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Technology Spontaneously Combusts In Sicily
Zacronos writes "According to MSNBC, ever since mid-January, various electronic devices have been spontaneously combusting in the now evacuated town of Canneto di Caronia, Sicily; at this point, the fires are almost daily. The town has been disconnected from the larger electrical grid and was hooked to a generator, but that, too, caught fire. Even unplugged items have succumbed. Nothing seems to have burst into flame except where there is someone present to witness it, but the police no longer suspect a prankster -- after witnessing wires catch fire without cause. Scientists have yet to explain the phenomenon (although unproven theories abound), leading many people to look to supernatural causes."
I'm thinking, can any kind of EMP cause this?
Scientists have yet to explain the phenomenon ... leading many people to look to supernatural causes
It really makes me sad when, if people don't understand something they assume it's magic. Why is it that so many people refuse to take 'we don't know yet' as an acceptable answer?
Science: 0
Magic: 1
:/
-Colin
You only have to look at all the loony beliefs in the world to know that people will leap to the most ridiculous conclusions at the drop of a hat.
"We can identify that flying object so therefore it must be an advanced alien scout ship!" etc.
It's sad really. No doubt when the mundane reason for this story becomes clear (e.g. hoax, sensational reporting or whatever), there will be another bunch of loons accusing the Italian government of a 'coverup'.
Do there happen to be any radar installations nearby?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Believe or not, similar incidents have occurred before.
o 1945 - A village a short distance from Almera in Spain (New York Time 5th July 1945).
o 1983 - A small coal town in West Virginia, Wharncliffe (Housten Post 16th June 1983 and Columbus Dispatch 24th July 1983)
o 1990 - San Gottardo in the Berici Hills of Italy
(UK Sunday Express 11th March 1990 and The Guardian 22nd March 1990)
I've given you references so you can check them out for yourself.
(posted anonymously to avoid Slashdotters you refuse to think about things which don't fit inside their predefined universe).
2. America is one of the few nations in the world where the power going out or setting firest makes the news, in most of the world it happens daily.
3. About a decade ago Italy ruled their version of the FCC incompetent and disbanded them. Though there are EU rules to deal with, it is a wild west of wireless where you can send photon-torpedo strength EMI around with no-one to slap you until the mobs find you.
I dunno, I sorta like the two lines before those ones:
...or this one stuck on the side of the article:
methinks someone's playing with tesla coils. what happens when the earth voltage goes sky high?? stuff catches fire presumably...
(at least thats what happened at tunguska...)
That man tried to kill mah Daddy
Don't laugh. I've seen it done.
A company (I don't remember what) was trying to sell some of a wetting agent to a fire department I was part of. They demonstrated that it got soot stains out of concrete, got oil off your hands, etc.
They mixed the stuff about at about a 1:5 ration with gasoline, and used a bucket to splash the resulting mixture onto a pile of burning tires. It darned near put it out. It did reduce the temperature of the fire by 2500 degrees Farenhuit.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Best wishes
Paul
My web domain.
I'm a Sicilian (I live in Catania) and I can confirm that the news is real. At first the police thought of fraudulent actions from unknown people but after some weeks 3-4 policemans saw some electric cables (old cables, unconnected and resting on floor) that started spontaneously to combust. After that many scientists and technicians have done many tests without results. Those events are happening only in a very little town near the city of Messina.
A high-power military radar installation does put out enough power to kill an unfortunate bird (or incompetent engineer) at short distance, but still wouldn't do much more than disrupt electronic equipment at greater distances.
However, it is not unthinkable that a relatively small disruption in an eletronic device can lead to a bigger problem later on - a disrupted control circuit causing an overload that leads to a fire is well possible. This scenario is not very feasible after main power is cut though.
There is little need to invoke God or strange physics. A more likely explanation is at hand.
The common thread to all of these are power sources, wires and people. The missing, unmentioned ingredient is the pocket knife or screwdriver concealed in the hand of the disturbed fellow who is causing the shorts.
John Vreeland
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
First of all, this is pretty old news in Italy.
Here is CICAP entry on this phenomenon (in Italian sorry).
CICAP is a group of scientists who routinely investigate (and debunk) any so-called supernatural phenomenon in Italy (they cover anything: ESP, religious miracles, even omeopathy). Sort of a James Randi fan club.
