Striking his head hard, especially bruising his forehead, a person sees a bright flash. Sometimes he feels like sparks are pouring out of his eyes. This phenomenon is well known. Such sparks, flashes, various bright spots, luminous balls and dots are called phosphenes. They appear without exposure to light on the eyes - even if you just press them with your fingers. The optic nerve transforms physical effects into all sorts of bizarre images.
As it was recently found out, phosphenes can also be induced in the process of so-called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), acting on the head with pulses of a rapidly changing magnetic field. This procedure, known for many years, makes certain areas of the brain respond - for example, the areas that control the muscles of the limbs. They begin to shrink in response.
Recently, scientists have been using TMS for research purposes: artificially turn on neurons with its help, imitating natural signals, and see what it leads to. Phosphenes are a kind of side effect of such manipulations.
Stimulated
From the most unexpected side, Austrian scientists approached the phenomenon of "sparks from the eyes" accompanying TMS.
“Our measurements and calculations have demonstrated,” says Alexander Kendl from the University of Innsbruck, “that the magnetic field used for the procedure is almost perfectly matched by its parameters to that which occurs during a thunderstorm - when lightning strikes.
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As the researcher explains, each thunderstorm discharge directed from the heavens is accompanied by reverse strikes - lightning, which are attracted from the earth to the sky. Sometimes 20 such blows occur in 1 - 2 seconds. It is they who generate the rapidly changing magnetic field. As with TMS.
To see phosphenes, and in fact, visual hallucinations, a person must be no more than 200 meters from the flash of linear lightning.
Kendl and his associate Joseph Peer believe that fireballs appear first of all in front of the eyes of those caught by "natural stimulation", which slowly float or jump chaotically. But this is how eyewitnesses describe ball lightning - in the form of small spherical objects that appear at eye level. Appear during a thunderstorm and, as a rule, after a linear lightning strike.
Conclusion: fireballs - of course, not all, but at least some of them are just visual hallucinations. In this case, the “inexplicable” miracle, which observers sometimes report, becomes explainable. Allegedly, ball lightning penetrates through glass. Or through the keyholes. Or even pass through walls. And here is the solution - it only seems.
People don't see it yet
The amazing effects of TMS were observed in his experiments by the Canadian professor of neurology Michael Persinger. While stimulating the volunteers, he found in the brain such a region - in the temporal lobe of the right hemisphere - the effect of a magnetic field on which caused mystical hallucinations.
The subjects, who were alone in a closed room during the procedure, reported that inexplicable fear rolled over them. But most importantly, there was a feeling that someone was nearby. Or something.
The professor's experiments were attended by 900 people. More than 700 of them "met with guests." Some were deceased relatives, and some were representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations.
Who knows, maybe people who talk about encounters with the other world and aliens actually see hallucinations caused by thunderstorms?