Originally published at: A crystal ball started this home fire | Boing Boing
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I think we all know what really caused this…
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Basic science beats “psychic prediction”; color me shocked.
That said, most ‘fortune tellers’ I know of are wise enough to keep their crystal balls under a cloth; both to protect it from dust but also to prevent such mishaps like this one.
As soon as I read the title, I knew how the fire started…
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My dad was an air traffic controller. There was one of these sunshine recorders on the roof of the control tower. Maybe there still is.
When the sun is bright, it burns a trace in the paper strip.
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Well, I guess they didn’t see that coming.
What a shame, though; poor family. 
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I bought one of those mirrors on the extending arm last year, and it came with a warning about not installing it where sun would hit it. First time I’ve seen that.
Also, are we sure the sun started the fire…?
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So, this is why gramma also gave me a scarf, and advised me to always keep the ball covered with it when not in use…
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I’m skeptical. Remote armchair fire investigation follows, so take it with at least a shaker of salt:
First, the burned couch appears to be sunward of the crystal ball. This makes it seem unlikely it could have focused a point of light on the couch, to say the least. Note that in the Stokes-Campbell recorder (cool!) above, the recording card is behind the spherical lens. This is generally how lenses work (/s) - light has to go through them.
Second, the focal length of a sphere is very short (citation), so the ball would need to be sitting very close to the couch in question. It appears it was sitting on a table behind the couch, at least one diameter away from where the upholstery would have been. This would not produce a sufficiently compact image of the sun to cause ignition, even if it were in the right direction.
Third (and supporting only): In my experience, fire investigators are in a big hurry to assign a cause, and may be sloppy. Once, a house I lived in burned, with smoke damage causing it to be a total loss. The fact that a brass oil lamp was present led the responding officers to blame the fire on unattended flame, despite the fact that the lamp was decorative and had never been lit. When we got back in, we found that the refrigerator motor had caught fire and the fire developed from there. We had to have the fire chief back out to review the scene and update the report before the renter’s insurance would accept our claim.
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So glad to see no aunts got burned.
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She didn’t hand you the ball and tell you make sure you stick it where the sun doesn’t shine?
Missed opportunity.
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She was a true southern lady, and never joked like that. She’d say something like this instead…
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Yes indeed. It’s not to protect of contain some magical power of the crystal ball, it’s to contain the very real physical power it can channel from the sun into your flammable house.
Well, maybe both. But it’s the latter that you really have to worry about!
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It was a jewish space laser. 
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Never heard of it!
Being a fluids guy, I know of the Navier-Stokes equations — but I had absolutely no idea that Stokes dabbled in anything mechanical. Now I have to look into that! Thanks!!!
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Given what the owner informed the firefighters of, do you think it possible that the owner or firefighters simply moved the crystal ball further away from the window, hence that 's what we see in the photos? Even in a room of ashes, firefighters are incredibly anal-retentive when it comes to reducing the chance of another fire flaring up.
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