For the first time, I heard about the columns of light “beating into the sky” in the combination “north, shamans, cold night”. Of course, I took it for fiction. Shamans do not control light, and they do not have powerful searchlights at their disposal. Of course, the easiest way is not to believe it and take everything for fiction. But believing everything is even easier.
Later I heard about this again and again, and without any mention of shamans. Is this really possible? A little later, I happened to see photographs.
Just like a Christmas picture.
And here are two more pictures.
And the second is something special. But then they began to come across and instructions about atmospheric conditions. Quiet frosty weather. Ice crystals in the air. Who noticed them? But, nevertheless, these are already valuable indications. Food for thought.
It is difficult to imagine that light rushes vertically upward under the action of gravity, but you can imagine ice crystals slowly falling in the air under the action of gravity, and that they somehow influence the behavior of light.
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Descartes studied the rainbow using a huge raindrop model in the form of a glass sphere filled with water. Why am I worse than Descartes? Worse. Descartes was of "noble blood". He had money. But in order to use the simplest model of an ice crystal - an ordinary prism - even if it does not at all look like an ice crystal, you do not need to "ennoble" your blood at all.
But no matter what shape the ice crystal may have, no matter how decently it behaves when falling through the air at rest, after all, it cannot direct light straight up? After all, here it is necessary not only to direct the light, but to collect it from all sides? Yes, even electronically controlled crystals cannot cope with this!
Still, I took my prism, turned on my desk lamp, and experimented a bit. I made sure that the prism scatters light rather than collects it. And if it does, then only at a distance less than the size of the leg of its narrow edge. You cannot organize a column of light with its help. These pillars of light only deceive us. A kind of Fata Morgana.
But do we still see these pillars of light? Yes, but we see not a pillar at all, but light reflected from ice crystals. Reflection of light from many crystals gives us a picture of a column of light. You have to look in a completely different direction. Do not try to simulate a column of light, but look for how it arises as a result of light reflection from crystals. After all, the rainbow does not exist. But we, nevertheless, see it. And each his own and each in a different place.
To get the right answer, you have to ask the right question. The correct question is already half of the solution.
I looked at my prism again in the light of the table lamp. But I looked not where the column of light should have appeared, but what "signal" the prism itself was sending me. And in the side face of it, I saw the reflection of the lamp. This was the answer to the right question.
Please look at the picture.
Imagine that a slowly falling ice crystal has a facet about 45 degrees to the horizontal as it falls through the air. Reflection of light only from this edge can get into our eyes. Move the crystal away from the vertical, coming from the light source. Reflection from this edge will hit anywhere, but not in our eyes. Therefore, we see only reflection from those crystals that are in the space that forms a column above the light source. But there is no concentration of light in this space. Light spreads in all directions equally. There is no “pillar” of light. This, as almost always, is an apparent phenomenon. Everything only seems to us.
It also becomes clear that the length of the “pillar” is limited. The higher the ice crystal in the air, the less chance that light from it will enter our eyes.
It is quite clear that such a pillar can arise from any sufficiently low light source, including from a bright fire. Apparently, shamans are observant not only in relation to the human psyche, but can also observe the influence of weather on various natural phenomena. Everything that we do not understand, we are ready to attribute to mysterious phenomena emanating from the spiritual power of various kinds of shamans. Therefore, various "rulers of human souls" at all times collected knowledge, but this knowledge became secret. They never shared them with the people. The enlightened people are more difficult to deceive. It is not long before that, instead of offering gifts, they will be beaten for attempting to deceive, and even forced to earn their own food.
Johann kern