Apropos to recent discussions on ghosts and psychic phenomena, I thought I’d bring up something which has been scientifically acknowledged but never satisfactorily explained: ball lightning.
Any explanations?
And if that doesn’t tweak your nipple, we can move on to rod-shaped lightning, bead lightning, lightning which shoots upwards from the top of clouds, horizontal lightning, and colored lightning, all of which have been reported in the past.
Finally, let’s talk about anomalous falling matter: rocks, fish, young toads (by the tens of thousands), worms, blood and flesh, grain, autumn leaves (in the spring), seeds from Central Africa (in Italy), hazelnuts, straw, and large chunks of ice. Such things have been detailed by the Associated Press, the New York Times, Science, Nature, and various meteorological journals, among others. Is there an explanation for specialized falls of organic and inorganic matter which stays within the bounds of known physical law? Or are we tempted simply to dismiss all reports as having conventional origins or as being hoaxes? It’s an interesting question to ponder, I think…surely we haven’t plumbed the depths of Mother Nature just yet, right?
I don’t know…many of the conventional explainations seem as hokey as the event itself (“a small, invisisble passing tornado sucked the frogs up from nearby swamps and dropped them on the town” - yeah, whatever).
These things all sound really cool. Someday, when I don’t have to work anymore, I would love to put my engineering and critical thinking skills towards investigating phenomena such as this. AND NO, it’s not because I watch the X-Files. I was interested in this stuff when Gillian Anderson was reading “The Cat in the Hat”.
I can check further about the stuff falling from the sky (I work with some meteorologists), but my understanding has been that they were all pretty well explainable by natural phenomena (things being sucked into the air by tornadoes or waterspouts, and deposited elsewhere).
As for ball lightning, there have been some hypotheses to explain it (I posted one from Discover magazine a number of years ago to a UFO discussion, and it got put on somebody’s web page – I don’t know if it’s still there or even where it was, I’d have to do a search to find it).
I couldn’t find the original article, but I did find a brief summary I wrote for our newsletter (back in July 1993). Here it is:
Discover magazine’s “Weather Watch” section in July discussed a phenomenon that many, if not all, of us have heard about in conjunction with UFOs. Ball lightning is back in the news!
A University of Bristol researcher and expert on steam turbines, David Turner, has a theory that he thinks may finally explain ball lightning, described as “glowing, grapefruit-sized spheres [that] seem almost alive.” This phenomena is often reported as a UFO.
Without going into too much detail, Turner thinks that ball lightning is “a floating, self-sustaining chemical reactor, in which certain chemical reactions between the plasma and the surrounding air release heat and others absorb it.” The chemistry involves steam, nitrites, nitrates, and other ions in the reaction. According to Turner, it explains every aspect realistically ascribed to ball lightening, including its weaving movement. Hopefully, somebody can take the theory into the lab and test it, and perhaps a few more UFO cases will be Identified.
Interesting stuff on the ball lightning, David; thanks. It seems as plausible an explanation as any. Though not all reported ball lightning has been grapefruit-sized–some have been much larger, and some much smaller.
As for waterspouts and tornadoes explaining all anomalous falls, here’s a passage from William Corliss detailing possible problems with that hypothesis:
I’m not subscribing to any conclusions he may be drawing here, mind you, but the described problems with the waterspout theory are definitely interesting. Thoughts?
Oh, and here’s an interesting account of the specificity of certain falls (if the journals reporting the events are to be believed, of course). These are the words of R. Hedger Wallace, writing in a naturalist journal about an occurrence in Italy in 1897: (The passage comes from Corliss’s book Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena, as did the above)
Now, I’m sure there’s a natural explanation for falls of this type (again, assuming that the accounts are accurate–all evidence of frog falls, seed falls, ice falls and the like is anecdotal, and most of it is second-hand. But there are thousands of accounts.); I just don’t know if we’ve got it figured out quite yet. And it would appear, from the evidence, that waterspouts and tornadoes aren’t able to account for all anomalous falls.
What do you think, David?
(Next–frogs in rocks. Has that been satisfactorily decided yet?)
Minor hijack here, although it’s also a bizarre occurrance: The mastadon carcasses found in Siberia, fast frozen with partially digested flowering plants still in their digestive systems. I read somewhere, (I know, no cites, sorry), that they didn’t freeze just because ‘winter came on and it got cold’, but were frozen very, very quickly. The theory I remember best was that some material, (dust, gas, whatever) was ejected from an explosive volcano eruption, actually attained suborbital speed and was chilled in the upper atmosphere, then fell to earth and landed on the unlucky mammoths. (I also know I shouldn’t be confusing mammoths and mastadons, but I really don’t remember which was found, nor what the difference is.) I do remember that the meat of these unlucky animals was still edible when they were found and thawed. If this has already been discussed, I apologize. Great links about the ball lightning and sprites!
I have no explanations to offer, but I have seen some of this odd lightning. I was on the side of a mountain in Montana with some friends, and we watched a thunderstorm move through the valley below us. It was well shaped, with the classic anvil shaped front formation, and the lightning was intense. We actually saw colored lightning! Some of the lightning was very unusual shaped, also, like the bead and rod lightning mentioned above.
That sounds to me like a slight exaggeration of some claims/observations/theories that are usually found in discussions of “catasprophism”, specifically Velikovsky’s … er … um … well, I’ll do him the honor of calling them hypotheses. IMHO, these claims have been debunked.
