• Three cups of brewed coffee a day ‘triples risk of hallucinations’;
• ‘Visions link’ to coffee intake; and the alarmist
• Danger from just 7 cups of coffee a day.

all had the same theme: that drinking coffee can lead to an increased risk of hallucination and therefore seeing ghosts or sensing dead people around you.

As is usually the case with the reporting of scientific publications, the story reported is often not actually what the research indicates and the headline writers usually extrapolate things so that they become sensationalist! That is certainly the case with this study.

What was the study about?

In what are called “Diathesis-stress models of psychosis”, it is proposed that stress plays a role in the development of hallucinatory or schizophrenia-like experiences, which are enhanced by the stress hormone cortisol.

Caffeine has been found to increase the amount of cortisol released in response to stress and so it was proposed that ingestion of caffeine (not necessarily from coffee) would be associated with an increased proneness to psychotic-type experiences.

Previous studies in this area have used participants who have psychoses; however, there is a problem that any medication that they were on could interfere with caffeine. So in this study, the researchers used a ‘normal’ population of participants as it’s known that schizophrenia-like (or schizotypal) experiences occur in non-psychotic people too (the most common occurrence familiar to most people probably being hearing a voice in your ear).

What the researchers were looking for was to see whether:

1. Caffeine intake was associated with stress levels;
2. Caffeine intake was associated with hallucinatory experiences and/or persecutory ideation.

Results

The results showed that caffeine consumption was not associated with persecutory ideation, but it was associated with stress and it was associated with hallucinatory experiences. The effect, the size of the association, was found to be small however.

Associations or correlations do not prove causation, and it may be that caffeine causes hallucinatory experiences in people but it may just be that people who have hallucinatory experiences consume more caffeine. Or, it could be something else altogether that causes people to have hallucinatory experiences and to consume more caffeine.

What can we conclude?

From a skeptics’ point of view, we may be faced with people claiming that ghosts can be seen as the result of drinking coffee and such like; but this was really a huge extrapolation of the study’s findings by the media headline writers and not a conclusion of the study – which, incidentally, had nothing to do with ghosts or the paranormal.

What we can say is that the study’s findings support the hypothesis that caffeine consumption may have a small effect on psychosis-like hallucinatory experiences in people who are prone to stress and such experiences in the first place. The effect of caffeine on these experiences, if true, is so small that it probably has little or no meaning outside of a clinical setting.

This was a small, preliminary piece of research that was relevant to its own field, but it’s not an answer to seeing ghosts, hearing voices and other, what we might come across as paranormal, experiences.

The problem here is not the actual research or the researchers, but the media’s interpretation of it.

vbloke © 2006

This scheme ignored the actual stars themselves, but uniformity was more important than fussing about star positions.

Since then, precession has caused the celestial equator to wobble so as to cause the intersection point between it and the ecliptic to move westward along the ecliptic by 36° or a tenth of the way around.

Your birth sign ignores the effect of precession. What a horoscope calls “Aries” is the 30° segment along the ecliptic that is east of the current location of the vernal equinox – but today, most of it is in Pisces. The next 30° segment (called Taurus in the horoscope) is mostly in Aries. The astrological signs are directions in space that no longer correspond to the constellations that bear their names.

Precession causes the position of the sun on the vernal equinox to move as the earth wobbles on its axis – then again, the position of the sun varies on every date (analemma). This means that it is not only the names of the zodiac signs that are now wrong, the names of the tropics are also inaccurate!

This all dates to when the sun is within the constellation of your birth sign. According to astrology (corrected for precession – although these dates will vary slightly from year to year), you may find that you’re actually a different birth sign.

If you were born between November 30th and December 17th, you’re actually an Ophiuchus.

What happens in astrology is that the sun travels through the traditional 12 signs of the zodiac over the course of the year. Whatever sign the sun is in when you’re born is the sign you “are”. However, over the past 2,600 years (since the charts were drawn up), the precession of the earth has shifted the ecliptic westwards and now the sun visits the constellation of Ophiuchus during November/December. I very much doubt you’ll find a horoscope that takes this into account.

