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Re: Golka video: Ball Lightning in lab. WHAT?!!!!!



Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: Mddeming@xxxxxxx
> I agree, What if everyone is lying or incompetent? What is there is a major
> conspiracy?

Who mentioned lies or conspiracies?  You're using a classic logical
fallacy called "straw man."

> What if we're observing something previously unknown that flies
> in the face of all known physics?
> Baloney!!!!!

If by "baloney" you mean that we should be very suspicious and test
things, then I agree.  The new stuff is very rare; maybe only 0.1% of
unusual observations are real.   Very probably the size-change is just a
camera artifact caused by extreme brightness change.

But if by "baloney" you're disparaging unusual possibilities, and you
think such things need no testing, then you're very wrong.  You've also
taken yourself out of the running in the race to find interesting new
phenomena.

Any amateur can stumble across interesting effects which 'real scientists'
haven't investigated.  In fact, when new discoveries are announced, very
often it turns out that many people saw the new effect over and over, but
dismissed it as uninteresting.  I've only found three genuine examples of
weirdness myself over the years.  If I had a habit of saying "baloney,"
then I almost certainly would have missed them.  "Research is to see what
everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought."  - Szent-
Gyoergi



> Unless one lives in sub-Saharan Africa, the sound of hoofbeats should make
> one think horses or cattle, not zebras.

But unless you actually go and look out the window, you're relying on
prejudice and probabilities and don't have actual knowledge.  One time out
of a million it *is* zebras.  If you're in the business of capturing
zebras (i.e. a scientist), then you need to develop a habit of being
suspicous about assumptions, of always checking to make sure, and steering
far clear of irrational emotional biases indicated by use of words like
"baloney."


"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-- that principle is contempt prior to investigation." - H. Spencer


On the other hand... are those large and glowing "balls" created by acetylene cutting torches as well as by arc welders? If an identical effect is produced by non-electric flame, then they probably have nothing to do with plasma.





> In a message dated 6/18/05 7:28:33 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
> Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> "But Golka claims that there's a salt-grain-sized metal fragment in the
> center of those 5mm glowing spheres rolling across the water.
>
> Really?  They have a solid core?  I'm suspicious!  What if Golka bases
> his
> claim NOT on evidence (such as shadowgraphs of dark cores in the center
> of
> those spheres.)  What if instead he ASSUMES that the metal grains were
> in
> the spheres.  Maybe they're not.
>
> What if the glowing sphere *is* the metal fragment?  What if our eyes
> aren't fooling us, and the glowing balls really do shrink down and turn
> into solid metal grains?  What if those glowing balls are something
> terribly weird; matter in a quantum state half way between plasma and
> metal: metal with its electron-sea pumped to stunningly high energy, not
> a
> metal at all but an extremely dense plasma of electrons bound to
> positive
> copper ions?"
>
>    If you look at the burn marks those things make as they skip across a
> piece of wood or paper you'll see that there isn't much difference in
> the diameter as the thing cools off.  I'll go for the illusion and
> almost constant diamter.
>
> Ed
>
>
>
>

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William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com                         http://amasci.com
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