Can This Black Box See Into the Future?
Deep in the basement of a dusty university library in
Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two
cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random
numbers in an endless stream.
At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment.
Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no
more complex than the ones found in modern pocket
calculators.
But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this
box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the
‘eye’ of a machine that appears capable of peering into the
future and predicting major world events. The machine
apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World
Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but in the
fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims
were swiftly knocked back by skeptics. But last December,
it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just
before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic
tragedy.
Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a
small box with apparently inexplicable powers.
‘It’s Earth-shattering stuff,’ says Dr Roger Nelson,
emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the United
States, who is heading the research project behind the
‘black box’ phenomenon.
‘We’re very early on in the process of trying to figure out
what’s going on here. At the moment we’re stabbing in the
dark.’ Dr Nelson’s investigations, called the Global
Consciousness Project, were originally hosted by Princeton
University and are centered on one of the most
extraordinary experiments of all time. Its aim is to detect
whether all of humanity shares a single subconscious mind
that we can all tap into without realizing.
And machines like the Edinburgh black box have thrown up a
tantalizing possibility: that scientists may have
unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future.
Although many would consider the project’s aims to be
little more than fools’ gold, it has still attracted a
roster of 75 respected scientists from 41 different
nations. Researchers from Princeton - where Einstein spent
much of his career - work alongside scientists from
universities in Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and
Germany. The project is also the most rigorous and
longest-running investigation ever into the potential
powers of the paranormal.
‘Very often paranormal phenomena evaporate if you study
them for long enough,’ says physicist Dick Bierman of the
University of Amsterdam. ‘But this is not happening with
the Global Consciousness Project. The effect is real. The
only dispute is about what it means.’ The project has its
roots in the extraordinary work of Professor Robert Jahn of
Princeton University during the late 1970s. He was one of
the first modern scientists to take paranormal phenomena
seriously. Intrigued by such things as telepathy,
telekinesis - the supposed psychic power to move objects
without the use of physical force - and extrasensory
perception, he was determined to study the phenomena using
the most up-to-date technology available.
One of these new technologies was a humble-looking black
box known was a Random Event Generator (REG). This used
computer technology to generate two numbers - a one and a
zero - in a totally random sequence, rather like an
electronic coin-flipper.
The pattern of ones and noughts - ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ as it
were - could then be printed out as a graph. The laws of
chance dictate that the generators should churn out equal
numbers of ones and zeros - which would be represented by a
nearly flat line on the graph. Any deviation from this
equal number shows up as a gently rising curve.
During the late 1970s, Prof Jahn decided to investigate
whether the power of human thought alone could interfere in
some way with the machine’s usual readings. He hauled
strangers off the street and asked them to concentrate
their minds on his number generator. In effect, he was
asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails.
It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results,
however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily
explained.
Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their
minds could influence the machine and produce significant
fluctuations on the graph, ‘forcing it’ to produce unequal
numbers of ‘heads’ or ‘tails’.
According to all of the known laws of science, this should
not have happened - but it did. And it kept on happening.
Dr Nelson, also working at Princeton University, then
extended Prof Jahn’s work by taking random number machines
to group meditations, which were very popular in America at
the time. Again, the results were eyepopping. The groups
were collectively able to cause dramatic shifts in the
patterns of numbers.
From then on, Dr Nelson was hooked.
Using the internet, he connected up 40 random event
generators from all over the world to his laboratory
computer in Princeton. These ran constantly, day in day
out, generating millions of different pieces of data. Most
of the time, the resulting graph on his computer looked
more or less like a flat line.
But then on September 6, 1997, something quite
extraordinary happened: the graph shot upwards, recording a
sudden and massive shift in the number sequence as his
machines around the world started reporting huge deviations
from the norm. The day was of historic importance for
another reason, too.
For it was the same day that an estimated one billion
people around the world watched the funeral of Diana,
Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey.
Dr Nelson was convinced that the two events must be related
in some way.
Could he have detected a totally new phenomena? Could the
concentrated emotional outpouring of millions of people be
able to influence the output of his REGs. If so, how? Dr
Nelson was at a loss to explain it.
So, in 1998, he gathered together scientists from all over
the world to analyze his findings. They, too, were stumped
and resolved to extend and deepen the work of Prof Jahn and
Dr Nelson. The Global Consciousness Project was born.
Since then, the project has expanded massively. A total of
65 Eggs (as the generators have been named) in 41 countries
have now been recruited to act as the ‘eyes’ of the
project.
And the results have been startling and inexplicable in
equal measure.
For during the course of the experiment, the Eggs have
’sensed’ a whole series of major world events as they were
happening, from the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia to the Kursk
submarine tragedy to America’s hung election of 2000.
The Eggs also regularly detect huge global celebrations,
such as New Year’s Eve.
But the project threw up its greatest enigma on September
11, 2001.
As the world stood still and watched the horror of the
terrorist attacks unfold across New York, something strange
was happening to the Eggs.
Not only had they registered the attacks as they actually
happened, but the characteristic shift in the pattern of
numbers had begun four hours before the two planes even hit
the Twin Towers.
