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FANTASTIC PHYSICS

The Quantum Physical Explanation of Paranormal Phenomena

Frisch in Quantum Theory and Beyond (Cambridge, 1971) gives a lucid account
of the conceptual problems in quantum physics in plain language in his essay
"The conceptual problem of quantum theory from the experimentalist's point
of view.". For example:

""... classical physics ... is much more specific and ... more complete in
its description. It takes the line that there is definitely an outside world
consisting of particles which have location, size, hardness and so on....
they are bona ide particles which exist whether or not we observe them; they
have momentum and position at the same time and if they have got an angular
momentum it has got three components and so forth.

   One of the arguments that has been going on for a long time is whether
quantum mechanics is right in ascribing less detail to what it deals with -
I am trying to avoid the word 'reality' ....

One attitude is to say that electrons are there but that although, in a
sense, they are particles you must be careful not to ascribe position and
momentum at the same time. Similarly you must be careful not to speak of
more than one of the spin components.

   The other attitude is to say that these things are not there; that they
are merely pictures which we create in order to interpret the measurements;
that measurements are done with macroscopic instruments consisting of a
large number of atoms, and that for the description of instruments classical
physics is adequate."

The last remark is a bit ambiguous because, for example, the stability of
matter on the macroscopic level requires quantum Fermi-Dirac statistics for
spin 1/2 electrons and nucleons. One easily falls into a blackhole of
circular reasoning if one insists that "it is an essential feature of an
instrument that it should be described completely in classical terms. This
has raised the question to what extent quantum mechanics can give an account
of the actual process of measurement. ..."

Regarding Schrodinger's infamous feline suspended in a Dantesque limbo
neither alive nor dead:

"I cannot quite put my finger on it but my feeling is that a cat should not
be described by a wave-function or even by a superposition of wave-
functions. But then the question is, where do you draw the line?...."

I suspect (on the basis of the Born-Oppenheimer theorem) that while the body
can be described classically, the electrons in out molecules cannot. Even
the spin degrees of freedom of protons in the ubiquitous hydrogen bonds
cannot. It is these residual nonlocally entangled quantum degrees of freedom
that forms the physical substrate of the biocomputer whose higher levels of
coherent information processing is our mental experience.

On the "quantum eraser":

"One can think of a number of examples where a measurement appears to have
been done but can, in fact, still be undone....irreversibility is an
essential part of a measurement....it defines by its very nature the
direction of time....This is what makes me sceptical about the possibility
of describing the state of a measuring instrument, either before or
afterwards, in terms of state vectors."

In some strange sense, then, our immediate awareness of the flow of time is
the effect of continual quantum measurement on the quantum mechanical system
that we call "mind".  It would also then follow that any artifical
intelligence must be quantum mechanical in order to be "alive" and
"conscious".  The quantum nature of mind is necessary but not sufficient.
The sufficient conditon is, IMHO,  "quantum connection communication" or
what Einstein called "telepathy".  That is, the nonlocal entanglements of
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen form a communication channel that tunnels through
the seemingly impassible speed of light barrier.  This is the really new
physics of destiny beyond quantum physics today in which the future reaches
back to the past to bring itself into being. This really new physics,
"Sarfatti's Version" would also allow sufficiently intelligent beings to
know parts of the future and to travel backwards in time.  The universe may
be like a "Riemann surface" of many branches connected through a "cut" in
the mathematics of functions of a complex variable. A time traveler with
"free will" can change the past but in doing so he or she will experience a
future branch of history different from the one it came from.  On the other
hand, if the time traveller does not have the means to pass through the
"cut" or "time gate", any attempt to change the past will fail. Just as the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle limits the completeness of our knowledge of
the microworld, so too, global self-consistency will limit "free will".
Causality in the usual sense is violated (i.e., the future creates the past)
but not logic!

On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen enigma:

"... in ordinary practical physics... we are quite liable to forget that a
system of two particles has got six dimensions of space (or more) ...These
three considered a system which breaks up into two particles. In classical
parlance you can say that the two particles go off in opposite directions
and with opposite speed. ..in the decay of positronium into two photons...
the two photons must be polarized at right angles to each other... if I pick
one of them up through a polaroid in the vertical direction the other one
will with certainty go through a polaroid with horizontal polarization. But
what happens if you turn both polaroids by 45 degrees... one of them has a
50 per cent chance of going through; and (if) the other knows nothing about
it and thus again has a 50 per cent chance of going through.

  In fact .... this is not so. Quantum theory predicts (and experiment
confirms) that whenever you put the two polaroids at right angles to each
other, if one photon was to go through one of them, then the other photon
would be sure to go through the other one! This cannot be described in any
conceivable way by giving each photon a certain polarization; we must
consider the two photons as being one system. Or if you prefer it, you may
say that one photon arriving at its polaroid, if it goes through, telegraphs
back - with speed exceeding that of light - to tell the other photon 'go
through your polaroid'; ,or 'please adopt the polarization corresponding to
the one which has just been measured for me'."

No wonder Einstein called this "telepathy"! Today we have the Princeton PEAR
experiments in "precognitive remote viewing" in which two minds are
seemingly like the two twinned photons in the decay of positronium (a bound
state of electronic matter and anti-matter).

Now if we use standard quantum physics with its "probability" interpretation
the telpathic or precognitive message gets wiped out in the statistical
averaging. But this is really due to the very low complexity of single pairs
of photons or electrons or neutrons or even atoms.  Henry Stapp of UC
Berekely has suggested that the mind is a very complex macroscopic wave
function connected with very delicate quantum degrees of freedom of the
brain that are, so far, not within the range of the crude instruments used
by neuroscientist.  The use of ultra-sensitive SQUID bio-magnetometers may
change all that if the right kinds of measurements are made.

Think of a system splitting into 24 photons each going in opposite
directions. Each photon is a quantum bit of polarization information. The
logic of these bits is not the same Boolean logic of the classical electron
current bits in out present day computers. So we have two nonlocally
connected ('entangled") quantum 24 bit-strings. The wave-function for this
pair of message strings coherently spans a Shannon message space of a very
large number of dimensions.  Each possible message string is comparable to a
"mental state" of a "mini-mind". When an experience of one mind incoherently
and irreversibly collapses the pair state of both minds into a define
message the other mind, if and when it encounters a similar measuring
experience will have a synchronistic experience. Later, then the two minds
come together and compare the outcomes of their two measuring experiences,
the will be amazed at the Jungian acausal synchronicity. All of this is
standard quantum mechanics with Stapp's Ansatz that the mind is a quantum
system.  This quantum explanation of Jungian synchronicity does not require
the stronger principle of quantum connection communication.

Quantum connection communication is a step beyond physics today. It allows
one mind, through an act of free will, to decide which string it's mind will
collapse to if an when it encounters the measuring experience. This is
basically the physics of of the living truth behind "The Force" of George
Lucas's mythic film Star Wars.  It is the reason that so many people respond
to it emotionally. We have the intuitive awareness of these telepathic
powers latent within us.


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