Capricorn: January 20th to February 16th
Aquarius: February 17th to March 11th
Pisces: March 12th to April 18th
Aries: April 19th to May 13th
Taurus: May 14th to June 21st
Gemini: June 22nd to July 20th
Cancer: July 21st to August 10th
Leo: August 11th to September 16th
Virgo: September 17th to October 30th
Libra: October 31st to November 23rd
Scorpio: November 24th to November 29th
Ophiuchus: November 30th to December 17th
Sagittarius: December 18th to January 19th

Since I’m no longer Cancer and am now Gemini “all of a sudden”, does this mean I’ll have to change my character and I can sue astrologers for giving me wrong information?

vbloke © 2006

Gravity obeys what is called the “inverse square law” – that is, it drops off rapidly the further you get, imagine standing next to a hot radiator – the heat is intense, but you feel it less the further you move away from it. True, the gravity of the planets reaches out for millions of miles, but in the case of Earth, the Sun and Moon overpower the combined gravity of every other planet in the solar system. Even the building you are standing in overpowers the gravity of Jupiter.

The electromagnetic force relies on the planets having an electric charge. Whilst the larger planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune) do, they are too far away for their relatively weak electric fields to affect us. The Sun’s electric charge dwarfs the entire electric output of all the planets. It’s like comparing a 1.5 volt battery to a power station.

So, this force must be something else. Something that does not diminish by distance and that helps tiny Pluto have the same effect as giant Jupiter.

Astrologers have sometimes said that there is a “quantum force” at work, neatly using Quantum Physics, something that is, let’s face it, very complicated and not easily understood unless you have a lot of PhD’s.

Here’s a quick note though. You might want to note this down for future reference. If something has “quantum” effects, it operates at the sub-atomic scale. Like the strong and weak nuclear force, quantum effects don’t work if you’re bigger than an atom. A lot of people claim “quantum effects” for all sorts of alternative therapies and products. Quantum effects operate on things so small, even the most powerful electron microscopes in the world cannot see them. Once you get to the size of a thousand thousandth of a millimetre, quantum effects no longer work. Write that down.

So, a “quantum force” would only work if Jupiter was an atomic nucleus and you were an electron.

When the zodiac was originally drawn up in around 600BC, astrologers knew about 6 planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. These were given arbitrary names and characters, as mankind likes to anthropomorphise things. Each planet was known to move around in the sky (the word “planet” actually means “wanderer” in ancient Greek) and appeared to follow the same line across the sky as the Sun and Moon – a line we call the Ecliptic. It is the constellations that lie on this line that we call the zodiac. Every planet passes through the constellations on their journey around the Sun.

So, so far we have six planets, the Moon and Sun and an unknown force. These were considered to affect your personality at the time of your birth.

Hang on, aren’t there nine planets?

All the planets past Jupiter are too far away to be seen properly without telescopes, so the ancients couldn’t have known about them. The telescope was invented around 1608 (not by Galileo, as often claimed, but by a Dutch spectacle maker that we don’t know the name of), this means that, whilst these planets obviously must be having an effect on your horoscope, they weren’t known about, so they couldn’t include them in their calculations.

For a start, this raises an interesting question – these planets had an effect, but couldn’t be included in horoscope calculations – why didn’t ancient astrologers notice this “extra” influence coming from somewhere? If, as they claim, astrology is a science, this effect should be measurable and quantifiable and the positions and sizes of these planets should be calculable by extrapolating from this extra influence. This never happened.

Uranus was discovered in 1781 by Sir William Herschel. Astrologers never saw it coming. Instead, Uranus was quietly included in their calculations. Suddenly, your horoscope changed to include this massive new planet that had always existed. Does the force that controls astrology only work when it’s seen? If we don’t know about something, does it have no effect? If so, you could cross a motorway safely, just by closing your eyes and wearing earplugs.

Neptune was discovered in 1846 by collaboration between Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams and Johann Gottfried Galle. See above.

