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The idea that the dead remain with us in spirit is an ancient one, appearing in countless stories, from the Bible to "Macbeth. Belief in ghosts is part of a larger web of related paranormal beliefs, including near-death experience, life after death, and spirit communication. The belief offers many people comfort — who doesn't want to believe that our beloved but deceased family members aren't looking out for us, or with us in our times of need? Ghost clubs dedicated to searching for ghostly evidence formed at prestigious universities, including Cambridge and Oxford, and in the most prominent organization, the Society for Psychical Research, was established.
A woman named Eleanor Sidgwick was an investigator and later president of that group, and could be considered the original female ghostbuster. In America during the late s, many psychic mediums claimed to speak to the dead — but were later exposed as frauds by skeptical investigators such as Harry Houdini.
It's considered the incorporeal essence of a person, and is said to be immortal and transcendent of material existence. But when scientists speak of the soul (if at. I find different explanation for 'soul'. It can refer to 'a living being', but it can also refer to 'the spiritual entity of a living being'. So what is it?.
It wasn't until recently that ghost hunting became a widespread interest around the world. Much of this is due to the hit Syfy cable TV series "Ghost Hunters," now in its second decade of not finding good evidence for ghosts. The show spawned dozens of spinoffs and imitators, and it's not hard to see why the show is so popular: The two original stars were ordinary guys plumbers, in fact who decided to look for evidence of spirits. You don't need to be an egghead scientist, or even have any training in science or investigation.
All you need is some free time, a dark place, and maybe a few gadgets from an electronics store.
If you look long enough any unexplained light or noise might be evidence of ghosts. One difficulty in scientifically evaluating ghosts is that a surprisingly wide variety of phenomena are attributed to ghosts, from a door closing on its own, to missing keys, to a cold area in a hallway, to a vision of a dead relative. When sociologists Dennis and Michele Waskul interviewed ghost experiencers for their book " Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life " Temple University Press they found that "many participants were not sure that they had encountered a ghost and remained uncertain that such phenomena were even possible, simply because they did not see something that approximated the conventional image of a 'ghost.
Personal experience is one thing, but scientific evidence is another matter. Part of the difficulty in investigating ghosts is that there is not one universally agreed-upon definition of what a ghost is.
Some believe that they are spirits of the dead who for whatever reason get "lost" on their way to The Other Side; others claim that ghosts are instead telepathic entities projected into the world from our minds. Still others create their own special categories for different types of ghosts, such as poltergeists, residual hauntings, intelligent spirits and shadow people. Of course, it's all made up, like speculating on the different races of fairies or dragons: There are many contradictions inherent in ideas about ghosts. For example, are ghosts material or not?
Either they can move through solid objects without disturbing them, or they can slam doors shut and throw objects across the room. According to logic and the laws of physics, it's one or the other. So we're still looking at these things from tens of meters away. We're trying to get the best resolution we can out of Pancam , to be able to analyze the layering and be able to tell as much as we can about the geomorphology of this stratigraphy.
With these new, super high-resolution images, scientists will able to see the layering in these cliffs in much sharper contrast and be able to pick up more subtle features. Like Spirit , Opportunity continued its atmospheric studies throughout the month, including daily measuring atmospheric dust with the Pancam and surveying the sky and ground with the miniature thermal emission spectrometer Mini-TES , and periodic searches for clouds with the navigation camera NavCam.
Testing of the new "workaround" on its rock abrasion tool RAT was also on Opportunity's agenda in early May. On Sol May 3, , while the rover was acquiring stereo microscopic imager MI pictures of the "lab rock," Viva la Rata Long Live the Rat prior to grinding the rock surface, joint 1 of the rock abrasion tool RAT stalled, so the rover wound up conducting a touch test on Viva La Rata with the RAT and spent the rest of its time that sol searching for clouds with the navigation camera.
We can read the fault flag, then place our RAT just above the rock, start it spinning, then bring it slowly down on the rock. Opportunity filled out the first week of May by taking more super-resolution images of Cape St.
The rover also surveyed a target known as Rodrigues with the Mini-TES , acquired Pancam images of the terrain ahead, monitored dust on the rover mast, and acquired thumbnail images of the sky with the Pancam. The work never seems to stop. On Sol May 8, , Opportunity postponed a planned drive to study some cobbles because of another joint 1 stall that occurred while stowing the robotic arm before the drive. This stall was similar to previous stalls. Instead, the rover acquired sky images with the Pancam and checked for drift changes with time in the Mini-TES.
After acquiring the usual post-drive images with the NavCam, it conducted a diagnostic test of the IDD or robotic arm, stowed the IDD, and acquired Pancam images of Madrid, as well as images of rock cobbles in the area. The cobbles or loose rocks on the ground caught the collective eye of the science team, because they appear similar in color and texture to the Madrid-Guadarrama outcrop, feature different properties from other materials seen at Victoria Crater, and are believed to be crater ejecta. Moreover, Madrid and Guadarrama and the cobbles under study are chock full of "big blueberries" or small, round rocks.
The scientists hope to get an idea of the composition of the outcrops as well as the cobbles by examining the cobbles up close. After acquiring a set of Pancam images of Guadarrama and Madrid, Opportunity stowed the IDD in preparation for a drive on Sol May 10, , but the planned drive, to a cobble called Pedriza ended prematurely after about 0. On the following sol, Opportunity surveyed the horizon with the Pancam in the morning, took color images of targets known as Cercedilla and Fuenfria, also potentially ejecta from inside the crater, then studied Cercedilla and another target known as Navacerrda, as well as its own external calibration target with the Mini-TES.
