There's an SF short story - Bob Shaw maybe? - on this theme. Spirits get blown away by the solar wind unless they are massive enough. Can't recall the details, but it involved a mad professor, his daughter and her swain.
Anybody?
Anybody?
Senex
Philosopher
My favorite writer is Charles Dickens (we all aspire to be someone we admire -- and I wish I had a fraction of Charles Dicken's skills). Ghosts can be seen as a metaphor. Scrooge may have dreamed it (but the spontaneous combustion scene in Bleak House showed even my hero could promote woo).
Ghosts would make the world more interesting but physics doesn't allow for ghosts.
Ghosts would make the world more interesting but physics doesn't allow for ghosts.
Physics sucks.
That's the whole point of ghosts; gods; crop circles; big-foot, et al.
When I studied thermodynamics, I only had to get to the 2nd law before the woo looked promising.
What's to lose?
Math is also a dead-end street, as per profession; should you love your dna.
Woo is all about upping the odds of biological significance.
Get on the train, nerds.
That's the whole point of ghosts; gods; crop circles; big-foot, et al.
When I studied thermodynamics, I only had to get to the 2nd law before the woo looked promising.
What's to lose?
Math is also a dead-end street, as per profession; should you love your dna.
Woo is all about upping the odds of biological significance.
Get on the train, nerds.
aggle-rithm
Ardent Formulist
Is it at all possible that being could exist made out of dark matter?
We don't know much about dark matter except that we can't see it, and it DOES have a gravitational interaction. That would explain why the "ghosts" don't float off into space.
Perhaps it doesn't have an electromagnetic interaction, which would mean that it could pass through walls?
Of course, that leaves the same contradiction as before...how would it pass through walls, and yet not sink down to the center of the Earth?
We don't know much about dark matter except that we can't see it, and it DOES have a gravitational interaction. That would explain why the "ghosts" don't float off into space.
Perhaps it doesn't have an electromagnetic interaction, which would mean that it could pass through walls?
Of course, that leaves the same contradiction as before...how would it pass through walls, and yet not sink down to the center of the Earth?
aggle-rithm
Ardent Formulist
C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce had a similar premise. His idea was that Hell was a tiny little speck compared to Earth, and Earth was a similarly tiny speck compared to Heaven. People who were in Hell could come up to Heaven whenever they wanted to, but found it an extremely unpleasant experience because they grew to Heavenly size while retaining the same mass. The result was that they would cut themselves on blades of grass and would be impaled by falling raindrops.
Lewis admitted that he got this idea, in turn, from a science fiction story about time travel. This story had the premise that if someone moved backwards in time, they would be unable to interact with the environment because the past is written in stone and can't be changed. Raindrops would go right through you--painfully.
aggle-rithm
Ardent Formulist
In that TNG episode, one of the "phased" characters believed they had died and were ghosts, while the other was convinced there was a scientific explanation. As it turns out, the latter was correct. Unfortunately, a scientific explanation has EXACTLY the same problems that a supernatural one does.
LarianLeQuella
Elf Wino
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Psi Baba
Homo Skepticalis
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More importantly, do they have money in them? Is non-corporeal money legal tender?
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
The Cottage of Eternity, if I recall correctly. It's in his collection A Better Mantrap. It covers quite a lot of the proposed physics of ghost behaviour.
Dave