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Science that Blows My Mind
A few months ago, I watched What the Bleep Do We Know?, a documentary/film about quantum physics/mechanics. It was fascinating, but some of it just didn't register with me. However, when I saw a copy of the extended edition while out shopping a couple months ago, I bought it. Jason and I sat down and watched half of the documentary footage (about two hours) this weekend. My mind is completely blown. Why isn't this stuff - these experiments - being reported by the mainstream media? Why aren't people losing their marbles over these discoveries? I still find it difficult to wrap my mind around the concepts because they contradict what we've been told to believe all our lives.
I don't want to kill your flist page, so I'm going to put all this behind a cut.
First: the double slit experiment. The video below will explain it much better than I can. Basically, when you are not looking, an electron (small particle of matter) behaves very differently than when you are looking. Just the act of watching the electrons with a camera will make them drastically change their ways.
Second: the placebo effect. This has been proven in many different experiments with varying degrees of disease, but the one that freaked me out with the Parkinson's placebo effect test researchers did a few years ago. They gave patients with Parkinson's a placebo, but told them that it was an active drug which would reduce or remove their symptoms. Symptoms of Parkinson's are caused by lowered dopamine levels. The patients who received the placebo exhibited significant elevations of dopamine production in their body, even though the drug they were taking was not responsible. Simply by the power of their mind and the power of suggestion from the doctors, they were able to make their own body produce dopamine that they had not been able to do before. That's crazy.
Third: the global consciousness project. Researchers gave a group of experienced meditators a small electronic device that did nothing in particular. They were asked to individually hold it and meditate on telling the device to raise the pH of a container of water by one degree. Once finished, the device was wrapped up and mailed off to a laboratory where it was placed next to a container of water. Sure enough, it raised the water pH level by a degree. A similar device that had not been meditated over was unable to accomplish this. Random number generators (that generated 1's and 0's) were placed in a room with meditators. Their mental focus was able to make the generators coherent, no longer random. With this in mind, the Global Consciousness Project was started. Across the world, several random number generators are running. During large events in which a large number of people are focused on one particular thing, they have found that the world as a whole can make these random number generators coherent, producing a statistically improbable/impossible series of numbers (a long line of ones, unbroken by zeros or vice versa). This actually occurred on September 11, 2001 when everyone's attention was focused on the goings-on in NYC. In hindsight, the data seems to show that the mass consciousness actually was aware of the attack before it even happened because the generators became coherent before the first plane hit the towers. It continued in coherency off an on for several hours that day, unlike any other day for severals years before or since. Carrying this idea a bit further and sharping it down to a single individual, many researchers in the quantum physics arena believe that a person can greatly affect the world with his/her mind. If you wanted a hundred dollar bill to appear in your hand, and you had the correct mental focus and belief that you could make it appear, then you could do so. This blows my mind.
Fourth: HADO and Dr. Masaru Emoto. You should run and go to this website. Dr. Emoto believed that our thoughts and feelings can influence the world around us. A bit like karma - what you put out, you get back. So, he did experiments in which he froze water and observed the pattern the ice crystals make. The catch was that he influenced each batch of water with a certain emotion, even labeling the samples with words like: thank you, I hate you, you make me sick, and beautiful. He noticed a huge difference in ice crystals influenced by positive emotions versus negative ones. The website I linked above has pictures of these ice crystals and what emotion was sent to them while they were forming.
I don't want to kill your flist page, so I'm going to put all this behind a cut.
First: the double slit experiment. The video below will explain it much better than I can. Basically, when you are not looking, an electron (small particle of matter) behaves very differently than when you are looking. Just the act of watching the electrons with a camera will make them drastically change their ways.
Second: the placebo effect. This has been proven in many different experiments with varying degrees of disease, but the one that freaked me out with the Parkinson's placebo effect test researchers did a few years ago. They gave patients with Parkinson's a placebo, but told them that it was an active drug which would reduce or remove their symptoms. Symptoms of Parkinson's are caused by lowered dopamine levels. The patients who received the placebo exhibited significant elevations of dopamine production in their body, even though the drug they were taking was not responsible. Simply by the power of their mind and the power of suggestion from the doctors, they were able to make their own body produce dopamine that they had not been able to do before. That's crazy.
Third: the global consciousness project. Researchers gave a group of experienced meditators a small electronic device that did nothing in particular. They were asked to individually hold it and meditate on telling the device to raise the pH of a container of water by one degree. Once finished, the device was wrapped up and mailed off to a laboratory where it was placed next to a container of water. Sure enough, it raised the water pH level by a degree. A similar device that had not been meditated over was unable to accomplish this. Random number generators (that generated 1's and 0's) were placed in a room with meditators. Their mental focus was able to make the generators coherent, no longer random. With this in mind, the Global Consciousness Project was started. Across the world, several random number generators are running. During large events in which a large number of people are focused on one particular thing, they have found that the world as a whole can make these random number generators coherent, producing a statistically improbable/impossible series of numbers (a long line of ones, unbroken by zeros or vice versa). This actually occurred on September 11, 2001 when everyone's attention was focused on the goings-on in NYC. In hindsight, the data seems to show that the mass consciousness actually was aware of the attack before it even happened because the generators became coherent before the first plane hit the towers. It continued in coherency off an on for several hours that day, unlike any other day for severals years before or since. Carrying this idea a bit further and sharping it down to a single individual, many researchers in the quantum physics arena believe that a person can greatly affect the world with his/her mind. If you wanted a hundred dollar bill to appear in your hand, and you had the correct mental focus and belief that you could make it appear, then you could do so. This blows my mind.
Fourth: HADO and Dr. Masaru Emoto. You should run and go to this website. Dr. Emoto believed that our thoughts and feelings can influence the world around us. A bit like karma - what you put out, you get back. So, he did experiments in which he froze water and observed the pattern the ice crystals make. The catch was that he influenced each batch of water with a certain emotion, even labeling the samples with words like: thank you, I hate you, you make me sick, and beautiful. He noticed a huge difference in ice crystals influenced by positive emotions versus negative ones. The website I linked above has pictures of these ice crystals and what emotion was sent to them while they were forming.
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Just something to think about.
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I'm glad you linked that article, though. It solved a question of mine. There was one woman in particular in the film who rubbed me the wrong way. She kept talking, but nothing made sense. I believe she's the nutball referred to in the article as the woman who channels some manly spirit. Ha! Each time she popped up on the screen (which was not all that often), I wanted to fast forward it. ;-)
Anyway, I liked the film. I'm not all that easily sold on things, so it was a nice jumping-off point for me, giving me things to investigate further. It wouldn't consider it the be-all-end-all on quantum physics, but it does a great job of presenting different ideas and discussing the research into quantum physics.
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Have enjoyed your posts about this topic. :D
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