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Happy pareidolidays!

I know some people have Christmas on their mind today, but this is a bit too literal: a brain scan taken at Newcastle University turned up a familiar face nose: I always pictured him as somewhat...

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Carroteidolia

It’s been forever since I posted some pareidolia: an object or shape that looks like something else. Usually it’s a face or a religious icon — Jesus, Mary, Mohammed, whatever — but really it can be...

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Rushmore, doubt less

You’ve almost certainly seen pictures of Mount Rushmore; it’s a magnificent carving of the heads of four past US presidents, each almost 20 meters high. Located in South Dakota, it’s in a national park...

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Angry slippers are angry

It’s Caturday, and I have decided to expand my definition once again to include not just animals but also things that aren’t alive that look like things that are alive. So I present to you angry...

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Back from the Old World

Mrs. BA and I have spent the last week in Europe, on a Center for Inquiry-sponsored cruise with fellow critical thinkers. I’ll post more later, but yesterday we flew across 8 time zones, arriving home...

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Swimming up the Milky Way

Pareidolia is the psychological term for seeing patterns in random or near-random distributions of things. The Face on Mars, the Man in the Moon, Jesus in a taco shell, and so on… most of the time it...

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A dragon fight in the heart of Orion

It’s very common to see familiar things in random patterns. We see faces in clouds, Jesus in a tortilla, and smiley faces everywhere. It’s so ubiquitous there’s a term for it: pareidolia. So when I saw...

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Disturbing face distortion illusion

This is a pretty nifty illusion: as you look at a spot between two rapidly changing images of faces, your brain distorts the images, making them look really weird: I could do without the title they...

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The fist of an angry cloud

I glanced out my office window the other day and saw what is clearly a sign that the weather is ticked off about something: Go cloud! Punch that sky! I was thinking at first the cloud was the result of...

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A fiery angel erupts from the Sun

When you build and launch a high-resolution solar observatory that stares at the Sun 24 hours a day, you’re bound to catch some pretty cool stuff. As proof, check out this video of a stunning...

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Presleidolia

Hey, I haven’t posted a fun pareidolia (patterns that look like faces or figures) news article in a while, and this is a good one: a man in Finland found this interesting image on his wall: [Here's the...

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Sunsquatch

I love the images of the Sun taken by astrophotographer Alan Friedman. I love pareidolia. And I love cryptozoology. So of course I love love love this: [Click to sasquatchenate.] Pareidolia is the...

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Solar purrominence

I know I’ve posted a lot about the Sun lately, and I know I just posted a funny picture by astrophotographer Alan Friedman. And maybe I should’ve waited for Caturday to post this. But c’mon. How could...

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Grow a paireidolia

I believe without reservation that this may be the greatest instance of pareidolia of all time: an ultrasound of a man experiencing epididymo-orchitis, or pain and swelling of a testicle: Having...

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Angry nebula is really REALLY angry

In the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud (one of the Milky Way’s many satellite galaxies), there lies a vast complex of gas called 30 Doradus. And inside that sprawling volume of space is the...

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Repost: Happy pareidolidays!

[I don't repost very often, but this one from last year still works. -- The BA] I know some people have Christmas on their mind today, but this is a bit too literal: a brain scan taken at Newcastle...

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Carcineidolia

If there is any definition of "ironic", it must be a smiley face seen in a cancerous cell: Australian researchers at the Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research were investigating how the...

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Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun.

The Sun is feisty. Rising and falling packets of ionized gas (called plasma) below its surface generate fierce magnetic fields, which store vast amounts of energy. This can give rise to such features...

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Fire, water, and ice

Because you simply cannot have enough incredibly beautiful photographs of aurorae in your life, here’s one taken near Tromso, Norway, on March 28, 2012 by photographer Helge Mortensen: [Click to...

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Cateidolia

Via my pal Miss Cellania (possibly not her real name) at Neatorama, I saw this short cat video which is really pretty funny: Ha! This is a great example of audio pareidolia; hearing (instead of seeing,...

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Dragon hunting above, dragon hunting below

On May 23 — the day after the SpaceX Dragon capsule launch — International Space Station astronaut André Kuipers snapped this shot of the Earth: [Click to ensmaugenate.] André — who’s Dutch — put this...

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Coathook to the stars

In the constellation of Vulpecula, the fox – located high in the sky this time of year for northern hemisphere observers – is a fun little asterism: a collection of stars formally known as Brocchi’s...

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Skull flower

This is quite simply one of the best examples of pareidolia – seeing faces or other familiar things in otherwise random patterns – I have ever seen: How cool is that? The picture was taken by Todd...

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The faces of Licinia

In April, 2012, the Dawn spacecraft was a mere 272 kilometers (170 miles) from the surface of the asteroid Vesta when it took this wonderful picture of the crater Licinia: [And oh yes, you want to...

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Hubble’s Carineidolia contest

On April 24, 2007 – the 17th anniversary of Hubble’s launch – the Space Telescope Science Institute released a devastating picture of the Carina Nebula, a ridiculously complex and gorgeous star forming...

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