Article from New Scientist! AMAZING!! http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundam...t-activity.html



I never thought i'd see the day we had some solid theories & evidence... i guess i was wrong...

Skeptics, hold your tongues

Perhaps they have a high zinc blood level.
There was an interesting post about a battery, zinc, and a levitation machine anyone can make at home that posted by another poster earlier.

You can download the paper from

http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/0801.0382

It appears to be a speculative theory paper, with no evidence being presented that what its authors think could happen really does happen. At least it appears not to be an April Fool's joke.

Michael Persinger is on the journal's editorial board. You remember him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml

and this is Brian Josephson's (mentioned in the New Scientist article as also on the editorial board) Nobel write-up from 35 years ago

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1973/

I will have to read he report first before I can comment on the study.

Seems to me like it's all theory to me. No real hard evidence is presented.

They try to come up with something for everything, sleep paralysis, esp etc. I guess this only proves to people that we can all move objects at will given the right circumstances.

Someone should try to test their theory.

While I would love for a scientific study to be done on psychic phenomena this article is not such. I hate to sound like the local skeptics, but this is no more than a hypothesis here. Unfortunately the people that get a lot of credit for doing scientific analysis on the subject (CSI) seem to have a personal bias which stops them from always doing real science. Society is afraid to believe so they refuse to study it and people who do believe often times falsify stuff as well leading to a total disregard for science in the field of unexplained phenomena.

/rant off

If these scientists would do experiments to prove their hypothesis though I would love to see it.

Well its April fools day.

it is true it's 1 april foolish day or however you say that in english, but still I HEARD(!) about a kid using energie on a thermometer to make it get hotter while he was half a meter away from the thermometer... ofcourse you hardcore sceptics will come up with some theorie he had condenced water under it or something but I think that guy just threw a psiball to the thermo meter and with that heating it up. So why wouldn't you consider it to be real?

The paper, so far as I can see, does not address the issue of moving objects at will. It proposes a novel mechanism by which objects might move in the vicinity of some people because of their (supposed) physical situation, not particularly because of the person's wish that the object move.

If the paper's theory were true, it would place poltergeist events within the realm of physical phenomena, comparable in metaphysical import with my "ability" to affect radio reception by walking around the receiver's antenna.

Well, if the theory were true and poltergeist events were established to happen in the first place.

Hm, for some reason it's only letting me see the abstract.

If you're using my link, over the paper title and abstract, but under the banner and file reference, on the left is a set of five small icons: pdf, postscript, and three other formats. I downloaded the pdf version (first icon).

Hmm, well there are MANY theories out there on different subjects in the scientific world. I would like to see this put into practice with test subjects. I'm sure there would be video documentation to view. Anyway, nice post. Thank you, Jody

Wow, that's neat stuff. I'm not even going to pretend to understand the mathematics, and I'm certainly no scientist, but I think it's a pretty cool theory from what I understand.

As far as experimentation goes, I think it would be difficult to find a particular pubescent kid who can cause it to happen.

Just for reference, I'm all for opening up a kid's brain if it's necessary. I don't like kids.

I've seen several attempts at trying to scientifically explain the Poltergeist effect - from ion flow to negative Casmir radiation.

I've yet to find one that can explain how some Poltergeists can articulate themselves and have distinct personalities.

I agree, i believe the Human mind can do some extraordinary things (turn electrical devices on and off), (know certain things are going to happen before hand) even remote viewing -in some instances. But some of the things i have seen either on video or in front of my own eye's need more of a paranormal backing then puberty and what about shadow people or actual demon sightings? i cant believe that they all come from girls going through puberty. I know its crazy but i can see a young girl making a coffee cup fly off the shelf but actual manifestations of Ghosts or spirits? nah

Absolutely.

Whilst I'm fine with speculative papers - indeed, if we're accepting that there is a phenomenon to explain (which in my mind is doubtful, but nevertheless), it's hard to imagine another place to start - and of course I'm also fine with naturalistic explanations of apparently supernatural phenomena, this one isn't great, imo. I'm in no way a physicist, but I like to think I can follow a rational argument, and I'm not sure this is one.

