How to kill a virus
Shake it, baby, shake it!
According to this Live Science article, “Scientists may one day be able to destroy viruses in the same way that opera singers presumably shatter wine glasses. New research mathematically determined the frequencies at which simple viruses could be shaken to death.”
Every “thing” vibrates because everything is made up of atoms that vibrate. We vibrate. Even our “thoughts” vibrate, because brain function is electromagnetic.
Sounds pretty woo-woo, doesn’t it? But this stuff comes straight from science.
Maybe one day the energy healing folks will have the last laugh. Maybe one day the Stuart Davis “thoughts are things” video (warning — R rated!) won’t be a parody. Maybe Bruce Lipton is right about his understanding of epigenetics, and that our own thoughts control certain genes.
Maybe is the key word for me. Obviously I’m very interested in woo stuff, but I need a lot more scientific evidence before accepting certain notions hook, line and sinker.
Add your comment
XHTML: You may use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Very interesting. Kidney stones are already neutralized with ultrasonics. I have no doubt that the woo world will latch onto this and declare that they were right all along. What they will miss is the action of a physical effect on the virus itself. There is no definable “vibration” coming from a virus. What is affected is the structure of the virus itself.
Much like boiling water, the heat imparts energy to the water molecules - increasing their energy and causing the liquid to transform to vapor. Water reacts to direct energy, not wishful thinking
I doubt there will come a day when energy healers and the like are credited with anything more than a cognitive based placebo effect
PS - Having a resonant frequency is not vibration.
According to the article, viruses do vibrate. And they resonate with frequencies.
“To expedite this search, Sankey and his student Eric Dykeman have developed a way to calculate the vibrational motion of every atom in a virus shell. From this, they can determine the lowest resonant frequencies.
As an example of their technique, the team modeled the satellite tobacco necrosis virus and found this small virus resonates strongly around 60 Gigahertz (where one Gigahertz is a billion cycles per second), as reported in the Jan. 14 issue of Physical Review Letters.
A virus’ death knell
All objects have resonant frequencies at which they naturally oscillate. Pluck a guitar string and it will vibrate at a resonant frequency.”
What am I missing?
I don’t have an issue with everything vibrating and resonating. Like you, my problem is how the woo world often makes unsubstantiated claims.
I just want the truth, man.
I hope I can handle it…
The issue is in identifying the resonant frequency of a virus. Although elements in the atomic level are “moving” they do not impart that energy to the macro level. This is the big misunderstanding of quantum physics. The actions at the quantum level do not bridge to the macro level - elsewise Newtonian physics would be completely overturned. An object at rest, etc. I think the authors are not being clear about their technique, and the article is a representation of their research.
I think we have the crux of the leaps of logic being made from incomplete information. Michale Shermer spends some time trying to decouple this incorrect linkage.
Try this for a basic quantum primer
Me too on the truth.
Yeah, I’ve read a lot about quantum physics — especially how it’s mangled and misrepresented.
You may be right that the article isn’t clear. Even so, I think it’s very cool that scientists can measure the vibrational motion of atoms and then find the frequencies they resonate with in order to manipulate them.
There is still a lot we don’t know about the quantum world and how it works. In spite of the Shermer article, no one truly knows the extent that thoughts and consciousness have in influencing reality (starting on the quantum level). I know that most scientists think the story is over, but that doesn’t mean it is!
Or they have chosen to ignore the issue. Have you read this post?
http://you-unplugged.com/blog/2007/03/30/physics-mysteries-versus-quantum-flapdoodle/
Good post.
I like Park’s work. I think the challenge that thought affect things at a “quantum” level is an interesting theoretical exercise, however, I am not aware of any reliable indications that this relationship exists.
Now, how consciousness exists or what it is - I have no idea…
You probably know that there are consciousness researchers working on this question right now. I find it all so fascinating.
One book that helped me grasp the possibility that everything is a form of information (some call it “consciousness”) is “Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, From Our Brains to Black Holes,” by Charles Seife.
I mentioned the book here:
http://you-unplugged.com/blog/2007/01/23/the-one-thing-i-dont-have/
(I didn’t continue reading McTaggart’s book. She really annoys me…)
The FDA has been arresting people quakery for decades who have said the same thing.
Baby steps?