Alright… I have many guilty pleasures! Some of which will not be discussed at this moment.
The guilty pleasure I’m going to talk about is enjoying watching Ancient Aliens, Skinwalker Ranch, and lately, Beyond Skinwalker Ranch.
I’m not a believer per se. But I really enjoy the outlandish conclusions based on what could be nothing more than embellished legends or spurious electrical emissions. Oh and by the way… I want to believe, and if possible I want to ShipJack some poor alien tourists to get off this rock!
Ancient Aliens I tend to tear apart pretty quickly. There are simply so many other possible explanations for what the “researchers” present as truth. The other half used to roll his eyes, smile, then ask me why I was watching if I didn’t believe their conclusions. He also used to point out that my watching the show and the advertising meant I was complicit in supporting absolute bullshit!
Skinwalker Ranch, was a little more interesting and a little more difficult to rip apart. The other half just rolled his eyes and went back to his reading.
Now with Beyond Skinwalker Ranch, where two other “investigators” are wandering around with instrumentation and sampling the environment. It’s possible, that instead of proving anything about Skinwalker ranch, they’re simply proving that “odd” things are actually normal in a lot more places than we thought.
But one thing that makes me really start ignoring Beyond Skinwalker Ranch is the goofy ignoring of science. Well known science in fact.
One one episode they’re looking at odd electromagnetic readings and said those readings we disconnected from radio transmissions they were seeing.
Uhhh NOPE!
And at the time there was a guy who builds Tesla Coils standing there. Believe me, Tesla Coil guy knows all about radio interference. His neighbors must love him… On another episode there was a HAM operator who heard these guys say something similar. Neither of these guys corrected the “Hosts”. Both had the credentials to correct the bullshit. Neither of them should have let it go, They should have told the hosts “Nope, you’ve got that wrong, here’s why, and let me demonstrate the principal for you.”
Something that caught my attention was an anomaly on a bridge. The bridge crosses a river at 90° and is a pretty low, standard construction. Concrete, rebar, asphalt, 
In the middle of the bridge their TriField meter spiked for no apparent reason. I admit that’s weird… That’s the kind of stuff that intrigues me. Something like that isn’t a cue for the spooky music. It’s an effect that says “Hey look at me, I’m interesting! Can you figure out why I’m doing this? When you do you’ll say that’s cool!”
They drove the bridge a couple times and verified their results. They probably should have switched to another meter. They could also have found another bridge, and just to be thorough measured dry riverbeds and bridges crossing water at different angles. If other bridges exhibited the same behavior and dry riverbeds were different than riverbeds with water flowing in them, then we all could have learned something.
Machinery moving through the ocean can become magnetized. I don’t know if submarines and ships become magnetized because of friction between the hull of the ship and water, or if it’s the flow of water itself that generates a magnetic field. I only know that the Navy regularly demagnetizes ships, to make it harder for potential enemies to identify various ships in a flotilla by their distinctive magnetic signature.
I’m pretty sure that a Navy scientist could explain the interaction between a ship moving through the ocean and magnetism.
Water is a conductor, the earth has a lot of naturally occurring magnetism. I know that moving a conductor through magnetic fields generates electricity. Which also propagates magnetic fields.
I have no idea what a flowing fluid conductor like water, or mercury would do. Interesting question though. I wonder what happens if the flow is not smooth. Creeks and rivers often have turbulent flow or turbulent sections. How might that impact conductivity or magnetism? Cool question… Maybe one of those fancy drones with a magnetometer could quickly and easily answer it.
My point is that it’s possible the flow of water is interacting with the grounded rebar in a bridge that’s generating a magnetic anomaly. It doesn’t have to be some Spooky Music scenario.
Science! Physics! Both can be stone bitches. But they provide people like me a foundation. Well, maybe it’s more like a security blanket.
Both Skinwalker Ranch and Beyond Skinwalker Ranch make a big deal about 1.6 Ghz transmissions or interference. As somehow special.
I can think of half a dozen machines including the computer that I’m typing on right now that could generate 1.6 GHz. I often see evenly spaced interference on my radio if I’m using my big computer monitor and laptop dock. The monitor and dock both have processors in them and I suspect the emissions are leaking from one or more of the cables connecting the devices. The interference is weak, but it’s there, with the frequency analyzer built into my radio I can detect it. The equipment I’m talking about is modern which means, it’s pretty low power and therefore low RF emission.
This begs the question. What kind of emissions would you get from older or higher power equipment?
All of these shows, I think need someone that says, “Wait a damn minute… Before we freak each other out what does the actual known science tell us?”
Honestly, I think there might be a market for a Skeptics show. The reason I think there’s a market, is because if the skeptics can’t come up with an explanation then whatever is left, really is unexplained and mysterious. The fun could be, discovering if the mystery simply the limits of our knowledge, our equipment, or really something to be spooked by.
If we’re going to have scary camp fire stories… let’s make ‘em scary as hell.
02/26/2024 Update.
Sorry for the weird half sentences in the originally published piece. My favorite application for writing blog posts had an update. Everything on screen looked great, until the piece was published.
What you were seeing appears to have been a partial fusion of original text, autocorrected spelling, and various edits, all overlaid in a very strange way.
I may have to switch to the alternate application for a while.
OR… Cue the dramatic spooky music! There’s no way that the software could be affected that way… It must be Aliens!