Kevin's Watch

Heres a thread for all the weird stuff that hangs around the edges of science, but is definitely in the realm of the natural rather than the supernatural.

Three things that I would like to ask about. I was once told by an old aquaintance of mine who was an NPL physicist and a keen mountaineer, that above the snowline a weird optical illusion was known to occur [albeit rarely], whereby if say two people were walking along a flattish surface in clear conditions, all of a sudden they would see themselves walking toward ....er....themselves at a distance. This is the only time I have heard of this phenomena, but the guy was no fool and didn't imply he was making fun of me [entierly possible however]. Another old chap I knew, also a keen mountaineer once told me that strange things could occur in the rareified atmosphere at the top of mountains, but he did not elaborate. Has anyone else encountered this [or other] phenomena.

Secondly - has anyone ever heard of [or indeed seen] the 'green flash' that is said [again rarely] to occur at the instant of final disapearence of the sun at sunset. Some people have by all acounts watched thousands of sunsets and never seen the phenomena, while others get lucky and see it by chance when not even aware of it's existance. I've not seen it, nor met anyone who has, but do know a good few people [of pretty sound mind] who vouch for it's existence.

Thirdly I will recount a tale reported to me by my father - as hard headed a man as you ever encountered - about an event that occured when he was cooking his dinner and simultaneously doing his business 'books' late one night. Seated at the table in his cottage, he had placed a piece of steak on a foil lined grill pan and placed it under the grill at high heat in the small kitchen imediately to his left and behind him. Above the grill, on the cooking surface of his cooker [the grill and heating rings were all part of the same electric coker] he had placed a frying pan with hot oil in which he was frying tomatoes at a high heat. He was no more than a couple of strides away from this [shockingly dangerous] cooking arrangement, head down in his accounts laid on the table before him, when all of a sudden a loud 'twang' [how he described it] made him start. He raised his head and looking to his left, saw an ball of light the size of an apple appear from the kitchen door and move at walking pace past him and paralel to the wall of the room. As the ball moved past him it got smaller and smaller and simultaneously the 'twang' sound got quieter and quieter, untill, reaching a position next to the electric fuse box etc on the wall, it finally dissapeared and the fuse box gave a 'click'. I can only assume that the high heat, oil and electricity of the cooker in some way contrived to produce a ball of plasma/ball lightening [or some other physical phenomena] that he witnessed for the duration of it's short life. Any thoughts on this?

Hmmm.

Re mountain illusions, I think your "old chap" who told you that "strange things could occur in the rarified atmosphere at the top of mountains", was almost certainly referring to hypoxia-induced hallucinations, brought on by the combined effects of physical exertion and lower oxygen content of the air at higher altitudes.

Re green flashes at sunset, you mean this?



You'll find a scientific explanation for this rare phenomenon here.

As to your father apparently creating a plasma ball in his kitchen via means of cooking steak and tomatoes, I think that's a tad unlikely. I have a couple of possible explanations:

1) I do recall reports, although vanishingly rare of free-form and slow-moving ball lightning naturally occurring. The fact that it was attracted by the fusebox would seem to support this. Your dad's supper wouldn't have been a triggering factor.

2) I don't suppose this event occurred in the psychedelic mid-sixties, did it?

Trust me - TheFallen; for my dad there was no psychedelic mid sixties.

Here's an odd phenomena [not perhaps science but certainly pertaining to brain function] that I experienced many times while blood testing cattle for tbe brucellosis causing organism *Brucella abortis*. The blood was taken from the tail vein using a vacutainer tube and needle, and it took very little movement or ineptitude in sampling to loose the necessary vacuum or collapse the vein to the point where sampling became impossible. Under these circumstances a change of tack was required and the animals head had to be tethered and sampling done from the jugular vein instead. Given that there may have been 100 + animals to sample, farmers did not look kindly on this occuring too often since the overall time of the 'test' could be trebled by it. As such the sampler was under some degree of pressure to get the samples from the tail quickly and efficiently - and do so under the eyes of four or five not altogether friendly farm workers who regarded the whole exercise as a waste of their time [it was a statutory test for which they were not paid].

A test would often begin well and I would have every animal flying through the 'crush' and a rich flow of blood filling each tube to the brim. Then, twenty or thirty animals in, you would suddenly get a difficult one. Now the farmers would not notice - I would 'fiddle the tube' in situ and get the blood, albeit in a miserable dribble. Now heres the weird bit. From that animal onward you would fight and struggle to get the blood into the tube. You would do it without recourse to the neck vein - but you would fight. You did nothing different in your positioning of the needle, the tail, your insertion etc - but every one would be hard. This would be visible in the difference between the early [full] tubes and the later [half empty] ones. That slight blow to your confidence would in some absolutely impossible to pinpoint way, affect your performance from that point on. I guess darts and snooker players have the same thing, and the trick would be to be able to put that slight hiccup behind you. But I knew many other testers who confirmed exactly the same phenomena and like me could never explain quite how it happens.