Unimpressive "Mars Jellyfish" Goes Viral, While Far Stronger Photos of the Spooky Are Ignored by Mainstream

I am seeing in my news feeds these days articles about a photographic anomaly on Mars. An example is an AOL article that appeared on the Yahoo site and also on Google's Science News page. It was entitled  "Jellyfish" Spotted In NASA Mars Photo Sparks Frenzy As People Dig For Explanation." 

We read that people on social media are getting all excited about a photo taken by the Curiosity rover "on August 20, 2023, during Sol 3924 of its mission while exploring Gale Crater on Mars." In any report like this, it is essential to look for the original NASA page containing the photo. That page is the one here.  That page has a 1024 by 512 image of the surface of Mars. The page has a Download button, but in this case the button is unnecessary, because when you click that button you get the same 1024 by 512 image displayed on the page. 

The 1024 by 512 image showing the photographic anomaly is the one below:

If you look in the bottom left, you may notice a little anomaly. Below is a crop of that portion of the photo, a crop that is 77 pixels by 71 pixels:

77 pixels by 71 pixels

You should not be impressed by this, given that the anomaly in the middle consists of a handful of pixels. The anomaly is maybe 10 pixels in width and 10 pixels in height. A good rule of thumb when dealing with anomalies in photos is: ignore any anomaly that consists of only a very small number of pixels in a photo, particularly if it is an anomaly that only appeared once. There are 1001 mundane reasons why you can get such "handful of pixels" anomalies. 

The NASA page here allows you to see other photos taken on the same day. Other photos from the same angle on the same day fail to show the anomaly. For example, one is below.

Can we think of a natural explanation for the anomaly appearing in the first photo shown above? We certainly can. The anomaly looks rather like something known to frequently occur on Mars: what is called a dust devil. Observed on both Earth and Mars, dust devils are fleeting little mini-storms that cause dust to rise in the air. Dust devils are thought to be more common on Mars, which is covered in fine, lightweight dust. The Google Gemini infographic below explains what causes dust devils on Mars. 

So in this case we have a known natural phenomenon on the surface of Mars (dust devils) that can easily be the cause of the so-called "Mars jellyfish." There is no need to assume that there's some weird undiscovered life form on Mars, merely because a photo shows on the horizon of Mars something that looks like a dust devil.  Another possibility is that a tiny bit of dust got on the camera lens, and was blown away by the time the next photo was taken. Because the surface of Mars is so abundantly filled with fine dust, such a thing would be not very improbable. 

We have three glaring failures of the "Mars jellyfish" photo to qualify as good evidence of the paranormal:

(1) The photo is a "one shot" affair, with there being only one photo showing the anomaly. 

(2) The photo is a "handful of pixels" affair, with the anomaly showing up as only a very small number of pixels (and almost all such "handful of pixels" things are dubious). 

(3) There is a known natural phenomenon on Mars (dust devils) that can produce something like what we seem to see in the "Mars jellyfish" photo. 

It is ironic that social media and mainstream sites get all excited about low-quality evidence such as a photo showing only a few spooky-looking pixels, while far more impressive photographic evidence of the spooky continues to be mostly ignored by social media and mainstream sites.  Back in my most productive days as a photographer of the anomalous, I got two types of very spooky anomalies that were very worthy of attention, but which were ignored by mainstream sites: (1) photos of dramatically repeating stripe patterns in mysterious orbs, taken under clean, dry conditions, and (2)  photos of dramatically repeating patterns in mysterious orbs, taken during photography of falling water drops. 

To read about the details of the first of these two things, you can read my post here or my post here. The visual below shows 36 types of repeating patterns I got in mysterious orbs I photographed in clean, dry air. The number under each photo is the number of times I photographed an orb with the stripe pattern shown. For example, under the first photo (showing an inverted Y pattern) we see "x11." That means that 11 times I photographed a mysterious orb with such a pattern. See my post here to see the photos that are the basis of this summary infographic. 

Almost all of these pattern repetitions would occur on different days, with in-between photos showing no such pattern. So, for example, the photos below (showing the same pattern) were taken on the different days shown in the caption, and there were very many other photos taken on the same days and days in-between these days, showing no such pattern:

 And the two repetitions of the "ballet dancer" pattern below occurred on different days mentioned in the caption below, with many in-between photos showing no such pattern:

 In the two photos above there was a most astonishing double pattern repetition, with both a "ballet dancer" pattern being repeated, and also below that a "vertical stripe" pattern being repeated. 

Altogether over the span of several years I got more than 800 photos of mysterious striped orbs, while photographing in clean dry air. You can conveniently see all of these photos using the link here, which takes you to a free online book which you can read by finger-swiping, after clicking on the [] icon at the bottom of the book viewer. The striped orbs appeared in a variety of colors. So, for example, I got 69 photos of striped blue orbs, 15 photos of striped pink orbs, 19 photos of striped purple orbs, 24 photos of striped red orbs, 15 photos of striped yellow orbs, 37 photos of striped green orbs, and 23 photos of striped orange orbs. 

