Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

The Baltic Sea Anomaly, the Nazis, and "Vril"

The "Baltic Sea Anomaly" is becoming the woo-woo phenomenon that will not die.

You probably remember that the whole thing started last year, when some Swedish treasure-hunters discovered a pile of rocks on the floor of the Baltic Sea that was vaguely circular.  The presence of a circular pile of rocks on these people had exactly the effect it would on anyone, provided he had the IQ of a jar of peanut butter: the people who took the photograph decided it was a downed spaceship.

This caused all sorts of excitement amongst the world of woo-woo, especially when the Ocean Explorer team who had made the initial "discovery" told the press that they couldn't go back because of funding problems and the onset of winter.  They promised, however, to return this year, and anticipation grew, until a couple of months ago, they went back, took more photographs, and found that the downed spacecraft was...

... still just a pile of rocks.  But they were really special rocks!  Really!  And this definitely isn't a publicity stunt intended to draw the whole thing out interminably!

The latter, of course, is happening anyway, because woo-woos are nothing if not tenacious.  So, now we have a new proposal, based on the claim by the Ocean Explorer team that the "Baltic Sea Anomaly" (as the rocks have come to be known) was interfering with electronic equipment, that their cameras and so on "refused to work" when they got close to it.

So now, the pile of rocks has been morphed from a downed spacecraft into...

... wait for it...

... a superpowerful Nazi secret weapon.  (Source)

Yes, this is quite an amazing pile of rocks, isn't it?  It is a remnant of "super-secret WWII technology" that was "designed to block enemy radar and even causing ships and airplanes to lose their way, either crashing into the sea or sinking below the waves."

And as I've commented before, there is no silly idea that someone can't make sillier, so now the buzz is that this is the at-long-last evidence needed to prove the discovery by the Nazis of an ultrapowerful energy source called "Vril."

The whole Vril thing has been going around for years -- that the Nazis had found evidence of alien technology from a civilization on Alpha Centauri, and were working on a doomsday weapon that would be powered by "Vril."  Apparently the story of the Nazis looking for Vril is true; it was one of a whole lot of ridiculous, pseudo-mystical lines of "research" the Nazis were pursuing.  The fact that they were looking for Vril, though, is especially comical, because the whole idea came from an 1871 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton called Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, which the Nazis evidently didn't notice had been shelved in the "Fiction" section of the bookstore.

But that, of course, never stops either Nazis or conspiracy theorists, because they always have recourse to saying, "Of course it's shelved as fiction -- it was written in the guise of a fictional novel to cover up the fact that it was all true!  How's that for a clever strategy?"  And the result is that there are numerous secret and not-so-secret societies today that base their philosophy (if I can dignify it with that name) on the truth of the Vril story.  (Here's a webpage that goes into detail about the Nazi Vril program, but unfortunately seems to take the whole thing a little too seriously; and a highly, but inadvertently, comical page that tells you how to purchase your very own hand-held "Vril Generator.")

So.  Anyway.  Can we just clarify a couple of things, here?

1)  The "Baltic Sea Anomaly" is a PILE OF ROCKS.  How many times do I have to say this?  The Ocean Explorer team, in a sudden fit of honesty, admitted this when they went back there in May.

2)  Call me a cynic, but I just flat-out don't believe that the pile of rocks is interfering with electronic equipment.  That's just too convenient.

3)  There's no such thing as "Vril."  Bulwer-Lytton made it up for his novel.

4)  The Nazis were, for the most part, superstitious, irrational loons, whose only use for science was to make weapons.  Many of the reputable scientists they had fled to safety when the Nazis came to power, including Albert Einstein, Max Born, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Erwin Schrödinger, Hans Krebs, and Bernard Katz, with the result that most of the "science" they accomplished with the ones who stayed behind was pure garbage.

5)  Can we just move on to some other crazy idea, now?  Because this one is seriously getting old.

3 comments:

  1. According to the latest dive reports, the "pile of rocks" is quite precisely circular, smooth and convex on top, mushroom shape with its crown's diameter exceeding its base.

    Sonar imaging reveals surface features with straight lines and right angles.

    http://www.mfs-theothernews.com/2012/07/weird-or-what-baltic-sea-ufo-ocean-x.html

    The theory that this structure might be a WW2 anti submarine device has flaws, but no one except you has proposed that such a device could affect the radar of planes.

    Why you waste your time and your reader's time with this drivel when you have no idea of the facts is mystifying.

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  2. "4) The Nazis were, for the most part, superstitious, irrational loons, whose only use for science was to make weapons. Many of the reputable scientists they had fled to safety when the Nazis came to power, including Albert Einstein, Max Born, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Erwin Schrödinger, Hans Krebs, and Bernard Katz, with the result that most of the "science" they accomplished with the ones who stayed behind was pure garbage."

    I wonder why the US Government absolved the Nazi "garbage scientists" and put them in charge of our space program under operation "Paperclip"?

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  3. Honestly I think the most likely explanation is that it's an ancient place of worship, like a temple. It is close enough to the surface that during the last ice age it would have been above sea level which would also explain the round curves, the straight lines, and its out of place appearance. As for the electrical disturbance properties, that could be caused by a large electromagnetic/magnetic anomaly inside, under or around the structure that ancient people were able to recognize, and was thus somehow used as a place of warship.

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