Actually, most of us skeptics keep an open mind. We don’t throw things out a priori, all we want is evidence. You know, if that person you linked actually has paranormal powers, she can demonstrate it to James Randi to win a million US dollars. Hey, what more can you ask for? Fame and fortune!
Unfortuantely Urban Ranger “Paranormal Powers” are unlikely to be used for material gain. This is not evidence that paranormal powers do not exist.
I am not sure about that. Look at Uri Geller, the so called faith healers, all those astrologers, them media. I fear it is pretty hard to find somebody with “paranormal powers” not trying to make a quick buck. Unless you are a monk. 
Though it’s reasonable enough to focus on “did it really happen?”, let’s take the report at face value and ask whether vibrational anti-gravity is the only possible explanation.
What appears to be described is a multi-source acoustic wave generating setup.
In such cases, the waves can be tuned in such a manner as to produce interference patterns with stable nodes alternating with…er…nonnodal regions. The nodes are spots of null acoustical energy–the highs of one wave-set precisely cancel the lows of another. In between the nodes, one finds areas of reinforced, strengthened acoustical energy.
Acoustical waves are sound waves, outspreading higher-density regions of air, separated by lower-density regions. (The actual molecules of air move only slightly–it’s the density-region that moves along.)
It is not obviously impossible–in my semi-informed layman’s view–that a well-tuned stable interference pattern might either reduce air density–and thus(?) pressure–above the rock; or boost pressure below the rock; or both. It is not obviously (etc.) that such an effect mightn’t lift the rock. Some adjustment of the direction of the generating instruments–or even a gradual change in the frequency of some–could then guide it in for a landing.
So it’s not anti-gravity, but acoustical-aerodynamic propulsion.
Gravity waves? Theory says they ought to exist, generated by any accelerating mass. And of course, sound-generating instruments do indeed have parts that are accelerating. But gravity waves are so weak that even star-sized masses generate pulses that have not, as yet, been definitely detected. So no help from physics on that one.
I sure would like to see some evidence.
I wish I had a cite. This sure sounds like a really bad book I bought from a used bookstore in the mid-80’s and published in IIRC the 1950’s. Pretty sure this is just the same rehashed crap from that book.
The author “went” to Tibet and commented on the “technology” there that sounded suspiciously like the west circa 1950. One of his things was on an elevator type device.
There is a lot of cool stuff in Tibet. Longompa’s are described by Alexandra David-kneel. Read Way of the White Clouds by Lama Govinda, In Exile From the Land of the Snows by John Avadon, etc. Please don’t throw in anything by Shirley Temple :).
Stuff like the inner heating seems to be supported by scientific testing (see Avadon’s book).
However, in all of my trips backpacking in Tibet, I only saw people levitating the old fashioned way – strap the load to their back and climb up the hill. Gravity may be slightly decreased at 15,000 feet, but the lack of oxygen makes 10 pounds feel like 100.
This levitation thing sounds pretty unbelievable, although I have a book called “72 consumate art secrets of the shaolin temple” in which it demonstrates a method of moving large stones without actually touching them.
The method seems to mainly involve roughing up the surface of your hands until the surfaces rubbed together create such a vibration or disturbance in the air that a physical object can be moved.
Is it?
I think so, but resonance usually destroys that object. Like some glasses can be shattered by a high pitch noise.
I would have thought it possible to design an object that has no resonant frequency.
Is it Tibetan drums and trumpets, or is it Memorex? When I was a wee lad in the 1950’s, if somebody had talked about cooking food with radar and cooling it with sound waves, he could have either gone to work for Popular Science magazine or gotten escorted back to the loony bin. Those two things are now, of course, common knowledge.
Jarl’s story from Tibet in 1939 roughly parallels Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Wanna Take You Higher” sixty years later. Stone believed he was speaking figuratively. Who knew he only needed more drummers?
I have to go rest my tongue, now. It’s been pressing firmly in my cheek since I started this post, and it’s tired. Thank you for your patience.
