Bohr and Einstein

Nigel and I were discussing spooky events. He was telling me that people he once knew popped into his mind for no apparent reason, and shortly afterwards he heard that they’d died. I was remarking on how often I’d felt compelled to contact people who came into my mind, only to find that they were having a really tough time. This was particularly so for family members.

Normal electrical activity in the brain influences the environment to the extent that if you put electrodes on someone’s head, you can pick up brain waves more than 5 mm away. So, if someone is experiencing extreme emotions, could it be possible for the intense electrical brain activity to affect the physical environment? Does this account for poltergeist activity?

I’ve never knowingly encountered poltergeist activity, even though I’m convinced things move after I’ve put them down, but I’ve listened to several people who witnessed such phenomena and whose word or sanity I have no reason to doubt.

What’s occurin’?

Imagine two particles (electrons, say) from same source. Now let them be separated by a large distance. If the ‘spin’ of one of them is changed, the ‘spin’ of the other changes—even though the particles are so far apart that any information passing from one to the other would need to travel faster than the speed of light. You might say it would have to travel infinitely fast.

Quantum physics demands phenomena like this that operate external to time (e-ternal, ec-stasis), or at least ignore time as they ignore distance. Niels Bohr, one of the developers of quantum theory, is reputed to have said ‘anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it’.

Can anyone understand what’s going on?

If all humans came from one, or a few, ancestors, then we share particles from the same source. The notion that what affects one affects all is then by no means unlikely. Every one of us carries around material from the primeval soup: nucleic acids, elements, electrons, quarks or whatever. The notion that what affects one affects all is then by no means unlikely. Perhaps this is why dogs know when you’re upset.

Think twice about swatting a fly: it might be intimately connected to you in ways that you can’t imagine.

Albert Einstein played the violin, and his cousin Alfred (a respected musician and musicologist) accompanied him on the piano. After one session, Alfred chided his cousin, saying ‘the trouble with you, Albert, is that you have no sense of time’. A good story, but piffle.