I suppose most of Slashdot's reader cannot read Italian: the gist of it is that they suspect a prank. According to similar phenomena they investigated in the past, the first accidents are caused by natural causes (short-circuits, overload).
But then people start talking, and making hypotesis, and someone starts causing this as a prank or a way to get attention, media coverage etc. Then CICAP arrives, and start looking aroud, and everything goes back to normal.
CICAP sums this as follows: 100% of phenomena happen when controls are at 0% 0% of phenomena happen when controls are at 100%
Humans are kinda in a rush to assign blame, or rather... attribute intention for events with socially relevant consequences. If it impacts us socially, our brains insist that somebody must have intended it, even if we also have a readily available mechanical explanation.
Or at least, that's the premise of Religion Explained. It's a fascinating read.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I think the parent poster was referring to people who could safely be called "science fanboys". If something doesn't fit their brand of scientific dogma, then it's obviously nonsense. They start from the conclusion they want (which was told to them by someone else - i.e., not original) and dismiss or ridicule what doesn't support it.
Of course, these people aren't "scientists", they're "science types". (Well, some real scientists might be like that - who am I to say that all scientists are good scientists.
My guess is that he thought his "advisors" were full of bull, and were trying to manipulate him. So he said, "If you guys are so in tune with the supernatural, you should be able to tell me my dream." (Sort of like, "Why doesn't the Psychic Hotline lady call me?")
His advisors, understandably, said, "You're on crack -- no king in history has asked something like that", to which he replied, "I'll show you who's on crack..."
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
Especially when the story mentions the head exorcist of the Catholic Church definitively calling this the work of the devil, when the local priest decided to sit this one out and let science have a go at it first. These people obviously aren't *that* removed from the outside world, even if they are filthy, filthy Italians.
--- What
you want video?! here's your stinkin video. http://elwood.longlines.com/~soucada/fireball/comp aqmod.mpg
m ation1.avi
http://elwood.longlines.com/~soucada/fireball/Ani
A Mysterious Unbalanced power factor?
Most likely one of the following:
1.) Old fabric-insulated wire systems and new power hungry appliances
2.) Old aluminium based wire (the Ausies had fun with that technology)
3.) Temperature coefficients of conductor increased resistance under load causing thermo run-away by overloading power systems.
4.) Step-down transformer has become unbalanced
5.) Transient suppression condensers are not inline between the town's sub-stations
6.) Magic-8-Ball says the "air conditioners" did it, surly a power plot.
Natural atmospheric conditions in the sky can cause lightning, could an unusual atmospheric charge cause something tesla-like naturally at ground level?
How about underground, if there were enough minerals capable of transporting electrical impulses?
I can attest to the fact many people turn to God to explain technology when they don't understand it. I was sitting in church when the question was asked of a small group of members: "How does TV work." The expected answer was that the TV station transmitted a signal the TV received... not looking for a technical answer here (and they were heading for an analogy, but that is beside the point). From the group, who had been so indoctrinated that they couldn't think for themselves anymore, the answer rose: "God's will".
It was the last time I attended church. Yes, some of those people were intelligent (the one asking the question had far higher hopes than that - he never got to apply his obvious analogy he was working towards), but it felt *wrong* to sit in a room knowing that these people didn't just have faith where faith was potentially appropriate: they had faith indiscriminately. To them, the light switch was powered by God, the microwave worked because God did not see it as evil, and TV was beamed from heaven direct (must not have *watched* too much TV recently, eh?).
After some years of thinking about this situation, I have come to a realization that you don't need a higher power to explain the organization of the universe. (Previously, I had my doubts about the complexity arising spontaniously, a common doubt of even scientifically minded people). Quantum mechanics says that until an event is observed, the outcome is a probability wave. Upon observation, that wave collapses. Taking this to the logical conclusion, after the creation of the universe (big bang or string colision or whatever) there was a huge, unobserved probability wave. Upon one part of that wave stumbling across the unlikely (but part of the probabilty wave) creation of an "observer", that observer would cause the wave to collapse locally, influencing the rest of the wave from that point forward. In other words, every outcome was equally likely until an observer becomes an outcome of the probability wave. Once that happens, the observer is no longer just a probability, but a fact. More simply: a quantum mechanical universe favors the creation of observers. Of course, this conclusion is simply the creation of my own brain: perhaps someone has a refutation?
Sig under construction since 1998.
