10/31/2017 Ghostbusters!

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40 percent of Americans believe in —but no one can prove that they’re real.

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STANDARDS Ghostbusters! PHY NGSS: Core Can ghostly phenomena (/PAGES/TOPICS Idea: LS1.D Light & CCSS: be explained by science? Sound (/Pages/Topics/Li Literacy in Sound.Html), Science: 8 Electricity OCTOBER 30, 2017 & TEKS: 6.9, (HTTP://SCIENCEWORLD.SCHOLASTIC.COM/ISSUES/2017- Magnetism 7.3A, 8.3D, 18/103017.HTML) (/Pages/Topics/El P.7B By Jacob Batchelor Magnetism.Html)

ESSENTIAL QUESTION:

Bookmark What steps might scientists follow when searching for JUMP TO explanations to natural Teaching Resources phenomena?

READING LEVEL

1040L You’re home alone in the middle of the night, and a floorboard creaks behind you. https://scienceworld.scholastic.com/issues/2017-18/103017/ghostbusters.html#1040L 1/12 10/31/2017 Ghostbusters!

Go Back to Issue The hair on the back of your (http://scienceworld.scholastic.com/issues/2017-neck rises. Your heart starts 18/103017.html) to race. You get a sinking feeling that someone—or something—is standing just out of sight. But when you muster up the courage to look... nothing’s there.

Is your house haunted? Was it just your imagination? Or could it be something else entirely? About 40 percent of Americans believe in ghosts, but so far scientists have found no evidence of activity.

So what causes these spooky phenomena? There are three leading theories. Find out how sound waves, electromagnetism, and your own imagination may be responsible for the things that go bump in the night.

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Sounding Off https://scienceworld.scholastic.com/issues/2017-18/103017/ghostbusters.html#1040L 2/12 10/31/2017 Ghostbusters! A video describing the characteristics of sound waves

EERIE SOUNDS

One night at a laboratory in England, something spooky happened. More than 30 years ago, an electrical engineer named Vic Tandy was working late when he was overcome with a strong feeling of discomfort. He was alone, but he couldn’t shake the impression that he was being watched. Out of the corner of his eye, he he saw a strange, gray apparition. After a few tense moments, Tandy turned to face the . But as he did, the figure vanished.

After some investigation, Tandy found that an air- conditioning unit in the room was producing infrasound. These low-frequency sound waves vibrated at a rate that was too low for him to hear (see How Sound Waves Work). Even though our ears don’t register infrasound, it can still affect our bodies.

https://scienceworld.scholastic.com/issues/2017-18/103017/ghostbusters.html#1040L 3/12 10/31/2017 Ghostbusters! Tandy did more research and discovered that the infrasound was at just the right frequency to vibrate the human eye. He believed that vibrations caused a distortion in his vision—the gray figure from his spooky night at the lab—and his feelings of discomfort. Tandy went on to uncover sources of infrasound at other well-known “haunted” locations in England. He came to believe that most experiences of the paranormal are actually encounters with sources of infrasound.

HOW SOUND WAVES WORK

When an object vibrates, the air around it vibrates as well. These vibrations travel through the air as sound waves.

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SCIENCE WORLD

CHARGED UP

A different theory suggests that encounters with ghost- like phenomena may be caused by small changes in electromagnetic fields (EMFs). An EMF is a field produced by charged objects. The field spreads out from an object as various forms of waves (see Energy Waves). Sources of EMFs include just about everything from wall sockets to thunderstorms. Humans can’t directly perceive most of these EMFs. But some scientists think EMFs may affect the in subtle ways.

Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist at in Canada, first became interested in the paranormal while he was studying the human brain. He found that applying weak https://scienceworld.scholastic.com/issues/2017-18/103017/ghostbusters.html#1040L 5/12 10/31/2017 Ghostbusters! magnetic fields to the temporal lobe—a region of the brain associated with perception and memory— could cause people to have paranormal-like experiences. He wanted to know if this phenomenon might explain ghost sightings around the world. “Almost all great scientific discoveries started by exploring an unexplained phenomenon,” says Persinger. “I knew that investigating these experiences might tell us a great deal more about how the human brain is organized.”

ENERGY WAVES

Electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, can produce many types of electromagnetic radiation. These energy waves are arranged on a spectrum in order of wavelength (distance between a wave’s

https://scienceworld.scholastic.com/issues/2017-18/103017/ghostbusters.html#1040L 6/12 10/31/2017 Ghostbusters! peaks). As wavelength decreases, the wave’s energy increases.

MAGICTORCH

Persinger created a device that applied weak EMFs to specific regions of a person’s brain. During Persinger’s experiments with the device, about 80 percent of participants in his studies experienced at least one strange “paranormal” sensation, such as an unexplained presence, vivid images, or strong emotions. Persinger thinks many ghostly experiences are caused by similar EMFs found naturally in the environment.

Not everyone is convinced by Persinger’s work, however. Christopher French, a psychologist at the University of London in England, decided to test both the EMF and infrasound theories. French https://scienceworld.scholastic.com/issues/2017-18/103017/ghostbusters.html#1040L 7/12 10/31/2017 Ghostbusters! and his team installed electromagnets and infrasound generators in a London apartment and invited volunteers to visit. The participants were told that they might be subjected to EMFs, infrasound, both, or neither. Some volunteers experienced symptoms of a supernatural encounter. But French says he didn’t find enough evidence to prove that EMFs or infrasound were factors.

“These ideas are interesting and worthy of further study, but the evidence is at best mixed in their support,” says French. “For now, the jury is still out, and we must await the results of future studies.”

ZACARIAS PEREIRA DA MATA/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM Ghost sightings usually involve blurred or invisible presences that can be explained by other factors.

https://scienceworld.scholastic.com/issues/2017-18/103017/ghostbusters.html#1040L 8/12 10/31/2017 Ghostbusters! ALL IN OUR MINDS?

Infrasound and EMFs aren’t the only theories that could explain ghostly phenomena. These occurrences could also be psychological—having a mental instead of a physical cause.

French argues that suggestibility—the tendency that people have to misperceive or misremember events in line with their expectations—is a big factor. “If you are told that a particular building is haunted, you are much more likely to notice even slightly anomalous experiences, such as unexplained noises, and to attribute them to ghostly intervention,” he says.

Scientists may not agree on what causes paranormal experiences, but that won’t stop them from continuing to investigate the mysterious— and sometimes scary—parts of our world. It’s that act of inquiry that’s most important, says Persinger. “The subject

https://scienceworld.scholastic.com/issues/2017-18/103017/ghostbusters.html#1040L 9/12 10/31/2017 Ghostbusters! matter of science is the unknown. The scientific endeavor is seeking to understand the mechanisms behind the phenomena around us.”

CORE QUESTION: All of the studies mentioned relied on feedback from human participants. Why might this type of data be less reliable than something that can be objectively measured?

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PHYSICS

A video describing the characteristics of sound waves

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