They had, it appeared, detected that an event of historic
importance was about to take place before the terrorists
had even boarded their fateful flights. The implications,
not least for the West’s security services who constantly
monitor electronic ‘chatter’, are clearly enormous.
‘I knew then that we had a great deal of work ahead of us,’
says Dr Nelson.
What could be happening? Was it a freak occurrence,
perhaps?
Apparently not. For in the closing weeks of December last
year, the machines went wild once more.
Twenty-four hours later, an earthquake deep beneath the
Indian Ocean triggered the tsunami which devastated
South-East Asia, and claimed the lives of an estimated
quarter of a million people.
So could the Global Consciousness Project really be
forecasting the future?
Cynics will quite rightly point out that there is always
some global event that could be used to ‘explain’ the times
when the Egg machines behaved erratically. After all, our
world is full of wars, disasters and terrorist outrages, as
well as the occasional global celebration. Are the
scientists simply trying too hard to detect patterns in
their raw data?
The team behind the project insist not. They claim that by
using rigorous scientific techniques and powerful
mathematics it is possible to exclude any such random
connections. ‘We’re perfectly willing to discover that
we’ve made mistakes,’ says Dr Nelson. ‘But we haven’t been
able to find any, and neither has anyone else.
Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these
results by fluke are one million to one against.
That’s hugely significant.’ But many remain skeptical.
Professor Chris French, a psychologist and noted skeptic at
Goldsmiths College in London, says: ‘The Global
Consciousness Project has generated some very intriguing
results that cannot be readily dismissed. I’m involved in
similar work to see if we get the same results. We haven’t
managed to do so yet but it’s only an early experiment. The
jury’s still out.’ Strange as it may seem, though, there’s
nothing in the laws of physics that precludes the
possibility of foreseeing the future.
It is possible - in theory - that time may not just move
forwards but backwards, too. And if time ebbs and flows
like the tides in the sea, it might just be possible to
foretell major world events. We would, in effect, be
‘remembering’ things that had taken place in our future.
‘There’s plenty of evidence that time may run backwards,’
says Prof Bierman at the University of Amsterdam.
‘And if it’s possible for it to happen in physics, then it
can happen in our minds, too.’ In other words, Prof Bierman
believes that we are all capable of looking into the
future, if only we could tap into the hidden power of our
minds. And there is a tantalizing body of evidence to
support this theory.
Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in
the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that
people could sense the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked
people up to hospital scanning machines so that he could
study their brainwave patterns.
He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon
drawings. When the pictures were shown, the machines
registered the subject’s brainwaves as they reacted
strongly to the images before them. This was to be
expected.
Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases,
these dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds
before each of the pictures were even flashed up.
It was as though Dr Hartwell’s case studies were somehow
seeing into the future, and detecting when the next
shocking image would be shown next.
It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable.
But it was to be another 15 years before anyone else took
Dr Hartwell’s work further when Dean Radin, a researcher
working in America, connected people up to a machine that
measured their skin’s resistance to electricity. This is
known to fluctuate in tandem with our moods - indeed, it’s
this principle that underlies many lie detectors.
Radin repeated Dr Hartwell’s ‘image response’ experiments
while measuring skin resistance. Again, people began
reacting a few seconds before they were shown the
provocative pictures. This was clearly impossible, or so he
thought, so he kept on repeating the experiments. And he
kept getting the same results.
‘I didn’t believe it either,’ says Prof Bierman. ‘So I also
repeated the experiment myself and got the same results. I
was shocked. After this I started to think more deeply
about the nature of time.’ To make matters even more
intriguing, Prof Bierman says that other mainstream labs
have now produced similar results but are yet to go public.
‘They don’t want to be ridiculed so they won’t release
their findings,’ he says. ‘So I’m trying to persuade all of
them to release their results at the same time. That would
at least spread the ridicule a little more thinly!’ If Prof
Bierman is right, though, then the experiments are no
laughing matter.
They might help provide a solid scientific grounding for
such strange phenomena as ‘deja vu’, intuition and a host
of other curiosities that we have all experienced from time
to time.
They may also open up a far more interesting possibility -
that one day we might be able to enhance psychic powers
using machines that can ‘tune in’ to our subconscious mind,machines like the little black box in Edinburgh.
Just as we have built mechanical engines to replace muscle
power, could we one day build a device to enhance and
interpret our hidden psychic abilities?
Dr Nelson is optimistic - but not for the short term. ‘We
may be able to predict that a major world event is going to
happen. But we won’t know exactly what will happen or where
it’s going to happen,’ he says.
‘Put it this way - we haven’t yet got a machine we could
sell to the CIA.’
But for Dr Nelson, talk of such psychic machines - with the
potential to detect global catastrophes or terrorist
outrages - is of far less importance than the implications
of his work in terms of the human race.
For what his experiments appear to demonstrate is that
while we may all operate as individuals, we also appear to
share something far, far greater - a global consciousness.
Some might call it the mind of God.
‘We’re taught to be individualistic monsters,’ he says.
‘We’re driven by society to separate ourselves from each
other. That’s not right. We may be connected together far
more intimately than we realize.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 7:00
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