If the main power grid has been turned off, people will be attempting to run their own generators. Some of them will neglect to disconnect their electrical system from the main supply before starting their generator, causing circuits elsewhere to become unexpectedly live.
Signed,
the electric AC
If you read This reference under "Combustibility", it says:
Now when you consider that dunking a wire and plastic in liquid oxygen is also likely to cause lots of heat-stress fractures in both the now-brittle plastic and the metal...Whoosh!
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
IIRC, it was a message logged when a parallel port device raised the error line but didn't send an error code. The "On fire" was not a statement but a question, as in "lp0: Reports error but not out-of-paper, not paper jammed, not offline. On fire?"
If I remember correctly, there was a specific model that prompted that because it had a problem with the print head getting stuck. There were no safeties on the positioning motor which (if not stopped) would keep trying to move the head until it overheated and, well, caught fire.
I beleive that smoke from the drive belt was more common than actual fires.
plus-good, double-plus-good
You need to get out of that Middle Age's thinking about God. There's alot of us out here proclaiming the Good News and living our lives believing in God, educating ourselves, and working intelligently.
Damn straight. I've added you to my friends list. There's nothing more satisfying than running across a fellow geek who lives his life for Jesus Christ.
Don't sweat the other replies. They'll understand the truth some day. Unfortunately, it will be too late for most of them.
Romans 14:11: For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
I'm a scientist myself, and I'm taking devil's advocate here, but don't take that to mean that I'm not being sincere in what I say.
First of all, extraordinary claims DO NOT demand extraordinary proof, and it annoys me every time I read that. Extraordinary claims demand ordinary proof, just like everything else. Many claims which we now consider proven (leaving aside the epistemological claim that nothing can ever be proven) were once considered extraordinary. According to the scientific method of empirical research, after enough tests come out positive, a hypothesis becomes a working theory. Period. It doesn't matter how extraordinary the claim is, there is no scientific "raising of the bar" for one claim versus another claim. If there was, we probably couldn't get any science done because we would have to examine every hypothesis for its "extraordinaryness" and set the bar accordingly.
Secondly, science tends to be dismissive of "faith" in favor of "science", but sometimes the things which are believed in "science" are uncomfortably close to "faith". For instance, let's take Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
The GTOR works remarkably well on the scale of the solar system, so well, in fact, that we can predict the position of a planet 100 years from now within spitting distance of where it will actually be.
However, it's long been (what I would characterize as) an article of *faith* among physicists that the GTOR applied equally well throughout the universe, and indeed for a long time it was believed despite evidence to the contrary. Nowadays, we know that there's not near enough visible matter in the universe to make Einstein's equations work in our own galaxy, much less the universe. So what's the answer? Dark matter baby!
Well, to make matters (no pun intended) worse, we now know that the galaxies are moving away from each other at an *accelerating* rate. Now this cannot be accounted for at all, even with dark matter! Even if we're right about dark matter, the galaxies should not accelerate away from each other. So what is the answer? Dark energy baby!
Now, to an outside observer such as myself (I am not a physicist), it might seem that scientists were clinging to their old beliefs and trying to shape the universe to fit them, rather than admitting that they're wrong. In other words, they're taking the GTOR on faith, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
A physicist can say that the GTOR is evidence for "dark matter", and "dark energy", despite having absolutely no direct evidence for either one, only the indirect evidence that GTOR won't work without it. In the same way, someone who believes in God can do so because, well, we exist, and we had to come from somewhere. Science doesn't even attempt to answer the question of how the universe came about (if you reply with the big bang, please explain where the infinitely dense infinitely small point came from), so really, it's comical when a scientist ridicules a believer in God.
Do you see what I'm saying? Most scientists would admit that the question of the origin of the universe is one that science could never answer. Why then do they try so hard to discredit the belief in God? Science has no business even getting into the argument, at least until they come up with a reasonable explanation themselves.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Belief in God is just as credible -- not more than, and not less than (and that's the key point) -- as my belief that God does not actually exist, and is in fact a creation of our own minds.
Just because X is possible but unproven is NOT the same as saying it is just as credible as the alternative. It is possible (but unproven) that there is an IPU standing next to you. (An IPU is an Invisible Pink Unicorn, the common currency in these kinds of discussions). However, evidence suggests that there is no such IPU. Neither postulate can be proven without a doubt, and a true scientist would keep their options open about the existence of the IPU. But if a conclusion had to be drawn then most sane people would say that the IPU is not there.