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh. Pluto is a bit of an anomaly though, it’s tiny. Also, it’s orbit is what astronomers call “eccentric”; it orbits at an angle to the sun – the other eight planets all lie roughly within the same plane, but Pluto sits at an angle of 17°. It’s also the only planet whose orbit takes it inside the orbit of another planet – for a part of it’s year, Pluto is closer to the Sun than Neptune, the rest of the time, it’s further away. Why does Pluto have the same effect as it’s giant neighbour? To put it another way, Neptune is nearly 58 times the volume of Earth, whereas Pluto is smaller than Earth’s Moon.

What about Sedna? 2002UB313, the recently discovered planet candidate? The asteroid belt? The Kuiper Belt? Comets? Do these have an effect? Some of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter are larger than Mercury and Pluto! Do they have an effect? Why not? Things are looking a bit dodgy for astrology.

So, that’s it for planets – isn’t it?

No.

You see, every dot of light in the sky (apart from the planets) is a star. Our sun is a star as well, it just so happens that we’re very close to it. Do other stars have planets?

Yes.

Since 1989, planets have been found around other stars. In total so far, astronomers have discovered 188 “extrasolar” planets. 188! That’s a lot of planets.

Most of these are huge. In our solar system, Jupiter is the king of planets. It is huge – 1321 times the volume of Earth! Most of these extrasolar planets are what are called “Hot Jupiter’s” – planets that make Jupiter seem small. Some of them are truly gigantic – measured at up to 11 times the mass of Jupiter. 11 times! That’s one big planet.

Astronomers recently discovered a “cold Earth” – a rocky planet around 5 times the mass of Earth orbiting a distant star in our own galaxy. Surely this should affect your horoscope?

If, as astrologers would have us believe, their force does not diminish by distance, then these planets should have a measurable effect on your horoscope. We can’t see them directly, so why should they have an effect? Well, we can’t see Pluto, Sedna or 2002UB313 without very powerful telescopes, but these have been included in horoscopes as having effects, so why not these massive extrasolar planets? You see, these planets haven’t been given “traditional” names like our solar system planets, they’re called things like 16 Cyg B b, HD 216435 b and 55 Cnc d. What does that tell you about their characteristics?

Astronomers have theorised that most of the stars we can see might have planets. We can only detect them by inferring them from how they effect their parent star, so the process is slow and laborious. There are definitely more than 188 out there.

One day, your horoscope will have to include all these planets, but where will the line be drawn? Theoretically, there could be billions of planets in the observable universe. Your horoscope will be very cluttered and probably the size of the Encyclopaedia Britannica every day to include the effects of all these other planets. Phew.

Is that it?

No.

What happens when a star “dies”? Well, some stars explode violently in a supernova, some expand into red giants and then shrink, slowly cooling over billions of years. What could happen is, if one of these stars had a planetary system, some of these planets could be thrown out of their orbits and sent flying through the universe. A planet without a star. These would be almost impossible to see, but it is almost certain that there are some out there. Would these “wanderers” have an effect as well?

Astrologers want to claim their profession is a science. If so, then they have to play by the rules of science. Their force should have a measurable and predictable effect. We should be able to infer and predict things based on this force. No astrologer ever predicted Uranus, Neptune or Pluto based on their calculations, even though they must have been having an effect by their force acting on us. No astrologer predicted extra solar planets or recently discovered comets based on their calculations of the zodiac. No astrologer will tell you that the planets were named arbitrarily by the ancients, these names are used by astrologers to personify them and give them characteristics. Mars was the god of war – hence it controls aggression. This is because it has a reddish colour in the sky and red is the colour of aggression. What would your horoscope be like if it had been called Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting, or Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love?

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto’s names were decided by a vote. There was no consideration of their “characters” when they were named. What does this say about their effect on your horoscope?

John Jackson © UK-Skeptics

Spontaneous Human Combustion is the proposed phenomenon whereby human beings spontaneously combust without any external source of ignition, often burning away most of the body, yet leaving surrounding materials unburned.

Can human beings spontaneously combust?

To answer this we need to look at what combustion is. Under normal circumstances there are three requirements for combustion; often called the fire triangle:

1. An oxidising agent.
   
   There are many oxidising agents other than oxygen; however, with the case of domestic fires it is oxygen from the air that acts as the oxidiser.
   
