Kirlian Photography: Building Your Own Equipment | Hacker News Reader

Kirlian Photography: Building Your Own Equipment

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64 pointsjoebig16 comments

The company is quite old! They have some old YouTube videos depicting how their stuff is used[0].

Some of their videos allude to kickstarter which made check! Kickstarter is 17 years old. Man, I remember the early days of it. Boy!

0: https://youtu.be/rAGSStsMuy4?is=fK-qhiPT4ITcbTld

I like this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX-rGLNSoFM more technical details in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRKIGhOJ5Ew

IIRC this was debunked as ...The plate/glass was not thoroughly cleaned between photos...

I.E. the leaf left residue on the glass.

I consider it a given that any living organism radiates (heat) energy: there is constant energy and matter exchange with its surroundings; a foundational aspect of life. I consider it at least a possibility that by looking at this radiation, you can find correlations between balanced “health” (new age speak: intact Aura), and potential imbalances, and thus that it may work as a diagnostic tool.

You can measure someone's temperature to find out if they have a fever, is that the kind of thing you're suggesting?

Did you ever touch a human body and noticed that its temperature feels different in different regions? Even, say, down one arm? That’s what I was referring to; not core temperature.

They do that for professional athletes but they use thermal cameras for that and look for asymmetries in the left and right side of the body. That seems to give a clue about inflammations. They look for differences as low as 0.1°C iirc. Take all that with a grain of salt because I heard very little about it.

As a sufferer of psoriatic arthritis, I am painfully aware of this phenomenon.

It appears to be a form of DBD (dielectric breakdown discharge). Setting aside the para-physical claims, that aspect of it seems reproducible, as a fun science demo, at least.

I agree, the Kirian photography is real, but the GP is taking about the paranormal claims, in particular the torn leaf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography#Torn_leaf_...

(Are the original photographs available somewhere? I found only bad modern photoshoped versions, and even a guy that made a debunking video and then his photos were repeated as confirmation evidence.)

Replications are available online, can't seem to spot any of the original material as of now. http://exo-science.com/phantomleaf.html (!!Woo-woo warning, just take what you need and exit stage!!).

Reverse search off above leads to "The Phantom Leaf Effect: A Replication, Part 1" "https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2013.0182". I have not had the time to examine the claims therein.

This is specifically addressed in the article, at length.

"Kirlian's work was first made known to the general public in this country by a book published in 1970 by Shelia Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder titled "Psychic discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain""

Ha ha, the psychic 70's. And U.F.O.s, biorhythms…

(Loved the 1970's)

(Loved the 1970's) I concur, Sir.

An aside: Arthur C. Doyle toured US to sumptuous throngs lecturing on consciousness, the spirit realm and seances in 1920s-ish, iirc. Someone alive in 1970 might have had recollections of that coverage/seen ACD in person and would be in a position to pass on the whiff of ether to an younger generation: hungry for transcendence and shedding of burdens.

The book Superlearning (also by Shelia Ostrander) made a big impression on me as a high schooler. The idea of using rhythms, music, relaxation to shift one’s brain into a highly receptive state to learn and memorize was super compelling.

And Rupert Sheldrake later in that decade with his theory of morphic resonance.

His son Merlin Sheldrake has written a book about fungi called Entangled Life which is quite sensible and doing very well. I noticed that the book was very carefully referenced with detailed end-notes, some like mini-essays with references to papers by a wide range of authors. These notes comprise about a third of the word count of the book. Unusual in a popsci book of this kind. I can't help thinking that this approach might be a reaction to Sheldrake senior's writings and the reaction to them.

OA is a nice Web site with practical information on what could be an interesting art-practice.

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