Clipmarks | Phenomena Clips

Tonight: The Leonid Meteor Shower

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:38:05 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: The Leonids are famous because their meteor showers, or storms, can be, and have been in a few cases, among the most spectacular. Because of the superlative storm of 1833 and the recent developments in scientific thought the Leonids have had a major effect on the development of the scientific study of meteors which had previously been thought to be atmospheric phenomena. The meteor storm of 1833 was of truly superlative strength. One estimate is over one hundred thousand meteors an hour[2], but another, done as the storm abated, estimated in excess of two hundred thousand meteors an hour[3] over the entire region of North America east of the Rocky Mountains.

Other great Leonid storms were seen in 1866 and 1867. When the storms failed to return in 1899, it was generally thought that the dust had moved on and storms were a thing of the past. Then, in 1966 a spectacular storm was seen over the Americas.

Clip Source: www.answers.com

The Leonids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to stream from that point in the sky.

The most famous depiction of the 1833 meteor storm actually produced in 1889 for the Adventist book Bible Readings for the Home Circle based on a first-person account of the 1833 storm by a minister, Joseph Harvey Waggoner on his way from Florida to New Orleans.

The meteor shower is visible every year around November 17, plus or minus a week, when the Earth moves through the meteoroid stream of particles left from the passages of the comet. The stream comprises solid particles, known as meteoroids, ejected by the comet as its frozen gases evaporate under the heat of the Sun which begins to warm the comet as it comes within the orbit of Jupiter. A typical particle is no bigger than fine dust.

Woodcut print depicts the shower as seen at Niagara Falls, New York.

Tags: leonids, annual meteor shower, approximately november 17th,

How to survive a Poltergeist

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:04:56 GMT

clipped by: arielcream
clipper's remarks: and other ineresting info

Clip Source: paranormal.about.com

DO YOU HAVE A POLTERGEIST?

How about you? Are you experiencing poltergeist activity in your home? If so, what can you do about it?

SURVIVING A POLTERGEIST

If poltergeist phenomena are stress-induced, there are better courses of action.

Research has shown that most recurring poltergeist activity lasts only a few weeks.

If the activity seems mild and harmless, it might be best to wait it out.

If the activity is severe, annoying or you just want it to stop, the first thing to do is try to determine who the agent might be.

The person might be experiencing something that is causing extreme emotional stress,

recurring poltergeist phenomena are relatively rare, and we don’t really know how our deep emotions can work through the unconscious to produce psychokinetic effects.

However, this is one from of unexplained phenomena that is more prudently examined and treated by a conventional therapist rather than a psychic or exorcist.

Tags: paramormal, ghost, apparition, shadow people, doppler, spirit, unexplained, unknown

16 Signs That Your House is Haunted

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:45:42 GMT

clipped by: arielcream
clipper's remarks: What to watch for and what to do about it

Clip Source: paranormal.about.com

16 Signs That Your House is Haunted

The Signs of a Haunting

The first step is to determine, as best you can, whether or not you truly have a legitimate case of a haunting. Not all hauntings are alike, and they may exhibit a variety of phenomena. Some hauntings feature a single phenomenon - such as a particular door slamming shut that occurs repeatedly - while others consist of many different phenomena, ranging from odd noises to full-blown apparitions.

Unexplained noises

Doors, cabinets and cupboards opening and closing

Lights turning off and on

Items disappearing and reappearing

Unexplained shadows

Strange animal behavior

Feelings of being watched

Those are some of the most common experiences of those who think their houses are haunted. Yet even stranger things can happen...

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Tags: ghost, haunted, supernatural, scary, unexplained, strange, apparition

Synesthetes - people who hear colors, see flavors ...

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:07:13 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: "For people of a poetic bent, this is quite useful: You get to tell your date that her eyes glow like the moon, hair ripples like the ocean and skin is smoother than a friendly corporate takeover. (Fine, I'm not a poet.) But life wasn't always so romantic. The arts are a latter-day human characteristic, one that requires a certain amount of security and stability to flourish.

