kamalktk
Antediluvian
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2011
- Messages
- 7,168
Lifting a car is well above normal human ability however. My car is roughly 1400k, no normal human is going to come close to lifting that. What I was reading from the Scientific American article James linked is the adrenaline/panic effects give an estimated 30-40% jolt to the lifting capacity. If I can (generously) lift 100kg, an adrenaline jolt is taking me up to maybe 140kg, not giving me a 1400 kg capacity. The typical car remains around an order of magnitude outside the adrenaline jolted capacity of a normal person.Unfortunately, there is no easy way to replicate this on demand under test conditions.
However, medical scientists do know that adrenalin alone can increase muscular efficiency and improve blood circulation. It's not that much of a stretch to believe it.
The lifter is presumably taking advantage of the fulcrum with the wheels. Perhaps there is more leverage benefit in that than people realize, so these events are less remarkable than they seem?
Bystander's camera phones and cctv mean we should have a car lift on video before too long.
In any case, my point had been that science has apparently decided to accept as fact something that only has anecdotal evidence. It's worth raising eyebrows over. The adrenaline studies are used to justify the anecdotes (which are accepted as factual), they do not prove the anecdotes, only attempt a scientific justification of them. Many fortean subjects are like hysterical strength in that they have only anecdotal evidence. We can take ghosts as an example. There is a near infinite number of ghostly anecdotes. If science were to take the same approach to ghosts as it apparently does hysterical strength, ghosts would be accepted as factual and science would be looking at justifying their existence.