–Nott, the confuser
Nopity-nope. Far from it. As a matter of fact, physical objects have an infinite umber of natural frequencies (at least mathematically). You can, sometimes, design an object so that its natural frequencies lie outside the band of frequencies encountered during normal operation. However, as a rule of thumb, the more complex the object’s shape, the thicker the natural frequencies will cluster, and it might be well-nigh impossible to eliminate all the the natural frequencies from your operating region.
Is it not possible to design an object where resonance of one part is damped by another?
Well, yes and no. You might be thinking of mass dampers (also known as vibration absorbers), which work like so: Suppose you have a big piece of machinery that sits on rubber mounts. The weight of the machine and the compliance of the rubber essentially make a big spring-mass system that has a specific natural frequency. If that natural frequency happens to be one that is excited during machine operation, that would be bad. One way to solve the problem is to introduce a mass damper, which is essentially another spring-mass pair (possibly with a damping element, also) that is tuned to the same natural frequency. This will eliminate the natural frequency response at the frequency of interest, but it won’t eliminate the natural frequency completely. Rather, it will shift the location of the natural frequency… and also introduce additional natural frequencies into the system. Check out figures 5 and 6 in this pdf file for some further info (albeit rather thick).
Or, perhaps, you’re thinking about adding damping elements into the object (shock absorbers, in other words). Damping elements dissipate energy in the system, and so smooth out the large amplitudes associated with natural frequency motion. Dampers don’t eliminate resonant frequencies, they just supress the associated large amplitude motion. Additionally, it’s difficult or impossible to arrange damping for all resonant frequency modes of a system. The dominant one? Sure. All modes? Huh-uh.
This lifting stones with sound waves fable is simply errant nonsense that your standard issue, credulous “seeker” (posing as a critical analyst) gobbles up with a spoon and asks for seconds. There are many things that are hard to believe that humans can do but defying the laws (such as they are) of physics with a high altitude orchestra is not one of them. More cultural anthropologists have been fooled by basic shamanistic magic tricks than you can shake a stick at. Two sticks even.
Everyone wants to believe the physical world is full of hidden levers, miracles and powers that people can access with sufficient amounts of belief, concentration or a sufficiently high state of enlightenment. The truth is that the world is full of hidden levers, miracles and powers, but they are not directly accessible by people’s mentality or physical efforts. They are accessible through empirical research into the nature of things and building tools to manipulate that nature.
No offense, but…
Astro, your comment is the sort of thing I find all-too-often emanating from the capital-S Skeptics.
There’s no need to flame-on about credulous seekers and what “everyone wants to believe.” I urge you to leave the attitude on the doorstep of The Amazing Randi and other such great lights.
Nor is there any need to invoke the so-called Laws of Science. Science takes what has been observed to occur in certain situations and attempts to represent those observations quantitatively, and to generalize them beyond the actual observations according to whatever model of the world is then current. The “real” Laws of Science cannot be “broken”–only repealed and rewritten. One may believe whole-heartedly in the spirit of scientific objectivity and yet choose to investigate odd, interesting stories as they come up.
I advanced some pure speculation in my post above, but speculation with a scientific basis. My offering it is not an insult to the scientific community. It might be an instructive experience if someone would take a moment to consider it and point out its flaws. Remember that one part of the OP was to ask “if this can really happen”–perhaps it really CAN happen (not to say it really did), but with a different explanation.
In nearly nine years there hasn’t been a news conference given by “our own scientific establishments”? Or are major airlines not interested in radically lowering their overheads?
OTOH No one’s mentioned Boeing’s (alleged) anti-gravity plane yet
Actually Scott I wasn’t responding to your post, but to the OP. I really didn’t really even read your post in full until your response.
With respect to your post you speculate that
It is not obvious in any way, shape or form that directed or reinforced soundwaves coming from voices or musical instruments will have sufficient energy to “boost pressure below the rock” to the point it will move it . Like you I am just a layman, but please tell me how we go from changes in air pressure due to orchestral or verbal level sound propagation to a force capable of lifting, moving and guiding an object weighing hundreds to thousands of pounds through the air. One does not follow from the other logically or physically given the energies involved in making music and those necessary to lift a large rock.