The classic article is, apparently (I haven’t read it) by Farrand in Science 133:729-735, March 17, 1961. The following extracts appear in The Velikovsky FAQ at Talk.origins:
"…In contrast to scientific efforts, a number of popular and quasi-scientific articles have appeared in recent years, in which fragmentary knowledge, folk tales, and science fiction are combined under the guise of veracity – much to the chagrin of scientists and the confusion of the public. The most recent of such articles is that of [Ivan] Sanderson, who comes to the conclusion that the “frozen giants” must have become deep-frozen within only a few hours time. Such a thesis, however, disregards the actual observations of scientists and explorers. Adding insult to injury, Sanderson proceeds to fashion a fantastic climatic catastrophe to explain his conclusions…
"…The cadavers are unusual only in that they have been preserved by freezing; the demise of the animals, however, accords with uniformatitarian concepts…The ratio of frozen specimens (around 39) to the probable total population (more than 50,000) is of the order of magnitude expected among terrestrial mammals on the basis of chance burials. Furthermore, the occurance of whole carcasses is extremely rare (only four have been found)…
"…There is no direct evidence that any wooly mammoth froze to death. In fact, the healthy, robust condition of the cadavers and their full stomachs argue against death by slow freezing. [their emphasis] On the other hand, the large size of their warm-blooded bodies is not compatable with sudden freezing. In addition, all the frozen specimens were rotten…only dogs showed any appetite for [the flesh]…‘the stench [of decay]…was unbearable.’
"Histological examination of the fat and flesh of the Berezovka mammoth showed, “deep, penetrating chemical alteration as a result of the very slow decay,” and even the frozen ground surrounding a mammoth had the same putrid odor, implying decay before freezing [actually, no–the ground could have thawed after the mammoth was frozen and permitted decay, then refrozen. ERE] Furthermore, the stories of a banquet on the flesh of the Berazovka mammoth were, “a hundred per cent invention.”
"…The only direct evidence of the mode of death indicates that at least some of the frozen mammoths (and frozen wooly rhinoceroses as well) died of asphyxia, either by drowning or by being buried alive by a cavein or mudflow…Asphyxia is indicated by the erection of the penis in the case of the Berazovka mammoth and by the blood vessels of the head of a wooly rhinoceros from the River Vilyui, which were still filled with red, coagulated blood.
"The specific nature of the deposits enclosing the mammoths is not known ell enough to be very helpful as an indicator of the mode of death or burial. Most of the remains are associated with river valleys and with fluviatile and terrestial sediments, but whether the mammoths bogged down in marshy places or fell into ‘riparian gulies’ or were mired in and slowly buried by sticky mudflows is not clear…in Siberia only mammoths and wooly rhinoceroses have been found frozen and preserved…
"…so far no other members of the contemporary Eurasian fauna [except mammoths and wooly rhinos]…have been found frozen and well preserved. That only the bulky and awkward ‘giants’ of the fauna are so preserved points to some pecularity in their physique as a contributing factor…the mammoth, with his stiff-legged mode of locomotion would have difficulty on such [Siberian] terrain and moreover would not be able to cross even small gullies. It would be nearly impossible for him to extricate himself if he had fallen
into a snow filled gully or had been mired into boggy ground…
"The stomach contents of the frozen mammoths indicate that death occured in the warm season…when melting and soluflication would have been at a maximum and, accordingly, locomation would have been difficult.
"…Digby was impressed by ‘countless riparian gullies’ that would have been ideal mammoth traps…Vollosovich…theorized that an animal so trapped
might fall on its side and act as a dam, being slowly buried and suffocated by mud. The Berezovka mammoth is commonly regarded as having fallen as a cliff slumped beneath it; its broken bones attest to such a fall…the Mamontova mammoth perished in a bog…Quackenbush [wasn’t he also Groucho Marx?] believed that his specimen from Alaska perished on a floodplain and that most of the flesh rotted away…
“…All of these theories are credible and can be accepted as possibilities. There seems to be no need to assume the occurance of a catastrophe.”
…I was just about to bop over to talk.origins myself and challenge the woolly mammoth story. It’s gaining more popular currency now since its inclusion in that wretched Charlton Heston “documentary.” What was that called, again?
hoping this doesn’t turn into another Velikovsky thread
And aenea, that’s really interesting. Can you describe the lightning in more detail? I love to hear accounts of this stuff from people who’ve actually seen it.
Come to think of it, anyone else out there seen natural phenomena which couldn’t easily be explained? Bring it to the table; the uber-skeptics can evaluate the evidence and we’ll see what conclusions we can reach.
Are you suggesting that God gets in such a whimsical mood sometimes that he decides to randomly sprinkle some toads on a city, just to keep us guessing?
Not suggesting anything, other than that it (apparently) happens, and that we should probably find a plausible way to explain it within the context of natural science–or else change certain assumptions we hold about the world around us.
OK then, can we at least agree that the toads/fish/seeds/whatever originated on earth, and were transported into the clouds/sky by some as yet unknown mechanism? Or are you defending the position that:
[list=1]
[li]These things were always in the clouds/sky and somehow fell to earth? OR[/li][li]These things were created in the clouds/sky, and somehow fell to earth. OR[/li][li]These things were transported to the clouds/sky from some unearthly source, and somehow fell to earth.[/li][/list=1]
Somehow, tornadoes and waterspouts are sounding much more plausible.