Transcranial magnetic stimulation is an extraordinary technique pioneered by neuroscientists to explore the workings of the brain. The idea is to place a human in a rapidly changing magnetic field that is powerful enough to induce currents in neurons in the brain. Then sit back and see what happens. [...] Focus the field in the visual cortex, for example, and the induced eddys cause the subject to 'see' lights that appear as discs and lines. Move the the field within the cortex and the subject sees the lights move too.
But if this happens in the lab, then why not in the real world too, say Joseph Peer and Alexander Kendl at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. They calculate that the rapidly changing fields associated with repeated lightning strikes are powerful enough to cause a similar phenomenon in humans within 200 metres. [...] It turns out, of course, that there are numerous reports of these types of observations during thunder storms. "An observer reporting this experience is likely to classify the event under the preconcepted term of 'ball lightning'," say Kendl and Peer.
Magnetically-Induced Hallucinations Explain Ball Lighting, Say Physicists
Also, presumably, fairies.
Tags: mad science, tasp
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9 Responses:
It would also affect CCDs which would explain all the video of ball lightning! Brilliant! Human AND machine united in consensual hallucination.
What would be awesome is if they can can get this kind of neurostimulus technology working well enough to draw simple vector graphics. And then you can play Asteroids in your own mind while lying under tons of electromagnets.
Somehow, I don't see the Atari huge, humming, carcinogenic mind control box taking off as the next fad in home entertainment.
This is both bonkers and awesome.
Also, Moses may have hallucinated everything on Mount Sinai from ingesting psychotropic plants in the area.
That's actually scarier than the idea ball lightning is an external physical phenomenon. "In an EMF field so powerful everyone's brain starts hallucinating".
Next step: stimulate areas other than the visual cortex!
It's like when you first play with UNIX, and you can't help but randomly
cateverything into everything else. But with root priviledges and fewer backups.That explains my hallucinations the first time I saw the Butthole Surfers. I must have been standing too close to the speakers.
Crazy! I love shit like this. Did you hear about infrasound possibly being responsible for ghostly hauntings?