In sum it is utter nonsense and anyone claiming to have directly observed this phenomena is either easily fooled or is lying in order to tell a good tale and/or sell books. Don’t take my naysaying as a personal affront. People lie all the time to advance their fortunes. It’s human nature to lie like crazy. We’re story tellers and if a good story works to accomplish our ends so be it.
If I am presented with a situation that defies the quidelines of physics so utterly that it is classed as a miracle, and if I am then asked to decided whether a miracle occurred or someone is bullshitting in order to spin a good yarn, I think the BS choice will be the safe one 999,999 times out of 1,000,000 on average.
IANAPhysicist, but wouldn’t it be reasonably simple to calculate how many ergs or joules or somesuch measurement of energy it would take to lift said a boulder of a given weight up a known height? Then measure the energy a drummer exerts banging on his tom-toms, multiply by the number of drummers, and compare the energy going into the equation with the energy required by the work being performed? I’ll bet it’s not even close.
[Homer]In this house, we observe the laws of thermodynamics![/Homer]
Astro,
To clarify, wasn’t assuming that your comments were directed my way–or even toward the OP specifically–but rather toward anyone who would give rumors of rock-levitation the time of day. If I reacted with a tinge of passion, I suppose it’s because I’m thoroughly sick of SICOPitudinalism–the (perceived) attitude of what one might term the community of Professional Skeptics that no quarter shall be given to those who take seriously (NOT: “who accept unreservedly”) reports of peculiar phenomena.
There are good, solid philosophical reasons to be open to alternatives to what has become, in the last couple hundred years, the standard “respectable” worldview–that “scientific realism” just plain IS the last word as to the nature of The Real, and no further controversies shall be admitted. That is a proposition the truth of which has yet to be demonstrated.
(I should carefully add that I don’t assume that you personally, Astro, are in that camp–I’m only accounting for my sensitivity.)
“It is not obvious in any way, shape or form that directed or reinforced soundwaves coming from voices or musical instruments will have sufficient energy to ‘boost pressure below the rock’ to the point it will move it .” I agree, and in fact I refrained from saying what you think I said. I said, twice, “it is not obviously impossible.” In logic, to be “not obviously impossible” is NOT just the equivalent flip side of “obviously possible.” Something not obviously impossible is fully consistent with it turning out to be impossible (it just wasn’t OBVIOUSLY so), whereas the claim that something is obviously possible is NOT consistent with it turning out to be impossible. Ie, in the latter case the claim is thus refuted. So the phrases mean two different things.
My Dictionary of Physics refuses to express pressure in terms of pounds, and after some round-robin searching I gave up. But I believe I recall that air pressure at ground level is 16 lbs. per square inch. It’s somewhat less up in the mountains, of course. The stone block in question is described as 1 meter by 1.5 meters, thickness not indicated, nor actual composition. Imagine a vertical “core” taken through this stone, 1" by 1" by some reasonable guess as to the thickness of the original stone–I would guess less than half a meter. How much is such a segment likely to weigh? IF less than 32 lbs, and IF the air pressure could be shunted from above to below by the means suggested–there’s your window of opportunity.
Realistically, I don’t see how it could be done–but I’m just a layman. What I’d really like to know is whether acoustical interference nodes actually do decrease/increase local air density, and how that affects actual pressure (on some small surface).
At the very lowest end of the AUDIBLE sound spectrum, I calculate an interference node to have a characteristic diameter of about 1 meter; and of course the same devices that produce low-end audible sound may also be producing yet lower harmonics as a by-product.
Though it’s reasonable to say that everything must balance-out in the end energy-wise, it might be that this sort of acoustical setup taps potential energy resident in the atmosphere. I don’t mean some kind of mystical anti-gravity prana-type energy, just ordinary physical potential energy of the kind we learn about in high school physics. Want an analogy? Kick a round stone out of place on a slope, and note how the work done by the stone may well exceed that done by your foot.
That’s not too hard. The energy required to lift a boulder up is just the potential energy of the boulder at a certain height: E = mgh where m is mass of the boulder, g is Earth’s gravitational constant (9.8 m/s[sup]2[/sup]) and h is the height. To lift a 1kg rock up 1m, you need 9.8J of energy.