Inexplicable Phenomena Research Articles

Life After Death and the Paranormal World

This research paper explores the question of whether life after death and the paranormal world exists or if it is just a string of false beliefs. Life after death and paranormal activities have a wide area of discussion in India wherein, we focus on the existence of different realms, the interaction between these realms, the process of channeling, and various perspectives regarding the idea of “ghosts”, “spirits” and “entities”. We aim to logically deconstruct the phenomenon of paranormal activities and delve deeper into the concepts of soul, spirits, good and bad energies, and how they travel through this dimension to the other after death. The role of human beings in these occurrences is also substantially discussed in the context of the energies we emit and attract. These energies and actions that we give out in the world and perform throughout our lives also pave the way to the kind of vibrational frequency we would turn out to be in another dimension and also focus on the deeds and unfulfilled wishes of this lifetime which entraps our spirits in this world refraining it from starting a new life. This paper takes us through the experience and encounters of people who have become mediums to bridge the gap between different worlds, how these abilities can be of use, and what effects it has on them. It attempts to give an insight into all the inexplicable phenomena and the ravenous beliefs that surround the topic. It aims at unraveling the mystery around the question of whether the paranormal world and life after death are concepts that can be logically accepted or are just a set of deep-seated fears that emerge in the form of beliefs and experiences.

Solar Eclipses and the Origins of Critical Thinking and Complexity

Abstract This paper relates curiosity to economic development through its impact on human capital formation and technological advancement in pre-modern times. More specifically, we propose that exposure to inexplicable phenomena prompts curiosity and thinking in an attempt to comprehend these mysteries, thus raising human capital and technology, and, ultimately, fostering growth. We focus on solar eclipses as one particular trigger of curiosity and empirically establish a robust relationship between their number and several proxies of economic prosperity. We also offer evidence compatible with the human capital and technological increases we postulate, finding a more intricate thinking process and more developed technology among societies more exposed to solar eclipses. Among other factors, we study the development of written language, the playing of strategy games and the accuracy of folkloric explanations for eclipses, as well as the number of tasks undertaken in a society, their relative complexity and broad technological indicators. Lastly, we document rising curiosity both at the social and individual levels: societies incorporate more terms related to curiosity and eclipses in their folklore, and people who observed a total solar eclipse during their childhood were more likely to have entered a scientific occupation.

The Semantics of Eucharistic Miracles

Abstract The term “Eucharistic miracles” refers to some seemingly inexplicable phenomena which have been observed at many times in Catholic churches in various countries. (“Eucharist” is the central element of Christian worship in general and Catholic worship in particular). According to Wikipedia, “reported Eucharistic miracles usually consist of unexplainable phenomena such as consecrated hosts visibly transforming into myocardium [heart] tissue”. From a believer’s point of view, a “Eucharistic miracle” can be read as a message – a message which doesn’t force belief but which does “want to be believed”; and which, first of all, “wants to be understood”. As such, these phenomena present a task for a semanticist: what meaning can be plausibly attributed to them by people open to faith and how can this message be best articulated? In this paper, the author, a semanticist with a special interest in the semantics of religion (Wierzbicka, 2001, 2019) takes a look at “Eucharistic miracles” from a semantic point of view. Her goal is to explore these phenomena through Minimal English anchored in universal human concepts (Wierzbicka, 1996, 2014; Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2014; Goddard, 2018, 2021).

INEXPLICABLE BEINGS, PHENOMENA, AND EVENTS, CATEGORIZED AS MYTHOLOGICAL, AMONG THE PEOPLES OF THE SOUTH SLAVS: COLLECTIONS OF FOLK TALES, INTERVIEWS WITH STORYTELLERS AND MYTHOLOGICAL BEINGS IN MODERN NOVELS

This article contains the basic structural features of a same-named Ph.D. research thesis. The main tasks of the research are to identify three focal fields with mythological elements, whether they are phenomena, objects, people, or creatures that some believe and others doubt exist. These focal fields are found in various collections of folk stories, and contemporary literary texts as well as in interviews with storytellers. However, the focus of this article is primarily on the introductory story and on providing the background of the general idea. The goal is to acquaint the readers with the background that explains the origin of the mentioned stories among the people. It talks about death, man’s natural fear of it, and the world of the paranormal, religious, and mythological, which combined create inexplicable phenomena that contradict the rational reasoning of man. One of the hypotheses of the research itself is to understand why this phenomenon is still present in the human community and what benefits it brings. Furthermore, the methodology used in the research includes a comparison and contrast of information between folk stories and contemporary literary works. In addition, the most important research method used is the interview technique with the aforementioned storytellers with strategically selected persons who are assumed to possess quality information.

