Xref: utzoo sci.physics:18019 sci.bio:4743
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!news.cs.indiana.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!news.iastate.edu!sharkey!fmsrl7!wreck
From: wreck@fmsrl7.UUCP (Ron Carter)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Magnetic Levitation of Organic Materials
Summary: Watch out for those fields!
Message-ID: <40065@fmsrl7.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 91 18:57:32 GMT
References: <1489@gtx.com>
Reply-To: wreck@fmsrl7.UUCP (Ron Carter)
Organization: Ford Motor Company, Scientific Research Labs, Dearborn, MI
Lines: 20

In article <1489@gtx.com> al@gtx.UUCP () writes:
>I'm curious about the possibility of generating gradients like this on
>a large scale so that, say, a person's body could be levitated.  Given
>the above numbers, would this be technically possible?  Would the
>great field strength or gradient thereof have any significant effect
>on, say, electrical activity in nervous tissue or other life processes?

Hell, yes.  Just think of the phenomena you have in the body:
mildly-conductive fluids moving through tubes in a mildly-conductive
matrix.  Now introduce an enormous magnetic field.  Every moving
ion will experience a BxV force, and every blood vessel which is
not parallel to the ambient field becomes an MHD generator of
DC current (pulsating in the arteries, closer to continuous in
the veins).

I'm not sure if the currents would be enough to short out the
neural circuitry which controls the heart, but I wouldn't want
to find out personally.  It sounds dangerous.

Yes, I'm a real double-E.