Be Excellent To Each Other

Also, gas usually can permeate through most building materials.

Eventually, perhaps, walls are not air-tight, but at the same time it wouldn't be possible to observe a cloud of gas pass through something ostensibly 'solid' and continue on its way.

You just need to clean your glasses.

Where's Lave when you need him? He's off swanning around with his new doctor friends, that's what he's doing, instead of telling us whether ghosts can float in a wall of water and plasma or something.

None of the laws of physics I learned allow for such things to exist, so unless they've added some new laws lately it's quite likely there is no such thing as ghosts.

EMF detectors are usually sold as 'Ghost detectors', which makes no sense to me. Ghosts would have to somehow emit an elctro-magnetic field. What could this source of this be? Fields don't exist in mid-air without a source.

No such thing as gravitational anomolies kalmar

Last I heard, he was moaning about how this 'Ecto-containment system' he and a colleague had come up with was going to 'cost a load of bread to capitalise'. He was wondering where he was going to get the money.

The question is, would you consider the laws of physics you learned to be anywhere near complete?

why has no-one ever claimed James Randi's $1mill prize for demonstrating any metaphysical phenomenon under lab conditions?

Beakers repel ghosts.

why has no-one ever claimed James Randi's $1mill prize for demonstrating any metaphysical phenomenon under lab conditions?

In 1984–87, Ken Webster in Dodleston, UK, purported to be in contact with someone called Tomas Harden from the 16th century, along with other characters including some claiming to be from the future, one of them being known as 2109 (or 2105). The messages are purported to have been left — somehow through the space-time continuum — on a humble BBC Model B fitted with an Acorn DFS upgrade. They were found on the editing screen of the ROM-based word processor EDWORD and within EDWORD files created on disk (or appended to them). Ken detailed the curious case in his now out-of-print book The Vertical Plane [1989 Grafton Books, ISBN 0-586-20476-8], two episodes of a BBC 1 documentary series presented by Carol Vorderman [Out Of This World, 20 August 1996 & 27 August 1996 and in a Fortean Times article, The Vertical Plane - FT108.

Beakers repel ghosts. All labs have beakers. Therefore no metaphysical activity can ever take place in a lab.

1. Define "ghost".

2. Define "real".

3. ?????

4. Prophet.

Some researchers, such as Professor Michael Persinger (Laurentian University, Canada), have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields (created, e.g., by tectonic stresses in the Earth's crust or solar activity) could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. This theory has been tested in various ways. Some scientists have examined the relationship between the time of onset of unusual phenomena in allegedly haunted locations and any sudden increases in global geomagnetic activity. Others have investigated whether the location of alleged hauntings is associated with certain types of magnetic activity. Finally, a third strand of work has involved laboratory studies in which stimulation of the temporal lobe with transcerebral[clarification needed] magnetic fields has elicited subjective experiences that strongly parallel phenomena associated with hauntings.

No, I will admit that happily, and you are right to point out I am being flippant. However I contend that if the dead really can contact us from the afterlife, this is the by several orders of magnitude the most important discovery mankind has ever made; it would rewrite the science, philosophy, and theological landscape at a stroke. So why is it still the stuff of circus sideshows, and why has no-one ever claimed James Randi's $1mill prize for demonstrating any metaphysical phenomenon under lab conditions?

However, it's pretty hard to say that the laws of physics disprove such things

Because geomagnets are vampy flavoured

Hmm, that makes very little sense. The Earth's magnetic field is millions of times weaker than the one you are subjected to when you go for a CAT scan, so why don't those people see ghosts all the time?

Persinger has also come to public attention due to his 1975 Tectonic Strain Theory (TST) of how geophysical variables may correlate with sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Persinger argued that strain within the earth's crust near seismic faults produces intense electromagnetic (EM) fields, creating bodies of light that some interpret as glowing UFOs. Alternatively, the EM fields generate hallucinations in the temporal lobe, based on images from popular culture, of alien craft, beings, communications, or creatures.

Canadian researcher Chris Rutkowski of the University of Manitoba has become a prominent harsh critic of Persinger's Tectonic Strain Theory. For one thing, Rutowski argues, in order to try to accommodate UFO sightings in regions far removed from faults, Persinger has claimed that UFO-like lights or hallucinations can manifest hundreds of miles away from an area of seismic activity. Not only does this place an absurdly great distance between the actual area of tectonic stress and the surmised significant EM field, it also makes the theory unscientific by destroying any possible predictive power. Nearly every place on the planet lies within a few hundred miles of a seismically active area. Rutkowski pointed out severe flaws in Persinger's statistical methodology, since he confused possible correlation (however weak) with causality. For example, one could more easily explain occasional clusters of UFO sightings along earthquake fault-lines by the fact that populations often occur there in higher densities and by the fact that transportation routes often follow major fault lines, such as the San Andreas fault in California.

As with criticisms of Persinger's claims that minute laboratory magnetic fields can invoke hallucinations, Rutowski also points out that Persinger's inferred seismic EM fields would have much less influence than what people commonly experience near electrical appliances like television sets or hair driers. This again raises the question as to why people don't experience UFOs or aliens far more often than they do, or why these hypothetical hallucinations from electrical devices wouldn't drown out any possible contribution from much weaker geophysical fields. Once again, Persinger notes that the magnitude of the EM fields may have less significance than the particular temporal patterns. Furthermore, commentators such as British researcher Albert Budden, has proposed that man-made electromagnetic emissions can (in certain circumstances) generate close encounter experiences and has cited possible examples of this effect in his work Electric UFOs (Blandford, 1998).

In the UK, Paul Devereux advocates a variant geophysical theory similar to TST, the Earthlights theory. However, unlike Persinger, Devereaux generally restricts such effects to the immediate vicinity of a fault line. Devereux's approach also differs from Persinger's in holding triboluminescence rather than piezoelectricity as the "more likely candidate" for the production of naturally occurring UFOs. Devereux doesn't advocate, as in Persinger's TST, that the phenomenon might create hallucinations of UFO encounters in people, instead proposing an even more radical hypothesis: that earthlights may possess intelligence and even have the ability to read witness' thoughts. [2]

UFO researchers critical of the sesmic stress theory admit that, while, observations of diffuse lights during (and sometimes before and after) very severe earthquakes may give some weak support to some parts of TST and Earthlights theory (see Earthquake lights), they question the ability of fault lines to generate luminous effects and hallucinatory experiences under much less severe conditions(as cited above). Nonetheless, even TST critics such as Rutowski think such theories may hold some promise for explaining a small percentage of UFO phenomena, although they doubt that they can ever offer a comprehensive explanation for the vast majority of unexplained UFO cases. Other UFO researchers (mainly in the U.K) believe this very limited interpretation of the TST is brought into question by the clustering of UFO reports within areas prone to faulting - such as the Pennine region of northern Britain. While acknowledging the drawback's of Persinger's theory, they feel that amended versions of it may account for a significant proportion of "True UFO" reports.

It's pretty hard to say the laws of Physics disprove a whole lot of things. The flying Spaghetti Monster being a prime example.

The whole point of science is that you don't bother trying to disprove things until there's a plausible theory or some sort of demonstrable effect to investigate.

Otherwise, you'd spend all your time trying to disprove all sorts of demented shit.

So, just because you don't have a personally-autographed-by-Einstein disproof of something, doesn't mean it exists.

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