Становление системы К.С. Станиславского в контексте эпохи Серебряного века: влияние Востока

The article presents an overview of the All-Russian scientific conference with the contribution of international participants. It took place at GITIS on November 2–3, 2022. While creating his famous theatre system, K.S. Stanislavsky discovered some common details between his methods of pedagogical practice and yoga. He intuitively came to the same methods of influencing the psyche that had been known in the East for thousands of years. In the process of his work, he addressed the concept of “prana”, that he borrowed from the yogis. He also used such terms as “emission” and “perception”, “radiation” and “induction”, that were adopted from the French philosopher and psychologist T. Ribo. In the second half of the 19th century, the concept of psychic energy became widespread in psychology and was used to interpret numerous inexplicable phenomena during spiritual sessions. Sigmund Freud freed this term from mystical overtones and denoted it with the word “libido”. Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, proposed to consider the libido neutral by its character as a universal psychic energy. By addressing some principles of yogic teaching, K. S. Stanislavsky created various methods for the development and improvement of the actor’s psychotechnics. From this basis, his colleagues,followers, and students later developed a number of psychophysical trainings. They became part of Stanislavsky’s method known throughout the world as his “system” and have proven to be very useful in the process of an actors’ education. The purpose of the conference was to reveal those aspects of the Silver Age culture which contributed to the creation and establishment of the K. S. Stanislavsky system.

Spendemic: Japan’s Marketing of Mythical Creatures and the Business of Selling Hope

With their roots in animism and Shintōism, Japan’s mythical creatures known as yōkai have been feared, revered, and used to explain calamities or inexplicable phenomena. Needless to say, in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak and even now to some extent, very little was known about the origins of the virus, its potency, and how it could be prevented or treated effectively. Naturally, this threw most countries in the world into a state of confusion and Japan was no exception. However, as opposed to seeking answers from conspiracy theories to make sense of the unknown, Japan turned to アマビエ(Amabié) – a mermaid-like yōkai known for prophesizing either an impending epidemic or an abundant harvest. While Amabié offers no explanation, advice or immediate help, it is believed that by recreating manifestations of its image, people can defend themselves against illness. Whether it was wishful thinking or simply a trend is debatable, but countless artists, city councils, product manufacturers, and shrines around the country all jumped onto the bandwagon of producing and promoting products with images of Amabié in 2020. Although their motives varied and a sense of hope certainly inspired the production and consumption of Amabié, in this article I argue that the profit factor was a major incentive for shrines and businesses who invested in the trend. I will demonstrate this by drawing upon previous research on the commodification of religion while providing examples of the commodification of Amabié by local, corporate, and secular entities.

Exponential Clustering of Bipartite Quantum Entanglement at Arbitrary Temperatures

Macroscopic quantum effects play central roles in the appearance of inexplicable phenomena in low-temperature quantum many-body physics. Such macroscopic quantumness is often evaluated using long-range entanglement, i.e., entanglement in the macroscopic length scale. The long-range entanglement not only characterizes the novel quantum phases but also serves as a critical resource for quantum computation. Thus, the problem that arises is under which conditions can the long-range entanglement be stable even at room temperatures. Here, we show that bi-partite long-range entanglement is unstable at arbitrary temperatures and exponentially decays with distance. Our theorem provides a no-go theorem on the existence of the long-range entanglement. The obtained results are consistent with the existing observations that long-range entanglement at non-zero temperatures can exist in topologically ordered phases, where tripartite correlations are dominant. In the derivation of our result, we introduce a quantum correlation defined by the convex roof of the standard correlation function. We establish an exponential clustering theorem for generic quantum many-body systems for such a quantum correlation at arbitrary temperatures, which yields our main result by relating quantum correlation to quantum entanglement. As a simple application of our analytical techniques, we derived a general limit on the Wigner-Yanase-Dyson skew information and the quantum Fisher information, which will attract significant attention in the field of quantum metrology. Our work reveals novel general aspects of low-temperature quantum physics and sheds light on the characterization of long-range entanglement.

