Can anyone help explain this discharge?

reply to post by Extralien


First off - flag and star to the OP. This is some classic ATS right here folks. Good work on pulling all those videos together and laying it all out for us.

Second - After watching the videos my gut reaction is that the disturbance in question looks like a Jacob's Ladder.

Is it possible to provide a clearly lit picture of the exact area where this video was shot, and not just an example of the mesh gates?

I wish i had more to offer to this conversation, but this is fascinating and i look forward to any future data.

Again, good work!

reply to post by negativenihil


Thank you. I tried to supply as much data as I possibly could in order to stop a lot of running around..

I will ask around if we managed to get a good clear shot of the exact doorway. We had two teams that night and we covered this location with both teams individually. My team was the first in.

For those who wish to see a Jacobs ladder in action, then take a peak at these two vids;
the first is just a set of small ones ... the second is a massive 500kv switch opening..






[edit on 9-6-2010 by Extralien]

Originally posted by woodwytch
I imagine you will have also ruled out the possibility of other equipment being responsible for producing the noise.

What I noticed is that about 3-4 seconds before the flash, there is a very similar sounding noise, not identical but similar. And it does sound like equipment noise.

Since I don't have a full inventory of all the equipment that was onsite I can't venture a guess as to what type of equipment it might be making the noise.

The second noise may or may not be connected to the flash, it's pretty coincidental timing if it's not connected. But sometimes coincidences happen.

So if you really want to figure out what caused the second noise I'd listen closely to the first noise as well and try to figure out what it's from.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I too noticed the first noise.. One suggestion was that it was from what we see happening, but the event was out of camera shot.

But yes, it could very well be equipment.

We had a K2 meter and a gauss master, one digital voice recorder and a video camera. There may have been one other item of kit that would have been no bigger than the video camera and wouldn't have been dissimilar from the other kit.

It would have been absolute perfect coincidental timing if it was equipment knocking/clicking at the time of the flash...but even still, that doesn't explain the flash itself

And just to refresh your minds and to save you going back to page 1;

Originally posted by negativenihil
reply to post by Extralien

 

Second - After watching the videos my gut reaction is that the disturbance in question looks like a Jacob's Ladder.

Yes that was my first thought - Jacob's Ladders work because the plasma rises lowering the impedence of the air above allowing longer and long sparks.

It certainly appears something similar is happening here - there is a small plasma cloud rising that allows the second spark. The cloud is visible to the camera in front of and above the wooden beam on the top of the gate before it dissipates.

To be honest (and i didn't looka t the first video just the slower versions and looped versions..... It looked like someone had a hand jsut in view and went and sparked a ciggerette lighter...

reply to post by LightFantastic


IF it is a 'jacobs ladder' effect... then how can we explain it happening in this circumstance?

It does seem to be the most plausible answer considering what we are seeing.

But how? What triggered it? Can this happen as we see it or does there need to be a + and/or - for the reaction to occur and just what were the + and - ?

If the + was the stonework and the - the wire mesh, then surely we should have seen something going horizontally and not arching upwards over a wooden beam...

hhmmmmmm

reply to post by DaRAGE


That's a good way of describing the actual 'flash' itself..
But unfortunately, there was nobody in that particular cell at the time.

There was just us in the main corridoor.

If we didn't review all our collected data as best we can then we may never have known about this one event that has got quite a few people talking.

Ok, it's not a full body apparition, but it is unusual as we are currently unable to fully explain it.

For some, it is simply a camera error or reflection, but there are others who look at this sort of 'evidence' all the time and this bit of video shows something that is out of the ordinary.

I can't help but remember an electrical engineers description;

a static discharge that defies physics & likes wood

Brilliant

Originally posted by negativenihil
reply to post by Extralien

 

First off - flag and star to the OP. This is some classic ATS right here folks. Good work on pulling all those videos together and laying it all out for us.

Is it possible to provide a clearly lit picture of the exact area where this video was shot, and not just an example of the mesh gates?

Look what we got

A lit up pic of the actual doorway. We can clearly see the wire mesh on the outside of the wooden beam which gives us an explanation as to how the flash goes up the wood itself. But we are still left with what and how.

