Home

On:

During a routine patrol on August 10, 1990, Idaho Air National Guard pilot Lieutenant Colonel Bill Miller spotted a strange sight from the cockpit of his RF-4C Phantom fighter jet: a quarter-mile (0.4 kilometer) wide series of intricate geometric designs, carved into the dry lake bed of Mickey Basin, located southeast of the Steens Mountains in Idaho’s Alvord Desert. The design was later identified as a Sri Yantra Mandala, an ancient Hindu symbol. But how did this large and mysterious earthwork, not there the day before, appear seemingly overnight?
read more

On:

Have you ever met someone who was a genius on the brink of madness? In this riveting detour, Ian returns to tell of his time with a man who showed him that "aliens" might be more closely linked to the occult than outer space. But the more he learned about his friend the more Ian suspected he was crazy. And the more he thought his friend was crazy, the more evidence would present itself that, through the madness, he may have been seeing the truth.read more

On:

Neuroscientists are learning new tricks from professional magicians, as they struggle to understand how the brain works. Magicians take advantage of how our nervous systems, including our eyes and sense of touch, are wired to perceive "impossible" illusions (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show). In Live Science.com, Wynne Parry quotes researcher Susana Martinez-Conde as saying, "Scientists have only studied cognitive illusions for a few decades. Magicians have studied them for hundreds, if not thousands, of years."
read more

On:

How do magicians fool their audiences? In order to find out what’s going on in the brains of people who are watching magic tricks, researchers are using fMRI scanning technology on volunteers. Hey, it’s just one more more way to have fun in the lab!

In New Scientist, Ewen Callaway quotes neuroscientist Ben Parris as saying that brain scans serve as a “lie detector for magic tricks,” because they show us how our brains deal with things that just don’t add up.

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
read more