Machine learning prediction of critical heat flux on downward facing surfaces

Application of external reactor vessel cooling (ERVC) in-vessel retention (IVR) was an important measure to ensure the integrity of the lower head of a reactor pressure vessel (RPV). As a typical boiling heat transfer process, the critical heat flux (CHF) plays a crucial role in the safety margin of a RPV's IVR-ERVC strategy. Although there have been a lot of correlations and experiments about the CHF of pool boiling on downward facing surfaces, their application range was relatively limited. To further expand the usability, machine learning was introduced in this research after collecting most accessible CHF data of pool boiling on downward facing surfaces. Considering the small amount of these experimental data, some pseudo data obtained by fitting the existed experimental data were added. Three machine learning methods, the ε-support vector machine (ε-SVM), back propagation neural network (BPNN) and random forest were used to predict CHF. Among the three methods, ε-SVM provided the best accuracy in the prediction. The effects of orientation, surface dimensions, heating surface material and pressure on the downward facing surface boiling crisis were predicted by ε-SVM, the results showed that in general, the CHF increased with the increase of orientation angle, and increased with the pressure from 1 bar to 10 bar. Under atmospheric pressure, the CHF decreased with increasing the width of the heating surface, but there was a width value that could eliminate the influence of width. In addition, the CHF seemed to increase with the increase of thermal effusivity. However, there are still some inexplicable phenomena that need to be revealed by further research. Overall, this method is expected to be widely used in predicting the CHF of pool boiling on downward facing surfaces.

Possession Amnesia

Abstract The occurrence of possession amnesia—memory loss subsequent to the cessation of possession by a spirit—is chronicled in Akkadian, Greek, early Jewish, and Christian literature. Anthropologists have collected data that witness to the same phenomenon occurring in indigenous cultures. Anthropologists have argued that patterns of experience with certain inexplicable phenomena, such as with spirits, may provide clues for evidence of their existence. This article discusses patterns of possession amnesia that occur cross-culturally and transhistorically as possible evidential support for the existence of spirits.

Кумулятивная фабульная модель в рассказе А. Радклиф «Комната с призраком»

The article examines the fabula of the Ann Radcliffe’s story “The Haunted Chamber” using the cumulative model of plot composition. The following elements are consistently distinguished: the exposition: the hero preparing for an overnight stay in the uninhabited wing of the Castle of Udolpho; the cumulation of events, including the storyline of Count Morano with two implicit (the discovery of a funeral pall and a dispute on the nature of supernatural) and one explicit (mysterious music in the castle corridors) contacts with inexplicable phenomena, as well as the Ludovico’s storyline with a series of mystical events: from a strange noise in the haunted chamber to a ghostly face appearing behind an armchair. The final catastrophe is made by the disappearance of Ludovico from the locked room and failed attempts to find him. An “old Provencal folktale” takes a special place in the narration; it also follows the cumulative fabula scheme, but ends with a favorable outcome. The analytical study of the Ann Radcliffe's story “The Haunted Chamber” using the universal cumulative model of plot composition allows, on the one hand, to consider it in the context of the genre tradition, namely, the aesthetics of the School of Terror and on the other — to reveal its artistic originality in full.

Air, the Physics of Sensus Communis

Based on the ways in which people's behavior and perception of space changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, I focus on the special attitude toward air, which goes beyond the perception expressed in the body of scientific knowledge and poetic metaphors. In this new of air, and proceeding from the ideas of the Presocratics and Gaston Bachelard, I consider the possibility of revisiting the logic of the elements, which has been supplanted in culture by atomistic rationality and metaphysical abstractions. In the elements, movement and transformation prevail over essence, cause, and purpose. I hold that the elements have no essence and manifest themselves only through clashing and mixing with other elements. Thus, during epidemics, the element of air comes into contact with the element of community. I contend that material manifestations of non-individual common (sensus communis) may be found at this intersection. Within this frame of reference, social and ethical relations acquire a physical dimension (in the sense of Aristotle's physis) and lend themselves to being interpreted in dynamic terms of forces and energies. This approach also makes it possible to discover many other elements, which are in contact with deindividualized sensus communis. Such areas of contact between elements (turbulence zones) manifest themselves in the anthropomorphic world in the shape of scientifically inexplicable phenomena, theoretical phantasms or incredible (silly) correlations that used to be the domain of magic but today are the domains of neural networks and big data.

