Tag Archives | Strange Science

The Search For The Brain’s Telepathy Center

By on November 14, 2012 in News 7

Via Science 2.0, a study reveals the section of the brain producing strange powers:

Experimenters from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences [joined with] the Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation, Bangalore, India to perform “Probably the first fMRI study to analyse the neuroanatomical correlates of telepathy.”

They asked Mr. Gerard Senehi, “well known for his mind reading and telepathy”, to try to reproduce an unseen sketch which had been drawn by the experimenter. An anonymous control subject was also tested. During their attempts, both individuals were continuously scanned in an fMRI machine.

“The image reproduced by the ‘mentalist’ showed striking similarity to the original drawn by the experimenter, whereas the drawing by the control subject did not. Furthermore, the fMRI scans showed measurable differences in brain activity of the two subjects — “This study’s findings are suggestive of an association between telepathy and the right parahippocampal gyrus.”

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Professional Psychics Fail Scientific Experiment

By on November 1, 2012 in News 28

Was this a fair experiment? Perhaps the laboratory setting suppresses psychic abilities. The BBC reports:

The test by researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London, tried to establish whether mediums could use psychic abilities to identify something about five unseen volunteers. The results, carried out under test conditions, did not show evidence of any unexplained powers of insight.

The experiment asked two professional mediums to write something about five individuals who were concealed behind a screen. These five volunteers were then asked to try to identify themselves from these psychic readings – with a success rate of only one in five. This was a result that was “entirely consistent with the operation of chance alone”, said Professor French.

But one of the mediums, Patricia Putt, rejected the suggestion that this showed any absence of psychic powers – saying that she needed to work face-to-face with people or to hear their voice, so that a connection could be established.

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Is Belief In Telepathy Unscientific?

By on September 23, 2012 in News 298

Rigorous experiments seem to suggest that ESP and mental telepathy are real, yet these phenomena are rejected as hoaxes by mainstream science, because belief in mind reading would contradict the most basic laws of our understanding of reality. Or would it? Via Reality Sandwich, Chris Carter argues that telepathy and quantum physics go hand-in-hand:

Like Price and Hebb before them, both Wiseman and French hold that the claim of telepathy is so extraordinary that we need a greater level of evidence than we normally demand. Why should this be so? Most people believe in the reality of telepathy based on their own experiences, and are puzzled by the description of telepathy as “extraordinary.”

Psychologist James Alcock recently wrote that the claims of parapsychology “stand in defiance of the modern scientific worldview. That by itself does not mean that parapsychology is in error, but as the eminent neuropsychologist Donald Hebb pointed out, if the claims of parapsychology prove to be true, then physics and biology and neuroscience are horribly wrong in some fundamental respects.”

However, a number of leading physicists such as Henry Margenau, David Bohm, Brian Josephson, and Olivier Costra de Beauregard have repeatedly pointed out that nothing in quantum mechanics forbids psi phenomena.

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Inventor Suffocated To Death By Helmet For Remotely Controlling Devices

By on August 20, 2012 in News 8

Is the gruesome death of this amateur inventor a metaphor for our relationship to the technology that has pervaded our everyday lives? Reported by New Zealand’s Stuff:

Police have confirmed the death of a man found in South Auckland on Monday was accidental, and it is understood it was the result of home experiment which went wrong. Michael William Roiall, 34, was found dead at his Papatoetoe home about 2.30pm.

It’s understood the man was an amateur inventor and was found wearing a home-made helmet, which he was attempting to use to control devices in his home. It’s believed the helmet may have suffocated him.

A neighbour, who did not want to be named, said the area was normally very quiet. However, she said there had been an unusually high number of police officers patrolling the street in the past few weeks. “It’s all been a bit weird,” she said.

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Alien Life May Resemble Giant Jellyfish

By on July 26, 2012 in News 12

A compelling if fantastical vision of soft pod creatures floating on gas currents through the soupy atmospheres of exoplanets. Via India Today:

Aliens may not actually resemble the little green creatures Hollywood loves to portray them as. Rather, they are more likely to look like ‘giant jellyfish’, if a leading British space scientist is to be believed.

“My vision of aliens is an inhuman, silicon-based life form that looks much more like a jellyfish… It is likely that there is extra-terrestrial life – it is just more alien than you’d imagine,” Maggie Aderin-Pocock, satellite expert and government adviser in UK, said.

“But while they might resemble jellyfish, they will live not in the sea but in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-like planet, where they float around,” Aderin-Pocock said. Rather than surviving on carbon, which is the basis of all life, the “silicon generated” creatures are able to live off light absorbed through their ‘skin’ and chemicals sucked in through their giant mouths.

