You rang?
Posted on 12/04/2007 4:36:13 PM PST by keat
THREE POINTS, Arizona (Reuters) - Financial advisor Jaron Ness stands in the cool desert air waiting for the clouds to clear and the moon to rise.
As the conditions come into alignment, he steps into the path of a cool blaze of blue-white light bounced off a wall of highly polished parabolic mirrors five stories high.
"It feels magnetic," he says, turning his hands slowly in the reflected glow of the light from the almost full moon.
The young professional from Colorado is among a growing number of curious people beating a path to this patch of scrub-strewn land out in the Arizona desert to bask in light from the world's first moonbeam collector.
A Tucson-based inventor and businessman Richard Chapin and his wife Monica are behind the giant device, which gathers up and focuses the light of the moon.
The effect of the moon's gravitational pull on the Earth's tides and other natural phenomena has been studied for millennia. Less attention has focused on the sunlight reflected from its surface.
The Chapins built the large, one-of-a-kind contraption that stands in the desert some 15 miles west of Tucson, Arizona, in the belief that moonlight might have applications for medicine, industry and agriculture.
"So much work has focused on the sun. We have just forgotten about this great object that has been here for billions of years, has affected us in all forms of our evolution," said Chapin, who paid for the project with his own money.
"If it could affect plants and animals ... I thought, 'what could the amplification of that light do?"'
BATHING IN MOONLIGHT
Neither of the Chapins are scientists. The couple used income from a popular swap meet they own in Tucson to develop what they call their "Interstellar Light Collector," which has so far cost them $2 million.
It consists of a large frame sunk into a 45-foot-deep (14-meter) crater, on private land in sparse desert, in an area known for its dark skies a few miles from the Kitt Peak National Observatory.
The device is five stories tall and weighs 25 tons, and is covered with 84 mirrored panels set on a hydraulic mount that, the Chapins say, can focus the light of the moon with "the precision of a Swiss watch."
There is no charge to use the facility, although the couple accept donations of $10 from people who use it to defray some of the operating costs.
So far they have had more than 1,000 visitors, with interest from as far a field as Australia, Japan, India and Saudi Arabia from people seeking either a new experience or in the hope of some kind of medical benefit.
Some dress in robes, others strip to their underwear to bask in the moon glow from the glittering bank of mirrors, spending anywhere from three minutes to 15 minutes at a time.
Visitors enjoy the experience. Some say it is like swimming underwater, while others say it feels like standing in a warm breeze and leaves them feeling upbeat.
"When I got in the moonlight it was an instant and profound sense of euphoria ... it was very peaceful," said Eric Carr, a hypnotherapist from Tucson who has visited several times.
BENEFITS OF LIGHT
Some visitors to the site believe that exposure to the moonlight has helped alleviate some medical conditions. After bathing in the moonbeams, Carr said he noticed an improvement in a long-standing asthma condition.
However, no clinical experiments with moonlight have been carried out on people. Scientists say there is no proof that it has any effect whatsoever on medical conditions and diseases, and are skeptical of anecdotal claims.
"I haven't seen any hard scientific evidence that it's not a placebo effect. There hasn't been enough real research on it yet to say that it's doing anything," said Katherine Creath, research professor of optical sciences and medicine at the University of Arizona.
"But whether or not it's the placebo effect or the light, I don't think that matters as long as people feel like they are having a positive effect, then it's worth it to them to do it," she added.
The Chapins are eager for researchers to use the site to determine if moonlight does have any demonstrable applications in areas including medicine, plant biology and certain industrial processes. They also welcome visits by skeptics to the site.
Meanwhile, visitors continue trek out to the imposing installation and listen to ambient music as they wait for a break in the clouds to step into the moonlight. For them, it is a very enjoyable experience in itself.
"You feel almost like you are in heaven," said Aranka Toniatti, a cancer patient who has driven from Colorado twice to stand in the moonlight. "It's a gorgeous feeling."
Hawaiian Tropic better ship some "Moonscreen 15 MPF" to these loonies or they'll get severely moonburned......
“Wouldn’t it be a scream if it turned out moonlight causes cancer?”
Only in places where the sun don’t shine.
No, for me it was rubbing the white crap from milkweeds on them..........Evidently it works because I don't have any warts.
There ain't no warts on me,
there ain't no warts on me,
There might be warts on some of you farts but there ain't no warts on me.......
Lol, It must have been Moonglow!
Three points is west on the Ajo highway. It is before you get to Kitt Peak and consists of only a couple of houses and a store. At least it did when I lived in Tucson nearly 20 years ago.
They should play Golden Earring’s “Moontan” album as you bathe in the moonlight. . .
Maybe they are going there to form Mating Clusters like those foam frogs do.
Think of all the future Democrats.
A few unrelated bits from Tucson and vicinity:
1) If you enjoy astronomy, I highly recommend a visit to Kitt Peak National Observatory, about 40 miles West of Tucson, a mountain with a bunch of telescopes on it, including a rarity, a triangle shaped solar telescope. They have tours that both adults and kids like.
2) In Tucson proper, at the University of Arizona, is the Flandrau Planetarium, which generally has a good program of entertaining astronomical shows, and is worth a visit. Astronomy is very big in southern Arizona.
3) South of Tucson is the San Xavier del Bac Mission, a 400 year old Spanish Mission still used by the Yacqui Indians as a church and parochial School. The most photographed building in Arizona.
4) Nearby to that is the Titan II Missile Museum, built in homage to the 5-story tall nuclear missiles that used to be stationed there. You can tour the underground command and control center, and it has a full sized dummy missile in one of the silos.
5) Other stuff to see in the area include the Biosphere 2 dome in Oracle, the Karchner Caverns and Colossal Cave, Old Tucson Movie Studios where they filmed a lot of western movies and TV shows, and the Sonora Desert Museum, a combination zoo, botanical garden and mineralogical museum.
6) The border town of Nogales is due South of Tucson, but soon you will need a passport to visit it.
I mourn for the state of General Science Education.
The Nation is lost.
Divide the collective IQ by two one more time and we will all be Muslim.
You rang?
I thought they had to be nude to get the full effect.:)
I have that album. Not bad but also not very relaxing.
If someone is going to pay ten bucks to bathe in moonlight they should choose music which is more ethereal.
You could also visit me in Vail about 15 miles SE of Tucson...oh wait. There is nothing to do at my place. I don’t even have a TV hooked up.
Anyone for a good book?
I'm just worried it will cause intensely bad poetry at magnitudes of awfulness never before imagined...
I wonder if they know where the term “lunatic” came from.
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