A different type of very spooky photo anomaly I got in the most enormous abundance over the course of several years was the appearance and persistence of inexplicable and massively occurring orb patterns while I photographed ordinary drops of clean, pure water falling in front of a black, featureless background. Something like this would happen on very many different days. I would be photographing ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background, using the protocol I describe in the second half of my post here. After quite a few photos showing nothing very notable, there would suddenly appear most mysteriously an unexpected pattern, repeating many times in circular shapes appearing in the photos.  An individual photo might show five or more very clear repetitions of the pattern. And exactly the same pattern would persist for many consecutive photos, often hundreds. 

The most convenient way to examine my photos of this phenomenon is to use the link here, which takes you to a free online book of 1495 pages, my book "Vast Precision of the Orb Patterns" which can be very conveniently read by finger-swiping, after the user has pressed the [] icon at the bottom of the book viewer. 

Some choice examples of the patterns I got with very great repetition can be seen in my summary posts here and here. On one day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I photographed many hundreds of orbs with face-like details, such orbs appearing in most of hundreds of consecutive photos. Below is one example showing seven occurrences of the same face-like pattern.  At the link here you can see a video of my camera viewfinder while I took photos such as the one below and the next photo after it. See here and here for similar photos from the same day.

On another day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I photographed  a series of hundreds of consecutive photos that almost all showed multiple instances of a breast-like shape, with this breast-like shape appearing a total of more than 1000 times.  Below is one example (see here and here and here for others).  At the link here you can see a video showing my camera viewfinder while I took many of these photos. I got a similar pattern on this other day.

On another day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I took more than a thousand photos showing face-like details as we can see in the photo below.  Additional examples can be seen here.  A video showing my camera viewfinder while I took some of these photos can be seen here.

Striped orbs would often dramatically appear in great abundance when I photographed falling drops of pure, clean water. On one day I got the pattern shown below. We see 25 striped orbs in a single drip of pure, clean water.

On another day I got the pattern shown below while photographing only pure, clean water falling against a featureless background. 

On one day I got the two-part pattern below, which persisted through almost all of hundreds of consecutive photos. I can't explain how these colors showed up when photographing only pure, clean falling water drops. 

On one day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I photographed a "snowman" motif consisting of a smaller circle on top of a larger circle, both on the right side of an orb.  Such a "snowman" motif appeared more than 5000 times in most of 1600+ consecutive photos I took, with the "snowman" motif appearing at least several times in most of these photos.  Below are two examples (see here for more). I photographed a similar pattern on this day.

All kinds of patterns would appear during such photography of falling drops of pure, clean water. A particular pattern might have up to seven  different parts. Below (from my post here) is an example of a five-part pattern that mysteriously arose one day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, with many repetitions in consecutive photos:

On another day I got the seven-part pattern shown below, which persisted through almost all of more than forty consecutive photos, appearing multiple times in most of such photos. 

On one day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I got the photo below showing a motif repeating nine times.

The photographs I describe here are not "handful of pixels" stuff like the crummy 10-pixel by 10-pixel affair that makes up the anomalous part of the so-called "Mars Jellyfish" photo. The photos I describe above are high-resolution photos in which each anomaly involves many pixels. And while the "Mars Jellyfish" photo can easily be naturally explained by assuming that a distant dust devil was photographed, or that a little of the super-abundant Mars dust got on the camera lens for a while,  we have no such convenient explanation for the photos of mine I have described above. They are shockingly anomalous, and seem to be suggestive of some mysterious power capable of making inexplicable manifestations with the most enormously precise power of repetition and persistence. A person adequately studying biology should not be too surprised by such a phenomenon, because within each of our bodies there occurs every day a million miracles of high-speed assembly (as described here), in which "molecular machine" protein complexes needed for our continued lives are mysteriously assembled with the most enormous precision, by some means that scientists do not understand. 

The photos of mine I refer to above were published online over a span of seven years between about 2015 to 2022, long before there were any good AI image generators invented. No trick photography or Photoshop-like product was used to make any of these photos, which looked the same to my eyes when I first saw them as they appear above and in the sources above.  You can see the photos in their original posts by browsing through my "Orb Pro" blog here. The Wayback Machine at www.archive.org has taken many snapshots of that blog over the years, documenting the photos were published during that period. My several long youtube.com videos showing my camera viewfinder during the photography of such wonders help to show the authenticity of these photos. Two examples of such videos are below. 

Among my photos have been 1500+ photos of mysterious blue orbs. An example of one is the photo below I published in 2015 in the post here. The size of the blue anomaly in the photo is roughly 200 pixels by 200 pixels. That's an anomaly photo area of roughly 40,000 square pixels, which is roughly 400 times larger than the anomaly photo area of merely 100 pixels in the "Mars jellyfish" photo. My photo here (taken with a different camera) shows an equally striking anomaly with a size of about 60,000 square pixels. 