О понятии «точка» как онтологической категории, фундирующей идею трансцендентности

The article shows that the active development of science, in particular, physics, which deals with unvisualizable and inexplicable phenomena, in the modern world it is especially important to understand the phenomena that are on the verge of human perception. In this sense, the study of the concept of “pointˮ not only as a mathematical object, but as a universal, anticipating the idea of an ontological order, can contribute to the methodology of thinking for new interpretations of scientific discoveries and their adequate description. The author considers the concept of “pointˮ in the mainstream of metaphysical comprehension, and the inclusion in the context of the analysis of the idea of transcendence, to which this concept leads, forms a conceptual scheme for interpreting what does not lend itself to multi-faceted comprehension and explanation. The search for alternative interpretations and additional semantic connotations of familiar concepts, which are characterized by integrativity and syncretism, is especially important in modern scientific research, because allows to enrich the epistemological arsenal and open new aspects of the thematic field of philosophy and science. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the ontological status of the concept of “pointˮ in the problem-theoretical context of modern culture. The point is presented as the beginning and end of being, which is illustrated by the generally accepted cosmological model. The special nature of this concept is demonstrated, acting as a link between the spheres of the immanent and the transcendent.

Суеверия и народные обряды в Cамарской, Саратовской и Пензенской губерниях

Often in everyday life we have to deal with various signs and superstitions that are quite tenacious, despite their incompatibility with Orthodoxy. Superstitions usually refer to the stories of the water spirit, bogie, puck, mermaids, healers, sorcerers, etc., as well as various supernatural creatures and inexplicable phenomena. Various charms, amulets, nauzes, etc. can also be attributed to superstition, as all of the above is an attribute of witchcraft. These phenomena arose, most likely due to a lack of enlightenment, education and Orthodox culture. Superstitions come to life in the usual proverbs, sayings, signs. Many rituals and customs – weddings, christenings, funerals, and even Orthodox holidays intertwined with more ancient rituals. They cannot be destroyed, it is transferred from century to century by one generation to another down to every last detail. Therefore, folk paganism constantly attracts close attention of researchers, as well as all who would like to understand the spiritual origins of our culture today. The phenomenon of dual faith is one of the varieties of neo-paganism. We explore the superstitions and folk rites in the Samara, Saratov and Penza Governorates.

The analysis of conceptual understanding and selected inquiry skills of students within non-formal education activities in the science Centre

Science centers have been established in an effort to promote science and technology in society, among children and young people. They are basically institutions that have prepared a series of scientific experiments, observations, games and similar attractions working on a selected phenomenon. A surprising effect, unexpected behaviors or inexplicable phenomena that are supposed to raise curiosity and desire to discover in a visitor are offered to them as a rule. Visitors of science centers are often groups of school children on a school excursion. From a teachers’ point of view it would surely be welcome if besides motivation the excursion had an educational aspect and if it could be possible to use it to complement subject matter or to develop selected skills, which schools do not have appropriate conditions for. For support of such ideas we established Inquiry science laboratory within the science center SteelPARK in Košice, where groups of school students can participate on two different inquiry activities pre-pared for each mostly one month period. Activities are guided by a lecturer, a pre-service physics teacher, in parallel for 5 groups of 3-4 students. Our laboratory teaching centers around key problems, pre-selected for each inquiry activity. Total time for one activity is 60 minutes. Conceptual test questions are discussed during the first part of the activity as a tool for the student’s involvement into the problem and also as a source of motivation. Activities are on the level of guided inquiry, which we specified through examples of ESTABLISH project units. After the activity, formative assessment tools are used for self-evaluation of selected development skills. In the paper we present the results of the conceptual tests and rubrics, basically created within the SAILS project, for skills mapping across the sample of more than 600 students discussed and analyzed on the basis of one exemplary activity. After two years of experience with more than 4500 participants from lower and upper secondary schools, the level of selected inquiry skills across 15 different inquiry activities is presented. All of our worksheets as well as findings from non-formal educational activities are recommended for use by teachers in school practice.