So how did it develop? To help our ancestors climb trees, said Ramachandran. Doing so requires a vision-informed mental map of the branches before us, as well as a touch-informed mental map of our limbs' positions. Somehow these have to correlate. Which is quite a trick, when you think about it."

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Poetry Comes from Our Tree-Climbing Ancestors, Neuroscientist Says

Some people hear colors, see flavors and are generally prone to a mixing-and-matching of typically disparate perceptual domains.

Those people are called synesthetes

Where does synesthesia come from? Maybe synesthetes are just lying. Perhaps they're under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs -- many research subjects are college kids, after all -- or happened as children to play with colored alphabet blocks. Or maybe they're simply good with metaphors

what appears as metaphor is a literal sensory experience for synesthetes. That may explain, he said, why synesthesia is eight times more common among poets, artists and novelists than the general population.

The essence of art is, arguably, metaphor, and its practitioners are especially prolific -- and metaphor is just a convenient shorthand for the connection of unlinked cognitive phenomena

That's exactly what appears to happen in the minds of synesthetes

Obama To Combat “Joe The Plumber” With Average Americans Of His Own

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:48:03 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: ... and Joe Biden starts to knock him around, carping that no real plumber makes $250K.

Biden calls Joe the Plumber "the 250 guy," with the plumber now mum on his income. He just says he would like to make that much.

The plumber was quoted in the hometown Toledo Blade thusly about Obama's "spread the wealth" cutoff of $250K:

"That's a pretty socialist comment. Two-fifty ($250,000) is his number now. When is it going to be one fifty ($150,000), when it's going to be one hundred ($100,000) [WHEN IS IT GOING TO BE YOU]?"

He's far from the first one to apply the term, of course. Google "socialist" and Obama. You'll be awash in hits. Recently actor Jon Voight wrote this:

If, God forbid, we live to see Mr. Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/10/joe-the-plumber-2.html

Clip Source: www.thenoseonyourface.com

Eager to combat the incredible amount of negative attention that the ”Joe the Plumber” phenomena has generated towards their campaign, the Obama camp is announcing a new initiative that seeks to showcase the sort of average Americans who will do support the Illinois senator.

“It’s called ‘Everyday Superheroes’,” said Obama spokesman Wentworth Q. Worthington, III. “And it’s President Oba…excuse me, didn’t mean to get ahead of myself. Soon-to-be President Obama’s way of showing that he is still firmly in touch with the common man. And unlike that gauche clod, ‘Joe the Plumber’, our heroes are real, live salt-of-the-earth American citizens who don’t pose impossibly difficult, blatantly racist questions to a man of Barack Obama’s stature.”

While the new ad campaign is not yet ready for full-scale release, TNOYF was able to obtain some still shots of the “Everyday Heroes” who the campaign staffers feel will help bridge the gap for Obama in the Red States.

Tags: o-bots, blatantly racist questions, "joe the carpenter"phenomena, common man-"everyday superheores"

Themes of fire and light are at the heart of photography

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:12:19 GMT

clipped by: pcmkrfn

Clip Source: webecoist.com

Themes of fire and light are at the heart of photography, which traditionally has a difficult time representing these visual phenomena as they truly are. Using HDR, some photographers are able to depict everything from sunlight to firelight in ways that are hard to catch in most media. A range of techniques is needed to show the range of visual possibilities of everything from devastating fiery disasters to amazing smoke, sun and light phenomena.

Smoke adds yet another dimension to the theme of light - the naturally occurring byproduct of the brightest-burning of earthly phenomena: fire. As the saying goes, where there is smoke there is fire - or in this case perhaps a volcano or some other heated formation or phenomena. In some cases clever photography can also blur the boundary between smoke and clouds. Click to enlarge:

Humans Made Fire 790,000 Years Ago

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:01:18 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Wow. With the same tools they had back then, how many of us could even start a fire today? Way to go, ancient humans!

