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."

Comments

Doesn't explain...

[Em Emalb]

Doesn't explain people having captured ball lightning on video from in some cases miles away.

Re:Doesn't explain...

[rubycodez]

there are photos in encyclopedias and on web.

I've seen ball lightening from distance of half a mile, and it's been created in lab

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070122-ball-lightning.html

Re:Doesn't explain...

[deglr6328]

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.

Re:Doesn't explain...

[WrongSizeGlass]

Oh wow, I feel so proud, my first ever [citation needed]

Do I get a Slashdot "Achievement" for that?

You would if you could:
* 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 /. poster
* 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!"

Re:Doesn't explain...

[fractoid]

...let me also point out that LSD doesn't explain real spiders.

HOLY SHIT THOSE THINGS ARE REAL?

FDA Response

[bughunter]

Feds will ban Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on the assumption that it can be used recreationally.

Re:FDA Response

[Philip K Dickhead]

Magnified transcrotal what?

Same Lights Common in Migraineurs, too

[sonnejw0]

For those that suffer from migraines, these lights and balls should be familiar as "aura", or scintilating scotoma. For migraineurs, these lights last longer because they are caused by changing bloodflow to the occipital lobe over a longer period of time. It most assuredly activates the same neurons that this magnetic stimulation of neurons produces. I would not be surprised of reports of concomitant parosmia, or olfactory hallucinations, with the display of ball-lightning caused by magnetic fields.

Re:Same Lights Common in Migraineurs, too

[Anonymous Coward]

If these are equivalent to migraine auras, I'm very skeptical that they can explain ball lightning. I've periodically experienced migraines and what doctors assure me is an aura preceding it. I don't know about others' subjective experience with auras, but while it's an annoying visual artifact covering some or all of my visual field, at no point did I ever perceive it as some localized 'ball' with anything like a defined position, distance relative to me, etc. as ball lightning is often described. It was always something I perceived as an internal static that makes my vision mostly useless, not some external object.

Again, there could just be subjective difference, but I've never heard a fellow migraine sufferer describe an aura as some ball of light.

For those that suffer from migraines, these lights and balls should be familiar as "aura", or scintilating scotoma. For migraineurs, these lights last longer because they are caused by changing bloodflow to the occipital lobe over a longer period of time. It most assuredly activates the same neurons that this magnetic stimulation of neurons produces.

I would not be surprised of reports of concomitant parosmia, or olfactory hallucinations, with the display of ball-lightning caused by magnetic fields.

idea != fact

[Itninja]

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!

Re:idea != fact

[eln]

Ball Lightening Caused by Magnetic Hallucinations

It's clearly a bogus theory. In my experience, ball lightening is usually caused by filling it up with helium.

Scissors

[MrEricSir]

Perhaps this explains the appearance of a giant pair of scissors in the sky when performing the iron pyramid experiment.

This is your brain.

[osu-neko]

This is your brain on lightning. Get the picture?

Re:Ministory

[IorDMUX]

A ball went from the warehouse floor in to the office area (I believe it went through a wall to do this) and stopped above an employee's head, where it dissipated suddenly. I just can't see this entirely being a hallucination if it can be tracked with your eyes.

Actually, this ability to be "tracked" is common in color/light optical hallucinations that are produced in the "front end" of your brain's visual processing, as opposed to more life-like and realistic (i.e. a deceased relative) visual hallucinations that occur father down the image-processing pipeline.

You can demonstrate this on your own: Look just to the side of a small, bright light source for a few seconds, then look away, ideally towards a blank wall or other plain surface. (Don't stare into the sun or a laser or anything... I don't want people responding with "OMG now I'm blind!") If you did not focus directly on the light source to begin with, the "echo" of the light should appear slightly off center. As you move your eyes and/or head to try and focus on the echo, it will move away as the spot is fixed with respect to your retina, giving you the illusion of being able to "track" this visual phenomenon across a room or other space.

Re:Proximity is not causality

[John Meacham]

We don't at all. The strongest statement the original paper makes is

"Lightning electromagnetic pulse induced transcranial magnetic stimulation of phosphenes in the visual cortex is concluded to be a plausible interpretation of a large class of reports on luminous perceptions during thunderstorms."

just plausible. It's the editors that decided to publish it as if it were accepted fact.

Re:I see what you did there

[NeutronCowboy]

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.