The Experiential Basis of Wave-Particle Duality, Quantum Uncertainty, the Creation and Collapse of the Wave Function, and Quantum Nonlocality

In this work a very simple model of physical experiential creation is developed and then used to provide a single, consistent, and clear solution to the riddles posed by the phenomena that lie at the heart of quantum physics. By providing a unitary framework for understanding all of these heretofore inexplicable phenomena, this model demonstrates that physical reality is a reality that has to be created in order to be known. What this model also demonstrates is that the way in which physical reality is created is through a specific type of relation that takes place at a level of reality that is more fundamental than the physical level of reality. Understanding that physical reality has to be created in order to be known first makes it possible to recognize the experiential mechanism that produces wave-particle duality. Recognizing that experiential mechanism then makes it possible to identify and define the fundamental limitation that exists in the creation of physical experience that produces quantum uncertainty. Following that, that same experiential mechanism and limitation is then used to explain both the creation and collapse of the wave function, as well as quantum nonlocality. Ultimately, this model of physical experiential creation, by providing a single solution to all of these heretofore insoluble riddles, allows for the unification of classical and quantum physical experiential reality, by demonstrating that the only difference between determinate classical physical reality and indeterminate quantum physical reality lies in the relational conditions under which each of these physical experiential realities is created. What this model also makes clear is that the probability or randomness that is so much a part of quantum theory is not an actual feature of reality, but is only an artifact of the process by which quantum physical reality is created, thereby vindicating Einstein for his never-relinquished view that reality is not fundamentally probabilistic.

L’intrusion du Fantastique dans les Nouvelles Écritures Algériennes : le cas des romans de Djamel Mati

The intrusion of the Fantastic in the New Algerian Writings: the case of the novels of Djamel Mati
 This contribution aims at questioning the way with which the Algerian Writer D. Mate introduces the fantastic in the diegetic universe inclined to the phantasmagorias of the tormented lucubration’s of the characters in quest of themselves. In this perspective, the Writer elaborates a new interactive and dynamic relationship between the moving and chimerical spatiality’s of "point B114" and the fantastic lucubration’s of atypical characters on the reading of "Sweet-sour, the lucubration’s of a tormented mind" and "It looks like the South". The researcher attempts to show how such dynamics is elaborated in the wake of a new Algerian writing of dreams and delirium, the liberation of forms and senses through a singular fantasy with innovative scriptural mechanisms to showtheir philosophical and ontological nature, consubstantial with the human condition. In conclusion, we will say that the fantastic is omnipresent in the phantasmagorical diegetic universe by the multiplication of hallucinatory, strange and inexplicable phenomena experienced by the tormented characters in search of themselves. However, Mati's scriptural aesthetic does not content itself with "threading" them in the narrative continuum: it draws eclecticly from other codes of the fantastic, ranging from the strange inexplicable to that of the disturbing Freudian strangeness to establish a sort of dismantling of time and space opening up to infinity in a supernatural dreamlike timelessness that escapes the classical spatio-temporal benchmarks (space, duration, dating). In Mati, the "raw" fantasy is not introduced into a world where enchantment goes without saying, it is the fruit of hallucinations, daydreams and dreamlike delusions of characters inclined to systematically consume sweet and sour pills and hookahs stuffed with Indian hemp. The intrusion of an eclectic and hybrid fantasy into a composite conglomeration of hallucinatory micro-narratives allows the expression of an existential malaise which the wandering characters seeks to circumscribe through strange and inexplicable experiences. Finally, the intrusion of a fantastic singular invades in an original and singular way the entire surface of the text through the excrescences of the hallucinatory dream, of the oneiric fabulation and refers implicitly to the impalpable ontological mystery which privileges the questioning of the human condition and the entity of being.