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Humans made fire 790,000 years ago: study

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A new study shows that humans had the ability to make fire nearly 790,000 years ago, a skill that helped them migrate from Africa to Europe.

By analyzing flints at an archaeological site on the bank of the river Jordan, researchers at Israel's Hebrew University discovered that early civilizations had learned to light fires, a turning point that allowed them to venture into unknown lands.

A previous study of the site published in 2004 showed that man had been able to control fire -- for example transferring it by means of burning branches -- in that early time period. But researchers now say that ancient man could actually start fire, rather than relying on natural phenomena such as lightning.

"The new data shows there was a continued, controlled use of fire through many civilizations and that they were not dependent on natural fires," archaeologist Nira Alperson-Afil said on Sunday.

Cool Trick

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:29:59 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: Entertaining clip. No, I don't believe in psychic phenomena. But this was fun to watch. I'd like to find out how it was done.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

7 Incredible Natural Phenomena

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:34:18 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.oddee.com

Venezuela's Everlasting Storm

the phenomenon is a cloud-to-cloud lightning that forms a voltage arc more than five kilometre high during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours a night, and as many as 280 times an ho

[Video]

Honduras' Rain of Fishes

it begins with a dark cloud in the sky followed by lightning, thunder, strong winds and heavy rain for 2 to 3 hours

Morocco's Climbing Goats

The goats climb them because they like to eat the fruit of the argan tree, which is similar to an oliv

Kerala's (extraterrestrial?) Red Rain

From 25 July to 23 September 2001, red rain sporadically fell on the southern Indian state of Kerala

Brazilian's longest wave on the Earth

[Video]

Denmark's Black Sun

flocks of more than a million European starlings

gather from all corners to join in the incredible formations shown above.

Idaho's Fire Rainbow

"Fire rainbow", appears when the sun is high in the sky

and its light passes through diaphanous, high-altitude cirrus clouds made up of hexagonal plate crystals.

7 Incredible Natural Phenomena

Witnessing

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:50:16 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: During the process of providing "Witness" many religious proselytizers rely on subjective experiential events to "prove" their positions. Of course these are not proofs at all but mere opinions.

Clip Source: atheism.about.com

Subjective Validation

Subjective Validation is also sometimes called the “personal validation effect” because it refers to a process by which people accept some claim or phenomenon as valid based solely upon a few personal experiences and/or subjective perception. In practice, this error is cited when a person perceives two independent events as having some sort of deeper, hidden relationship because of that person’s prior beliefs, expectations or hypotheses about the world.

According to the premises from which this person interprets the world, such a relationship must necessarily exist, and so the person will find a way to explain the data in terms of the assumed relationship. This subjective validation is often accompanied by Confirmation Bias whereby the person weighs the supporting data much more heavily than information which might cast doubt upon their beliefs.

This subjective validation is generally at the heart of people’s reports of the experience of paranormal phenomena.

The Paranormal

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:24:14 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: some organisations such as the United States National Science Foundation have stated that mainstream science does not support paranormal beliefs.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons Scientists are surprised so often

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Paranormal is an umbrella term used to describe unusual phenomena or experiences that lack an obvious scientific explanation.^[1] In parapsychology, it is used to describe the potentially psychic phenomena of telepathy, extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis, ghosts, and hauntings. The term is also applied to UFOs, some creatures that fall under the scope of cryptozoology, purported phenomena surrounding the Bermuda Triangle, and other non-psychical subjects.^[2] Stories relating to paranormal phenomena are widespread in popular culture and folklore

Paranormal · Forteana
Cryptozoology · Supernatural
Ghosts · Psychics
Remote viewing · Clairvoyance
Extra-sensory perception
Near-death experience
Precognition · Psychokinesis
Psychometry · Telepathy
Apparitional experience
Parapsychology
Haunted locations
UFOs · UFO sightings
Paranormal UFO explanations
Paranormal fiction
Ghost hunting · Folklore

Skepticism

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
Debunking · Hoaxes

1 Paranormal research

Her Ultimate O

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:32:08 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: Now John McCain has chosen as his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a diligent student of Big Oil's crib sheets. She's something of a flat-earther who shares the current administration's contempt for science. Palin has expressed skepticism about evolution (which is like not believing in gravity), putting it on par with "creationism," which posits that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago."

