Month: February 2023

Given the wide possibility of doing psychokinesis experiments over the internet, it is perhaps now a good time to brush up Professor Helmut Schmidts PK experiment (Read my book: Quantum physics is NOT Weird: Chapter 6 / Seven Critical experiments / 2: PK experiments), as not only psychokinesis is shown there, but also quantum entanglement of macro-objects – I mean objects that we can see with our eyes and handle with our hands without having to use special instruments.

Helmut Schmidt (1928-2011) and his QRNG’s

Schmidts research took place in the years 1970-1980 at the Rhine Research Center Institute for Parapsychology. Schmidts research was heavily critcised, (C. E. M. Hansel. (1980). ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Re-Evaluation. Prometheus Books. pp. 222-232). Carelessness and/or fraud were suggested by many:

"The psychologist C. E. M. Hansel found flaws in all of Schmidt's experiments into clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. Hansel found that necessary precautions were not taken, there was no presence of an observer or second-experimenter in any of the experiments, no counterchecking of the records and no separate machines used for high and low score attempts. There were weaknesses in the design of the experiments that did not rule out the possibility of trickery. There was little control of the experimenter and unsatisfactory features of the machine employed.[2]"

Unexpected experimental results, possible flaws in the design or control and the mere possibility of fraud may be a good reason for doing the research better, but not for right away implicating possible fraud. There are, of course, cases of fraud among scientists, especially if the pressure to publish is high, but there should be a clear reason for suspicion of fraud. It is certain that his publication did not help Schmidt in his career, on the contrary. Furthermore, acceptance of the phenomenon of mental influence on quantum generators – QRNG’s – has grown significantly because of the Global Consciousness Project.

As far as I am concerned, Schmidts results are well worth repeating and verifying at a time when his research could be more extensively done, with more advanced means and perhaps at a lower cost via the Internet. This is why I give here first a brief description of Schmidts research. Then I will explain why I think that this is a quantum entanglement effect between macro-objects and that it is important that such a phenomenon should be investigated properly.

Floppy’s as storage for the QRNG output

Schmidt already used quantum generators – QRNG’s – for his experiments in 1970-1980. The output of such a QRNG – the electronic versions of zeros and ones – was used to control red and green lights, 1 for red, 0 for green. Those zeros and ones were stored on floppy disks, initially for checking purposes only. The results and any statistical deviation could be analyzed quickly via the computer. In those years, the floppy was the portable storage device for computers. A thin flexible plastic disc with a magnetized layer and stored in some sort of square envelope. With the magnetic read and write head of a floppy disk drive, you could save and read data on it. It will become clear that it is important that a floppy disk is something you can pick up in your hands and that the magnetic layer is partly visible through the rounded opening in the ‘envelope’.

The output of a good designed QRNG is a completely random series of bits – according to the so spectacularly successful quantum physics. It is totally unpredictable whether a 0 or a 1 will be produced, but with a well-adjusted QRNG, on average, exactly as many zeros as ones will be produced. So, with the generation of a sufficiently large number of bits, the same amount of green and red flashes up to a predictable equal percentage of both can be easily produced.

Psychokinesis on QRNG’s

A subject was asked to try to mentally influence the red and green flashes controlled by the QRNG output that was also recorded on a floppy disk. More red than green, or vice versa. After a full influencing session, the output recorded on floppy was analyzed for deviations from normal behavior. Subjects proved able to produce deviations of 2% of the normal output. Well, this does not seem impressive, but if tests sessions show such a measurable deviation consistently, then a statistical analysis can be used to calculate the probability of this being a coincidence. In the analysis of the total of Schmidts experiments, chance of probability turned out to be 1 at 8000. So, this is serious.

Delayed influence on a QRNG

It is even more interesting to note that Schmidt also carried out delayed QRNG influence experiments. In this case, the red and green flash signals were not received directly from the QRNG, but by a detour and with a certain delay. The zeroes and ones recorded on floppy disk were then used at a later time to control the red and green flashes. So, in these delayed experiments, the signals for the red and green flashes were not received directly from the QRNG and before the moment of observation by a subject it was still unknown to everyone what series of bits of the QRNG precisely had been registered on the floppy disk.