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The Nazi Plan To Breed Lost Animal Species

By on July 7, 2012 in News 6

Jurassic Park fifty years prior? Cabinet Magazine on a strange form of zoology in Nazi Germany, centered around the cordoning off of untainted forests for the re-creation of pure, ancient breeds of ponies, boars, and a mystical striped oxen called the auroch:

In 1920, the brothers Lutz and Heinz Heck, directors of the Berlin and Munich zoos, respectively, began a two-decade breeding experiment. Working with domestic cattle sought out for their “primitive” characteristics, they attempted to recreate “in appearance and behavior” the living likeness of the animals’ extinct wild ancestor: the aurochs.

This conflation of biological and aesthetic destiny coincided with a strain of Nazi thought that sought to apply pseudo-Darwinian theories in support of a racialized conception of the state. In this mode, the zoologist Konrad Lorenz identified parallels between the changes he observed in animals as the result of their domestication and what he saw as the deleterious genetic effects of civilization.

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UFO Beneath Baltic Sea Cuts Off Electrical Equipment When Approached

By on June 28, 2012 in News 25

The Swedish diver team investigating the gigantic mushroomed-shaped object says their devices cut out when they go within 200 meters of the structure. Sci-Fi-horror movie troupes bursting into reality, via the the Daily Mail:

Professional diver Stefan Hogerborn, part of the Ocean X team which is exploring the anomaly, said some of the team’s cameras and the team’s satellite phone would refuse to work when directly above the object, and would only work once they had sailed away. He is quoted as saying: ‘Anything electric out there – and the satellite phone as well – stopped working when we were above the object.”

The Swedish diving team noted a 985-foot flattened out ‘runway’ leading up to the object, implying that it skidded along the path before stopping but no true answers are clear. Member Dennis Åsberg said: ‘I am one hundred percent convinced and confident that we have found something that is very, very, very unique.”

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Inexperienced Hypnotist Leaves Canadian Teens Trapped In Trance

By on June 19, 2012 in News 17

Ever feel as if you’ve been enveloped in a trance for your whole life? Via Russia Today:

A hypnotism show at a private girls’ high school went strangely awry after a young hypnotist put several teenage students in a “mass hypnosis” trance and had to call in his mentor for help to bring them out.

At College du Sacre-Coeur in Quebec, school administrators decided to celebrate the end of the year’s studies with the hypnotism show and invited a 20-year-old hypnotist to entertain a group of 12- and 13-year-old girls. Maxime Nadeau worked on a small group while others watched the show. When it came time to end the event, several girls in the audience remained under hypnosis and could not snap out of it, no matter what Nadeau did.

The hypnotist had to call in his mentor and trainer, Richard Whitbread to help him out. Whitbread arrived in an hour.

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Arctic Expedition To Prove That The Earth Is Hollow

By on June 15, 2012 in News 49

Carefully crafted plans and millions in funding have been secured for a journey to locate the passageway to Inner Earth. I certainly hope that the North Pole Inner Earth Expedition happens:

This $1.5 million pledge gets the ship charter in place by August of 2012. The Expedition launches in July of 2013. The science is real. The story is more than 5,000 years old. The legend says that at a certain place above the Arctic Circle, there exists an oceanic depression or an entrance into the Earth. It’s a place where the maritime legend claims sea level isn’t level anymore.

The discovery that the earth is hollow would forever shatter our long-held beliefs about how planets are formed. More importantly, however, discovering life beneath the earth’s crust could potentially provide us with new tools that would allow life on the surface to regain environmental balance, harmony, and possibly even peace.

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What It’s Like To Have Ultraviolet Vision

By on June 12, 2012 in News 0

Engineer and self described nerd Alek Komarnitsky describes how post cataract surgery, he now sees an expanded color spectrum. What could the lilac glow beyond violet be — auras, pet spirits, Venus rays? Via Komar:

Numerous people who have also had their natural lens removed have written me saying they see similar to what I describe below. I’ve been very happy so far with the Crystals implant for cataract surgery. But one unexpected/interesting aspect is I see a violet glow that others do not … I’m seeing Ultraviolet light!

An eye surgeon recently wrote about blue-violet color changes after Crystalens implants and his experience is that only 3% of patients have experienced (or mentioned!) this phenomena … but some people may just have more sensitive photoreceptors, so the vast majority of the patients would not see this.

Some related interesting tidbits include during WWII, the British used aphakics for signaling using UV lights … since only they could see it.

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