Why has the unimpressive "Mars Jellyfish" photo gone viral, while so much better photos of the spooky have been ignored by the mainstream? You can explain it in terms of people getting excited about something that fits in with their worldview, while ignoring something conflicting with their worldview. Our media is largely controlled by an academia-centered "Ministry of Materialism" that wishes to propagate materialist ideas (to use a metaphorical phrase I coined in a post).  Those who serve that ideology want very much to believe that life arose on Mars, a place incredibly inhospitable to life. Life on Mars (particularly large macroscopic life) might show that blind evolution may have a great power to beat the most prohibitive odds, producing wonders of biology. 

But the same powers controlling such a "Ministry of Materialism" do not want to believe that there can be a mysterious unseen power acting here on planet Earth, capable of somehow producing the most astonishingly repetitive spooky manifestations with the most enormous precision. So even when the most abundant evidence of such a thing has been published, such an ocean of evidence may be ignored by those controlling the articles that appear in our news feeds. Playing "phenomena amnesia," the same information overlords ignore two hundred years of convincing written evidence for the paranormal, very much of it written by scientists and doctors, as well as an enormous body of evidence conflicting with their cherished "brains make minds" ideas.  

It's kind of a situation where the operating principle is rather like this: "a few drops count as an ocean, if it seems to support what I believe; but an ocean of evidence doesn't even count as a few drops, if it seems to conflict with what I believe."

It Was Like Wireless Instant Messaging Before That Was Invented

Nowadays life is very convenient in regard to instant messaging. People tend to have forgot how different it was before 1850. If you were someone living around then, and your relative died far away, you might not hear about it for many days. At best, you might get a letter that might arrive within a few weeks. In the 1830's the telegraph was invented, but it was a while before the invention had much impact on the average person's notifications. By the 1860's there arose telegram services such as Western Union.  The idea was that in any city connected by telegraph wires, you could go to a Western Union office, and "send a telegram."  Your message would be transmitted by telegraph wires to a distant city. Then someone at that city's Western Union office would deliver your message to someone living in that city, like a mailman delivering a letter.  Telegrams were very expensive to send, so people would be very concise in what they said. A death notification might read like this:

SARAH WILLINGTON DIED ON AUGUST 23, 1851 IN PHILADELPHIA -- STOP -- FUNERAL TO BE HELD ON AUGUST 28 -- STOP -- WILL TELL YOU OF INHERITANCE

In the 1870's the telephone was invented, which led to possibilities of a more convenient notification of deaths.  About two decades later  there was invented radio communications. With radio, very many people might be notified at the same time when some famous person died. 

But it seems that preceding such inventions, there was a type of wireless instant messaging that would sometimes notify of deaths.  This occurred through telepathy and the appearance of apparitions. For example, in an 1872 newspaper account in the Providence Herald we read of how a woman in Providence, Rhode Island was notified of the death of her sister in New York City, many miles away:

"A young lady from New York has been visiting relatives in this city, living on the west side, during the past two weeks. Sunday morning, after a quiet night’s rest, she was suddenly awakened between three and four o'clock, and distinctly saw a figure standing in her room near the door, looking toward her. This figure bore an exact resemblance to a sister that she left at home in New York, in her usual health. The young lady was not alarmed by the vision, but got up and went toward it, when it disappeared. She then opened a window and looked all about, but saw nothing unusual. She then retired and fell asleep again. In a short time she was awakened and saw the apparition of her sister again, in the same position as before. She got up again. As she advanced toward it, it receded and disappeared. Again she looked about from room to room and out of the window, but saw nothing more. She then dressed herself and remained sitting up in her chamber until daylight. Sunday noon the young lady received a dispatch from New York, informing her that her sister, whose presence she thought she saw twice in her chamber, at 4 o’clock in the morning, had died at home quite suddenly at that hour."

Presumably the "dispatch" referred to was a Western Union telegram. In this account the woman sees an apparition that in effect serves as an "instant message" telling her of her sister's death, long before any instant messaging services existed. A 1921 newspaper account tells a rather similar story:

"Here is a peculiar case vouched for by an Alberta (Canada) reader. A lady of about fifty was walking in an open space when she met an old friend whom she thought was at sea. The man did not turn to look at her, hut walked straight ahead. Returning home she told her friends of the Incident only to learn that the seaman had returned home and had dropped dead at about the very time the lady thought she saw him."

The account below is a very interesting one. We hear of a mother who was separated from her son by the very bad earthquake in San Francisco in 1906. The mother and son spent years looking for each other, without success. Ironically the son took up residence only a few blocks from the mother, without the two ever discovering each other.  The son eventually became a soldier and died in World War I. The mother says that two days before finding out about the son's death from a phone call, she saw an apparition of her son.

You can read the full account here:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=FHD19181113.2.44&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------

The account above dates from November, 1918. The date of the apparition sighting is not given, but from a historical fact (the fact that US soldiers only started fighting in World War I in October, 1917) we can deduce that the mother's account must have been told within about a year of the claimed apparition. We have the full name and address of the witness, and her own first-hand testimony of an event occurring with about a year. The account has several of the hallmarks of good observational evidence.  

A similar account is given in the newspaper account you can read below (from the source here): 

The weight of the story is increased by the apparent existence of two witnesses of the apparition. 

