- As five G technology
begins to get implemented all around the world, there's a lot of confusion
and concern over what it is, how it works, and if it's even safe. So today we're gonna go
over all aspects of five G. We have our friend and tech expert MKBHD who's gonna explain why
people are so excited about this technology. And then we're gonna
take the science angle about how it actually works,
what it does to your body and most importantly, what the science says on
whether or not it's safe. - We have looked at hundreds
of scientific papers and journals in order to
decipher the truth about five G and yes, we will be jumping into some of the conspiracy
theories and claims, so stick around for the end
of the video when we do that 'cause they are pretty wild. But first, we're gonna throw
it to our friend, MKBHD, to tell us about what's going
on with five G tech right now. - Hey, what's up guys? I'm MKBHD here. So five G technology
or the fifth generation of these data networks has
been getting a lot of hype and it's been talked about a lot and it's been slowly rolled
out over the past year or two, and getting insane speeds on some phones. So the wavelengths used
for five G technologies can be split into three
different sections. There is low-band five G, which is frequencies
below about one gigahertz. Then there is what we
call mid-band five G, which is slight above that, which is faster but
travels a shorter distance. And then there's millimeter wave, which is talked about the most, which can give you the fastest speeds and uses the highest frequencies but travels the shortest distance. And so with five G now we're
talking about download speeds of anywhere from 50 megabytes per second, all the way up to those
crazy millimeter wave speeds you might have seen of like
two gigabytes per second, which is insane, I mean,
that's we're talking like a whole TV show season
downloads in seconds, so download speeds are nice but this five G tech will be useful for far more than just your phone. So having these high end speeds and low latency in the
future will be essential for things like fleets of driverless cars all driving as a swarm and all talking, communicating with each
other to never crash, all the way to things like a robot and a surgeon in two different states but that surgery being
performed remotely in real time. So I had the chance to
use some early five G, it was millimeter wave, and
it was really impressive but you could tell it has a long way to go before it can be used and
rolled out to the world. For starters, it doesn't travel very far and it's very easily blocked by obstacles, that stuff I talked about in my video. So it would take a lot of
nodes and a lot of antennas just to cover a small area like a town, let alone a country or the entire globe, and that would be expensive
and time consuming. But even the low to mid-band
five G can still be impressive in terms of improvement in speed. So there's a lot going on but it is a pretty
exciting future of five G if I say so myself, but with that comes a
lot of fears and concerns about the potential effects
of these new frequencies on our biology and on our health. So for that, I'll throw
it back to Greg and Mitch to talk through the science of it all. - So how does five G work? In order to fully understand five G we actually have to learn about
one of my favorite things, which is the electromagnetic spectrum. And this is a spectrum of radiation. So yes, we will be talking
today about radiation. So it does sound scary, but it's important that
we know that radiation is just the transmission of energy through waves or particles. On the left of the spectrum we
have really long wavelengths, some as long as thousands of kilometers and as we move to the right,
they get shorter and shorter to even a fraction of the
size of an atomic nucleus. Now a wavelength size is
measured from peak to peak, or trough to trough. Basically, the distance over
which the wave shape repeats or the size of this
literal tattoo on my arm because yes, I do love the
electromagnetic spectrum. As the wavelengths become
shorter and shorter, they have higher frequencies and energy. Frequency describes the number of waves that pass a fixed place
in a given amount of time, and is usually measured in hertz each set. So a low frequency will
fit less wavelengths and a high frequency more. - Take gamma rays, for example, which can be 10 to the
power of minus 12 meters, which is 0.000000000001 meters. I hope I got the right amount of zeros. And they're generated by radioactive atoms and nuclear explosions. And these gamma rays along with X-rays and higher energy UV
radiation can damage DNA and destroy cells, also
known as being ionizing. Yeah, that's scary. As we move back to the left, the wavelengths get longer
and have less and less energy and are no longer ionizing. This part of the spectrum
is the wavelength size that the cells in your
eyes evolved to see, otherwise known as visible light. Every single wavelength your eyes pick up fall within 400 to 700 nanometers. If we keep moving left, we go through microwaves and radio waves, which are also called
radio frequency radiation. This low energy, low frequency radiation has been used in technology like radios since the late 1800s, but it wasn't until the 1980s that the first generation
of cellular technology or one G began. - This next chart is from
NASA, ever heard of her? She's famous and it breaks
down all the generations of cellular technology frequencies. One G cellular attack,
we're talking in the 1980s, used 150 megahertz aka UHF,
ultra high frequency waves. Two G was using around 450 megahertz, more ultra high frequency waves. Three G was allocated
frequencies between 450 megahertz all the way up to three gigahertz. This was in the spectrum known
as super high frequencies. Four G was allocated similar
frequencies to three G but was taking advantage of
some of those higher frequencies which takes us now to five G, which is allocated between 600 megahertz to as high as between 38 to 90 gigahertz. So it is also using a super
high frequency section but for the first time in
cellular network technology, it's moved into the extra
high frequency section with millimeter wavelength technology leaving the radio wave section in this graph and chart
that we saw earlier to the section of now microwaves. Of course, none of these words help make any of this sounds, radiation, super high frequencies, extra high frequencies, microwaves. Thankfully, the electromagnetic spectrum is regulated to keep us all healthy. An important regulating
body in all of this is the International Commission of Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, which is essentially a
conglomeration of epidemiologists, biologists and physicists and people who understand
this technology very deeply, who take all the most up-to-date science and make sure they understand and regulate what this
radiation is doing to all of us. It's also important to note