   
2. A fuel.
   
   The fuel is the substance that reacts with the oxidizing agent during combustion.
   
   
3. A heat source.
   
   This could be a spark, a flame, or a hot item like a cigarette, burning coal, or the bar of an electric fire. This is what ignites the mixture of fuel and oxidizing agent.

Chemists have studied combustion in great detail because of the need to understand chemical hazards, and have shown that spontaneous combustion will only occur once a substance has reached a certain temperature; known as its ignition point. Spontaneous combustion occurs at the ignition point without the need for a heat source in a special class of reactions:

Many compounds are known to undergo Hypergolic reactions, which means that they will ignite or explode spontaneously on contact with an oxidising agent. Pyrophoricity is a special case of hypergolic reaction where the oxidising agent is (atmospheric) oxygen. Although there are some pyrophoric liquids and gases, most pyrophoric materials are metals.

The problem with this class of reactions and Spontaneous Human Combustion is that no pyrophoric compounds exist in the human body, nor is there an oxidising agent present. So it seems very unlikely, if not impossible, for human beings to combust spontaneously. A few alternative explanations have been suggested for an internal source of spontaneous combustion, such as Larry Arnold’s “Pyroton Particles”, but such explanations seem to be invented in order to match the theory rather than based on any evidence.

Although Spontaneous Human Combustion proponents believe that it involves an internal source of combustion, all accounts of burned bodies show that burning occurred from the outside in; many internal organs actually survive the burning, and in no cases are the internal organs burned more badly than the outside of the body.

This means that in cases of human combustion, an external source of ignition, a heat source, is required; which means that spontaneous combustion does not occur in human beings.

If we can not combust spontaneously, what is going on?

Spontaneous Human Combustion has probably been thought to exist because of the fact that bodies have been found where the torso has burned away completely, yet extremities, arms and legs, are left behind unburned. There’s often no obvious source of ignition and as surrounding furniture etc. is often undamaged, this can create the illusion that the body had burned from the inside out. This can lead those who are unaccustomed to investigating fire deaths jumping to false conclusions simply because they do not understand the dynamics of the phenomenon.

Indeed there are many sources of information which deal with Spontaneous Human Combustion and various explanations for the phenomenon have been postulated; however, most of these are unscientific. To get a truer perspective on Spontaneous Human Combustion we need to look at the professionals’ reports. Professionals such as forensic pathologists.

The truth is that there are no official, professional reports of any case of a fire death where spontaneous combustion (internal combustion without a heat source) has been reported as the cause.

Examples of Spontaneous Human Combustion:

This example, shown right, is a case of a woman who had parkinson’s disease. To someone not familiar with how bodies burn this can look inexplicable. The torso has disappeared, yet the legs are still there. In fact, paramedics had removed the remains of the torso before this photograph was taken.

It is known that the woman had been smoking and probably because of her parkinson’s condition dropped her cigarette and set her clothing alight. The wick effect (see below) soon comes into play and the body begins to burn. The cigarette would be completely burned in the fire, hence the apparent lack of an ignition source.

The reason that extremities are often left behind is because of the temperature gradient present in the burning body. Heat rises, and flames easily travel upwards. In a body, which does not easily support combustion itself, flames do not easily move downwards or even laterally.

To illustrate this point, Joe Nickell gives the following analogy:

It’s often thought that total destruction of the torso occurs in these cases. This is not actually true; the internal organs often survive. Again, this is because of the temperature gradient and the insulating properties of internal fluids which protect the organs from the high temperatures close by.

The image on the right shows a burned corpse where the heart and intestines have survived intact.

Even in cases as severe as this, forensic experts can often determine the cause of death; be it a fall, heart-attack, or even an attempt to cover up a murder. By far, the most common cause of the burning is ignition by cigarettes. Alcohol has also been implicated; especially in the 19^th century when it was believed that drinking too much alcohol could cause human flesh to become highly inflammable. This is now known not to be true. If alcohol is involved, it is more likely to be so in the role of making people more likely to fall asleep whilst smoking, or more likely to fall over into a fire place or onto a source of ignition such as a lamp; and of course, less likely to wake up should such an event occur.

