I was just wondering, what is the straight dope on Kirlian photography? A while back, it was all the rage, especially in paranormal circles.
I recall, people claimed it showed people’s auras, supposedly at least. For example, when two people in love had their fingers next to each other on the slide, the auras symbolically connected, they said. And when they kissed, there were all kinds of fireworks, it was claimed. Furthermore, when they cut off part of a leaf, the aura of the removed part remained, it was said.
Has any of this stuff been proven? Or it is just a cleaver sham? And how so, then? I am a consummate skeptic. But some of these things sound pretty strange to me, though.
[Jim B.]
(There, that is for Mr. Adams. I now leave the debate open to the rest of you to dissect:).)
The “Woo” part of Kirlian Photography is total bunk.
However, you can make some really neat images with it. I used to do this in my darkroom back in the 70’s. It might be fun to try with a digital camera these days.
And when two people who are NOT in love have their fingers next to each other, strangely, the same effect appears.
Yeah, I’ve experienced that too. What’s it got to do with Kirlian photography?
You might check out the wikipedia article, which says “However, if the imaging surface is cleaned of contaminants and residual moisture before the second image is taken, then no image of the missing section will appear.”
I think we understand scientifically what causes the effects that are attributed to KP and the rest, such as Auras, is “woo”. If you believe in “woo” then it’s a real phenomenon. Fortunately, in this day and age most people don’t believe in “woo” much anymore.
Kirlian was a shyster. His famous trick is to show a Kirlian of a leaf, and then cut a large bit of the leaf away. Then show a second Kirlian of the remainder of the leaf, and it shows the whole leaf.
The trick was that the leaf was primed to leave a leaf print. The second Kirlian shows the leaf print where the leaf isn’t existing any more. and so with the saturation of the film at the “still has leaf part” and at “leaf missing part”, the two sections are indistinguishable… a saturated kirlian image of a leaf…
I recall it was also supposed to show if you were sick or healthy, and here there’s almost a grain of truth since differences in perspiration on the skin can affect the images.
Not that that makes it a useful diagnostic tool, just trying to throw Kirlian a bone here.
Definitely “a while back”. I heard a few things about it back in the 70s. And even then it was confined to “paranormal circles” – people who really wanted to believe in anything.
And they assumed the object was just emitting an aura. Kirlian photography wasn’t just say, a leaf on a photographic plate, it was a leaf with a goodly charge running through it… a toy car would leave an aura in that set-up.
Oh, and many of those people claimed to be able to see auras without any electric stimulation.
I hung with a lot of “sensitive to the cosmos” hippies, and a pretty common way to get to know new “freaks” was to walk up to a stranger and say “Whoaaaaaa [concerned surprise], your aura is like purple, but with… [study them closely] dark green edges… you must be stressed. Want some weed?”