Your microwave oven has its own microbiome (www.nature.com)

submitted 3 months ago by ArcticDagger@feddit.dk to c/science@lemmy.world

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From the article:

But for the general public, the implications of the study are simpler. “A microwave is not a pure, pristine place,” Porcar says. It’s also not a pathogenic reservoir to be feared, he says. But he does recommend cleaning your kitchen microwave often — just as often as you would scrub your kitchen surfaces to eliminate potential bacteria.

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[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

How does bacteria live through being microwaved? I would think they’d boil from the inside out.

[-] Nutteman@lemmy.world 28 points 3 months ago

If you're reading this I am in dire straights, possibly dead. I woke up this morning to find my microwave is bursting with tardigrades. I have left it cooking nonstop for 13 consecutive days and they've only gotten more pissed off. I've welded their every possible exit from the machine shut, but I fear they are beginning to chew their way out. If you're reading this, tell the government they need to drone strike my location immediately, possibly nuke it. The world is not prepared for what is inside my microwave.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

Y'all ever see that one episode of Cowboy Bebop

[-] blackluster117@possumpat.io 3 points 3 months ago

Who knew lobster could go so wrong?

[-] trolololol@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Hold the nukes it's just going to piss them off

[-] Fermion@feddit.nl 1 points 3 months ago

Touch the inside walls of your microwave after you heat something up. They don't get all that hot.

[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

The walls of the microwave don’t contain water. The bacteria do. Microwave ovens work by vibrating water molecules, creating friction and heat. If bacteria are on the oven walls, they should be exploding from the microwaves.

[-] Fermion@feddit.nl 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Since the metal wall is conductive, the standing wave pattern inside a typical microwave oven has a magnitude that goes to zero at the conductor surface. The heating power also goes to zero at the wall serface. Additionally, anything in thermal contact with the metal wall will remain close to the temperature of the wall even if there is a heat flux. Bacteria may well be cooked on the carousel plate, but there will be regions within the cooking cavity where bacteria will not experience high enough temperatures for sanitization.

Check out this page and note how the heating profile is vanishingly small around the perimiter. https://www.highfrequencyelectronics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2153:smoothing-electric-fields-in-microwave-ovens&catid=178&Itemid=189

PS: friction is not an applicable term to describe how microwaves rotating dipoles produces heat.