Other causes include people having heart-attacks or strokes whilst smoking. Most victims of alleged Spontaneous Human Combustion are elderly and/or infirm which also adds the complication that if they set their clothing on fire, it would be difficult to deal with it should they become aware.

The wick effect.

The human body is known to be difficult to ignite, and it does not readily support combustion on its own. What can happen however, is if a body is ignited whilst clothed, the body fat can melt and be absorbed into the clothing that remains and this fat-soaked clothing acts like a wick, burning in a similar fashion to a candle, although an inside-out candle.

It was demonstrated in 1998 on BBC 1’s QED programme. A dead pig, which was chosen as pigs have a similar fat content to humans, was wrapped in cloth and set alight. It burned for five hours before the experiment was ended, and the fire largely consumed the pig’s body, including its bones, yet there was little heat damage to other items that had been placed in the room with it.

The fire produced by the wick effect is not a blaze; it’s more of a slow-burning smoldering. It gets very hot locally, possibly up to 500oC (note: the 2000+oC temperatures that some claim are needed to burn a body are not required), but it does not produce huge flames that could set other things alight. This is the reason why the burning stays localised. Also once the fat has been used up, the ash produced acts as an insulator for whatever was touching the corpse – such as the chair it is in. This too prevents other items igniting as the burning wanes.

Of course if other things were to ignite and the whole room went up in flames, it would just look like an ordinary house fire and no one would be looking at it as a case of Spontaneous Human Combustion.

The wick effect is most likely the true explanation for the way the body burns after ignition. It should be pointed out though, that in the QED experiment, petrol was used to ignite the pig’s corpse. This is because corpses, pigs’ or humans’, are not easy to ignite. This leaves us with the most problematic area in explaining apparent cases of SHC: how the bodies ignite in the first place.

Ignition and wick-effect burning.

Cases of claimed SHC are rare which suggests that the conditions necessary for wick-effect burning to occur are also rare. The most obvious requirement for a body to be set alight is that the person would have to be dead or greatly incapacitated; a heart attack, stroke, or severe inebriation being obvious candidates.

Cigarettes, or other tobacco and related products, are often cited as the initial cause of ignition. The problem with this is that cigarette ends, although very hot, do not set light to flesh; they can burn through skin but are extinguished in the process. Cigarettes, however, do readily set light to inflammable clothing and furniture. Whether cigarettes or some other source of ignition, the source is external.

The vast majority of fires that begin this way will spread and become a normal house fire. For a case to be described as SHC, the fire has to stay localised to the body. This is where the wick-effect comes into play. If body fat starts to melt and is absorbed by some clothing or sinks into the chair’s stuffing, the wick-effect takes over. This means that instead of large flames being produced which could spread the fire, localised burning takes place with small, hot flames which are fuelled as more fat melts as the body burns.

As long as the body is not too close to surrounding objects, the burning will not spread easily. Even newspapers, which burn readily if a flame is applied, require very high temperatures before they will combust spontaneously.

Lastly, as the body fat is used up the flames start to die away. The item that the body is sitting in or lying on is prevented from burning further by the insulating soot and ash that was produced in the fire.

Summary of requirements:

• A dead or incapacitated individual;
• a source of ignition;
• inflammable clothing or furniture;
• body fat melting;
• a potential wick such as clothing or furniture stuffing;
• enough isolation from surrounding objects to prevent direct ignition of them;
• the production of insulating soot and ash to prevent the fire burning further once the fat has burned off.

For a burning case to look like SHC, all of the above conditions need to be satisfied. This is probably what makes these cases so rare.

Conclusion.

Spontaneous Human Combustion as a phenomenon itself does not exist. It is most likely used as an explanation for deaths involving burning which occur under very unusual circumstances. Although it may seem impossible for a body to burn in a chair and leave most of the surrounding area untouched, the deaths can be explained without the need for fantastical theories.

An examination of the Phyllis Newcombe case by the Dutch Skeptics: Phyllis Newcombe.