On page 135 of the February 28, 1930 edition of the periodical The Two Worlds, which you can read here, we read the following:

"The Manchester Keening Chronicle tells the remarkable story concerned with three premonitions a Bath woman has just experienced. In each case motor vehicles have played an important part. The first premonition occurred in October of last year, when the woman was reading a book. 'All at once,' she told a reporter, ' I sensed a  presence in the room with me.'  She kept her eyes on the book a little longer, and then, suddenly looking up, was startled to see a figure walk slowly across the end of the room. It turned and faced her, saying 'Uncle William.'  Though the form soon vanished, news was received next morning that this relative had been killed in a bus smash. On the next occasion, about two months ago, the woman again became conscious of some discarnate presence. She saw a dark form float across her room, and later recognised the features to be those of her dead mother. This time she beard the words, repeated three times, ' Aunt Emily.'  Later she learned that her aunt had been killed by a motor lorry on the preceding evening."

In the 1898 newspaper article below, which you can read here, we read of a Mrs. Kate Le Brun who was visiting a sick friend of hers (Mary Penfold) in Chicago in 1896. According to the account, Mary recognized she was dying, and promised to visit Mrs. Le Brun after Mary died, saying, "When I am out, Kate, I will visit you first of all to say 'Good-by' forever!" We then read this account of Mary's apparition appearing to Kate, as promised:

In a 1903 edition of the Daily Mirror, we have this account:

"I and my brother were twins. He died in China, and at the hour of his death I saw his apparition in America. Afterwards time and incidents were corroborated. I am convinced it was a realistic mental photograph of two unusual beings in intense sympathy at the hour of death." -- J. Evans, Piercefield-terrace, Bristol.

In The Electric Magazine of Foreign Literature 1883 Vol 37 Issue 5, page 680 we have the following account presented by the very distinguished researchers Edmund Gurney and F. W. H. Myers. Part of a larger paper you can read here, a paper with other just as interesting cases, it tells of a man (J. G. Keulemans) seemingly "ghost-told" of the death of his child:

In the modern account here, celebrity Khloe Kardashian claims or suggests her daughter saw an apparition of a deceased person, "the morning before" the notification of the death of that person arrived. Given all the glitzy razzle-dazzle surrounding the Kardashian family, it is an account that would tend to be dismissed by many. But the reported pattern matches one I have documented in many old reports, so someone familiar with such reports may tend to take the account quite seriously. 

Many accounts similar to these can be read by reading my series of posts here, and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right. 

This morning I had a dream in which someone was mentioning the song "If You Could Read My Mind" by Gordon Lightfoot. It's a song referring to telepathy, and also a ghost. It includes the line "a ghost you can see." Just after recording the content of the dream in a notepad I keep near my bed, I went into the bathroom, where I saw a small green light mysteriously turn off and then turn back on. This is an anomaly I have recorded about 70 times since 2022, as you can read in my post here. Almost all of those 70 times occurred on different days. 

70+ Questions to Ask a Scientist

These days biologists routinely display enormous overconfidence. They routinely claim to understand very deep things they do not understand, things that are a hundred miles over their heads. Biologists also have the very bad habit of repeating groundless triumphal legends claiming that scientists have developed explanations for wonders of biology that are actually vastly beyond the understanding of our biologists. 

Science journalists should act as a check inhibiting the extreme overconfidence of biologists, just as speed bumps are checks that limit the speeding of reckless drivers. But alas, today's science journalists often act like they are afraid to ask scientists the tough questions such scientists should be asked. 

Not a good way to interview a boasting scientist

But we may hope that one day we see more science journalists acting like real journalists rather than like North Korean journalists who reverently accept everything told them by authorities. In this post I will give 70+ questions you can ask a scientist, if you are trying to act like a good science journalist who asks tough questions. 

Below is a sketch of how a science journalist could interview an overconfident scientist.  The interview might follow a general strategy:

(1) First, the journalist asks a few "softball questions" that will typically result in the overconfident scientist making his most overconfident claims. 

(2) Instead of immediately disputing the overconfident answers, the journalist asks about very many smaller issues related to the overconfident claims. 

(3) Eventually, the journalist points out the discrepancy between the overconfident claims made by the scientist at the beginning of the interview, and the answers given in the main part of the interview, pointing out the contradiction between the two.  

The earliest of the questions below are questions you might ask in Part 1 of such an interview. 

A good interview might use many or most of these questions, with the interview selecting a subset of these questions that makes sense to ask a particular type of scientist. 

1. Do you think scientists such as yourself understand the universe well? 
2. Do you think scientists such as yourself have a good understanding of the human body?
3. Do you think scientists such as yourself understand well the origin of the human race?
4. Do you think scientists have a credible story to tell of the progression of matter in the universe, one leading from the universe's origin to the present day and the day-to-day reality we experience?
5. Do you think scientists such as yourself have a good understanding of how the human mind arises?
6. Are there any big unsolved problems of science that you find to be particularly interesting or troubling?
7. On a scale of 1 to 10 in which 1 is very poor scientific practice and 10 is the best possible scientific practice, how would you rate the practices and methods used in the scientific research you are doing?  The question is best asked of scientists such as psychologists, neuroscientists, and sociology scientists, although it can also be asked of evolutionary biologists and theoretical physicists. 
8. I have studied what are called Questionable Research Practices such as the use of way-too-small study group sizes, the lack of a blinding protocol, the failure to pre-register a hypothesis and a research plan, and something calling HARKing or Hypothesizing After Results are Known. Do you sometimes engage in such practices? If the answer is "yes," a follow-up question should be asked such as, "So why should we be confident in the research you have done?"
9. What is the universe mostly made of? Note whether the scientist professes belief in dark matter or dark energy. 
10. What happened at the earliest time in the history of the universe? Note whether the scientist tells an account of the universe undergoing "inflation" or an account of exponential expansion. 
11. How is that amino acid sequences in the human body are able to form into the three-dimensional shapes needed for protein molecules to function, and why does this occur at such a very fast speed? This question is known as the protein folding problem. It is still one of the biggest unanswered questions in biology. Don't be fooled by untrue claims that some software called AlphaFold2 has answered this question or solved this problem. That software made progress in a different problem, one called the protein folding prediction problem, which is the problem of predicting a protein's three-dimensional shape from its amino acid sequence. The year 2026 paper states, "The explanatory scientific understanding of the protein folding problem is thus not directly advanced by AF2 [AlphaFold2]." Later the same paper says, "The protein folding problem remains unsolved." The answer to the protein folding problem is not that the shape of a protein is specified by DNA or genes. DNA has only the linear, one-dimensional information of which amino acids make up a protein, not the three-dimensional information of what shape a protein molecule takes. 
12. Why is it that different types of proteins form into functional teams of proteins called protein complexes, with this occurring so very quickly and very frequently? Scientists lack any credible explanation for protein complex formation, the phenomenon of individual protein molecules joining together to form functional teams of protein molecules that serve a particular biological purpose. Random combinations fail to explain the phenomenon, which very often involves the formation of functional components so fine-tuned, well-organized and useful that they are often called "molecular machines." The formation of protein complexes is as stunning a wonder as what would occur if floods passing through hardware stores were to be very frequently assembling machines as well-arranged as bicycles, with very many types of such machines arising from a mysterious assembly of much smaller parts. In a scientific paper two scientists confess that "very little is known about how protein complexes form in vivo [in living organisms]." In another scientific paper, two scientists confess that "a general theoretical framework to understand protein complex formation and usage is still lacking." 
13. What are cells? If the scientist gives an answer such as "the basic building blocks of human bodies," follow-up with the next question.
14. Are human cells simple things like building blocks, or something more more complex?  If you get any answers failing to candidly describe the enormous organization of cells, follow-up with a question such as "But is it not true that many types of cells are vastly complex and enormously organized, components so complex that they have been compared to factories or cities?"
15. Can you list some of the levels of organization in a human body? What are cells made of, what are those constituent components made up, what are the constituent components of those constituent components made of, and what are the constituent components of those constituent components made of?  This is a good question to ask to help determine how well a scientist understands the organization of human bodies.  You should not at all assume that most scientists know the answers to these questions. The correct answers are that cells are built from organelles, that organelles are built from protein complexes and proteins, that protein complexes are built from proteins, and that proteins are built from amino acids. If the scientist failed to answer the question correctly, refer back to any upbeat answer the scientist may have given to Question 2 -- for example, asking, "So why did you claim earlier to have a good understanding of the human body?"
16. Why did you previously claim that you understand the origin of mankind, when you apparently do not well understand the degree of organization in the human body, given your answer to the previous question? Shouldn't a good understanding of the complexity and organization in the human body be a prerequisite for anyone claiming to understand human origins?  Ask this question only if the scientist has failed to answer well the previous question. 
17. How are cells so enormously complex and vastly organized ever able to reproduce? Keep in mind that you will not be getting a substantive answer to this question if you merely get from someone a listing of different stages of cell reproduction,  such as prophase and interphase. The question is: what is it that causes a cell to perform the incredibly complex series of transitions that results in cell reproduction? No one understands this well. 
18. If you had to richly describe the universe in a single sentence, some sentence that would provide insight and shed some light, what sentence would you use?
19. Are human memories stored in the brain? 
20. So in what part of the brain are memories stored -- in neurons, in synapses, or somewhere else? Ask this question only if you got an answer of "yes" to the previous question. 
21. Do you actually understand any brain mechanism by which a person could store learned information? Scientists do not actually understand any such brain mechanism, but you may get some bluffing hand-waving in response to this question. 
