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Could ghosts actually be a life form?

Cainkane1

Philosopher
Cainkane1
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
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Location
The great American southeast
Watching Ghost Hunters and other ghost hunting programs one fact has always intrigued me. Batterys go dead and unopened packs of batteries arte found to be dead when opened. Supposedly this is because ghosts use this type of energy to exist.

Ok would this be scientifically possible? Could a living thing made up of energy live and reproduce and develope a type of intelligence? If so then these creatures would not be the souls of the dead but a life form.

Ghost behaviour seems similar to an animal protecting its space in much the same way as a cave bear would resist intrusion by humans. Even the Casper type stories could be explained by the fact that many species of animals enjoy the company of human beings.

The programs are probably hogwash but has anyone else ever suggested this?
 
Cainkane1 said:
Watching Ghost Hunters and other ghost hunting programs one fact has always intrigued me. Batterys go dead and unopened packs of batteries arte found to be dead when opened...
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Are you sure this is the case, and not because these are entertainment programs, with no clear process or controls around battery or equipment management?

Supposedly this is because ghosts use this type of energy to exist...
Ghost behaviour seems similar to an animal protecting its space...
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I think it would be better to actually find believable evidence that ghosts exist before trying to explain their behavior.
 
Surely a reality based scientific discussion would not start by considering what ghosts are or what they eat, but by considering whether they exist at all. Then they would probably stop and wait patiently for any scrap of worthwhile evidence to emerge.
 
The 'batteries going dead' thing is simply confirmation bias in operation.

When you get batteries out and they work, there's nothing of note to remember.
 
Cainkane1 said:
Watching Ghost Hunters and other ghost hunting programs
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I'm sorry for being slow here, but what exactly is this discussion about?

Is it about "Could ghosts actually be a life form?"

or is it about ridiculous television programs where "ghosts" eat batteries?
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I wonder what ghosts ate before batteries were invented.
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If you read historical ghost stories many sightings were made during times of thunder and lightening. If there is anything to so called ghosts there are more ghosts now than at any other time in human history.

Consuming battery energy might be like a primiitive man eating chocolate cake for the first time.

Incidentally lets keep the discussions light. I fully realise that scientists roll their eyes and when they say anything at all they describe paranormal activity as nothing more than superstition and overall bullcrap. They are probably right. Very possibly absolutely right.

I also realise that Mr. James Randi has successfully debunked every haunting he has ever investigated. However ghost sightings persist and there has to be some reason why people keep reporting these things. Mr. Randi has suggested the presence of carbon monoxide in a house may induce hallucinations.

I personally saw a "ghost" in my house but my doctor explained that when we are bored our minds start a form of self entertainment. Hence the souurce of my sighting.
 
Oh, come on, folks. The OP was meant to be a thinking exercise, not an attempt to demonstrate that this type of life exists.

Cankane1, you're asking whether "energy" could exist independently of a physical material to contain it? I don't see how - energy is a property of material stuff. You can have material at a high energy state, but that energy is not itself something. As far as we know anyway.
 
Cainkane1 said:
If you read historical ghost stories many sightings were made during times of thunder and lightening.
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Thunderstorms (particularly at night) are scary and put people on edge. It wouldn't surprise me if people were more inclined to imagine they see stuff when they're tired and frightened in the dark.
If there is anything to so called ghosts there are more ghosts now than at any other time in human history.
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How do you measure that?
 
Bob Klase said:
The writers of Star Trek used to suggest it about 10 shows a year.
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I've brought this up recently in another thread. In the "Physics of Star Trek", Lawrence Krauss said that a life-form made up of energy would have its sense of time infinitely dilated, so that the entire history of the universe would pass by instantly from its perspective. Even if it were possible, there's no way such a life-form could interact with the natural world.

And its probably not possible. How would intelligence exist where there is no time? How can an intelligent thought go from inception to completion when there is no "before" and "after"? The concept itself is hopelessly flawed to the point of being meaningless.
 
CurtC said:
Oh, come on, folks. The OP was meant to be a thinking exercise, not an attempt to demonstrate that this type of life exists.
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OK, fair enough.

For anything like a being we'd regard as "alive" to exist, then I suppose one of the fundamental things it would need to have is some form of complex structure. I don't see a way to build or maintain such a structure in energy (electromagnetic or whatever?) without the influence of matter.

Getting onto how such a hypothetical entity could "eat" the energy stored in a battery, that's even more mysterious. The battery produces a small potential difference between its contacts, and will supply a good stream of electrons if the ghost can find some way to transport them from one terminal to the other. The ghost somehow does this, and extracts useful energy in the process. Any clues about how any of that's supposed to happen?
 
Well... computers run on electricity, so I suppose you could have an entity move around and replenish its energy from batteries. Bigger question would probably be how it would get the energy out of the batteries, through the closed packaging.

ETA: Ah, I see Jack beat me to it.
 
aggle-rithm said:
I've brought this up recently in another thread. In the "Physics of Star Trek", Lawrence Krauss said that a life-form made up of energy would have its sense of time infinitely dilated, so that the entire history of the universe would pass by instantly from its perspective. Even if it were possible, there's no way such a life-form could interact with the natural world.
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That was kinda what DS9 was going for with the Prophets/wormhole aliens. Although they kinda forgot the "we cannot understand linear time" thing by the end of the show, when it turned out Sisko was made by them. Bah.
 
Another theory about repeated ghost reportings is infrasound. This is from the Skeptic's Dictionary.

Infrasound refers to extreme bass waves or vibrations, those with a frequency below the audibility range of the human ear (20 Hz to 22 kHz). Even though these waves can't be heard by us, they can be felt and have been shown to produce a range of effects in some people including anxiety, extreme sorrow, and chills.
<snip>
Psychologist Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire thinks that the odd sensations that people attribute to ghosts may be caused by infrasonic vibrations.*
<snip>
Infrasound may be produced by wind, by some types of earthquakes, by ocean waves, and by such things as avalanches, volcanoes, and meteors​
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​
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If it is infrasound, then this might explain why the long corridoors in old houses are so often 'haunted' during storms. And also often in the same physical place.

​
 
aggle-rithm said:
I've brought this up recently in another thread. In the "Physics of Star Trek"...
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Remember that episode in "Next Generation" where #1 and some woman were ghosts on the Enterprise? They could walk through walls but how come they weren't sucked through the floor by whatever artificial gravity device the ship uses? Huh? Yeah, what does that guy who wrote the book say about this? How come when the ship goes to warp everyone ins't flattened against the wall. How come there aren't daily riots outside the holodeck concerning whose turn it is? (You know there would be and no one would be using that 1930's nightclub program when there were sex programs to be had.)

This whole "The Physics of Ghosts" bothers me. How can a ghost propel themself if they can't use friction? They must have some sort of mass if gravity is to effect them or ghosts would just be flying off the planet (from our terrestrial point of view) willy nilly as they came into existence.

I need someone to define the physics of ghosts before I can take their existence seriously.
 
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