Tiggs, I think you put your finger on one of the main issues with this paper: the phenomenological aspects. I see no references, research or even explanation to underpin their assertions that rappings, burning, electrical failure and movement of objects are the right and only phenomena to explain with a 'theory of poltergeist activity'. It seems as though in putting forward their proposed explanation, they have only addressed phenomena which have the potential to be explained by their theory - circular reasoning.

They miss other phenomena which are (necessarily) anecdotally attached to the poltergeist phenomenon (for instance, object apports, seemingly purposive actions, the appearance of puddles of water, apparent intelligence and attempts to communicate [see descriptions by e.g. D. Scott Rogo]), and arbitrarily choose to explain the only four phenomena which could be explained by their theory.

I'm not saying these other phenomena actually occur, I'm saying that it's strange to propose a theory to explain alleged poltergeist phenomena, but include no discussion of those phenomena themselves.

The fact that the actual thesis of the paper - if I understand correctly, that changes in the adolescent brain related to chirally asymmetric proteins produce entropic imbalance which is redressed by dissipative energy discharge in the form of vacuum polarisation - is only really described and discussed in one paragraph (the final one of section 4), shows the incompleteness and paucity of the argument. The authors also fail to discuss the relevance of what seems to be the only cited experimental context in which these phenomena may be observed - the Belousov-Zhabotinskij reaction - to human brain chemistry.

At the end of the day, as I said, speculative theories suggesting further research are fine in my book, as long as they are clearly labeled as such (as this one is); but I don't think these authors have at all done proposed a reasonable or useful theory, at this stage. It's an odd little paper, and one that clearly has its origins in 60 years of rumination by a physicist as to the correct explanation of a strange phenomenon he witnessed under somewhat less than controlled conditions.

Edited for clarity
Edited again because all the punctuation turned into little squares.

uh... just so people "get it" it was an April fools joke by New Scientist... just like they do every single April Fools

This was posted on march 31...If it was mean tto be an April Fools prank, wouldnt they of doen ti on april fools?

Well, my understanding of "April Fools joke" is to make a timely untrue statement.

The paper exists, since appearance in the Cornell e-print archives (I gave the UC Davis mirror) is publication as the term is understood in science. Neuroquantology is a real web journal, and Josephson is on their board, as the article reports.

The paper is listed as appearing in issue 2 of volume 6 in the e-print archive. Only issue 1 is up on the journal's site, but in previous years, they have done 4 issues per year. It is not unusual for a journal issue to appear late.

And the article accurately describes the contents of the paper.

Maybe with truths like this, New Scientist felt they didn't have to make anything up this year.

If you want to decide upon an absolutely clinical and inflexable definition of April Fools then.. no... it's not a joke..

However it was posted as a "we'd never post this garbage bat-s**t crazy psudo-science on any other day except April Fools day". The paper may be "real" etc, however it's such a far fetched, not based on evidence of any sort, wishfull thinking, desparately grasping at straws scientific paper that they put it up as a "joke" for April Fools day.


Uh... beleive it or not but there are other places in the world with different timezones.. check the comments on the article...

Well given New Scientist's penchant for publishing reports of speculative and preliminary papers under unit-shifting banner headlines such as (for example) "Proof of String Theory" or "Atlantis Rediscovered", if it is a joke it seems to be more at the magazine's expense than the potty physicists who wrote the article.

Still, as eight bits points out, it is a real article, published in January, in an actual scientific journal.

If you meant it as a joke, the thread should have been started in the jokes section.

Because poltergeist is one of the most visible and Multi -witnessed forms of psychic abilities, it is perhaps the closest to having any scientific credibility.

It is a phenomenum which scientists simply cannot deny happens, so they have to postulate theories, ranging from outright fraud and deception in every case, through to this form of biomechanical phenomenum.

This is not a new theory and the physical correlation between many poltergeist activities and young teenage people, especially females, has long been recognised. It has led to the postulation of the idea that physical changes in some humans are able to manifest into the surrounding physical world via mechanisms we do not yet understand.

I havent read this article but it sounds like it is a refined version of the original hypothesis, with perhaps some greater recognition/evaluation of the physical changes established as occuring in some people at puberty.

A controlled poltergeist spinning the psi wheel.