One element of the puzzle has now been solved.. just got to work on the rest of it now

Edit to add, the reflection theory is out the window also as I have never, ever seen unpainted wood or galvanised wire mesh create such a reflection. I've seen the sun glinting/sparkling on parts of galvanised metal but not such a huge reaction as this.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7681029c714e.png[/atsimg]

[edit on 10-6-2010 by Extralien]

reply to post by Extralien


Fantastic

After writing my original reply in this thread i started thinking about batteries made from every day object (a good example is making a simple battery from a lemon - a common school science experiment), and i found this:

Earth Battery

An Earth battery is a pair of electrodes made of two dissimilar metals, such as iron and copper, which are buried in the soil or immersed in the sea. It can act as a receiver of Telluric radiant energy and as a water activated battery. Earth batteries are sometimes referred to as Telluric power sources and Telluric generators.

Perhaps you captured a small discharge from an accidental Earth Battery? Can anyone with more knowledge on this subject chime in?

Originally posted by Extralien
reply to post by LightFantastic

 

IF it is a 'jacobs ladder' effect... then how can we explain it happening in this circumstance?

Yes it is still very difficult to explain fully. If the two vertical wires that the spark appears to be between are connected well to the rest of the mesh then it is still difficult to explain.

The photo of the actual gate does lend some credence to the ladder effect as it appears some of the wire protrudes above the wood at the top.

Are the walls next to the gate underground and if so do are they under the path of vehicles?

Another though I had was that a cosmic ray triggered the spark in a similar way to how Spark Chambers work.

Interesting - The motion with the crackling sound is what gets me! Perhaps you could submit these to a paranormal site for analysis - such as Ghost Hunters - let us know if you do and what they have to say.

reply to post by LightFantastic


To give you a better perspective of this jail;
farm1.static.flickr.com...

you can also locate it on google earth for an aerial view.

Originally posted by Extralien
Look what we got

A lit up pic of the actual doorway. We can clearly see the wire mesh on the outside of the wooden beam which gives us an explanation as to how the flash goes up the wood itself. But we are still left with what and how.

Thanks for the photo, that helps. Have you got any more with slightly different angles? Or wider angle?

I was trying to line up the photo with the video and I can count the mortar joints in the video from the top of the doorway. There are 4 well spaced mortar joints then #5 and #6 are quite close together, and it appears that's about the vertical lever where the flash starts, then it appears to ascent vertically toward mortar joint #4 (from the top). I'm having difficulty lining those mortar joints up in the photo because of the way the left side of the photo cuts them off. But trying to guess at a match, it almost looks like the start of the flash is at an elevation even with the topmost part of the wire mesh, and then it continues above that.

Originally posted by negativenihil

Earth batteries are sometimes referred to as Telluric power sources and Telluric generators

Perhaps you captured a small discharge from an accidental Earth Battery? Can anyone with more knowledge on this subject chime in?

I can. Earth batteries would be very low voltage. Most of the ones I'm familiar with are from a fraction of a volt to maybe 2 volts, look at the voltages in the Earth battery source in your post, they only go up to 1.75 volts. so you might get 3 volts if you're lucky, more if you put multiple Earth batteries in series.

The problem I see is that it does resemble a jacob's ladder, and the voltages needed for that are extremely high.
Jacobs ladder

A Jacob's Ladder is the type of high voltage "climbing arc" display seen in many old (and usually bad) Sci-Fi movies.
You will need 12 to 15 kVAC at 20 to 30 mA.
Microwave oven transformers produce only about 1,500 to 2,500 VAC which is too low.

Well if 1500 volts is too low then I'm sure the 1 or 2 volts from an earth battery are way too low. The electrical resistivity of air is pretty high, but it can be lowered by certain things.

One possibility that I wouldn't rule out is a spider web connected to the top of the wire mesh. The thicker radial silk strands of the spider web could form more highly conductive sides of the Jacobs ladder, and the thinner circumferential parts of the web connecting the radial strands would be horizontal in this case, and would allow the voltage to arc like that at much lower voltages than would be possible in plain air.

Also, possibly in support of that idea, is that the horizontal arc doesn't seem continuous. This could be just an exposure artifact, or it could be a stepping motion from different strands of the spider web arcing in sequence.

