Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog

“What is your theory on why we experience déjà vu – that feeling you’ve been somewhere or met someone before?” asked by Denzel Washington

Many of us have experienced the strange feeling of “déjà vu” – the impression that something we are seeing in the present, we have already seen in the past. This feeling of premonition is made more confusing in that we don’t really remember when we have seen this event before.

The term of déjà vu was first described in 1917 in The Future of Psychic Sciences, by the French psychic researcher Emile Boilac, who believed that type of phenomena could be explained by science.

Since then researchers have been studying the sensation of déjà vu, recently using hypnosis to stimulate the impression of recollection reported by so many people. To scientists, the most likely explanation of this phenomenon is that this is a common memory error, or mental malfunction, that causes the brain to mistake the present for the past, thus creating the impression of déjà vu.

This weird sensation is actually pretty common among us, since more than 70% of the population claim to have experienced it. But despite that statistic and the recent researches, this phenomenon is still often associated with the idea of psychic abilities and a past-life experience.

What if the feelings of Déjà vu were actually warnings sent from the past or clues to the future? This is the theory behind the new Tony Scott movie “déjà vu”. Academy Award-winner Denzel Washington stars as Doug Carlin, an ATF Agent investigating an explosion on a New Orleans ferry when a feeling of déjà vu convinces him there is a way to stop a devastating event from actually taking place, which could save hundreds of innocent people. The movie is on general release from the 15^th December so be sure to check it out and find out more about the feeling of deja-vu.

Denzel Washington and the Answers team are looking forward to your theories on why we experience that déjà vu feeling.

–Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

This week’s featured user is Owlwings who hails from one of the UK’s most famous university cities, Cambridge.

Since joining in April, Owlwings has answered over 4600 questions reaching Level 7 and riding high on the UK leaderboard.

Now retired, Owlwings has spent the last 20 years working in IT roles, hence a lot of his expertise and answers are found in the Computer & Internet category. However, this isn’t the only area he focuses on… His answers range from fighting spam to the production of rose-wine and even giving advice on relationship problems.

A former antiquarian and bookseller, his interests include reading (especially Harry Potter), music (from Classic to Celtic Folk) and photography (check out his 360 blog, there are a lot of impressive nature photos).

In tune with the season, Owlwings is currently working as Santa Claus in a Garden centre!

On being asked why he uses Answers:

“Yahoo! Answers has been an ideal way to keep the brain working and to do what I really enjoy doing best: finding quality answers for all manner of questions.”

Thank you very much for the quality you provide to Answers, Owlwings, we hope you keep it up in the future!

–Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team