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Ball Lightning Caused By Magnetic Hallucinations
KentuckyFC writes "Transcranial magnetic stimulation involves placing a human in a rapidly changing magnetic field powerful enough to induce eddy currents in the brain. 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 field within the cortex and the subject sees the lights move too. Physicists have calculated that the fields associated with certain kinds of multiple lightning strikes are powerful enough to induce the same kind of visual hallucinations in anybody unlucky enough to be within 200 meters or so. These fields ought to induce hallucinations that would take the form of luminous lines and balls that float in front of the subject's eyes, an effect that would explain observations otherwise classed as ball lightning, say the scientists."
Typical of Slashdot. From TFA: "That's an interesting idea: that a large class of well-reported phenomenon may be the result of hallucinations induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation."
From the Summary:
Ball Lightening Caused by Magnetic Hallucinations
From 'interesting idea' to stated fact in record time!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Absurd, you'd might as well also claim the Fox Alien Autopsy video and all the various close encounters of the blurred kind on Youtube aren't explained by the fact that we now understand things like kanashibari. The videos of so called ball lightning out there are far away, shaky, defocused and about as convincing as Chupacabra photos in the Weekly World News.
Look, I'm sorry to piss on everybody's parade, but its time to relegate ball lightning to its rightful place in history alongside phrenology and N-rays. The invention of the CCD and the associated UNBELIEVABLE proliferation of personal digital imaging devices over the past decade means that virtually everyone has a camera in their pocket at all times now. If the phenomenon of ball lightning existed at all, we should be seeing like one multiply reported HIGHLY CONVINCING video a week uploaded to the internet showing this. In fact, the number of ball lightning sightings and recordings over the past who knows how many years has pretty much stayed constant. If ball lightning exists at all, it's in the heads of observers, either as a result of a terrified mi-d thunderstorm hallucination or a result of some magnetic field induced phosphene as reported in this new paper.
If ball lightning were an actual physical phenomenon, the number of video observations of it should have skyrocketed over the past 10 years along with the availability of personal digital imaging devices in the same way that once Red Sprites and Blue Jets were first reliably observed with very high speed video in 1994, observational replication around the world was practically IMMEDIATE and widespread.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Oh wow, I feel so proud, my first ever [citation needed]
Do I get a Slashdot "Achievement" for that?
You would if you could: /. poster
* Provide the requested citation
* Post a link to a goatse domain showing a guy with his balls on fire (this is for all intents and purposes considered 'ball lightning')
* Find a way to blame another
* Combine any or all of the above into a super-mega-post
I didn't expect anyone to take my comment seriously.
Well, that happens around here so often that they really need a moderation tag for "Whoosh!"
Just because it has been modded up, I'd like to respond to the troll: on what basis exactly would you exclude funding for this research? Obviousness? Clearly not, because no one had any idea what a modulating magnetic field would do to the inner workings of the brain. Uselessness? Can't see how you arrived at that conclusion, considering that it indicates a way to manipulate how the brain processes inputs, which has a ton of potential application.
No, the only reason that this is research unworthy of funding is that it doesn't immediately yield a product, which is the lamest, most short-sighted reason for which to deny a grant request.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.