I'm not at all convinced it's a spider web arcing, it's just one possibility Im throwing out there as an idea that popped into my head that wouldn't be impossible. The problem remains that even with the spider web, you'd still need a considerable voltage source, much higher than the 1-2 volts of an Earth battery, but considerably less than the 10,000+ volts needed for a Jacob's ladder. I've never experimented with arcs on spider webs so I can only guess where in the middle of that range would be enough to cause arcs across a spider web, but possibly as little as a few hundred volts. A spider web may not be too conductive itself but it could accumulate dust, condensation droplets and other impurities simply because it's so sticky, and all the impurities mixed in with some condensation could form a somewhat conductive path.

But how that metal mesh could get electrified to even a few hundred volts is completely beyond any understanding I have of the situation.

However I will say when I was about 10 I went to a museum and touched a handrail and got knocked on my butt with about 220V, there was some faulty wiring and something that wasn't supposed to be electrified somehow got electrified. Was there any AC power anywhere in that facility?

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Although possible, I doubt there would have been much in the way of spider webs as this place is open to the public and you do get quite a few people coming in and leaning up against the gates etc.. especially kids, but that does not rule out the recent making of a new web in the time we were there and the general public were not.

As for the electrical wring, there is some. Each cell has a display (apart from two, which are on the opposite side of room. Each display has some lighting but not a massive amount. You can see one wire leading into the cell at the top left corner of the doorway. It's brown in colour and looks like it is the standard 1.5mm thick wire for lighting.

Originally posted by Extralien
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

I too noticed the first noise.. One suggestion was that it was from what we see happening, but the event was out of camera shot.

But yes, it could very well be equipment.

We had a K2 meter and a gauss master, one digital voice recorder and a video camera. There may have been one other item of kit that would have been no bigger than the video camera and wouldn't have been dissimilar from the other kit.

It would have been absolute perfect coincidental timing if it was equipment knocking/clicking at the time of the flash...but even still, that doesn't explain the flash itself

And just to refresh your minds and to save you going back to page 1;

Wow I'm away from ATS for a day and come back to a big 'catch-up' session ... I love that people are so interested ... and putting forward some fantastic and constructive ideas.

My suggestion sounds a bit feeble compared to a 'Jacobs Ladder' etc but after looking at the equipment you list in the above post I was wondering about the recorder ... is it voice activated ?

I ask because mine is and it makes a similar (if not the same) kind of noise when it stirs into action.

Also my EMF Meter let's off a noise when it spikes ... but I'm guessing both of these are pretty obvious and would have instantly been dismissed !

But sometimes we can miss the most obvious ... so thought I'd mention it anyway (or is that just me)

Woody

reply to post by woodwytch


Hiya Woody...

A day is a long time on ATS

The digital voice recorders are not voice activated..they are 'push a button to record' type.. And no, the button doesn't click like that.

We have the K2 EMF meter and the Gauss master.. only the Gauss master makes a noise ..a bit like a geiger counter ... and thinking about it, I am going to go over the video again from earlier to try to see if it is the gauss master that made the clicking...if so, then there WAS recognition of something being there.. We do get the ocasional click, click on the meter, but stronger signals make it clickity clickity click clik a lot faster.

So, back to the video footage and i'll try to determine if the gauss was on at that point in time..

Well, It definitely is not the Gauss master clicking away.

Although it was on, the clicking is not caused by it. The clicking is still to do with the flash we see, imo.

And to clear up a small error, but one which throws us back to square one, the picture of the doorway with the wiremesh on the outside of the wooden frame is a picture that was taken several weeks ago on the preliminary investigation.

The old barrier was removed to gain access to that cell and a new barrier put in its place, which is what we now see..

To confirm that, I looked through the video evidence again and picked out a bit of the video that highlights the barrier as best as possible. You can clearly see the wire mesh is on the inside of the wooden frame... So we are back to the flash being a good inch or two away from the mesh and going in front and above of the wooden beam...



This is a pic of one of the cell barriers..it is typical of them all.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d6d140bdfa9b.jpg[/atsimg]

[edit on 11-6-2010 by Extralien]

reply to post by Extralien


WT@ ... What on earth is that at the bottom of the photograph (bottom of the wire grill) with the person holding the Gauss Meter ???

I'm sure there is a simple and logical explanation but it looks like some sort of creature with shiny black eyes.

Please tell me I'm seeing things.

Woody

reply to post by woodwytch


Well spotted Woody...

I'll enlarge it and post it. Seems rather odd.

I'll post it in the bodmin live thread instead of here as it goes off topic slightly
www.abovetopsecret.com...




[edit on 12-6-2010 by Extralien]