A No Science Page

During April, in the forum, I was asked about Ley Lines and Min Min Lights. So, even though this isn't really scientific information, let us explore the rich mythology of Australia...and history behind mythology the British Ley Line. I will endeavour to discover a rational for these phenomena where possible.

The Faery Light

The Min Min Lights have appeared twice in the forum discussions, so let us start with them.

The Min Min Lights are a night-time phenomena, most commonly seen in the flat grasslands that stretch across the North of Australia, including the Queensland Channel Country, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. They are not exclusively seen in this area, but this is where the greatest number of occurrences are recorded. The lights appear to be glowing balls that will bounce around and sometimes follow travellers. Aboriginals knew of the Min Min Lights long before the colonisation by Europeans. The Min Min Lights are not exclusively found in Australia; around the world, there are similar phenomena that are known as the Jack o'Lantern, the Will of the wisp, and ghost lights.

Unusually, there is a perfectly ordinary explanation for the lights.

Professor Jack Pettigrew of the University of Queensland believes the Min Min Lights are a form of Fata Morgana, in which landforms that are beyond the horizon appear to float above it in an inverted form - in other words, a mirage. The image of the light has been reflected from a light source beyond the horizon, using the mirror of a temperature inversion layer. This would also explain why the flat grasslands are so prone to the Min Min Lights, as they tend to create the atmospheric conditions favourable to creating the ghost lights, particularly in winter.

Alas... another mystery evaporates under the searing light of Science. Except... I experienced this phenomenon as a child, and the Light bounced around the family car, like it was looking in the windows. We had some trees around the car. How did the light move around without being occluded by the trees?

Not Just a Chocolate

When I was a wee girlie, I used to love it when my parents had friends over and they would start to tell spooky stories. IF I was very lucky, the grownups would have forgotten I was there – I was careful to keep quiet while they were telling their tales – and then, once in bed, I'd be unable to sleep from fear and excitement. My favourite stories were about the Yowie, a tall hairy creature that ate humans.

The Aboriginal folklore about the Yowie dates back almost thousand years before European settlement. Depending on which area of Australia the Aboriginals lived and to which tribe they belonged, they had many different names for the Yowie. The modern name was most probably an adaptation by the colonists of the Aboriginal names Yuuri and Yowri, which were the most commonly used names for the creature. The tradition appearance of the Yowie is that of a big, hairy man-like creature; a similar description is given to the American Bigfoot, the Canadian Sasquatch and the Himalayan Abominable Snowman. (So, not like the ugly but appealing novelty chocolates, which vaguely resemble Sweetums from the Muppets.)

Australian Yowie Hunters - and they do exist - theorise that the Yowie is a representative of a remnant population of hominids. There is no scientific proof of this, as no recent bones or living specimens have ever been examined by scientists. But then, the ''Hobbit Man'' lived in historical times ranging from 95,000 years old to a mere 12,000. Hobbit Man, properly named Homo floresiensis, was discovered by a team of Australian scientists on the remote Indonesian island of Flores. So it isn't completely impossible that a larger, hairier primate relative might be lingering in the Outback. Just highly improbable...

So, with my over-active imagination, I can still frighten myself by imagining hairy horror in the dark.

The Swamp Monster

The Bunyip is another monster from the Aboriginal Dreamtime; like the Scottish, they seemed to delight in inventing night-time horrors. The Bunyip was a swamp-dwelling creature, inhabiting in waterholes, lagoons, bends of rivers, billabongs and creeks, and where it lurked waiting to drown and eat unsuspecting victims.

What a charmer!

There is no traditional description for the Bunyip; or to put it another way, there are a multitude of conflicting descriptions. All appear to have just two things in common: large, luminous eyes and a loud, bellowing cry. In the various accounts, the Bunyip has looked like an emu, an elephant and a hippopotamus. It has had fur, feathers, scales and skin, and sometimes a combination of all of them.

I, personally, know of one Australian native animal that shares some the Bunyip's distinguishing characteristics. It lives in waterholes, rivers and swamps and, sometimes, the ocean. It drags unsuspecting prey into the water and drowns it, and then consumes it. Of course, I'm talking about the crocodile. It doesn't take much imagination to get a monster from a true predator like the croc. And most animals - including humans – would bellow and scream while being dragged into the murky depths of the reptile's home.

And so the story began...

