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Re: The MRI and Looping: For Ambient & Experimental Music?



On the MRI thing,
Kris wrote:
> He said the whole bit about absolutely no metal objects being in the room is nonesense....maybe that was for older machines? Not sure.  It depends on the type of metal and the distance from the machine. 
 
Hmmm. Seems to depend on who you talk to. I have a (guitar) student who works with MRI at Stony Brook University Hospital here on Long Island, and he says that much of it has to do with the size of the magnet involved. The magnets are measured in Teslas, where one Tesla =  10,000 Gauss.
Low-Field MRI= Under .2 Tesla (2,000 Gauss)
Mid-Field MRI= .2 to 0.6 Tesla (2,000 Gauss to 6,000 Gauss)
High-Field MRI= 1.0 to 1.5 Tesla (10,000 Gauss to 15,000 Gauss)
...and according to him, there are VERY high-field MRIs with up to 9 Teslas. There is one that strong in New York City. He often works with one that's 7 Teslas,. and he confirmed all the wacky stories we've been trading about the extreme magnetic properties of these machines. IV stands rolling across the floor and slamming into the units, tattoos becoming hot, etc. etc. The most intriguing thing was that workers are only allowed to be near the 7 Tesla machine for 1/2 hour at a time because they get dizzy, apparently from trace elements in the body becoming magnetized.
 
By the way, let's give it up for ol' Nikola Tesla, who did some of his wacky electricity-through-the-air experiments just a few miles from my home here on Lawn Guyland. Didja know Tesla invented radio (but didn't patent it because he wanted to transmit stronger energy), fluorescent lights, AC current, the alternating phase motor, and of course the Tesla coil (found in virtually all radios and TVs)? Tesla got a bum rap, however, because he never got the electricity-through-the-air thing happening, and later on he started fantasizing publicly about "death rays" (lasers) and the possibility of life on Mars, and probably because of his Eastern European origins, as opposed to Thomas Edison who was Mister All-American and more of a public relations manipulator than Nikki.
dB