewScientist [newscientist.com] says:
MEDUSA involves a microwave auditory effect "loud" enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. Sadovnik says that normal audio safety limits do not apply since the sound does not enter through the eardrums.
Also from NewScientist, a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago who has also worked on the technique has commented that while feasible, attaining the necessary volume might involve power levels that could cause neural damage.
This has been around for a while (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And we wonder why people are paranoid? (Score:5, Informative)
Paranoia is serious. I lost a best friend of many years to paranoia when he became so convinced that the government was out to get him that he hung himself. This very week my brother in law attempted suicide due to his hallucinations that involve his believing that the FBI is invading his mind. He is now being held under the Baker Act for 72 hours. Just maybe a different prescription might quiet his hallucinations. Paranoia can and does frequently cause murders where the sufferer becomes so convinced that someone is out to do him harm that he strikes first as a desperate act of supposed self defense.
Believe it or not mental illness means nothing in Florida. If you are so crazy that you think Santa Clause is an FBI agent out to kill you and you strike out that does not meet the standard for legal insanity here. The idea that you feel it is right to preserve your own life will be taken as proof that you have a knowledge of right and wrong, Society is sick.
Re:Ha! See! I told you! (Score:5, Informative)
TFA doesn't give much in technical details, but as I understand it, they are using the human skull as a heterodyne circuit. Basically mixing two microwave signals inside the skull to create audio.
Re:Ha! See! I told you! (Score:4, Informative)
I saw this last week in New Scientist [newscientist.com]. You're jumping to some very flase conclusions. It has nothing to do with subliminal messages. From the linked article:
Here's another report from a more reputable source (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where did the development $ come from? (Score:3, Informative)
'Where did the development $ come from?' ... as usual, it came from you and me.
(no, really - from http://www.sncorp.com/about/ataglance.shtml [sncorp.com]
"SNC (The Sierra Nevada Corporation) is a Privately Held Corporation and is considered the Top Woman Owned Federal Contractor in the US based upon the capabilities and resources to deliver high-technology systems and integration programs at the $1 Billion level")
-still, I like their beer...
Re:Ha! See! I told you! (Score:4, Informative)
The tinfoil hat might actually be one of the few ways you can block this without any special materials or equipment.
Half a Faraday cage is as good as none.
Re:Ha! See! I told you! (Score:5, Informative)
Tasers are a great example of why you can't trust your end user.
A Taser was designed to replace a gun. "Instead of shooting someone, you can INSTEAD tase them to incapacitate them."
Once they got into the hands of the end users, the got into usage creep. "Fighting is hard work. I'll use the taser." "Arguing takes effort. Taser." "Talking meh taser."
Now they're used for when you owe the bus driver a dollar. [www.cbc.ca]
(Despite what the article states, they have said in radio interviews that they use the tasers for non-compliance, including non-payment of fares.)
They're being overused as a compliance tool instead of their intended purpose, which was to prevent acute lead poisoning.
Re:scary. (Score:3, Informative)
It wouldn't be a gun, but a parabolic dish. A quick Google search on such dishes shows the main beam spread is 40 arc seconds, so you could get most of your energy onto a 40 cm head from 1 km away, but heads near the path would catch much radiation as well.
Re:Ha! See! I told you! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And we wonder why people are paranoid? (Score:5, Informative)
Everything in your post is informative, up to the statement that "paranoia can and does *frequenttly* cause murders..." I work in mental health, and have had experience with the circumstances you describe. However, there are 1000's of more paranoid folks who don't go on to commit homicide/suicide than those who do. Just a quick google turned up this:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/318/7193/1225 [bmjjournals.com]
which estimates roughly 8% of homicide perpetrators having contact with the mental health profession, but that certainly doesn't equate to them all being paranoid, or even having a true psychiatric diagnosis.
http://www.psychlaws.org/BriefingPapers/BP11.htm [psychlaws.org]
puts the a conservative estimate around 9%-15%, but again this is all mental illness, not just mental illnesses that involve paranoid ideation which is certainly less,And finally here:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/20/2064 [nejm.org]
cites a study showing an approximately 5% prevalence rate of schizophrenia amongst persons convicted of homicide. Now I understand this is orders of magnitude higher than the general population, and there is certainly an increased risk of self-inflected injury or homicide as compared to folks who don't have a history of schizophrenia. But the fact still remains that the overwhelming majority of folks with a psychiatric illness, including paranoid schizophrenia are not at risk for perpetrating violence against themselves or others.
Not necessarily disagreeing with your post, per se. Just pointing out the other side of the equation as there is a common misconception that those with mental illness are a risk to themselves and others.
thx,
jeff
Re:Ha! See! I told you! (Score:3, Informative)
Actually you've got the right idea with a tin foil hat. But since the signals may not be coming from the sky, the foil should wrap around as much of your head as possible. Looking through a metal screen or metal full of tiny holes should be effective in blocking signals approaching your face. The holes just have to be small relative to the wavelength of the signal. That should sound familiar since that's what's done in the windows in doors of microwave ovens.
Since the microwaves are in very short pulses the average power level apparently isn't high enough to cook you.
If the only effect is to hear something, it could be ineffective if one knows to simply ignore it.
How's this for an awful thought? .... send auditory spam to people via these microwaves...
I can see it now, crowds holding up shields to bounce signals back at their attackers
Re:They obviously didn't consider.. (Score:4, Informative)
I have schzioaffective disorder, I've learned how to be like John Forbes Nash and create a reality filter to tune things out like voices and hallucinations by ignoring them.
Re:First message sent (Real Genius homage) (Score:3, Informative)
It was Kent but yeah. Exactly where my mind was going with it, too.
"Look, it was hot and I was hungry..."
Re:Ha! See! I told you! (Score:4, Informative)
Sadovnik says that normal audio safety limits do not apply since the sound does not enter through the eardrums.
Such bullshit!
(Directed at Sadovnik, not you, Digital).
Hearing loss usually has nothing to do with mechanical damage to the eardrum or ear; rather, it's almost always due to the fact that loud noises cause the cilia in your cochlea to get ripped out (and they do not grow back). This microwave thing is still exciting your cochlea, so it's doing the same damn thing. The only difference is that the vibrations originate within your head, whose tissue is rapidly being heated and cooled by the microwaves. But your cilia don't give a damn about where the vibrations come from.
Ugh.
Re:Ha! See! I told you! (Score:3, Informative)
Atheism is not a religion. Religion requires faith and absence of faith is not faith. Insistence on evidence is the inverse of faith.
You appear to have atheism confused with agnosticism. Agnostics are the ones who neither believe nor disbelieve in divine being(s) because of the lack of evidence, while atheists believe that there are no divine beings with no more evidence than believers in any other religion have. In other words, atheists base their beliefs on faith, not evidence, since there is no accepted evidence that either proves or disproves the existence of divine beings.