The Seen and The Unseen – The Loch Ness Monster: When Science Goes Stupid
Steve Barton
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At Dread Central we’re all for science. It’s given us lots of cool things–for example, those globe thingies that turn static electricity into cool blue lightning bolts when you touch the glass. Seriously, don’t you love pretending you’re a powerful wizard?
Hmm, maybe that’s just me.
Still, we can’t help thinking that sometimes science fails to bring clarity when it comes to mysteries of the earth. Some of the theories turn out to be more ridiculous than the actual legends and insulting to a good number of people.
Take, for example, the Loch Ness Monster.
This article from Scientific American chronicles a failed scientific theory about Nessie, Scotland’s famous lake monster. An Italian geologist, Luigi Piccardi, proposed this not-so-brilliant idea: The massive bubbles everyone sees in the water are actually products of seismic activity under the Loch. Further, Piccardi tries to explain that St. Columba’s sighting of the monster, the first on record, might have actually just been an earthquake embellished by the Irish monks to show Columba’s power.
Poor Irish monks.
The problem with Piccardi’s theory is that is has no scientific data to support it. No earthquakes are recorded around reported Nessie activity. Further, while the Irish were guilty of telling a tall tale or two, it’s doubtful they would confuse a lake monster with an earthquake.
By all means, let’s try to figure out mysteries. But let’s not degrade our ancestors and come up with silly theories along the way, eh?
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