Two Scientific discoveries

Scientific discoveries take place almost every day.They are often very interesting and useful to us.Sometimes discoveries that baffle our imagination also are arrived at in those laboratories.We come to know of them only when they get published.Some of them does not get published either.

In the recent past IE the last couple of years, a few scientifically proved facts have been discovered.Some of them appear very strange and extremely interesting. Here are two. Perhaps they can hold your breath for a few moments.

1.Where do Ghosts come from.

Many people have had strange experiences in their lives that led them to believe in the existence of ghosts.Often scientists and medical professionals used to ridicule such experiences by calling these experience as mental aberrations, hallucinations etc.

Recently(2006), a 22 year female was being treated for such hallucinations resulting from epilepsy( according to her doctors.).She had no previous history of any psychiatric ailments or problems.

The woman was complaining that she often saw a ghost, who was imitating her in every way and she was frightened and scared stiff and blue to death.That was when her parents took her to the doctors.

During her treatment for epilepsy, some of her brain areas were electrically stimulated. One of the doctors touched a spot in her brain called as the left temporoparietal junction( LTJ).This is the place where the brain coordinates its functions.
When this spot was touched,the woman claimed that she saw the ghost then and there!

Though the stimulation of the brain was artificially induced, the patient did not feel it was an illusion that she was actually seeing.According to the woman,when she tried to sit up or lean,the "ghost" copied her pose and embraced her in his arms.She said this was a very "unpleasant" feeling.

One Swiss scientist ( named Olaf Blanke) has reported that electrical stimulations of the LTJ, can produce the feeling of the presence of another person in the patient's extra-perosnal space.This scientist's conclusion is that the patient was experiencing actually a perception of her own body and had resulted from the corrupted data collection and coordination by the brain.

Based on such studies, scientis now believe that such electrical stimulations of the brain could explain phenomena related to schizophrenia and other paranormal,abnormal experiences such as ghosts and other strange encounters experienced by many people.

Strange indeed!.

2.The secret of Mona Lisa' smile.

Leonardo Da Vinci's famous painting called Mona Lisa and the secret of her ambiguous and enigmatic smile has been a problem that has attracted the attention of thousands and thousands of people all over the world.

And do you know what scientists have now come up with to explain that smile?
It is that the painting was made after Mona Lisa had just given birth to her second son!. Strange !

This conclusion was arrived at,by a team of scientists, after they studied this fabulous painting with infra-red technology. Both the "Globe" and the "Mail" had reported that this enabled them to see beneath a layer of varnish and discover that the model had a gauzy layer over her dress. This robe ( called a guarnello) was typically worn by mothers who had just given birth or by pregant women in those days.

Mona Lisa was actually Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a cloth merchant of Florence.