Have You Ever Photographed Something You Can't Explain?

Personally, I don't really believe in all things paranormal, and most stuff you see on TV is obviously fake, but watching an old documentary last night did get me thinking a little, with one or two of the cases seeming pretty genuine. So, with so many photos being taken by people here, going back decades, it got me wondering whether anyone was intentionally, or accidentally photographed something you couldn't explain?

I had quite few things to happen to me, but seldom it could get photographed, as it was a coincidence of few things or a process. And I do not have bodycam on me, which I do regret deeply. 😂

In time, I find less stuff paranormal, and attribute it to rather unexplained. Did you ever read deeper explanation of the word "paradox"? These are completely logical things, for which we are too dumb to understand them broadly enough, making substitute reductionist simulations for these things and for ourselves to cope with it.

It starts with helium filled, or even hot air baloons. 😁

If you're looking for real unexplained things... no, unfortunately not!

But here's something I call ghostberries 😉:

Ghostberries by simple.joy, on Flickr

Long ago a shot in the woods showed some white blobs which weren't in the scene. Wife said she'd read about that on Facebook being attributed to the paranormal.

Much later I figured it was blur circles off of sunlit rain ...

Image is long gone, was just a snap with a point-and-shoot Kodak.

This is either three jets turning on command to "Come to heading...", or they were swerving to avoid hitting something in the sky.

Is this just a shaft of sunlight, or is the jet scrambling to avoid getting caught by an alien's searching beam?

😊

Steve Thomas

Few things happened to me too but I never took it upon me to capture images while such occurrences took place. I'm certain there's a great deal more of paranormal activity around here (where I grew up and still live) as I live very much nearby two cemeteries. In fact I'm up two stories and from the frontside windows I look down on one of the two while the second is about 150 yards further down the street. Difference between them is the one being for Roman Catholics (outside my window) with the other being a general cemetery. Personally I am opposed against recording any of the activity, merely out of respect for anyone's essence who I could potentially be capturing once I would do so, among them perhaps even a family member.

Not photographed but you give me the opportunity to tell a very recent story. I have been living on a property surrounded mostly by light cattle grazing and light forest. I heard a sound off in the distance one day that I initially attributed to a cow calling her calf, but it wasn't quite that. Then I heard it again and thought it a bull, but no just a bit too high pitched. Suddenly I thought a mid sized conch being blown. But there are no other people living close enough and I couldn't imagine anyone wandering around with a conch shell around here. A few days later while looking for things to shoot, I saw the top of an old windmill above the trees. So I made my way over there and took a few pics. While just starting to walk back down the track there was this very loud highish pitched noise that sent a chill down my spine. The wind had started the windmill and it needed some grease. A paranormal instant until my mind processed what it was...

Talking of balloons or boats for that matter, the standard description of buoyancy (Archimedes) doesn't fit well with me.

It's not that I think it's wrong, it's just that everyone always says "less dense objects submerged in a denser medium rise because they are less dense".

I'm pretty sure that the reason I struggle with this is density of a different kind, but the question I have long asked myself is "how does a less dense object know that Archimedes declared it has to rise?".

I prefer to think of things in terms of net forces. Where does the net upward force come from? There must be upward and downward forces at play (and sideways, I'm assuming these cancel out) but what is the cause of a less dense region netting out to an upwards force?

There must be a way of expressing buoyancy in terms of forces, but it seems to not be something I can intuit. I get all muddled up trying to think of volumes and surfaces areas, forces and reaction forces, the kinetic motions of vibrating molecules and so on. No wonder sensible people stick with Archimedes' model...

And another thing that has always bugged me. Special relativity tell us that the speed of light in a vacuum is the universal speed limit for anything moving through spacetime (presumably spacetime itself can expand unfettered) and Maxwell worked out the speed. But why is the speed of light the value it is rather than some other number? I've read that lightspeed is constrained by universal constants (permittivity of free space??) but if so, why are these constants the values they are? It's questions all the way down...

@DavidMillier:
Bhaha don't get me started on gravity itself, on celestials objects holding their orbits because of stability between gravity and kinetic energy (utter BS) and such...

Well, for the density and buoyancy, I hope I can help. All matter is moved by gravity. Gravity force is given by mass. Force in newtons is F=m*a. If the object of volume 1cu.ft is pushed by force 10N, and another more dense object is pushed down by the force of 100N, then the heavier object will try to move towards the gravity. The lighter object will get moved around or past this heavy object, seemingly rising up as long as the force of the heavy object pushes on it to get to the center of the gravitational pull. I.E. buoyancy is very poor secondary effect description, not a real basic property. The reality is that the heavier object is pushed into the gravitational pull "base" strongly enough to push anything else out.
So it'd not that stuff is buoyant. It's that heavier stuff pushes its way, leaving lighter stuff behind.

Orbits: If a body is suspended at height above a planet at rest relative to the planet's surface and then released, gravity will drag it straight down to the ground. It falls. Orbits are possible when the body also has a sideways velocity sufficient that as it falls down, it also moves laterally to clear the surface, escape over the horizon and keep missing the ground. If you reduce the sideways velocity, it will hit the ground before its sideways velocity carries it beyond the edge of the planet. if you increase the sideways velocity sufficient to exceed the pull of gravity it will arc away into space in a widening curve.