Interestingly, many of these issues are often problems with semantics. Some will say "There is a God", when what they really wanted to say was "Evidence suggests to me that a God exists." The word "is" can be powerfully misused, and there are even those who believe that we should not use the word "is" at all.
I grew up Catholic, but now I'm pretty much an agnostic: God may exist, but I don't think I can make such a determination, and I'm not sure what God is like if he does exist. I suspect that if there is a God, it's more of an "energy of the Universe" thing than a conscious being. (I just read up on Pantheism on Wikipedia from a link in this thread.) I definitely don't think God is going to change the laws of physics to help me win a baseball game.
But as an amateur physicist, I believe in Determinism. Time-space is a single entity. The Universe encompasses all space, so it must encompass all space-time as well. If we anthropomorphize the Universe (or suppose that there is any omniscient being) we can imagine Him sitting at the end of time (as we view it). He can look back from the end of time to our current time and know what we will do next.
However, I also believe in Free Will. I guess that makes it Soft Determinism. (Found on Wikipedia that it's also called Compatibilism.) While my actions may be pre-determined from the perspective of all time-space, my conscious mind does not exist in that reality. From my perspective, I am free to choose. Think of a book you're reading for the second time -- you know what's going to happen at any point in time, but you can't change it. But when you read it the first time (when you were a part of the moment) you didn't know what was going to happen.
It's an interesting characteristic of the human mind that it can simultaneously hold seemingly opposing ideas.
I'd also like to point out that Science doesn't prove things to be true either. It can prove things to be false, and provide strong evidence that theories are correct. But it can never provide the truth. So we're basically putting our faith in Science, just as many put their faith in religion.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
And, if so, does anyone know how to fix it? I fell asleep about 20 minutes into that bomb... I sure hope they key to our salvation wasn't in there somewhere.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
That's an excellent brief summary of Chaos Theory. It is certainly a useful model type in many cases, but I wonder if it is truly defining of our reality.
:)
As you imply, the illusion of non-determinism can exist in a deterministic system, which makes me curious as to whether non-determinism actually exists in our Universe?
If it does exist, then the grandparent could be right and non-determinism could exist throughout all of reality, which, when analyzing, we could simply write off as variations in measurement.
On a grander scale, many people are content to believe that a kernel of non-determinism lies at the heart of human "free will". Modern society does not blame fate for human actions, but rather the humans themselves. In keeping with this ideology, the paradox of "free will" versus a deterministic universe arises.
It seems that non-determinism vs determinism is a dilemma which cannot be objectively solved because absolute prediction about the future is impossible since we cannot effectively gather sufficient information (Heisenberg).
Some may say that this paradox is irrelevant since there is effectively no objective difference between non-determinism and uncertainty, but belief in non-determinism ("free will") has certainly influenced our society, and very arguably for the better... though, obviously, such an argument is recursive since it assumes the "free will" to choose.
Maybe I'm missing something. Any insight for me? In any case, thanks for prompting my muse.
I don't see any convincing evidence in any of the Wikipedia sources; if you follow the links, they lead either to (1) religious writings, with an obvious reason for bias, or (2) sources that are questioned by non-Christian historians because of the possibility of tampering during transcription.
e ws /TPStory/LAC/20040408/HARPUR08/Entertainment/Idx
Also, I have no particular "faith" that the Christian bible is not accurate. What I said was that I don't consider it an accurate source of historical information. And by the way, it's far from "the only written account of history that goes back that far".
If this sort of thing interests you, though, may I draw your attention to an interesting book I read about today? Tom Harpur, long-time religion columnist for the Toronto Star and former Anglican priest, has written a book called _The Pagan Christ_. In it he discusses the idea that the Christ figure is a synthesis of other religious traditions. There's a Globe and Mail article on it here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleN
The article makes the book sound worth reading. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Yes, because the only reason someone would hold religious faith is because of indoctrination, peer pressure, or a cult of personality. It also goes without saying that such people have stopped thinking for themselves.
WOW
You've hauled out so many tired charicatures of religious faith in so short a time that when I see you accuse someone else of not thinking, the words "plank" and "eye" come to mind.
Of course, that's a Biblical reference, which outs me as being a religious person as well. Accordingly, you're free to put my comments in whatever pigeonhole makes you most comfortable and continue a happy life of ignorance.
XOXO,
Some mindless religious guy