Lightning May Cause Hallucinations

[n2doc]

By Alexandra Witze, Science News May 20, 2010 | 4:05 pm | Categories: Brains and Behavior


Talk about a flash of insight. Lightning strokes could stimulate people’s brains and cause them to hallucinate bright blobs of light the same way a medical procedure that applies magnetic fields to the brain does, two physicists propose. The findings could help explain some reports of “ball lightning,” mysterious floating orbs that have been reported for centuries but are poorly understood. A paper describing the idea will appear in Physics Letters A.

“We don’t claim to have a solution for the mystery of ball lightning,” says study co-author Alexander Kendl, a plasma physicist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. “But this is a possible hypothesis.”

Lightning forms when electrical charges become physically separated in a storm cloud and build up electrical potential between them, which is then discharged in the sudden bolt. Strokes typically come in clusters. In some cases, Kendl says, they can come extremely rapidly: something like 20 to 60 lightning strokes, each on the order of 100 milliseconds long, raining down over the course of several seconds.

These rare repetitive strokes, Kendl’s team found, generate magnetic fields that are very similar — in strength and in how they rise and decay over time — to those used in a brain-stimulation technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS.

Working with Innsbruck graduate student Josef Peer, Kendl calculated that repetitive lightning strokes would trigger phosphenes “astonishingly well.” A person would need to be within about 200 meters of the lightning to experience the effect.

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/05/ball-lightning-hallucinations/

[samplegirl]

1. So thats what's wrong with me this week!

:eyes:

[mzteris]

2. That explains FLORIDA! n/t

[RC]

3. The idiots that came up with idea are themselves Hallucinating.

There are no magnetic fields associated with lightning. Anybody ever notice any iron or steel items jumping around during a thunder storm? Me neither.

[w4rma]

4. It sounds like you think you know how everything in the world works so perfectly

that you can spout nonsense on a topic you don't know anything about. These scientists are talking about fast, repetitive lightning bursts in large numbers.

[RC]

6. Post your proof.

You know nothing about me, my education or areas of expertise.
Lightning is static electricity, you take it from there.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. There are no magnetic fields associated with electricity in motion?

Okay.

[caraher]

7. These look familiar to you?

Pay attention to the last equation, and note that while the precursor to a lighting strike is a buildup of static electric charge, the lightning stroke itself involves lots of charge IN MOTION

[Ptah]

8. Thanks for this story and link.

Fascinating!

:thumbsup:

[Sancho]

9. From the lightning capital of the world: it's not true!

Everyone here knows you have to wear a proper hat in a T-storm!

:tinfoilhat: :crazy: :tinfoilhat: :crazy: