Dr. Dean Radin’s reports on his blog that the following paper (abstract present below) will appear in the Explore journal – The Journal of Science and Healing.
Testing nonlocal observation as a source of intuitive knowledge
This study explored the hypothesis that in some cases intuitive knowledge arises from perceptions that are not mediated through the ordinary senses. The possibility of detecting such “nonlocal observation” was investigated in a pilot test based on the effects of observation on a quantum system.
Participants were asked to imagine that they could intuitively perceive a low intensity laser beam in a distant Michelson interferometer. If such observation were possible, it would theoretically perturb the photons’ quantum wave-functions and change the pattern of light produced by the interferometer. The optical apparatus was located inside a light-tight, double steel-walled shielded chamber. Participants sat quietly outside the chamber with eyes closed. The light patterns were recorded by a cooled CCD camera once per second, and average illumination levels of these images were compared in counterbalanced “mental blocking” vs. non-blocking conditions. Interference would produce a lower overall level of illumination, which was predicted to occur during the blocking condition.
Based on a series of planned experimental sessions, the outcome was in accordance with the prediction (z = -2.82, p = 0.002). This result was primarily due to nine sessions involving experienced meditators (combined z = -4.28, p = 9.4 × 10-6); the other nine sessions with non-meditators were not significant (combined z = 0.29, p = 0.61). The same experimental protocol run immediately after 15 of these test sessions, but with no one present, revealed no hardware or protocol artifacts that might have accounted for these results (combined control z = 1.50, p = 0.93). Conventional explanations for these results were considered and judged to be implausible. This pilot study suggests the presence of a nonlocal perturbation effect which is consistent with traditional concepts of intuition as a direct means of gaining knowledge about the world, and with the predicted effects of observation on a quantum system.
Now, that’s an experiment I couldn’t do on my Psi Experiments website of even think of it. What do you think of its results?
reversible time experiment in the works
If I tell you that a certain square room is 144 square feet in area, and ask you what the length of the sides of the room are, you would take the square root of 144 and tell me that the sides are 12 feet. But there are two sets of solutions to the square root, 12 and -12. We ignore the -12 as an unreal solution, irrelevant to the problem.
Similarly there are solutions to the wave equations that involve a wave traveling from the place where the wave was absorbed (say the retina of your eye) back through time to the place where the wave was emitted (say a movie screen). Cramer's interpretation uses both solution but has them canceling out in such a way that the gross effects allow only the forward-in-time wave to be observed, but with slight imperfections that produce the weirdness of quantum mechanics on small scales.
My understanding (which could easily be wrong) is that this could not be used to carry non-quantum information that would be able to explain psi phenomena. Only subtle differences from standard QM interpretations would show up a Transactional "retrocausation" event.
When a quantum system is "observed" its behavior is different than if it is not (of if it has been observed in a different way). Modern understanding of quantum mechanics says that consciousness is not required to provide an "observer" -- any system large enough to act like a "classical system" will do. If I read this right, though, what Dean is claiming is that a quantum system acts like it was "observed" when its only interaction with a "classical system" was via someone attempting to observe it (non QM sense of the term) via ESP. Depending on how firm that result is, that is a very interesting result.