Probably everyone knows what a poltergeist is today. Quite a lot has been written about the tricks of the "noisy spirit" (this is how this word is translated from German). There is no shortage of hypotheses, one way or another, explaining the nature of this phenomenon, and yet, it seems to us, the explanation proposed by a resident of Nizhny Novgorod A. B. Arefiev, deserves a separate description.
I'll start from a distance, he writes. At the beginning of our century, in the village of Ivlevo, Nizhny Novgorod province, one hut suddenly became “restless”. It was rumored that cups, spoons and other utensils move by themselves in it - in no way someone has caused damage, conjured that is …
To drive out the evil spirits, the owner invited a priest, and for order - also a police officer. Yes, embarrassment happened to them. The saber of the police officer who entered suddenly began to jump out of its scabbard and fall back by itself. And the censer of the priest, as it “waved” to the side, hung in such a strange position. Frightened ministers of the law and the church hurried out …
But in the hut it was necessary to exist further - not to live on the street? And the "miracles", completely unnecessary, continued. The compassionate neighbors offered to send for the sorcerer, but the owner of the hut solved the problem much easier. He poured a little kerosene into the firing of the stove, near which all the "miracles" were usually performed and set on fire. The kerosene first ignited normally, and then the explosion went off! The stove was almost blown apart, but the "evil spirits" really disappeared. Why?
Let's try to figure it out, let's conduct our logical investigation.
Some of the hypotheses that explain the poltergeist are taken from fantasy stories. For example, some suggest that the poltergeist is the traces of the impact of "aliens from outer space". Others say that "people of the future" or "people of the past" (literally - the souls of people who are no longer living) make themselves felt. Still others believe that next to us there is some other invisible "parallel" world …
All this, you see, although beautiful, is too fantastic. Or maybe look for simpler ways to explain? Where else do we encounter strange movements of small objects? It turns out - with an electrical discharge, lightning. Moreover, lightning can be ball. And she, as experience shows, is invisible, almost silent, and is also capable of transferring an object, breaking it into small pieces, causing a sonic boom, frightening infrasound, water hammer …
In addition, ball lightning in one case out of ten appeared precisely from the stove, and sometimes even in dry weather, when there was not even a trace of a thunderstorm. And if you remember folk tales, then it is behind the stove or near it that the kikimora lives - an evil spirit that moves tables and benches, drops pots and pots. There are, of course, naughty rats and gourmet cats, but you can't explain everything just by the tricks of animals.
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Have ball lightning been observed in poltergeist cases? In the short film "Bad Apartment", shown several years ago on TV in the program "Under the Sign of Pi", one of the eyewitnesses saw a light ball flashing by and disappearing in the dark. And he disappeared right into the wall. But what if the eyewitness was wrong? You never know what could seem to a frightened person?..
To test ourselves, let’s take the book "Harbingers of Spiritualism in the Last 250 Years," published in St. Petersburg in 1885. Eight cases are described in most detail there, and all of them are very similar to what we now call a poltergeist. Moreover, upon careful analysis, it turned out that six out of eight cases fall on the peaks of solar activity (during II years our star shines more and more, and then its intensity weakens). In six cases, it was in winter, when our Earth again approaches the Sun. "Stirring" of objects usually intensified towards evening, by about 20 o'clock, and then weakened (and this, by the way, coincides with the change in the electromagnetic field of the Earth during the day). Sometimes the intensification of the phenomena was noted with the strengthening of the wind. Sometimes cats suddenly began to scatter, and the dogs, on the contrary, huddled up to the owners. There were buzzing, buzzing, scratching, banging … And what is most interesting for us: in seven cases it was reported about moving objects, and also noted (in three cases) the appearance of smoke with a sulfuric smell, as well as globular luminous formations.
