Physics Blog-Things that go bump in the night

In keeping with the fact that it is mid October, Halloween is just around the corner, and my fascination with all things supernatural, this is about scientific explanations that may or may not explain why things go bump in the night.

Scientific Explanation Ghosts- The most widely accepted theory about the "feelings" of being watched, unexplained dread, chills etc. It has to do with something called infrasound. Infrasound is sound that registers just below our hearing levels, and when we hear it, induces very bad feelings. The explanation for this may be in our evolution. Certain animals, such as tigers, make noises in that frequency. Therefore, after being eaten by tigers for millinenia, we have come to know anything within that sound frequency should make us run, so we dont die.

Scientific Explanations for Demon Posession-Demon possesion can be potentially attributed to many different causes. Most attribute it to a long list of one or more mental illnesses, such as tourettes, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and multiple personality disorder. A leading reason that people believe this is that people seem to being posessed less and less as time and medical treatment goes on.

Scientific Explanation for Deja Vu- Deja Vu is one of the more common strange experiences. Deja Vu is the sense that one has done something  before. There are several explanations for it including chemical imbalances, misfirings of the brain, and epilepsy.

Whehter you believe in the supernatural or not, these are possible explanatins for things that are unknown.

1st Blog Quarter 2-Awesome Natural Phenomenon

This week's blog is going to focus on some really incredible things that happen in nature, usually either breathtakingly beautiful, scary as hell, or a combination of both. Here are some of the coolest things that happen in nature....

1) Aurora Borealis.
The Aurora Borealis is one of the most wickedly cool and naturally beautiful things in the world. Another name for it is "The Northern Lights". This awesome light fest occurs when the sun gives off super-highly charged particles called ions. These ions are blasted at up to 1200 kilometers per second. A bunch of ion particles all fired at once form a cloud of plasma. The stream of plasma coming from the sun is called Solar Wind. When the particles get trapped in Earth's atmosphere, they start to collide with different gases. The result is beautiful.

2) Supercells
Supercells are one of the scariest things to see. Ever. In my opinion. Supercells are continuously rotating updrafts usually located within the bowels of a severe thunderstorm. They are extremely scary looking and usually produce severe wind, hail and tornados. Also, they are usually isolated in the thunderstorm, which means they are very photogenic, and several amazing pictures have been taken of them. Finally, they are known to last for hours, even splitting up and traveling in different directions, usually wreaking havoc on whatever is in their path.

3) Fire Tornados
Fire Tornados, AKA Fire Whirls, are possibly the most epic thing God ever created. Whirling tornados. Of fire. That's just awesome. Fire Whirls are formed when a warm updraft and a convergence from a wild fire meet. The most deadly fire tornado in recorded history occured in 1923, when a city sized fire storm produced a gigantic fire whirl, which killed over 38,000 people in less than 15 minutes.

Blog about ghosts

I have a strange fascination with the paranormal. Perhaps its because I have a fascination with things that are unknown, strange, and scary. Maybe its not. I dunno. But today's blog is about probably the most well known of the paranormal, ghosts. the belief in ghosts goes back almost as long as humans have existed, and started around the times humans began believing in an afterlife. Every single culture around the world believes in ghosts, or spirits of those who are deceased in some way. Today though, is about interpreting scientific data relevant to ghosts. There are many supposed scientific ways to "prove" that ghosts exist. Some say that through EMF detectors, some say through EVP, and many others. However, there is no conclusive evidence that these indicators mean that ghosts are present. Next, on to more digital media. Specifically, photos. These have been bother harder and easier to debunk than other forms of evidence. The main reason that photos are not considered "evidence" is because through modern devices like photoshop, ghosts are easily inserted into many different photos. There is even an iPhone app thats sole purpose is to make fake ghosts appear in photos. Because of that, most photos are considere fake. However, there are those 1% of photos that cannot be explained....

Blog

This week's blog is about something I have always been kind of curious about but always forget to research. Hypnosis. I've always wondered whether hypnotism is effective, and whether it works to the extent seen in movies and more recently "Call Of Duty: Black Ops" where one of the main characters seems to be hypnotized in some way to kill a certain group of people. My questions while doing research for this blog were A) Is hypnosis actually possible in any way? and B) Is there a military application that would allow implantation of "kill" commands in a hardened soldier's brain. For part A), after doing a fait bit of research, there is still no universally accepted answer. However, in my personal opinion, I feel that suggesting things to a susceptible and open mind is quite possible. There are many weak and middling minded individuals that would be open to many suggestions if in the right mental state. However, I also believe from my research that suggestions that would go against the hypnotized person's moral standings, such as murder or any form of physcial harm (assuming doing such things WAS in fact against the person's morals) would not work. Harmless suggestions=possible, killing,torturing, etc= not possible unless hypnotizing a psychopath. Overall, hypnosis seems entirely possible, and I will be trying several self-hypnosis videos in the near future and write a blog on my findings in the next few weeks....