This is why there is a clear relationship between the height of the orbit and the required sideways velocity. If the orbit were only 1 metre above the surface, to stay in orbit would requires a sideways velocity sufficient to traverse the full radius of the planet before it had fallen the 1 metre to the ground. Geo stationary orbits occur at a height where the sideways speed necessary to constantly miss the ground equals the rotation speed at the equator.

Buoyancy: so you are saying that if two objects have the same volume but different mass, the massive object will feel a stronger downwards pull. That makes sense. But then I get confused. The heavier object will not accelerate downwards faster because its extra mass also gives it an equal increase in inertia (hammer vs feather on the moon). So this is not about relative acceleration. Are you saying that the heavier object simply pushes more surrounding material out of the way than a lighter object can to make space for it to fall into? I'm finding it hard to visualise how that works, but my own half thought through idea of how this might work runs something like this:

1. If you imagine a rigid platform, something like a thick concrete raft
2. And a wooden block of a fixed size placed on it
3. The block does not sink into the concrete irrespective of the density of the block: you can make it out of balsa or mahogany, it's just sits there, unmoving
4. I presume this is the result of the Pauli exclusion principle not allowing the concrete and the block to occupy the same space: an upward reaction force equal and opposite to the downward force from gravity
5. This occurs because of the strength/rigidity of the block and the platform and with two rigid objects, it's not really correct to describe this as buoyancy
6. To be talking about a buoyancy scenario, we have to replace the rigid concrete platform with a weaker substance that cannot maintain its shape when subjected to a force; in other words a fluid
7. With a fluid, as the blocks falls down into it, instead of fully resisting it downwards movement, the fluid parts and flows around the block leaving a void into which the block falls. And as it falls it will continue to push more fluid out of the way.
8. However, the fluid (let's call it green slime) has some strength: it will not flow away infinitely fast and it will still offer some resistance to the descent of the block. This partial resistance will slow the rate of descent of the block.
9. The descent rate will also depend on the weight of the block. The heavier it is, the more force it will apply to the slime pushing it out the way more quickly and thus the quicker it will descend.
10. The rate of descent therefore depends on the weight of the block and the internal strength of the slime.

To my mind this partial model sort of explains why blocks of different weights will descend at different rates, it might even explain a floating equilibrium if the block is light enough to apply insufficient force to break the structural integrity of the slime in which case the slime is behaving like concrete, not a fluid. But it fails utterly to explain upwards buoyancy. If you took a lightweight block and forcibly buried in the slime then let go of it, why (under this model) would it shoot up to the surface? It can't. Something either missing or broken in the logic of the model...

Now if someone wouldn't mind fixing it for me.....😄

Geosynchronous orbit

Bodies at rest relative to the planet's surface at the equator may fall, hover or rise depending on whether they are within, at, or outside of the height of a geosynchronous orbit.

@DavidMillier I am thinking the stability of the orbit. By the description we are getting, It is complete nonsense that the gravity pull is exactly offset by speed in a balanced matter. Stuff would either collapse or fly away given the orbit would be disrupted by meteorit or just pull from other planets. The orbit is quite firmly set and held. It can change due to various reasons, but the orbit is not an outcome from perfect balance between gravity and speed. They explain it with reversed causality. There is something quite firm setting the orbit.

Well, if the object is heavy enough, it will fall through concrete too... Doesn't matter much what is the state of the matter for general description. Well, when you move through the air, you push it around you by forcing yourself in the direction. Same thing, doesn't have to be vertical really.

As I laid out, every matter has its weight and forces. So if you let a metal piece fall through thick slime, you have to substract the forces and also calculate with inertias and drag. That is unnecessarily complicated for the basic idea.

@AlanSh: In our country, the word for a cop (policeman) is "Policajt". And so by polymerisation of monocajt, you get polycajt. I wonder what monocajt is then... 🤪 Early stage, like pokémon?

Does it count if I was heavily intoxicated while taking pictures? Can't explain a lot of photos I took.

Paranomalwise, I got nothing.

This must be why IT folks think they're so indispensable...

Where does the pressure difference come from? Is it the height difference between the top and bottom of the block within the density gradient of the surrounding medium? I did try to explain hot air balloon flight once in terms of the forces on the top side and bottom side of the balloon arising from the differential energy of brownian motion on the low pressure side (top) vs high pressure side (bottom). I thought it promising but it never quite seemed to make complete sense. I was left with this nagging feeling I was omitting important stuff. A friend I tried this on implied I was slightly loopy to try and explain buoyancy with kinetic theory, and recommended reading up on the works of the guy in the bath. But the Archimedes picture always seemed a bit slippery to me in the sense that while it explains what happens in a practical sense it doesn't provide the step by step causal physical explanation I'm drawn to. Normally when you explain motion it comes back to Newton, but not with ballooning and sailing for some reason. My friend said "Different layers of explanation are appropriate for different purposes", you don't explain balloons with appeals to quantum field theory. I thought that a bit of a mischaricterisation of what I was trying to do, which was simply to understand something in terms of concepts I was already comfortable with. Sadly, I don't have what it takes to work it all out from first principles myself, hence the muddled attempts.