So, now the results – the bits – of the QRNG were first magnetically recorded, something in which we generally assume that such an action is something definitive and trustworthy. When I save a file to my PC’s hard drive, I assume that it resides physically there, albeit in magnetised digital form, and generally I can rely on it for retrieval, and a backup – a digital copy – is of course always a good safety precaution. Although floppy disks are no longer used as storage media today, they were no less reliable than a modern hard drive or SSD. I still have floppy’s lying in a drawer from years ago and everything was just still on it when I recently checked some.

The floppy disk became entangled with the QRNG ..

To be safe, Schmidt also made a copy of such a floppy disk with QRNG output on it. Then the originals and their copies were stored in a safe, without their digital content being observed by anyone. By observing I mean viewing the contents on a computer screen or printing the output on paper. This is an important detail. After some time, be it days, weeks or months, such a written and labeled floppy was retreived from the safe, inserted into the floppy disk drive whereupon the output, the zeros and ones that were waiting on the floppy to be played, was used to control these red and green lights in the same fashion as before. A subject was instructed again then to try to influence the red-green ratio mentally. Which remarkably enough succeeded, with even the same success rate as with the non-delayed QRNG playback experiment. The explanation here is that the magnetization on the floppy had thus become quantum physically entangled with the QRNG. The subject caused, by observing the flashes, the physical manifestation of the output of the QRNG together with the physical magnetization on the floppy disk with an apparently retrocausal effect. That’s the way I see it – quantum physically.

… ánd with the copy

After such an experiment, there was still an unused copy left in the safe. When this unused copy was then used in another mental influence pk experiment, it turned out that a subject could not mentally influence its contents any more. A subject no longer achieved any result with his mental efforts, different from the output of the primary floppy disk. This is in itself what should be expected of digital copies. I also expect this with a backup of the original files on my PC. On the copy, of course, should exist exactly the same series of zeros and ones as resided on the already by a subject observed original series.

Here, in my opinion, we clearly see the entanglement of macro-objects. The magnetic registration on the original floppy had thus become entangled with the QRNG. Only when ‘observing’ the contents of the floppy, via the flashing green and red lights, did the so-called quantum collapse or state wave reduction occur – apparently backwards in time. So even though you could just have the physical floppy disk in your hands and even see part of the magnetised surface, the magnetisation on it was still in the quantum wave state until the stored bits were manifested by a subject observing those red and green lights.

Entangled floppy disks

So, the copy floppy disk had also become entangled with the primary floppy disk ánd with the QRNG. Both floppy disks and QRNG were in the unmanifested quantum state wave condition while the floppy disks were waiting in the safe until the magnetic content of one of the floppy’s was observed. At that moment, the quantum collapse of the quantum state wave of the QRNG and the primary floppy disk took place as well as that of the copy. I think that this is a wonderful and convincing example – recorded in an experiment – of entanglement of several macro-objects visible to the naked eye.

Apparent retrocausality?

I say ‘apparently’ because we automatically assume that the past is something that really extends into the time dimension and that the zeros and ones that Schmidt’s QRNG produced – after their historical assessment by the perception of the subject – suddenly existed physically in that landscape, that is the past time. This is reminiscent of Einsteins static universe, which we traverse traveling along our individual world lines. Einstein believed deeply in this static universe where everything is essentially predictable. Retrocausality, a backward action in time, would then mean a change somewhere in such a static universe. That kind of retrocausality – retroactivity in time – evokes time paradoxes, such as preventing that superaccidental first encounter of your parents so that you were not born, which means you do not exist and cannot prevent their encounter, which means you were born, etc.

So, I see retrocausality somewhat differently. Not only matter but also the associated time is created by observation. I have already described this phenomenon in ‘Schrödingers Stopwatch‘. This is – rather subtly – something different from retroactivity in time. It is the creation of history by observation in the only moment that ontologically speaking really exists, in THE NOW. I have sometimes called it the creative accounting act of the universe. Once the manifestation has occurred by observation, history is fixed from that moment on and can no longer be modified. History is basically remembrance and re-membering happens in THE NOW. That, of course, immediately raises the fascinating question of what remembrance is.

Proposal for an experiment

I believe that this is an experiment that is perfectly suited to be carried out on a larger scale in a somewhat modified form via the Internet. Of course, the requirements of thoroughness, integrity in registration and control by independent second observers must be rigorously met, but these are in fact normal requirements for any real experiment. This could be a task for the an organisation that is dedicated to sound scientific parapsychological research – such as IONS – in cooperation with a quantum physicist, favorably one who is not believing too firmly in the multiverse. The demonstration of multiple quantum entanglement on that scale could be worth a Nobel Prize.