I couldn’t help but notice this headline on the Drudge Report today:
Here is the actual satellite image of Hurricane #Matthew, as Tweeted by The Weather Channel’s Stu Ostro:
This is a classic case of the human propensity to see faces in things where there aren’t any. For example, the famous “face on Mars”
Above: A 1976 Viking 1 photograph of the Face on Mars. Click here for a 2001 photo from Mars Global Surveyor that reveals the true appearance of the Face.
It has long since been explained as little more than light and shadow: http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast24may_1/
It is called Pareidolia
Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists. Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, the man in the moon, the moon rabbit, and hidden messages within recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds. – Wikipedia
This is akin to the need for humans to find patterns in data to support beliefs where there aren’t any, it is called Apophenia
Apophenia is the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data. -Wikipedia
This is something we see often in the climate debate. For example, while a nearly 4000 day long major hurricane drought is in progress, eco-activist newspapers are already trying to blame Hurricane Matthew on global warming/climate change.
Color me about as impressed as I am about the face on Mars.
Government-induced climaphobia…. It ain’t pretty.
The famous “face on Mars” example of humans seeing things where they are not is an example. The mars rovers pics show clearly that the face on mars is not an enormous construction that is meant to resemble a human face. The “face on Mars” is actually a skull.
Sorry about that.
it’s not a face…it’s a giant martian trilobite
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Galleries/TrilobitesCanada/Greenops-boothi/Greenops-boothi-1024.jpg
No it’s not. It’s Leonardo DiCaprio.
No. No. No.
DiCaprio is is FlukeMan underneath his rubber human mask.
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l12/PuddinTaine06/Flukeman.jpg
Looks like Drudge and huffpo to me…
We will see t=his on the cover of the National Enquirer at the supermarket. … beside, Batboy!
Looking at the latest forecast for the path of Matthew and Nicole it appears that they could collide or merge. Does anyone know what would happen if this occurs?
” Does anyone know what would happen if this occurs?”
Um … more Hillary emails found?
Or … O’Bugger talks about himself and his awesome wonderfulness?
They resemble two spiral galaxies getting ready to merge.
More like Sol system and Niribu. Amirite!
Nibiru
It is the planet that doesn’t exist
so why do all those fools persist
some people started quoting it not knowing what it was
and they’ll just keep on quoting it forever just because
it is the planet that doesn’t exist
Zombie Apocalypse.
David
It’ll be worse than we thought.
Much worse.
Auto
“Looking at the latest forecast for the path of Matthew and Nicole it appears that they could collide or merge. Does anyone know what would happen if this occurs?”
If they get close enough to each other, their winds fields should interfere with each other, which I suspect will reduce the power of the hurricanes.
Looks to me like Matthew is trying to go more north than northwest. Maybe the other hurricane is pulling on it a little.
I agree with TA. If they hit head odd, it will probably rip the two storms apart, resulting in a large, discombobulated series of minor storms. If it happens over land, the region below will get drowned, but the winds should be down to just strong-thunderstom levels. The idea of them somehow merging to form a stronger storm somehow without ripping each other apart first just doesn’t seem plausible.
Yes! They will adopt lots of kids and then get divorced.
This happens when you try and look at tree rings from Yamal.
I don’t know I think things like that are kind of cool – as long as special meaning isn’t attached to it.
I mean it kind of looks like Eddie. That’s gotta be fun for Iron Maiden fans.
Once again Bill Clinton sticks his face in the news.
+10
It could also be Degrasse Tyson.
The BBC has today been referring to Matthew as the strongest hurricane to hit the Caribbean in a decade. While probably true, it does put a very different slant on things to saying that there haven’t been any strong hurricanes there for a decade.
Here is where to go for some of the very best satellite images and time loops for this storm: http://www.goes.noaa.gov/goes-e/goes-watl-ir.html
Not seeing any skulls, but some impressive images.
What I like is that if you add a name to a bearded face it becomes either a miracle or a blasphemy depending on which Abrahamic cult you belong to .
Bob
Appreciated.