22. Do you actually understand any brain mechanism by which a person could instantly retrieve the answer to a specific question such as who was Napoleon? Scientists do not actually understand any such brain mechanism, but you may get some bluffing hand-waving in response to this question. If you get an "I don't know" answer to these questions about how memory works, you can ask a follow-up question such as, "But you previously claimed to know how the human species originated, and does it make sense to be saying that if you don't even how how human memory could occur in a brain?"
23. What's the shortest time it takes a human to learn something? If the scientist claims that learning takes several minutes, ask something like, "But is it not true that when people learn of the death of their child or parent, they learn something instantly, and never forget it?" If the scientist admits that learning can be instantaneous, ask a question such as, "So how could a person ever learn anything instantly using a brain, as that would require protein synthesis taking at least a few minutes?"
24. Do synapses have the kind of stability and permanence you would need for human memories to persist for 50 years? You may skip this question and the next one if the scientist did not refer to synapses when asked the earlier question about memory storage. 
25. But isn't it true that synapses are made of protein molecules that have an average lifetime of only a few weeks? And isn't it true that synapses are attached to dendritic spines that typically don't last for years?  Ask these questions only if you got a "yes" answer to the previous question. If you get an answer of "yes," and the answer to the previous question was "yes," then ask a question such as, "So why did you previously answer that synapses have the kind of stability and permanence you would need for human memories to persist for 50 years?"
26. Is a brain kind of like soft clay to which sensory impressions are written, rather like someone using a stylus to write characters into clay? If the scientist answers "yes," ask what brain component corresponds to such a stylus (there is none), and ask whether any types of specific impressions resembling marks in clay have ever been found (they have not). 
27. How is it that a brain could possibly be storing memories, given that no trace of anything anyone has learned has ever been found by the microscopic examination of brain tissue? Scientists have long maintained that memories are stored in brains. But very much brain tissue has been examined by very powerful microscopes, including the full brains of very many who arranged for their brains to be quickly preserved after their deaths, and also much brain tissue surgically removed from living persons, as a treatment for diseases such as epilepsy. Such microscopic examination has never produced any trace of learned information. No one has ever found a single sentence by microscopically examining brain tissue, nor has anyone ever found a single word by such examination, nor has anyone ever found a single image by such examination. An answer to this question might involve some speculation about a secret storage code not yet figured out. Another answer might be that the brain does not actually store memories. 
28. How is it that a brain could possibly be storing memories, given that no one understands any system of encoding that would allow the storage of the very many types of things that humans can learn?  You may get some hand-waving answer in which something like "patterns of synaptic connectivity" are wrongly described as a system of encoding. If so, ask a follow-up question such as, "But isn't that just empty hand-waving?"
29. People can quickly look up exactly the right answer to a question by using a book such as a one-volume encyclopedia, in which all of the thousands of topics are sorted alphabetically, or by using a book with an index, which allows you to quickly find the page with the right answer. But the brain has neither sorting, nor indexes, nor any of the addresses that indexes depend on. So how does a human being instantly remember just the right answer upon hearing a single name or short question? How are we able to recall the right answer so quickly when we are asked a question? 
30. Humans can remember many things reliably for more than 50 years. For example, a 70-year may remember very well very many experiences of his childhood that happened 55 or 60 years ago. But the claimed storage place of memory (synapses) are unstable things that do not last for years. For example, a 2025 paper states that  "the synaptic turnover rate is as high as 1% per day in the visual cortex." Another paper  states that in  hippocampal CA1 cells the synapses have an  estimated lifetime of only 1–2 weeks. How could people ever remember things for five decades using synapses that do not last for years?
31. Mentally, what is a human being? You may get a diminutive answer such as "consciousness." If so, follow-up with a question such as, "But isn't a human mentally something vastly more than just consciousness? Isn't a human a thinking, knowing, believing, loving, caring, planning, questioning, seeing, hearing, creating, imagining, willing, speaking, reading, aspiring, instantly learning, curious, striving, enjoying, suffering and comprehending unified self, a person capable of insight, compassion, morality, self-introspection, instant recall, philosophical inquiry, appreciation and spirituality?"
32. If your brain is what is producing your mind, why is it that many people report observing their bodies from a position outside of their bodies, in the type of event called out-of-body experiences? If you get an answer claiming hallucinations, ask the next question as a follow-up.
33. Out-of-body experiences are often reported during cardiac arrest, when the brain very quickly shuts down electrically, flatlining within 15 to 20 seconds after the heart stops. How could the brain ever hallucinate when the brain was flatlining, in a state in which conscious experience should be impossible, given assumptions that the brain makes the mind? 
34. How much have you studied near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences? Have you read very many of the accounts of those who had such experiences, or watched very many of their reports in videos in which they are interviewed? Or do you get your information on such things second-hand, mainly from reading skeptical magazines or skeptical websites?
35. How much reading have you done about the evidence for paranormal phenomena? Did that reading include lots of reading of original source materials and first-hand accounts? If you get a claim to have well-studied this topic, ask the scientist to discuss what was reported on this topic by the leading physicist William Crookes. If the scientist cannot answer, ask about the discrepancy between his previous answer and his lack of knowledge on this topic. 
