Riddled: Spectres of the Spectrum

Huzzah! Here is some sciency-sounding radiation-related ~~batshit-craziness~~ magical thinking that is not from Professor Michael Persinger! We should hate to become dependent upon a single supplier.

Dr Blank's reasoning is irrefutable in its geometric logic. Expose DNA to non-ionising radiation in the radio frequencies, which should only cause thermal warming, yet Maxwell's Silver Equation comes down upon its head, leaving the DNA with single-strand breaks. But DNA incurs the same damage from ELF waves... with wavelengths measured in continental distances... which is to say the control condition.

You might conclude that the effect is therefore spurious, but that is why you are not popular and very truly run after and cited as World's Leading Authority by every loon with an electrosmog allergy and a personal Faraday cage.

Blank's genius was to deduce that DNA must be a Fractal Antenna, absorbing energy with equal efficiency at all wavelengths. As further proof of the unique antennal properties of DNA he adduces the purported ELF sensitivity of the Na,K-ATPase and Cytochrome C Oxidase reactions (which involve no DNA) and of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky spatial-temporal reaction (which isn't even biological).

The crucial implication here is that if Raquel Welch is shrunk down to nano-naut size and inserted into your bloodstream to perform life-saving internal surgery, she will simply need to connect her radio to the nearest chromosome with a couple of jumper leads when she needs to receive messages from Mission Control.

At Riddled Research Laboratories we were sufficiently inspired to test the effect on DNA of sonic energy. Our experiments showed that it is especially sensitive to sarcasm, dramatic irony, bathos and litotes. Side-effects of the genome modification included extreme facial ductility [below, left] and Zodiacal growths [right].

In other news, DNA is not a conductor.

I am also advised that the special geometry of fractal antennae does not improve their extreme inefficiency at wavelengths longer than the antennae dimension L (larger, in this case, by a factor of 10¹²). It does improve performance at shorter wavelengths, rather than being stuck with peak resonance for wavelengths 2L; so a properly-designed, conducting, chromosome-sized hyper-coiled coil would not be confined to detecting infrared photons with a 5-micron wavelength, but could also absorb more energetic light into the visible and ultraviolet ranges.

It remains for Aterini and Ruggiero to ridicule the whole concept by suggesting that the fractal antennae also work as transmitters and enable our cells to communicate with us on the radio bands. Though I am puzzled by their choice of the august pages of the Springer Encyclopedia of Cancer as their vehicle for this parodic humour. I hope it's parody.