But beards are ‘IN’ nowadays, in London, anyway
My BUM-BOATIE BEARD OF FORTY-PLUS YEARS is fashionable again [ignoring the snowy strads . . . .]
Auto
strads – STRANDS
Sorry.
Auto.
So you couldn’t be taken for either Jesus or Mohamed ?
Even a really fuzzy picture ?
It reminds me of the guy on the Iron Maiden album covers.
That’s Eddie!
If there is one perfect example of finding patterns where there are none, how about those seeing a CO2-caused change in the weather over the past 30 years?
A great example of Anthropomorphic projection, which is also the basis of Climate Change Obsession.
I saw that earlier today, and thought somebody added the “teeth.” Since apparently they’re part of the original image, does anybody know that those white squares are? Some kind of artifact from the image-capture?
I was thinking they might be storm cells.
I’ve been wondering when someone is going to tag a superlative alliteration for the storm. Mega Matthew or something. It’s fun to joke but I’m afraid it’s not going to be very funny to the people of Hati.
Haiti is pretty much Mad Max with rain as it is.
I like mad Matthew. I was thinking about mega-death… when the joke stopped being funny. I’m pretty sure it’s going to end up as kilo-death anyway. Our church had a missionary group there during the earthquake. It took a huge effort and support of the D.R. military to get them evacuated. Kids loved it; they got a helicopter ride…
Don’t be silly, that’s a scary clown with a big red wig.
Aughh. I just wasted an hour at the Guardian site trying to be factual. At least I learned that (not kidding) “there are more earthquakes because of global warming because of more water weight.”
Ok, I’ll bite. Where do they claim the additional weight came from?
That would be the redistribution of hard fresh water from Greenland and Antarctica spread out over the remainder of the globe (about 2mm per year additional)
I really didn’t ask but I assume it was from melting ice as that was the context, God help us.
The crust is already holding the weight. Probably heavier where the ice is on land so melting would be relieving the weight in places.
HOW DARE YOU!!!! The face on Mars is real and it’s Elvis with a shower cap. Stop talking about things you don’t understand! !!
Lol.
At first I read that as “Stop thinking about things you don’t understand”
Lets not forget Karlophonia
Karlophonia is the need to make constant adjustments to the recorded data in order to create the needed graphics to prove your point is correct
Sheri Moon Zombie had a hand in this.
“Apophenia is the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data.”
Apophenic Global Warming comes to mind…
It looks more like an ape to me, maybe its payback for not inviting our ancestors to dinner.
H/T Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Really though it’s a big storm, if I was anywhere near it’s path I’d be preparing… Good luck, get those nuke power plants stoked up and see you in a week after it’s passed, hope your entire state grid doesn’t go down
..
Sure. That’s what They want us to believe. 🙂
Anthony, doing well?
or lost in oblivion.
stressed, burnout.
Some hopes.
Didn’t even pick up a Cuban cigar?
I miss our Old Man of the Mountain
http://wermenh.com/images/oldman.jpeg
Of course sometimes there IS a huge face carved in the rock…
check this out…
http://archaeologyinbulgaria.com/2016/03/27/5000-year-old-prehistoric-rock-shrine-with-huge-human-faces-hewn-in-discovered-in-bulgarias-rhodope-mountains/
The mind sees what it is looking for.
That NASA satellite image of hurricane Matthew looks like Naomi Oreskes
The sad thing is that some people might actually believe this is a sign of the end times. (Yeah, I know, too much Youseless Tubes but some of them are fun to watch and there are, sometimes, actually tidbits of real science behind the outrageous claims. 😉
I predict a Donald Trump meme will shortly appear using this picture, very shortly.
This human tendency to see patterns even where there isn’t any almost certainly has an evolutionary explanation. The evolutionary cost of seeing a lion/leopard/snake etc in the underbrush where there isn’t one is very low, while the cost of not seeing it when it is actually there can be very high. So our pattern-recognition software tends to be somewhat over-enthusiastic.
As a matter of fact the human eye is extremely good at discerning patterns in noisy data, usually much better than computers. This is the basis for using captchas to separate humans from computers.