On the night of December 29-30, 1902, at 1:05 in Paris, almost all wall pendulum clocks stopped. This incredible event was described in the first issue of the journal "Bulletin of Knowledge" in 1903. The publication said that at this moment many Parisians felt dizzy, accompanied by nausea and fainting.
The director of the central meteorological station in Paris then officially announced that no atmospheric anomalies had been observed for all this time. Seismographs have not recorded a single case of ground vibration. However, according to the assumption of experts, it was a geophysical phenomenon that took place, since only the pendulum instruments stopped, and the Parisian failure had no effect on the spring clock.
It is known that a pendulum in a clock oscillates under the influence of gravity. Such a simultaneous stop of all pendulums could have happened if, for example, that night in Paris, the force of gravity was removed in one fell swoop, and all the inhabitants would be in a state of weightlessness, and, accordingly, the pendulums too. The same scenario would be possible if the entire geographic area were in a state of free fall overnight.
Since this is practically impossible, it remains to assume that oscillations have arisen, in phase opposite to the oscillations of the pendulums. And when the vibrations were summed up, they mutually annihilated. In any of the options, the person will experience nausea and dizziness and, of course, will be very scared. Which is exactly what happened to the Parisians. Alarmed people demanded an explanation of the incident from the authorities, but did not get a clear answer.
Rotating the Earth
But here's what is interesting to know: on that night in Paris, only the pendulums of the clock stopped, or all the instruments making oscillatory movements, for example, the famous Foucault pendulum? Let us recall what it is.
Promotional video:
In the middle of the 19th century, Jean Foucault invented a device that clearly demonstrates the rotation of the Earth. At first, the scientist conducted an experiment in a narrow circle. Later, Louis Bonaparte learned about this experience. In 1851, the future French emperor Napoleon III invited Foucault to repeat the experiment publicly under the dome of the Pantheon in Paris. During the experiment, the scientist took a load weighing 28 kilograms and hung it from the top of the dome on a wire 67 meters long. At the end of the load, he fixed a metal point.
The pendulum oscillated over a circular fence, along the edge of which sand was poured. With each swing of the pendulum, a sharp rod, fixed to the bottom of the load, dropped the sand about three millimeters from the previous place. After about two and a half hours, it became clear that the swinging plane of the pendulum rotates clockwise relative to the ground.
In an hour, the oscillation plane turned by more than 11 degrees, and in about 32 hours it made a full revolution and returned to its previous position. The scientist thus proved that if the Earth's surface did not rotate, Foucault's pendulum would not show a change in the plane of oscillation.
So, in the journal of observations of the Foucault pendulum, which was kept by the servants of the Pantheon, on the night of December 29-30, 1902, no anomalies in the "behavior" of the device were recorded, that is, the pendulum oscillated as always, without any deviations or stops.
Ordered to be silent
For a long time, this fact was considered indisputable. Until the French journalist Jacques Lemieux took over in 1998. After conducting an investigation, he established that a certain Claude Rando was on duty that night in the Pantheon. It is clear that this person has long been gone in this world, but Jacques managed to find the granddaughter of this attendant, Madame Christine Chardren. She remembered that her grandfather had once told her that on that unfortunate night and Foucault's pendulum behaved unusual.
Judging by the traces drawn by the tip of the rod in the sand, it changed the amplitude of the oscillations and, probably, even stopped for a while. My grandfather did not see the very moment of this stop - you will not follow the pendulum without taking your eyes off! But Rando made an entry in the observation log. However, the sheet with this entry was subsequently removed from the journal. Instead, another was pasted in, where it was written that the night passed without incident.
The authorities strictly ordered Claude to be silent about what happened. Jacques Lemieux managed to track down this magazine, and he was convinced that Madame Chardren told him the truth. The leaf in the magazine was indeed replaced. It is not clear to whom and why it was required.
Who's guilty?
Why did the Paris crash happen? There are many versions, and some of them are completely exotic.
For example, it is believed that stopping the pendulums of a clock in Paris is an alien pampering. They, they say, conducted a kind of psychological experiment, wishing to follow the reaction of earthlings to such an extraordinary incident. The same Jacques Lemieux managed to establish that on the night of December 29-30, 1902, an unknown object in the form of a large dark-purple ball was recorded in the sky over Paris, crossing the capital of France from the south-east to the north-west. Information about this was in the Parisian newspapers.
An even more exotic version is that on this night in the Paris area, a miniature neutron star pierced the Earth through and through, like a needle. It is an astronomical object that is one of the end products of stellar evolution. It usually occurs after a supernova explosion. The masses of neutron stars are comparable to the mass of the Sun, but the typical radius is only 10-20 kilometers. Many neutron stars have extremely high rotational speeds, up to thousands of revolutions per second.
And if such a cosmic "drill" pierced the planet that crossed its path, it is quite possible that it slipped past it without even noticing and without causing serious damage. But the powerful impulse of the gravitational wave, which arose in this case, brought the bodies that met on its way into a short-term state of weightlessness and stopped the pendulums. And if radios, televisions and other electronic devices already existed at that time, the effect would be even more amazing.
It is possible that the Paris outage is associated with high solar activity. At the moment of solar activity, a release of matter with strong electromagnetic energy occurs, and if it is directed to the Earth, then the amount of matter does not affect gravity, but a strong disturbance of the planet's magnetic field occurs.
Since a large number of parts of mechanical watches are made of light, conductive metals, a change in the induction field can exceed the force of gravity and change the period and amplitude of movement of the parts, which for a watch means a violation of the course or a stop. This version is interesting, but does not explain why the spring clock did not stop.
It is possible that the experiments of the great scientist Nikola Tesla led to the Paris crash. It was during these years that he was engaged in the study of magnetic fields and high frequencies in his laboratory, conducted experiments on the transfer of electricity without wires over long distances. Some believe that the Tunguska meteorite is the work of Tesla. In this case, the Parisians got off with a slight fright.
Finally, the most down-to-earth version: the message in the “Messenger of Knowledge” is an ordinary duck. Allegedly, the new publication needed a sensation in order to increase interest in it and increase circulation, but in reality there was no failure.
One can object to this: the stopping of the clock excited the whole city. At that time, news was mostly learned not from newspapers, but passed on "by word of mouth." The mysterious incident was widely and vividly discussed even before the publication of the "Vestnik" issue.
As you can see, there are many versions, but none sheds light on the nature of this mysterious phenomenon. And most likely, we will never know the truth about the Paris crash.