So look what we do. Some phenomena could give rise to increased electrification: the solar cycle, season of the year, time of day, wind … Others are just possible with increased electrification: the movement of objects, buzzing in the ears, hair pinching … And starting somewhere in 1961 a new science of friction - tribonics - tends to explain many types of friction precisely by electrostatic forces. For example, it is they who hold the book on the table. And if they disappeared, the book would slide across the table, as if on the slipperiest ice, and would fall all the time. So much for the spontaneous movement of objects …
Next, let's pay attention to sulfuric smoke and globular luminous formations. Are they not typical signs of either ball lightning, or gas clots, such bubbles?..
However, during some cases of poltergeist, eyewitnesses had the impression that someone was “talking” with people with a knock … Some scientists, instead of “space aliens” and “people from the future”, suggested explaining such phenomena by the presence of “self-organizing mind”, which, they say, with us and talks. But then another question immediately arises: “How is this mind organized? What is contained?"
Attempts to explain this paradox with the help of certain gluon and other fields are rather confusing and vague. Let's try to put forward our hypothesis - simpler. The forms of intelligence we know did not appear immediately. "Homo sapiens" was formed gradually. And just as gradually, he acquired that complex formation, which we call the brain, and from which processes, nerves, go to all parts of the body, allowing this body to be controlled.
One of the simplest nervous systems is hydra - a transparent small column of matter with tentacles. With the help of nerves, she nevertheless reacts to the influences of the external environment or the experimenter: squeezes and unclenches the body, bends in one direction or another, brings and withdraws the tentacles … Her nervous system consists of separate sensitive cells tied into a kind of string bag. But even such a simple device can do a lot. It is known, for example, that some experimenters grinded the hydra into a gruel, but nevertheless, from this gruel the hydra was reborn again. Can you call it "self-organizing mind"? I guess it's yes.
But then the poltergeist can be explained much more simply, without any aliens and mysterious gluon fields! We can look for the secret of "reason" in the same … ball lightning!
How does it work? In the laboratory of IV Podmoshensky in 1982 it was suggested that the substance of ball lightning is a clot of "filamentous aerosols". And a little later, in 1987, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences BM Smirnov suggested that these aerosols have a read of “fractal clusters” (“fractal” is a grain, a particle, “cluster” is a union). That is, in other words, the smallest particles of matter are joined into "twigs", and these "twigs" then create communities - something like cluster spiders. When these "spiders" by hundreds interlock with their "paws", a strong mesh structure is formed, which, apparently, allows the ball lightning to retain its appearance for a long time - sometimes even tens of minutes!
The most interesting thing here is that the "fractal cluster" in its appearance, like two drops of water, is similar to a neuron - a nerve cell, a particle of the thinking brain! This means that in explaining the poltergeist, we can completely do with one invisible ball lightning, without any space aliens! The mesh structure of ball lightning is the same thinking "string bag" capable of reacting to environmental changes in about the same way as hydra reacts to them. A kind of burning and thinking "string bag" flies and does whatever it pleases …
… This is how far our attempts to explain the mysterious poltergeist have taken us. Perhaps, of course, we are mistaken - there are no thinking "avoseks" and cannot be. But, you see, it is still more logical to assume their existence than to allow the intervention of some spirits and otherworldly forces?
As for the case in the peasant hut, which was mentioned at the beginning, this may have been the case. Ball lightning was especially frequent in this hut for natural reasons. (Somewhere in the ground there could be, say, deposits of magnetic ore, or this area had some other difference.) A similar anomaly could also arise because at this place some gas came out of the soil, which allowed the air to electrify. Well, when the peasant set fire to kerosene, this gas also caught fire. The conditions for the existence of an electric charge have changed - they crashed together with the accumulated gas. And that's all - the end of the poltergeist!
I agree that such an explanation may seem far-fetched to someone, A. B. finishes his letter. Arefiev. But, she-she, it is no worse than many others. And it allows you to focus on the laws of physics, and not on empty fantasies …
Author: S. Zigunenko