Magnetically-Induced Hallucinations Explain Ball Lighting, Say Physicists

www.technologyreview.com...

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Quote from source:

Powerful magnetic fields can induce hallucinations in the lab, so why not in the real world, too? Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an extraordinary technique pioneered by neuroscientists to explore the workings of the brain. The idea is to place a human in a rapidly changing magnetic field that is powerful enough to induce currents in neurons in the brain. Then sit back and see what happens.

Since TMS was invented in the 1980s, it has become a powerful way of investigating how the brain works. Because the fields can be tightly focused, it is possible to generate currents in very specific areas of the brain to see what they do.

Focus the field in the visual cortex, for example, and the induced eddys cause the subject to 'see' lights that appear as discs and lines. Move the the field within the cortex and the subject sees the lights move too.

All that much is repeatable in the lab using giant superconducting magnets capable of creating fields of as much as 0.5 Tesla inside the brain.

But if this happens in the lab, then why not in the real world too, say Joseph Peer and Alexander Kendl at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. They calculate that the rapidly changing fields associated with repeated lightning strikes are powerful enough to cause a similar phenomenon in humans within 200 metres.

To be sure, this is a rare event. The strike has to be of a particular type in which there are multiple return strokes at the same point over a period of a few seconds, a phenomenon that occurs in about 1-5 per cent of strikes, say Peer and Kendl.

i agree with their findings, but to think that this is the reason for people seeing ball lightning is a little weird. What about the people that see lightning in places where lightning storms are nowhere near?

To think that magnetic fields create hallucinations, sure, to think that this explains ball lightning, well I personally think, not a chance.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

Ball lightning and the accounts of it are certainly fascinating.

But, in the end, who really cares if it is real or just a hallucination in the mean time before it is show to be either way?

edit: I mean, it's not light ball lightning wrote a book and has a religious following.

.... OR DOES IT!!!!!!!????



[edit on 12-5-2010 by RestingInPieces]

Hey, I beat you to this by just a few minutes:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Different news source though.


I guess great minds think alike.

Bullpucky.

When multiple independent people standing in different places all see the same thing at the same time how in hell do you 'explain' them all getting the same simultaneous signaling in EACH of their brains simultaneously?

Mass Hallucination is a bogus, non-scientific, denier term. PERIOD.

NEVER demonstrated in or out of a lab or had any aggregate data gathered that convincingly confirms it.

Simultaneous telepathically communicated illusions,

or it is simply real?

How dumb do they think people are?

Or how dumb are they?

These are scientists? These are idiots.

Originally posted by slank
When multiple independent people standing in different places all see the same thing at the same time how in hell do you 'explain' them all getting the same simultaneous signaling in EACH of their brains simultaneously?

Where are you getting this example from? Did you read the article?

What so the possible film footage of ball lightning created by a group of scientists in their lunch break with an old submarine battery at Los Alamos back in the 80's was a hallucination caught on celluloid?



Quick get that camera some meds, its seeing things...

Sure the head of the project didnt say categorically that they did make ball lightning but he was fairly sure thats possibly what it was given what they caught on tape. Oh and i guess hallucinations cut stove gas jets, kill pigs and burn peoples chests, kill people and melt holes in glass windows?

Id say the physical and eye witness evidence for ball lightning NOT being a hallucination is a damn sight larger than the evidence of it being just a hallucination.

[edit on 17-5-2010 by BigfootNZ]