When we predict future climate, it is important to understand the climate of the past. We do. Mostly. Some details are still debatable.
An example of that are the periodicities of ice ages – that is, how ice ages come and go. This is described in a theory developed by amongst others the astronomer Milankovitch in the 1920ies. The theory is good, but it doesn’t explain everything. The periodicity of ice ages has not been as precise as the theory would indicate. Why is that? Is it because of noise in the system.
Now climate scientist document that the climate system is more chaotic than the model indicates. A myriad of coincidences seem to displace the ice ages from the predictions of the theory. (1)
Four weird coincidences showing that there could be more than meets the eye…
Photo by Spiros Kakos @ Pexels
Introduction
In science it is often said that one anti-paradigm is enough to refute a theory.
Well, in that case one of the extreme coincidences documented below would be enough to refute our idea that life is ‘just’ what we see…
Without further adieu, let us start.
Coincidence no. 1: Richard Parker
In the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allan Poe’s only complete novel, there is a shipwreck. Following a mutiny and a monster storm, two heroes of the novel, Augustus and Pym find themselves in charge of the ship’s battered remains, accompanied by just two others, Dirk Peters and Richard Parker. Facing death by starvation, they draw lots to see who will be eaten by the others. Richard Parker loses… But what is the coincidence here? Well, many years after the novel was published, a shipwreck happened. And guess what… They ate a man called… Richard Parker as it was mentioned in the novel! (source)
Coincidence no. 2: The prediction of Titanic
Many decades before the disaster of Titanic, two novels were published that had extreme resemblance to the true story of the Titanic and its sinking. The description of the ship and its sinking are very accurate as well as the reason many passengers drowned (lack of life boats). Not to mention that the name of the boat in one of these novels was… Titan! Or that the author of the other book dies in the shipwreck of the… Titanic many years after he wrote his novel and after living a life during which we was afraid he would drown. (source)
Coincidence no. 3: The church choir
That is one of the most extraordinary examples of coincidences that was mentioned by Carl Jung. In particular, at 7:25pm on Wednesday 1 March 1950 a church was demolished by an explosion in Beatrice. By a weird twist of fate, all fifteen members of the choir who were all supposed to be in the church during the time of the explosion (and who all used to be punctual) were not there. For fifteen different reasons, each one of them were late and, thus, escaped the blast! (source)
Coincidence no. 4: The dream…
Hall of Fame boxer Sugar Ray Robinson backed out of a fight because he had seen a dream the previous day. He explained the boxing commission that in that dream he stroke his opponent so hard and he killed him, so he did not want to play the match. A priest and a minister managed to convince Ray to fight after all. Ray fought and during the game he hit his opponent like in his dream and, like in his dream, Ray killed the other boxer, Jimmy Doyle. (source)
What does this mean?
I do not know what these coincidences mean. But I do know that they mean something. They could mean that there is something more than what we currently sense in life. They could mean that we have a poor understanding of how the cosmos works behind the scenes. Or, well, they could be just… coincidences highlighting our mania to believe in patterns – thus posing questions about other patterns we see in the world.
Yet, this does not mean that we should not care. The things that are weird and not easily explainable are quite the most interesting things to think of. Scientists not investigating more such coincidences (and there are many more of these – we just selected four for this short article) clearly shows many things. People are usually happy to stay where they are, attach to what they know and build on paths they have already seen in front of them.
In astronomy we used to believe we know almost everything.
Until we learnt that what we saw did not count even for the 10% of the cosmos…
Similarly, we should investigate life…
You never know what wonders or terrors lie beyond our very nose…
Freud discovered that there are no accidents and no coincidences. Even “random-seeming” feelings, ideas, impulses, wishes, events and actions carry important, often unconscious, meanings. (1)
The unconscious rules our lives. And even though we feel the cosmos is ruled by rules we do not yet understand them. Perhaps sensing them is all we need to do.
The infamous martian NASA rover Curiosity has stumbled upon a werid rock [1] on the red planet, while traveling to a place named Glenelg. The rock discovered is of a type called “mugearite”.
And guess what: As the martian rock is near the place named “Glenelg” (the martian Glenelg), Earth’s Mugearite (the place from which the “mugearite” rock type took its name) is equally close to Earth’s Glenelg in Scotland! [2]
The mystery of the “Bermuda Triangle” of the homing pigeon world may have been solved. For years, scientists have been baffled as to why the usually excellent navigators get lost when released from a particular site in New York State.
The puzzle of the vanishing pigeons began in the 1960s. Professor Bill Keeton from Cornell University was trying to understand the birds’ astonishing ability to find their way home from places they have never previously visited. He released birds throughout New York State, but was surprised to discover that whenever the pigeons were released at Jersey Hill, near Ithaca, they became disorientated and flew about aimlessly. This happened again and again, apart from on one occasion on 13 August 1969 when the birds’ navigational prowess returned and they flew back to their loft.
But new research suggests the birds are using low frequency sounds to find their way around – and they cannot hear the rumble at this US location. [1] The study is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Well, I have another theory.
Is it pure coincidence that the problem arised at… Ithaka? Is it pure coincidence that like Odysseus, pigeons were searching for their Ithaka without success for years? I believe coincidences are created via a specific mechanism which tries to tell us something. Read Homer. He may have the answer… And don’t tell me that this theory is more… “radical” than a theory which postulates the use of low frequency waves from the deep ocean thousands of miles away. If the pigeons can hear the ocean from so far away, they can surely feel the ripples of history back from the days of Agamemnon and Achilleus… Who knows. Pigeons may help us realize how history binds us all together – living and dead, animals and humans – into One single existence…
Perhaps we should wait for 20 years and see if the “lost” pigeons return to their Ithaka, like the ancient Greek hero?