36. There is very high similarity in near-death experiences, with so many reporting out-of-body experiences, seeing dead relatives, and getting a glimpse of some other realm of existence. If near-death experiences are hallucinations, why would so very many people hallucinate the same thing?
37.  Should people assert the existence of things they have not directly seen or directly measured? If the scientist answers in a negative manner, check whether the scientist previously asserted the existence of macroevolution, brain-stored memories, dark matter, dark energy or "cosmic inflation" occurring at the beginning of time. None of these has been directly observed.  In such a case, ask the next question.
38. Why did you say that people should not assert the existence of things they have not directly seen or measured, despite your previous claims of the existence of something that was never directly seen or measured?  Ask this question if the scientist previously asserted the existence of dark matter, dark energy, brain-stored memories, macroevolution or "cosmic inflation" occurring at the beginning of time. 
39. Which well-known scientist (living or dead) is the most overrated? 
40. Which little-known scientist is the most worthy of being well-known?
41. How could humans have ever started to speak using a language? Do you have a theory of the origin of language? If you get a "no" answer, and the scientist previously claimed to understand the origin of humans, ask a question such as, "But you earlier claimed to understand the origin of humans, and does it make sense for anyone to claim that, if they don't understand the origin of language?" If you get a hand-waving attempt to explain the origin of language, ask a follow-up question such as, "But using a language requires a kind of mass adoption of a set of rules for how to speak, and how could such rules ever have been spread before there was any language?"
42. Will scientists ever be able to look all the way back to the beginning of time, to see exactly what was happening at the very beginning? If the scientist suggests this can be done by building sufficiently large telescopes, ask something like, "Is such a thing not impossible, given the assumptions of the Big Bang theory, which tells us that for its first 300,000 years the universe was so dense that it should have hopelessly scattered all light and radiation from such a period?"
43. Have you ever said to yourself something like: "Looking back on my career, I wish I had done more studying of X, and less studying of Y?" If so, what was the X and the Y?
44. Of the methods that are used by scientists in your field, which method do you think is the shakiest, the most prone to create false alarms or lead scientists on "wild goose chases" or point scientists in the wrong direction?
45. Darwin and Wallace were the co-founders of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Did they both claim that such a theory explains all human characteristics, or almost all?  If the scientist answers "yes," ask, "But is it not true that Alfred Russel Wallace wrote an essay claiming that natural selection is not sufficient to explain the higher characteristics of the human mind?" 
46. When did we first get very complex and very organized life on Earth? If the scientist claims that this did not occur until there arose the first eukaryotic cells, follow up with a question such as, "But is it not true that even the simplest self-reproducing cell would be a very high state of complexity and organization, requiring hundreds of types of very complex protein molecules?"
47. So how did there ever arise eukaryotic cells vastly more complex than prokaryotic cells? You may get an answer reciting the tall tale of eukaryogenesis by endosymbiosis. 
48. Has anyone ever observed either life arising from non-life, or eukaryotic cells arising from prokaryotic cells? The correct answer is "no." If you get that correct answer, follow up with a question such as "So why do scientists keep asserting these miracles of chance that no one has ever observed?"
49. Darwin kept claiming that "nature does not make leaps." Is either the theory of abiogenesis (an origin of life from non-life) or the theory of the endosymbiotic origin of eukaryotic cells compatible with such a principle? Is either of these theories a Darwinian explanation? The answers to these questions are "no." If the scientists answers correctly, follow up with a question such as, "So why do scientists keep insinuating that Darwin explained life, when he failed to explain the origin of the two main types of cells?"
50. Is it credible to imagine many thousands of new types of protein molecules originating in the distant past by hundreds of little steps, each providing a benefit to survival or reproduction, or is it true in general that protein molecules only become functional when most of their parts are arranged in the right way, and also that most types of protein molecules only are useful as parts of much larger systems such as protein complexes?  The idea that most types of protein molecules arose by a long series of little steps (each producing an improvement in survival or reproduction) is inconsistent with findings that very small changes in protein molecules tend to make them nonfunctional, preventing them from folding correctly, and also inconsistent with the reality that most protein molecules only become functional as team members of much larger systems such as protein complexes. 
51. Explain what are orphan genes, and tell whether they are rare or very common. Orphan genes are genes that seem to have no clear ancestor in genes existing in earlier species. Such orphan genes are very common. 
52. How many types of complex inventions are in your body?  A good answer is something like 20,000, referring to the number of genes or protein molecules in a person's body (some people estimate the number of types of human protein molecules as being as high as 100,000).
53. If you had to richly describe an average human being in a single sentence, some sentence that would provide insight and shed some light, what sentence would you use?
54. Can you name a philosopher whose works you've read, someone who provided a model of conduct or a mode of inquiry or a technique that you sometimes try to emulate? A good answer to this question would refer to Plato. In the dialogues of Plato, the character of Socrates very frequently asks questions of overconfident people, questions that tend to expose when someone is boasting about understanding something he does not really understand.
55. What do you think is the single greatest insight that anyone has ever had after pondering things observed by humans?
56. Can the wonders of biology be explained by a mere theory of accumulation, or do we need something much more than that, a true theory of organization? If the scientist confesses that we need a true theory of organization, ask something like, "Do we need a mere theory of simple organization, or something better -- a true theory of hierarchical organization, one that can account for fine-tuned systems filled with interdependent components?" If the scientist confesses the need for the latter, ask, "Is Darwinism such a theory, or is it a mere theory of accidental accumulation?"