The Spider Web of Magic

Alfred Watkins (1855-1935), a locally well-known and respected Herefordshire businessman, was the 'discoverer' of Ley Lines. In June 1921, he noticed that straight lines could be drawn to link up ancient points-of-interest on a map. Watkins was the first to call them ley lines, and went on to theorise that they were the faded, faint remains of prehistoric trading routes.

His first book on the subject was entitled, 'Early British Trackways', and was published in 1922. After this, he continued to pursue his study of the lines, ignoring the fact that the lines were often crossing steep cliffs or other impassable barriers to traders and merchants. In 1925, he published his main book on his theory, entitled, 'The Old Straight Track'. Later, he published further books on his topic, 'The Ley Hunters Manual' and 'Archaic Tracks Around Cambridge'.

In my Oxford Concise Dictionary, a 'ley' is listed as ''a field temporarily under grass''. I can only speculate that Watkins saw the ley lines as tracks temporarily under grass. Geomancy is listed as ''the art of siting buildings auspiciously' (isn't that Feng Shui?) or ''divination from the configuration of a handful of earth or random dots''; geomancy is the mystic art that is associated with ley lines.

It was the occultist Dion Fortune, in her 1936 novel 'The Goat-Foot God', who invented the idea that ley lines were "lines of power" linking prehistoric sites. This went on to become the basis for the study of Geomancy, which flourished in the later half of the Twentieth Century. In my net surfing for this article, I came across many sites dedicated to this new 'science'. As it has only been around for less than a century, I most interested in how it was considered an ''ancient art'' and was supposedly one of the Druidic accomplishments.

Did the Druids know of ley lines? Various Internet articles argue that the white markings on various chalk wolds are proof. Alas, in the name of real Science, this is not proof enough. As well, much of the 'proof' for the powers of ley lines is speculation and wild supposition – fun to read, but not very convincing.

Biography - Josephine Cochran, Inventor of the Dishwasher

Would it come as a surprise that the inventor of the automatic dishwasher was a woman? Josephine Cochrane invented the first usable automatic dishwasher in 1886. What was her inspiration, considering she was a socialite, and wasn't an engineer or inventor by profession?

Cochrane entertained often and wanted a way to wash dishes more carefully than her servants, a method that didn't involve breaking or chipping her good china.

To start at the beginning, Josephine, was born in 1839, and she came from a background of can-do inventors. Her great-grandfather, John Fitch, invented the steamboat. Her father was the civil engineer, John Garis, who helped build the old pre-fire Chicago.

As an adult, she married a merchant and politician, William Cochran – though she preferred to spell her married name with an e.

It was during her marriage that she started to toy with the idea of inventing a dishwashing machine, for the reason stated above. Her invention aimed water jets on china held firmly in a rack. Then, her husband died, and basically left her penniless. Her hobby had become her only chance of retaining an income.

Josephine Cochrane had expected the general public to welcome her invention, which she unveiled at the 1893 World's Fair. Sadly, though, only the hotels and large restaurants were buying her machines. It was not until the 1950s that dishwashers caught on with the general public, as most households that could afford servants didn't need a dishwashing machine, and everyone else couldn't afford one.

Still, she founded a company to manufacture her dishwashers, and it was reasonably successful. She died at age 74, and her company was eventually to be absorbed by the Whirlpool Corporation in 1940.

Josephine is to be admired for several reasons. Even though she was a wealthy socialite at the time, she didn't expect anyone else to solve her chipped-dish problem for her... in an era when women were expected to let their men look after them. She didn't see her lack of education or training as an impediment to her attempting to invent a mechanical device. She started her own business when it was unthinkable for any woman to do so, and ran it on her own with no husband beside her - successfully. Remember, she started her business while penniless, so she started with nothing and must have taught herself all her business acumen. She wasn't Thomas Alva Edison, but she was certainly in his league as a thinker and a doer, and stood her ground against greater difficulties.

She should stand as an inspiration, not just to women, but to everyone.

Concept of the Month: Mechanics

Mechanics is one of those words that has come to mean anything and everything. It can relate to Physics, and might be about the motion of objects and their reaction to states of rest or the actions of various forces - like the Science of Kinetics. Or it might mean anything to do with machines and devices. It can be used to define the technical aspects of any process, such as in 'the mechanics of evolution'' or ''the mechanics of writing a novel''. It can be used to refer to the men that fix your car.

The original meaning of the word derives from the Latin term mechanicus, which evolved from the Greek mechanikos, meaning "one skilled in machines". So your car mechanic is actually closest to the original intention of the word.