electromagnetism

Woohoo, I love these kind of threads, I was just thinking last night that we hadn't had one in ages and that I should find a way to start one (I know sometimes I get a bit carried away with my pseudo-scientific ramblings, so stop me if I'm getting too psuedo and not enough scientific).

The first thing that comes to mind is an experiment I saw on the discovery channel a few years back. I can't find the specific one but I'm pretty sure it was carried out by Michael Persinger, wired has a good article about a very similar experiment he carried out here. Anyways, in this particular experiment he was trying to see if UFO abuction stories could be explained by electromagnetic fields. People would be locked in a small chamber on their own. After they were convinced that they were alone in the room, the lights would be put out and they would then be subjected to very weak electromagnetic fields. I can't remember the figures, but a very high percentage of people became convinced that they were not alone in the room, that they could sense someone else in there, despite knowing that the room was empty to begin with and that no one could have entered without them knowing about it.

This says 2 things to me. The first is that we can somehow detect electromagnetic fields and our subconcious can process this and pass information regarding it to our concious minds. The second, is merely speculation on my part, but if our subconcious can interpret an EMF as a 'presence' in a room this suggests to me that it does so because it is used to interpreting certain types of EMF as a presence. i.e. if there actually is a person in a room our subconcious detects an EMF from them and learns to recognise that type of EMF as a person, then if it detects a similar EMF it can extrapolate that it's coming from a person, even if there is no person there.

I'm sure I'll have more to add when I get my thoughts in order and read through some of 6th's book.

Zillah wrote:

But the problem with that logic is that the "sense of presenc" that a medium might report is not what we all feel when around other normal living people. I hope that made sense.

I'm not sure it is all that different. First of all when we know that someone is there through our normal senses I think this totally overshadows any emf information our subconcious picks up, so we can ignore that type of situation for comparison. I'm sure we're all familiar with the feeling you're being watched, or suddenly feeling as if there's someone behind you, and turning to find that actually being the case. Sometimes it can be a a disturbing or shocking sensation, or sometimes it can be a warm reassuring one if it turns out to be a friend or loved one, someone who should be close to you. I think this is quite close to what a medium/psychic would feel when they sense a presence. Of course there would be some differences, mediums/psyhics, being people who have trained themselves, or are more naturally able, to listen to their subconcious and pick out information from it, would get more information than the rest of us. They would also be more likely to be ready for the sensation and more used to expreiencing it and not react physically like most of us which of course distracts us from what we sense.

I'd imagine there would also naturally be some differences in the fields created by ghost and living people.

Dublin6th wrote:

Having read this article ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3046179.stm ) a few years back, I though that though the scientists expalined that peoples reactions where merely due to electromagnetic fields they didnt consider what may be causing these pitches in fields? Its an interesting read,

That's an good read alright, I thought it was especially interesting that it was the fluctuations in EMFs that seemed to be associated with the paranormal more so than the strength of the fields. Persingers research seems to indicate the same, that different patterns produced different effects. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say here, but it all seems to me to be linked to resonance and to lead into the spiritual idea of vibrations and frequencies. I'm also starting to think that it's not the EMFs themselves, or the fluctuations in them, that are really signifigant but perhaps some currently unknown energy, the effects of which can be seen in the EMF fluctuations. I suppose orgone comes to mind but I don't really know anything about it. I'll try and put this idea together in some kind of properly organised ramble.

Zillah wrote:

Stevenmu, I sense you will remember this.

Yep, it took me a minute but I do now. I think the term used was 'remote sensing'

solas wrote:

I'm not speaking as a professional but in times past when I was "attuned" to sensing energy, it wasn't limited to having to be in the physical presence of someone, as is the case with the internet. I find that interesting in itself.

Interesting. Assuming you don't think that the information is transmitted over the internet, which I think is very unlikely, would you feel that that the information is always there and that communicating with a particular person over the internet somehow focuses you on theirs in particular, or perhaps tunes you into their particular frequency/wavelength ?

I think this goes back to the original question, what kind of information do emf's transmit and are these signals more than just a variety of wavelengths, or perhaps the patterns of those wavelengths contain more information than we can currently perceive.

That's a good question, we're all familiar with information transmitted using electromagnetism in the form of TV and radio pictures. With radio quite simply the variations in frequency or amplitude of the waves are picked up, amplified and used to vibrate the speakers creating sound. TV pictures are a little more complicated in terms of timings and stuff, but basically the same principle. EMFs are also used with computers to transmit information through a wide range of technologies. Computer technologies often also vary the wave forms (shape) and phase of a signal to squeeze more information into the same amount of signal. In all cases a certain wave pattern means a certain thing, and can be interpreted to mean the same thing by any device picking it up at any time from any source.

I would suspect that waves from natural sources (humans, ghosts, whatever) would be much more subjective in nature. I would see them as working similar to body language in that the overall picture and context is much more important than the individual gestures. I don't know if we could ever say get a printout of a particular wave pattern picked of from a person and attach a particular meaning to it. I think we would have to look at all the patterns together as a .. well .. bigger pattern, in much the same one would read tarot cards or interpret a dream, taking the individual elements and their meanings and seeing how they fit in with the whole picture. In a sense this is what Persinger is doing from the opposite direct, by exposing people to particular patterns and measuring their reactions to them. Ideally though it would be done the other way around, i.e. reading the patterns being given off by someone and comparing that to their mood/thoughts/health etc. I think I'd did come across something like that before (possibly done at Stanford), I'll see if google can dig it up.



edit: just reading over that I can see I didn't really answer your question at all, that has to be the best way I've ever said "I don't know"

Zillah wrote:

I also love entaglement, I believe its the theoretical basis for instantaeous communications over any distance. Like in Star Trek

Not to mention transporters and replicaters.


The rest of your points really depend on space-time not acting as a medium (I'll try and deal with some of them individually in another blog post so we don't take this thread too far OT), I'd love to know what experiments prove it does not, I can't think of any way that could be tested.

Hmmm... that caused a bit of pause for thought. There are some problems with that experiment though. First it assumes that the ether would move relative to the two observers. I'm not sure if this would be the case or at least that it would happen to a noticeable degree, particularly in a relativly large gravity well such as the earths.

edit: bear in mind that the ether is, fluidic is probably the wrong word, dynamic maybe better. It would be pulled along with the movement of the earth, and also a large portion of the earths movement, the expansion of the universe, is thought to be space itself expanding, not actuall movement.


Secondly, and more tellingly, it assumes that measurements of straightness are correct, that the measurements would be taken 'outside' the ether. If the ether were indeed moving relative to the two observers then the means of measuring where to aim the laser (or wave through the ether) would be affected just as the laser is.

waves2.jpg

That is, when the sender is aiming the laser using the 'stick' in the image, for it to appear to him that the stick is pointing directly at the equivelent spot on the target boat, he in fact would be pointing it forwards and it would be curving back to the correct spot (when observed from outside that frame of reference). The laser would follow the same path. This does not apply to the original boat example because the measurement of the straight path between equivelent points on the boats is made outside the medium of the water and is unaffected by it's relative movement.

edit: I believe this would be the case both with my idea and conventional relativity