57. Can you describe one time that you "stuck your neck out," and told your scientist colleagues, "You guys all seem to believe in this, but I think you're wrong"? If you get a "no" answer, ask something like, "So would you describe yourself as a 'follow-the-herd' kind of scientist?"
58. What type of spooky phenomena do you hear about, while thinking "That can't possibly exist?" And why do you say to yourself that after hearing reports of such phenomena? This question may produce a revealing confession in which the scientist says that some type of phenomenon cannot possibly occur; and the phenomenon may be something that has been well-observed by reliable witnesses. If you get a confession such as that, ask a follow-up question such as, "But don't all the observations for that phenomenon show that you've gone badly wrong in your underlying assumptions?"
59. Can you think of anything that you might observe that might cause you to think, "My worldview is in need of drastic revision, and some of my most fundamental assumptions are in error?"
60. If you had to richly describe the history of science in a single sentence, some sentence that would provide insight and shed some light, what sentence would you use?
61. What scientific finding or observation in your lifetime has most surprised you, and why did you find it to be so surprising?
62. Which supposedly prevailing idea of today's scientists is most likely to be overthrown, or most deserving of abandonment?
63. Is there anything that scientists of your type are not paying much attention to, which you should be paying attention to, because it suggests the need for a dramatically new paradigm?
64. Why is it that so many scientists use an unreliable technique for measuring memory recall in rodents, involving so-called freezing behavior judgments that are just recording immobility, rather than using reliable techniques for measuring memory recall in rodents?
65. Synapses seem to have short lifetimes, because they are built from proteins with average lifetimes of only weeks, and are connected to dendritic spines that almost all have short lifetimes less than a year. If synapses have short lifetimes, what does that imply about out understanding of memory?  A good answer would be one recognizing the gigantic inconsistency between the described short lifetimes, and the prevailing but senseless theory that memories are stored in synapses. 
66. Can you identify some central belief of yours that is not simply something that you directly observed or that someone else directly observed? If you get an answer, ask, "Did you independently adopt such a belief after years of studying the related evidence, or did you instead simply adopt that belief because one or more of your professors taught you that belief, or because you thought such a belief had become popular among scientists of your specialty?"
67. What exactly is DNA?  Look for misstatements such as the claim that DNA is a recipe, program or blueprint for building a human body. If you get such a misstatement, ask, "But is it not true that DNA and its genes merely have low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up a protein?" If you don't get such a misstatement, ask something like, "But why have so many, including scientists, described DNA as if it were something much more, something like a recipe, program or blueprint for building a human body? Are authorities misleading us on this topic?"
68. Is the brain a computer? If you get an answer of "yes," ask a question such as, "But isn't it true that computers have things such an operating systems, application programs, indexes, addresses, CPU chips, information transfer protocols, a system for permanently storing new information and a system for reading such information, and also perfectly reliable signal transmission, none of which are found in the brain?"
69. Have you made a deep study of cases of exceptional human mental performance, such as people with HSAM or people who seemed to have something like photographic memory? If you get an answer of "no," ask a follow-up question such as, "But don't you think you should be studying such cases before making any claims about how a human mind arises?" If you get an answer of "yes," ask a follow-up question such as, "What do you think such cases imply?"
70. What are some of the biggest examples of good fortune that our universe needed to have to allow the existence of creatures such as ourselves? The question tests whether the scientist has studied the issue of cosmic fine-tuning. A good answer would mention facts such as the fact that every proton has an electric charge the exact opposite of every electron (discussed here).
71. Why would our universe have had so many such blessings of good fortune needed to allow the existence of creatures such as ourselves?  If you get an answer referring to a multiverse, ask follow-up questions such as "Is there any observational evidence for any such multiverse?" or "But is it not true that the existence of other universes would have had no effect on the likelihood of our universe being habitable, just as the existence of other poker players has no effect on the odds of me getting two royal flushes when I play poker?"
72. Why do today's scientists so often seem to fail to study evidence for the inexplicable, such as evidence for telepathy, clairvoyance, apparition sightings, deathbed visions and near-death experiences? Is it because they don't want to learn about things that might conflict with their belief system?  If you get an answer such as "because they want to limit themselves to things that are on the most solid ground," then ask this follow-up question: "But what about all the scientists who spend so many years on things we never directly observed, such as dark matter, dark energy, string theory and primordial cosmic inflation?"
73. Do you think the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is likely, and if so, why do you think that? You will most typically get an answer stating the dubious "many chances equals some successes" argument, one referring to the very large number of stars and planets. If you get that, follow-up with a question such as, "But isn't it true that if something is sufficiently improbable, we would never expect it to happen by chance in the history of the universe?  And given the very great organization in even the simplest cells, and given all the endless difficulties of explaining powerful minds and powerful human memories, why shouldn't we regard as prohibitive the odds against an unguided origin of life and high intelligence?"
74. Do you think that 100 years from now scientists will still believe the main explanations scientists give today, or do you think they will look back and kind of laugh at much of what scientists claim today?