Updated at: 11/19/2009 11:08 AM | KSAX.com
By: Megan Brown
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Scientist, Psychic Weigh in on Standing Broom Phenomenon

SOUTH HAVEN, Minn. - It all started a week before All Hallows Eve.  

“This is just kind of crazy and fun, especially around Halloween,” Johnston of South Haven said.

It was around that time Shelly Johnston and her neighbor said there was something strange going on.

“I’ve never seen anything like this and I like science,” Shelly’s neighbor Michael Olson said.

Since then, the mysterious standing brooms have got not only Shelly and her neighbor scratching their heads.

“They have been standing for going on 48 hours now,” she said.

The story has got a number of KSAX viewers goin’ as well.

“I’m going to start reading up on this stuff because it has got me goin’ now,” Olson said.

Is it spirits? Is it science? Is it simply the style of the brooms?

“It’s got to be some force somewheres,” Olson said.

According to Gordon McIntosh, a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota-Morris, the answer is simple.

“This is not even a very interesting phenomenon. Stable equilibrium is well known. We know how that functions,” McIntosh said.

McIntosh says these brooms were engineered in a way that allows them to stand, plain and simple.

“That is, the sum of the forces up has to equal the sum of the forces down. Otherwise it would be falling down,” he said.

It makes sense, but despite this, there’s still one other force factoring into this equation.

“If you figure out the force of gravity from Jupiter on the broom, it works out to be .000000354 neutons and the weight of this object is one neuton,” McIntosh said.  

What does that mean? Gordan says right now, Jupiter is exerting a force on Earth and although the force is the greatest it ever is in a given year, it’s so tiny, it would have no effect on the brooms.

“That force is extremely small and in most cases, it would be neglected. It would be so small it wouldn’t have any effect on the motion of the broom,” he said.

There you have it. Science explains all… well, almost all.

“My first take on it was, wow, something’s really going on,” Joan Stokes of Mind, Body, Spirit said.

Stokes says you just never know.

“There are also spirit forces that could be creating something like that, so I wouldn’t say this first person didn’t have some type of phenomenon happen,” she said.

Although she says folks standing their brooms now is all being done in fun doesn’t necessarily mean Shelly and her neighbor didn’t have something more freakish going on.

“I will not say never because anything is possible,” she said

Spirits or science?

“The brooms standing up or falling down is not a mystical system. There’s a well established understanding of physics that can describe the system,” McIntosh said.

It just might be both.

“I think we allow science to tell us that we’re seeing things or hearing things and I think we just need to be open to more. I think that’s how we’ll learn more about it… but yeah, I never say never because the possibilities are endless out there,” Stokes said.

To see previous KSAX standing broom stories, Click the following links.

Spirits or Science? Freakish Brooms Defy Gravity in South Haven

Standing Broom Craze Continues

 Written for the web by Megan Brown

mbrown@ksax.com