How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
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How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
1–10 of 53 posts
Re: How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
#2Wouldn't iron in blood be affected well before this point though?
Re: How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
#3I think that you'd end up with neurological effects before the electrons were ripped out of atoms. I mean, our nervous system is effectively controlled ionic exchange.
Re: How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
#4Wouldn't iron in blood be affected well before this point though?
Not necessarily. Iron oxide is somewhat ferromagnetic but iron chloride is paramagnetic. So just having some iron atoms in something isn't enough to make it ferromagnetic.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/28...
Re: How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
#5Wouldn't iron in blood be affected well before this point though?
Bulk iron is ferromagnetic, but many iron-containing molecules are not. Haemoglobin is not ferromagnetic. http://www.revisemri.com/blog/2006/mri-blood-iron-attraction...
Re: How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
#6I think that you'd end up with neurological effects before the electrons were ripped out of atoms. I mean, our nervous system is effectively controlled ionic exchange.
Yeah, the strength of field that would literally destroy molecules is a ridiculously loose upper bound.
Re: How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
#7Would you be mechanically compressed by the field before your atoms deform?
Re: How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
#8I think that you'd end up with neurological effects before the electrons were ripped out of atoms. I mean, our nervous system is effectively controlled ionic exchange.
Definitely. Furthermore, the effects of motion in that field could induce a lot of current and heating in a person. Some of the experimental super-high field strength MRI scanners are reportedly prone to zapping experimenters.
Re: How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
#9I think you would be killed by the diamagnetic properties of water first...
If you can affect water with a small magnet like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FvWtEdY4sE
Then a magnetic field of sufficient power would probably kill you long before the effects described in the article. I'm amazed that someone other than me has thought about this!
Re: How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?
#10I think you would be killed by the diamagnetic properties of water first... If you can affect water with a small magnet like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FvWtEdY4sE Then a magnetic field of sufficient power would probably kill you long before the effects described in the article. I'm amazed that someone other than me has thought about this!
Blood electrocution would get you first. Moving conductor in a magnetic field generates a current, and you'd just need a current big enough to confuse the cardiac nerves. Given that existing MRI research magnets can give weird nervous system feelings when patients wiggle, just an order of magnitude or two more and you'd get knocked out by your own circulating blood.