The rover also took Pancam pictures of Guadarrama, and performed a thermal inertia experiment on a soil target in order to complete measurements inside and outside of the dark streaks on the northern side of Victoria that it studied last month. This experiment, which the rover continued the next sol, measured temperature-related properties of the soil during the day and overnight.
Once the soil experiment was finished, Opportunity stowed the IDD, completed the previously planned drive, and unstowed the IDD without further incident. Opportunity spent most of the third week in May examining the cobbles that may be crater ejecta. Opportunity departed Madrid-Guadarrama last week, on Sol May 22, In recent sols, the rover has really been putting the pedal to the metal, striking out for the plains and wide open territory where there is "redtop" for as far as the rover eyes can see.
But there are certainly no major obstructions and in fact virtually no targets, perfect for long drives and covering a lot of distance.
With the D-star checkout a resounding success, the rover still must still pass a Virtual Target Tracking VTT checkout, a method by which the rover can safely chart its course, assisted by the Pancam which "follows" a target as the rover drives along. There are multiple steps in the checkout process for each of these capabilities, and one of those steps for the VTT checkout was slated for today.
The base map is a context camera image. Science 19 December Since the two are the very opposites, how does that bonding take place? Physical relationships among the various layers exposed at Home Plate are crucial evidence in understanding how these Martian rocks formed. Could that somehow be manifested as a ghost? The rover also acquired more full-color Pancam images of GoodQuestion and super-resolution images of another target called Fern Shollenberger. The answer is very simple, and not at all mysterious.
When we ended most recent drive, we found this cobble we named Paloma that is just about 6 or 7 meters away from us. It turned out to be a good position for doing the VTT test, so we shifted gears immediately and decided to do the VTT test in today's drive. Basically, we're moving toward Duck Bay as quickly as we can, but we have this to-do list of flight software checkouts we have to complete and when an opportunity presents itself, we do it.
Sometimes these tests provide us with everything we need and sometimes they don't. And when they don't we have to go and try it again. So we'll see how much more needs to be done. At the current time, we've got 3 more boxes to check off and we're planning on checking one off today. Over this weekend and into next week, Opportunity will continue on to Duck Bay, sticking to the plan made last month. Of course, we want to do more imaging of cross-bedding at Cape St. Mary, which showed up in the panorama that we took we during superior conjunction.
But the best stuff was in shadow at the time and we didn't get a long baseline stereo on it and we didn't do super resolution on it, so we can definitely improve our coverage of that stuff. It turns out that Cape Verde is also a good place for doing a long baseline stereo imaging of Duck Bay that we can then use to support our decision-making process for a possible entry into Victoria.
As for when, exactly, Opportunity might being making its grand entrance at this queen of crater is anybody's guess. Those who've been following the MER mission know Squyres' rule: For all the MER Updates , go to: Opportunity , Spirit , mission status , Mars Exploration Rovers. Become a member of The Planetary Society and together we will create the future of space exploration. Support enables our dedicated journalists to research deeply and bring you original space exploration articles.
For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser. Mars Exploration Rover Credit: Jim Bell, principal investigator for the Pancam, chose this as one of his favorite images from the Gusev Crater landing site this month. Spirit's view of Home Plate Sol Spirit discovered Home Plate, which the MER science team now believes is the remnant of volcanic activity, looked more like the layered rocks of Opportunity's landing site than anything it had previously encountered at Gusev.
Silica Valley girl Spirit churned up the patch of bright-toned, silica-rich soil dubbed Gertrude Weise back on Sol March 29, The rover took this approximately true-color image with its panoramic camera on Sol April 6, Gertrude Weise The silica-rich soil patch was found by Spirit in Gusev Crater after spending months working within 50 yards of the spot. Volcanic Home Plate This false color, panoramic camera images of an edge of Home Plate contains the evidence on which the science team is basing its hypothesis that the circular plateau was created from volcanic activity.
The lower coarse-grained unit shows granular textures toward the bottom of the image and massive textures. A feature interpreted to be a "bomb sag," which is 4 centimeters across, is pointed out. It shows some of the most complex layering patterns seen so far at this location. In fact, the layered nature of these rocks presents new questions for the rover team. Beyond their chemical properties, which scientists are now studying using the rover's spectrometers, these rocks record a detailed history of the physical properties that formed them.
In the center of this image, one group of layers slopes downward to the right. The layers above and below this group are more nearly horizontal. Where layers of different orientations intersect, other layers are truncated. This indicates that there were complex patterns of alternating erosion and deposition occurring when these layers were being deposited.
Similar patterns can be found in some sedimentary rocks on Earth. What are the three primary names of God from the Old Testament? What are the three parts of man? What is original sin? What was the primary title that Jesus used to describe himself during his earthly ministry? What is the oldest Christian creed? Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. According to the Bible, mankind is distinct from all the rest of creation, including the animals, in that he is made in the image of God.
As God is a tripartite -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit -- so man is three parts -- body, soul and spirit. In the most explicit example from Scripture of these divisions, the Apostle Paul writes:. Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Thessalonians 5: Man is made up of physical material, the body, that can be seen and touched.
But he is also made up of immaterial aspects, which are intangible -- this includes the soul, spirit, intellect, will, emotions, conscience, and so forth. These immaterial characteristics exist beyond the physical lifespan of the human body and are therefore eternal.