On Thu, 27 Jan 2005, Colin Quinney wrote: > Wow. > > James Bond movie? No way. Sounds more like something seen in a John > Hutchison movie. Bill was the microwave oven on during this episode?
Nope. This was around 9AM in the electronics shop at work, just after I'd arrived. I had purchased a paper cup of coffee from the espresso stand in the physics building, then I continued on to chem building. We have no bizarre equipment in this shop, but there is a collection of large superconducting magnet dewars in two differnet NMR labs on the same floor a couple hundred feet away. They are shorted DC, a Tesla or two of very constant b-field, no pulses. Latest news: the stir-stick appears to have returned. "Vanished" objects are known to usually reappear. Yesterday morning I kept looking around the microwave oven and on the floor to see if the stir-stick would show up again. Nothing. In the trash next to the microwave oven was the pair of tea bags and the stir-stick which had already been in my ceramic mug (this stir-stick was stained bright red from hibscus tea I'd been drinking the previous day, and I carefully and knowningly discarded it and the two tea bags while preparing to dump the coffee from the paper cup into the ceramic mug.) Then a friend reminded me to keep the paper coffee cup as a memento. When I retrieved it from the trash bag on the other side of the lab... I found THREE stir sticks in the trash below it. Two were coffee-stained. The extra un-stained stick was one which I'd found on my desk when searching the lab for the missing stick. It was dusty so I trashed it rather than putting it back in the box of wooden sticks. One of the stained sticks in the trash was the second one I used. The other brown-stained stick should not be there. The plastic trash bag had been emptied early that morning, and there was nothing else in it except the paper coffe cup, the plastic coffee lid, and three wooden sticks. Nobody else was drinking coffee or tea. I checked. The only "sensible" explanation is that the stir-stick was in the cup the whole time, and I couldn't see it. When I poured 3/4 of the coffee into the ceramic mug while expecting to find the submerged stick, I couldn't see it. When I carefully drank the small amount of remaining coffee in the paper cup and checked for stick fragments in the bit of choclate goo along the edge in the bottom of the cup, the stick was invisible to me. WHen I threw the second stick and the coffee cup in the trash, the "missing" stick had to be right there in the cup. If it REALLY winked out of existence, I would have reappeared by the microwave oven, not in the trash with the paper cup. Below is another vanishing-object story, this one from early years on Vortex-L. I think this message is the one which inspired me to start the http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/ reports page. (((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) ))))))))))))))))))) William J. Beaty http://staff.washington.edu/wbeaty/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Research Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] UW Chem Dept, Bagley Hall RM74 206-543-6195 Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700 Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 19:46:04 -0700 (PDT) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [email protected] To: Multiple recipients of list <[email protected]> Subject: Re: End of Science > I can't help but inject a bit of metaphysics in too. Einstein was > quoted as saying he wanted to find out "if God had any choice in > creating the Universe"? I think the answer to that is that he had no > choice if his Universe required intelligent carbon-based lifeforms. The > degree of fine tuning of the 3 subatomic forces neccessary to create > life is incredible. > >Martin Sevior > -----------------End of Original Message----------------- One could also ask "Is God really HE?" "Are we really here at all?" I am still perplexed by simple things. Several months ago I was working on a four pole digital filter. Each pole was a tuned brass chamber. The sections were connected to the other physically, but there was no opening between the chambers as a 50 ohm probe was used to couple the RF from pole filter to pole filter. Each filter was tuned with a large brass screw. I did a stupid thing (normal for me) and went in to far with a tuning screw on the end filter. It dropped into it's chamber. I opened the chamber to find the screw missing. I knew I had the right chamber because of the hole where the screw had been. I shook the whole assembly to hear a rattle. The filter did not rattle before the screw was dropped. I opened the chamber on the other end to find the missing screw. I studied the problem for many hours and saw no way the screw got into the wrong chamber. I allowed two visiting russian scientists to study the filter, at first smiling and then agreeing that what happened was impossible. This is a true story. Not interesting, but true. God may not play dice with the universe, but sometimes she will screw with your head. ------------------------------------- Name: dacha E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 7/30/96 Time: 10:11:17 PM No matter where you go, there you are. http://www.visor.com/info -------------------------------------