She's addicted to it baby; it's her sex; it's her power. Who says it only has to turn the big boys on?

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Iwas water-skiing with my children in a light drizzle off Hyannis, Mass., last month when a sudden, fierce storm plunged us into a melee of towering waves, raking rain, painful hail and midday darkness broken by blinding flashes of lightning. As I hurried to get my children out of the water and back to the dock, I shouted over the roaring wind, "This is some kind of tornado."

Those odd climatological phenomena led me to reflect on the rapidly changing weather patterns that are altering the way we live.

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy

Their goal, according to a meeting memo, was to orchestrate information so that "recognition of uncertainties become part of the conventional wisdom" and that "those promoting the Kyoto treaty ... appear to be out of touch with reality."

DARPA Seeks to Use the Force, the Casimir Force

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:46:05 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: nextbigfuture.com

Casimir force is the result of virtual particles and could be related to inertia and gravity.

DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of Casimir Effect Enhancement (CEE). The goal of this program is to develop new methods to control and manipulate attractive and repulsive forces at surfaces based on engineering of the Casimir Force. One could leverage this ability to control phenomena such as adhesion in nanodevices, drag on vehicles and many other interactions of interest to the DoD. H/T to Nanowerk.com

A specific goal of this single-phase DARPA program is to demonstrate the ability to manipulate and engineer the Casimir force including the ability to neutralize the Casimir force.

Tags: darpa, quantum mechanics, casimir force

Building 'The Matrix'

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:57:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Feynman envisioned, a general purpose, programmable quantum computer could itself carry out quantum simulations. But such machines are still decades away, most researchers say, while machines designed only for quantum simulations may become available sooner.

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Simulating the complexity of quantum physics would quickly overwhelm even the most advanced of today’s computers.

If The Matrix really existed, it would probably have to be a quantum simulator. The fictional computer in that story can create virtual worlds indistinguishable from the real one and project them into people’s minds. But the real world includes quantum phenomena, something ordinary computers can’t fully simulate.

Now physicists have created a rudimentary prototype of a machine that simulates quantum phenomena using quantum physics, rather than using data kept in a classical computer. While the new device can't make people fly like the Matrix does, it demonstrates a technique that could enable physicists to create, in the virtual world, materials that don't yet exist in nature and perhaps figure out how to build, in the real world, superconductors that work at room temperature, for example.

Tags: complexity, quantum mechanics, matrix

Top Ten Online Psychology Tests

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:04:47 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Hundreds of online psychology experiments are going on at any given time, many cool and amusing to take part in. They’re great for researchers due to the ease and low cost of finding subjects, and because of that, more data

By design these studies are ephemeral, disappearing from the web once a deadline is reached or enough data collected. In this Top Ten list we’ve chosen to focus on experiments that are long-term, or if data is no longer collected you can still do the experiment for fun. And they are fun!

1. You Just Get Me

2. Bad Vibes

3. The Stroop Tes

4. FaceResearch.org

5. The Concept of Intentional Action.

6. Project Implicit. The Implicit Association Test

7. Basic Music Intervals.

8. Face Transformer from the Perception Lab at the School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, Scotland.

9. Visual Phenomena & Other Psychological Diversions

10. Casual Fridays at Cognitive Daily.

Each Friday

interactive test for their readers based on research, news, theories or plain curiosity