How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA

Now that airport security is on a new drive for further scanning methods after the appallingly concocted 'underpant bomber' episode, this development in terahertz waves is interesting. It has been said that new scanning methods were set to employ terahertz waves - lets hope this is not the case after these recent findings:

Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes , paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance. The way terahertz waves are absorbed and emitted can also be used to determine the chemical composition of a material...

The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. "Some studies reported significant genetic damage while others, although similar, showed none," say Boian Alexandrov at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and a few buddies. Now these guys think they know why.

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they've found is remarkable....

Go to original site - 'How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA'