Do you ever stop to look at the sky and see shapes in the clouds? Do you sometimes feel judged by the little face in the electric socket? Or have you seen a figure standing in the doorway at night, only to turn the lights on and find that you’re alone? If you have done one or more of these things, you are not losing your mind, you are simply experiencing a phenomenon called pareidolia.

The term was coined in 1866. It is a compound of the greek words para (‘instead of’, ‘alongside’, ‘beside’) and eidolon (‘shape’, ‘form’, ‘image’). It describes experiences of sensory inputs being interpreted completely differently. One of the most popular examples is the man in the moon, where the pattern of craters reminds many of a face.

Pareidolia is not limited to vision. In the 1980s, American rock music was linked to satanic rituals leading to widespread panic. The songs were played in reverse to look for ‘hidden messages’. These words supposedly revealed the speaker’s true intentions. However, what people hear or see can be easily influenced by something called ‘priming’. This means that if you tell another person that “there is a tiger in those clouds” they are much more likely to see a tiger’s shape, or in 1980s America, hear satanic verses.

But, why do our brains do this? Pareidolia is not a fault of the human brain, but actually a side effect of an important evolutionary feature. Studies have found that pareidolia is especially strong when seeing patterns that are reminiscent of faces, down to identifying the emotions shown on these faces. Researchers hypothesise that early humans who were able to quickly and subconsciously identify a possible threat from another person had an evolutionary advantage over those who could not. So next time you spot a ghostly face in a photo or feel watched by the man in the moon, remind yourself that this is your brain trying to keep you safe. By the way, one of the most common uses of pareidolia is this one :).

Sound bites

• And now for some good COVID-19 news! Recent research from the Rockefeller Institute in the USA shows that people that recover from the virus can remain immune for six months and even longer. The long immune response could be because of remnants of the virus that remain hidden in the gut.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210121131909.htm

• Saturn’s moons seem to be dragging it down. Two scientists from CNRS and Sorbonne University (Paris Observatory — PSL/CNRS) published their work in Nature Astronomy that as Saturn’s moons grow further apart from Saturn, they will cause the planet to further tilt. The moons’ motion triggers a resonance phenomenon that started 1 billion years ago.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210121132103.htm

For more science news, listen to Radio Mocha on Radju Malta and www.fb.com/RadioMochaMalta/

Did you know?

• Atoms make up most types of matter in the universe. They are also mostly empty.

• The first two video games copyrighted in the US were Asteroids and Lunar Lander in 1980.

• The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Expo in San Francisco.

• Snowflakes are made up of snow crystals that are built in clouds on tiny specks of dust.

For more trivia see: www.um.edu.mt/think