Mystae

Over the years, I’ve seen several reports of mysterious bird die-offs. Sometimes thousands of birds just seemingly fall out of the sky, either already dead, or dying when they hit the ground. Such a scene is disturbing and frightening. What is going on?

The Flannan lighthouse was a lighthouse located on Eilean Mòr, an island off the west coast of Scotland. It was manned by three people at a time, in a rotating schedule with a fourth man who was off.

The notion of sentient water was developed by Masaru Emoto. He purported to show that when water was treated to varying stimuli, it created noticeably different patterns when it froze into crystals. Water that had been exposed to positive stimuli, such as the word ‘hope’, formed symmetrical, beautiful crystals. Water subjected to negative stimuli such as the expression ‘self-consciousness’, formed misshapen crystals. Emoto’s claim was that water could sense the emotions behind the words, and would respond accordingly.

The Mpemba effect is named after Erasto Mpemba, a student in Tanzania who, in 1963, observed that sometimes hot liquid would freeze more quickly than cold liquid. This effect was noted by many scientists throughout history, at least as far back as Aristotle.

In about 2001 or so, reports began to surface about a new kind of thruster for a spacecraft. This thruster was said to produce a slight push in a way that violated the law of Conservation of Momentum. Despite this difficulty, there were experiments which seemed to support the possibility that the thruster worked.

There is a tribe in Western Africa known as the Dogon people. They have a tradition of having been visited by beings who taught them various skills. The Dogons explain that these beings come from the sky, from a star we know as Sirius. The Dogons explain that this star is actually two stars, one of which cannot be seen. One star circles the other.

This refers to a photograph purportedly taken by the father of a family. The story is that when the father developed the image, he was horrified to see that a hanging body appeared. They state that the hanging body wasn’t present at the time the photo was taken.

In 2011, researchers at CERN reported that some neutrinos appeared to travel faster than the speed of light.

These are some basic principles I use to help sort through the various topics and suggested explanations. Using them can simplify discussions.

Briefly, the Dunning-Kruger (DK) effect is the erroneous self-assessment of skill, knowledge, or other qualities in a field that is not the person’s area of expertise. This can be laymen grappling with an unfamiliar discipline, or experts who have strayed from their own fields into others. The DK effect is partly due to the person not knowing enough to understand the difficulties and complexities of the unfamiliar field.

From xkcd.com