that this regulating body isn't connected to any one government or a country or commercial corporation. - Which leads to the big question, how do five G waves affect us? We know that five G frequencies
are not ionizing radiation, but should we be worried about them impacting
our body in other ways? After decades of research
on health effects, the ICNIRP found the
only substantiated effect of radio frequency exposure
is heating of exposed tissue. These wavelengths can cause vibration of charged or polar
molecules inside of us, which creates friction and thus heat. But the higher the frequency, the lower the penetrative
depth in the body, which might seem a little unnerving and I think it's fair to have concern because technically there
is a thermal threshold that if we pass can cause
adverse health effects on us. But that's why all these
regulating bodies are there to make sure that our exposure never goes over that threshold. In fact, acute and long term effects of radio frequency exposure
below the thermal threshold have been studied extensively without demonstrating
adverse health effects. Research has even been done
on headaches, sleep quality, cognitive function, etc,
and has shown no issues. One other thing that was found was a small effect on brain
activity when measured by EEGs, but the biological
implication of what that means is pretty small and they haven't actually
seen any negative effects associated to this brain activity. - So why do some people say
that five G can cause cancer? There are a few studies
that often get quoted. And one, lab rats and mice were exposed to radio frequency
energy used in cell phones for nine hours a day starting before birth and for two years after, and found an increased risk
of some types of tumors in the male rats. But the male rats exposed to
the radio frequency radiation actually ended up living
longer than the other rats, and the female rats and all
of mice in the experiment didn't have an increase in tumors at all. Some other epidemiological studies have found a small increase
in some brain tumors in people who are heavy
users of cell phones, but it was actually found that
there were reporting biases and weaknesses in these studies. Also it's important to remember that these studies are on cellphone use. So they're actually talking about three G, four G and five G frequencies. The consensus among scientists is that five G technology
will not cause cancer but it is very confusing to
figure out this information when you are looking online. For example, even this article
in "Scientific American" would make you worried that cell phones and five G could cause cancer even though the studies
are not corroborated and some of it's claims are just opposite of what
the study actually says. This happens a lot with
scientific information that gets cherry-picked to mislead people. Read "Scientific American" a week later and you get most of the prior
articles information debunked, but both of these articles are from seemingly
scientifically accurate sources. So it can be very confusing, no shade, I guess, to
"Scientific American". At the end of the day
what it comes down to is scientists looking at large trials with large sample sizes
and controlling variables. One very large 13 countrywide study found that there was
no causal relationship between brain tumors and cell phone use. And another really great
Danish study, large study, I sound like Trump right now, great, huge and large study (laughs) also found that there was no link. - Okay, so let's talk
about the conspiracies. First, we'll address the
elephant in the room, the new online theory that
five G causes coronavirus. So this one is relatively easy to debunk, five G technology cannot
break chemical bonds which is a common claim that
conspiracy theorists use. On top of the fact that
viruses are visible we can literally see that
they physically exist, we can study them, we can
look at their literal DNA. So ultimately, just know that five G
does not cause coronavirus - Is five G bad for birds? This study is quoted often to explain how the
electromagnetic noise of five G can disrupt the migration of birds. But these researchers actually found that it is longer wavelengths, more like similar to AM
radio type wavelengths that were actually
affecting migrating birds. And they have actually come
out and tried to speak openly, trying to explain that their research is getting cherry-picked to try and say something about five G that they never said. - There's the new British 20 pound note show coronavirus and five G. These conspiracy theories
have been popping up stating that the 20 pound
note has a five G tower giving off radiation and
the coronavirus is above. This is actually an image
of the Margate Lighthouse and behind it is the new Turner
Contemporary art gallery. The purple foil patch is
based on the staircase at the Tate Modern. With now off the science territory though, so let's get back on track, if you are interested
in conspiracy theories and the science behind
why they work so well, we actually have a video
we made all about that, we'll link it in the description. So to recap, one, five G
technology uses wavelengths within the super high and
extra high frequency spectrum. Two, these fall into the category
of non-ionizing radiation, meaning they can't damage
DNA or destroy cells. Three, five G does have the
capacity to heat-exposed tissue, but due to regulation will
remain below the threshold known to cause any damage. Four, the current scientific consensus is that five G does not show
adverse impacts on health, like headaches, sleep,
cognitive function or cancer. And five, five G has nothing
to do with coronavirus, - The newly published guidelines
about regulating five G, I'm gonna link in the description below so that you can read them yourself. Now this doesn't mean that
we shouldn't be skeptical of technological advances. I mean, honestly we did all this research and made this video because
we were skeptical ourselves. I do think it is important
that we continue to regulate and understand how all
of these technologies that are gonna be used around us work. But at the end of the day we
also need to listen to science and to listen to the scientific consensus in order to guide our knowledge, - We talked more about five
G and conspiracy theories in our newest podcast
with a Harvard professor who studies disinformation
campaigns and conspiracies, so definitely click that and check it out. - It's fascinating, it's really a good way to understand how these conspiracy
theories are spreading. But if you haven't subscribed, make sure you've done that, right? What else can they use? Subscribe to our email thread. - Yeah we've got a mailing list, yeah. This 30-year old calls it an email thread. (laughs) But otherwise, thank you
for watching, like it, subscribe, do all the things
if you like science videos and we'll see you next time.
- (mumbles) Okay thanks. (laughs)
