Actually the SI unit for dose is Gray (Gy) which is J/kg and expresses the amount of energy used to produce ionization and it was originally developed for Air which by strange coincindence is almost equivalent to mammal meat as far as the atomic content goes. The Sievert adds a factor to take into account the biological effect of different types of radiation. If in addition the sensitivity of the irradiated organ is taken into account it is still called Sievert and is a different number. I therefore do not consider Sievert to be an SI unit.

Hope this helps

No not a joke the only reason why you would get a "catastrophic" event is likely because the beam is focused and as such has a very high flux on a very small volume as dose = energy /mass then the mass of the irradiated part is very high. In order to get a lot of dose to the hand it is better to tune the energy down in such a way that the total energy gets deposited in the object you are interested in. Also note that also the density of the material is very important. Therefore a tungsten block would retain much more energy than a hand. I you can give me the number of particles/square cm I can calculate exactly what the dose is for the hand. This is what I do for a living. And yes I have treated patients with neutron beams, proton beams and photon beams, so I know what I am talking about. My point is that everyone seemed to be overawed by the sheer energy of the beam, while that is not the point it has to be the right energy.

As I explained in the first post the notion of high energy beams having low stopping power is counter intuitive as your reaction shows.

Hope this helps

I was amazed at the ignorance displayed in this thread. In radiation therapy proton beams are used a lot to treat cancer so the problem is well known.
Of course you will need o know the fluence of the beam (e.g. number of particles/ square cm/ second) and the amount of time the hand has been in the beam.
Usually these beams are of relatively low flux, the particles in the beam do have a very high energy. The next thing you need to determine is
the amount of energy that will be transferred to the tissue. For this we use the notion of stopping power (i,e, energy deposited under the form of ionizing collisions per unit length). This quantity depends on the charge of the particle (squared) and the inverse of the speed of the particle (squared). This means, and most people find this counter intuitive, that the higher the energy, the lower the amount of energy being deposited. So in this case the deposited energy is very low, e.g. the beam passes almost right through the hand. I do not have any stopping power numbers for these type of energies handy but can only presume that they are very low. Some caveats, these line of thought only follows direct interactions and collisional interactions with electrons.
Most likely there is a larger component of nuclear interactions and ionizations coming from recoil events. Which will increase the dose.
In order to get the maximum effect with a proton beam one has to tune the beam in such a way that it comes to a complete halt inside the persons body
this is about 200MeV for a human, what is several orders of magnitude lower than the energies here at hand (pun unintended).

Anyway interesting question and at my next exam I will be sure to put it in. Now we will see if any of my students read slashdot ;-)

 

In follow up to my own submission.

Unfortunately all negative studies, that are well repeatable and do not show any increased permeability, Foiled again!
If there is a mechanism, this would not be it.

Record 1 of 5
de Gannes, FP; Billaudel, B; Taxile, M; Haro, E; Ruffie, G; Leveque, P; Veyret, B; Lagroye, I. 2009. Effects of Head-Only Exposure of Rats to GSM-900 on Blood-Brain Barrier Permeability and Neuronal Degeneration. RADIATION RESEARCH 172 (3): 359-367..
Author Full Name(s): de Gannes, Florence Poulletier; Billaudel, Bernard; Taxile, Murielle; Haro, Emmanuelle; Ruffie, Gilles; Leveque, Philippe; Veyret, Bernard; Lagroye, Isabelle
ISSN: 0033-7587
DOI: 10.1667/RR1578.1
Record 2 of 5
Finnie, JW; Blumbergs, PC; Cai, Z; Manavis, J. 2009. Expression of the water channel protein, aquaporin-4, in mouse brains exposed to mobile telephone radiofrequency fields. PATHOLOGY 41 (5): 473-475..
Author Full Name(s): Finnie, John W.; Blumbergs, Peter C.; Cai, Zhao; Manavis, Jim
ISSN: 0031-3025
DOI: 10.1080/00313020902885045
Record 3 of 5
Masuda, H; Ushiyama, A; Takahashi, M; Wang, JQ; Fujiwara, O; Hikage, T; Nojima, T; Fujita, K; Kudo, M; Ohkubo, C. 2009. Effects of 915 MHz Electromagnetic-Field Radiation in TEM Cell on the Blood-Brain Barrier and Neurons in the Rat Brain. RADIATION RESEARCH 172 (1): 66-73..
Author Full Name(s): Masuda, Hiroshi; Ushiyama, Akira; Takahashi, Miyuki; Wang, Jianqing; Fujiwara, Osamu; Hikage, Takashi; Nojima, Toshio; Fujita, Koji; Kudo, Motoshige; Ohkubo, Chiyoji
ISSN: 0033-7587
DOI: 10.1667/RR1542.1
Record 4 of 5
Masuda, H; Ushiyama, A; Hirota, S; Wake, K; Watanabe, S; Yamanaka, Y; Taki, M; Ohkubo, C. 2007. Effects of subchronic exposure to a 1439 MHz electromagnetic field on the microcirculatory parameters in rat brain. IN VIVO 21 (4): 563-570..
Author Full Name(s): Masuda, Hiroshi; Ushiyama, Akira; Hirota, Shogo; Wake, Kanako; Watanabe, Soichi; Yamanaka, Yukio; Taki, Masao; Ohkubo, Chiyoji
ISSN: 0258-851X
Record 5 of 5
Franke, H; Streckert, J; Bitz, A; Goeke, J; Hansen, V; Ringelstein, EB; Nattkamper, H; Galla, HJ; Stogbauer, F. 2005. Effects of universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) electromagnetic fields on the blood-brain barrier in vitro. RADIATION RESEARCH 164 (3): 258-269..
ISSN: 0033-7587

Hmm, What is the reference article reporting this. The blood brain barrier not only keeps out the "bad" chemicals, but also prevents us from delivering life saving drugs to the brain. So the prize winning treatment will be inject the drugs, apply RF to the brain. Patient saved, I get the Nobel Prize. Is there a way to make sure you log this /. ? It was discovered here first. I know the guys at Cleveland. If this was true it would have been patented long ago. And gazillions of presentations at all the big conferences would be the reward together with fame and fortune. No matter how much they got from the "cell phone" dark suits.

Wait a minute I had already posted this http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=210580&cid=17159284

I received exactly one reply to a engineering article with no substantial follow up generated. I don't think there is anything to it.

That Einstein did not believe in quantum mechanics is far fetched. This is the guy who invented the photo electric effect. He was well aware of the quantum nature of the electron orbits. What he doubted was the Kopenhagen interpretation. This (in a few very crude words) says that there is no way to observe the underlying truth and that we should stick to observables only. The Einstein Podolsky Rosen paper takes this logic to an extreme and comes out at the "spooky" interaction at distance. Note that everything stays within the boundaries dictated by the relativity theory in that not all information can be exchanged over the distance instantaneous but that part of the information already needs to have traveled the distance (the other half of the entangled pair),

The beauty is that he did not need to let his belief system dictate the logic of the argument. It might be that at the time his conclusions were wrong as the result he obtained was contrary to the experience he had up till now.