Doak Cox and the Woodcut

Doak Cox and the Woodcut Amanda Morris (bio) The thing about a mirror is that it shows you only an exact replica of what used to be. It is the fluid record of the death of the present played back at the speed of light. It is the image from a camera’s viewfinder that never becomes a snapshot. When we look to a mirror to see who we are, it shows us who we were just a moment ago. His name from childhood is Tokitaro. His name is Shunro, then it is Taito, then it is Iitsu. It is Gakyo Rojin Manji, which means “The Old Man Mad about Art.” He is an artist, and each time he makes a major shift in his artistic style, he changes his name. Now his name is Hokusai. Hokusai’s father made mirrors and taught him an appreciation for elegance. As a young boy, he watched as his father painted intricate designs around mirrors and then mimicked the craft. Seventy-year-old Hokusai dips his brush into a vial of black ink. His movements are controlled and deliberate. Beneath his bald and neatly creased forehead, Hokusai’s dark eyes squint severely at the page. He places the tip of his brush on the edge of the page and sweeps upward toward the center. He is tracing a curve. His brush jets back and forth in short, precise movements. His painted curls and dips are the grasping fingertips of a frothy wave. He has painted this wave before. This is the thirty-seventh and final draft of his Great Wave. Hokusai has been dead for ninety-seven years. In another forty-five a crater on Mercury will be given his name. It is 1946. On April 1 an earthquake off the coast of Alaska sparks a tsunami in the Pacific Ocean. The tsunami hurtles toward Hawaii more than three thousand miles from the quake’s epicenter. It reaches the Big Island in five hours and announces its arrival with a roar. It breaks over Pier 1 in Hilo Bay harbor, knocking people into the water. The first wave towers thirteen stories over the [End Page 169] Hawaiian coast. A trail of smaller waves bursts from the ocean in every direction, killing dozens in its path, which stretches from Alaska to South America. A person in Santa Cruz, California, drowns. Fishing boats sink off the coast of Chile. In Hawaii alone, 159 people were killed by the tsunami. Days later, geophysicist Doak Cox scratches neat equations on a pad in his office. A cigarette burns short in the ashtray on his desk. Cox scratches his head unconsciously as he considers data from the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Like the long equations he writes to explain otherwise inexplicable phenomena, he speaks in long sentences, stringing out clause after clause, chasing the strain of his imagination through ebbs and flows, drawing breathless conclusions. The United States government asks Cox to join a scientist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and another from the University of Hawaii in the first post-tsunami survey ever conducted. Each time I visit the Art Institute of Chicago, I pause in front of Hokusai’s Great Wave. The crashing wave frames Mount Fuji, dwarfed in the background of the image. Mount Fuji’s snowy peak is as white and clean as the threatening crest of the wave on the Pacific Ocean. The outermost ringlet of foam points directly to the mountain from above, as though poised to devour it. Nearly lost in the image are the boats. The viewer is meant to look first at the giant cresting wave, and then to the mountain safely nestled in the distance. I must have stood in front of the print fifty times before I saw the fishing boats. The boats and their crews of twelve men dressed in the same blues and whites of the ocean bow their bald heads toward the water. They strain against their oars and paddle for shore or for calmer waters, whichever they find first. Their long boats are built for speed to transport their catch. Fresh bonito was a prized delicacy and promised a payday worth the...

Microvesicles: ubiquitous contributors to infection and immunity.

MVs, which can be subgrouped into exosomes, SVs, and OMVs, are secreted by eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. Many previously inexplicable phenomena can be explained by the existence of these vesicles, as they appear to be important in a wide range of biologic processes, such as intercellular communication and transfer of functional genetic information. In this review, we discuss the immunologic roles of MVs during sterile insult and infectious disease. MVs contribute to clotting initiation, cell recruitment, and neovascularization during wound healing. In the context of pathogen infection, both the host and the pathogen use MVs for communication and defense. MVs are exploited by various viruses to evade the host immune response and contribute to viral spread. Bacteria produce MVs that contain virulence factors that contribute to disease pathology and antibiotic resistance. This review summarizes the role of MVs in the pathology and resolution of disease.

Microbiología alimentaria y fenómenos "paranormales" en la historia

A lo largo de la historia han existido fenómenos aparentemente inexplicables cuyos resultados han originado muertes, milagros, juicios por brujería e incluso ganancias y pérdidas de batallas militares. En este artículo se realiza una inspección microbiológica-histórica en donde algunos microorganismos (Claviceps purpurea, Fusarium sporotrichioides, Serratia marcescens y Stachybotrys chartarum), pueden ser los hipotéticos causantes de algunos de estos fenómenos.

The performance of solar bottle bulbs at different interior exposure levels

Different sizes and arrangements of solar bottle bulbs might greatly affect the lighting delivered and there is no general agreement on the best interior bottle exposure levels. This study was undertaken to examine the lighting performance of three prototype solar bottle bulbs and to compare their performance at three different interior bottle exposure levels: one-third, half and two-thirds. A solar bottle bulb made of one 1.5 litre bottle proved to be better than a solar bottle bulb made of three 0.5 litre bottles. In terms of interior bottle exposure levels, the half level performed the best. Some inexplicable phenomena were also observed with recommendations for further study.