From: jorn@MCS.COM (Jorn Barger) Organization: The Responsible Party Date: 25 Mar 1995 16:02:37 -0600 Newsgroups: alt.paranet.science,alt.paranormal Summary: nuclei:sound::electrons:vibesI'm going to sketch the outlines, here, of a new model of certain sorts of paranormal phenomena. This model has been very slowly evolving over the last 15 years, but a new piece has fallen into place today, that emboldens me to write it up...Subject: New theory: electrons and the atmosphere
I'm gonna start by bragging a little, because I'm expecting some heavy flak from the skeptics in this group, and I want them to appreciate that I do have some logical capabilities, along with my wild ideas...
I was one of the first members of Kevin Langdon's Four Sigma Society, for people who scored over IQ 165 on his "World's Hardest IQ Test" (first published in Omni magazine in 1978 or so). I've gotten to know Kevin somewhat, and he's published some of my writings. The last time we talked he complimented me by saying that in all his years of seeking out brainy people, I was the most 'consistently original' thinker...
My GREs in 1990 were 800v-790a-780m. I was a senior research programmer for three years at Roger Schank's AI lab. I've published articles on the theory of interactive fiction, and a major piece of literary detective work on James Joyce's notebooks for Finnegans Wake. And I've found serious mistakes in John Kidd's forthcoming edition of Ulysses, which was supposed to be state-of-the-art...
(See <URL: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/ > for more details of these)
But I have a rather unconventional approach to the natural sciences. I don't care at all for complicated math-- I look for simple, intuitive physical models of the world around me, which has led me to propose new models of punctuated equilibrium (in evolution), of muscle contraction, of snowflake symmetry, and of atmospheric physics...
And it's this last one (or two) that I want to discuss.
Current models of the atmosphere consider that by far the most influential sort of interaction between air molecules is collision, between molecules travelling (on the average) at the speed of sound. (That's why the speed of sound is what it is-- contrary to the common mis-understanding, sound really does travel faster in warmer air! This is in the textbooks, if you check it out...)
But if you go into meteorology a little way, you'll find occasional mention of a much subtler level of 'friction' between molecules, that involves their surrounding electron clouds, and has tiny effects even when the nuclei are relatively distant...
In fact, if you try to explain simple convection in terms of close collisions of molecules, I think you'll have a hard time. Hot air shouldn't rise, it should just blend with its cooler neighbors. The only explanation of its rising is that it has a 'coherence' due to intermolecular friction...
So I'd like to propose that these extended, rarefied electron clouds actually form a speed-of-light communication medium that coexists within the sound-speed atmosphere, as electrons coexist with nuclei...
This whole notion can be placed in better context by considering Van Der Waals forces, and snowflake symmetry...
Any organic chem book will tell you that lipids (eg) stick together more closely than expected, due to a hypothetical effect whereby their electron clouds 'resonate' so that one (oscillating) point is negative whenever the other is positive. This is termed Van Der Waals attraction, and it punches a big hole in the handwavy argument that electron clouds are mathematically 'uncertain' or indeterminate. (They may be indeterminate, but it must be in some way that still allows resonance between neighboring indeterminacies.)
If you follow out this line of thinking, picturing every molecule as having geometric patterns of charge on its surface, changing over time, then some other possibilities suggest themselves...
Pheromones, oddly, often have prime numbers of atoms in their main chain. This might lead to especially complex electron geometries (or rhythms at any given point)...
And the mystery of how a growing snowflake maintains nearly exact symmetry over trillions of atomic diameters might be seen as the inevitable consequence of its semi-liquid state in free fall having effectively infinite time to settle into symmetrical stability...
(Drip a drop of water into a round bowl of still water. Notice how the 'whispering gallery' effect forces the ripples to re-converge at the mirror-point. Picture this effect on a spherical droplet in freefall, as a water molecule impacts the surface. Is it unlikely that a hexagonal symmetry might emerge, especially if the droplet is spinning slightly?)
So I'll pause here... but the implication I want to move towards is that this media can carry other sorts of vibration, in particular what is anecdotally called vibes...
j the robot wisdom pages jorn@mcs.com http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/
Date: 27 Mar 1995 19:48:50 -0600 Summary: some odd phenomena re 'vibes'In my previous post, I presented some thoughts about how the outer electrons of air molecules might form a different sort of medium, sharing the same volume of space as the atmosphere, while transmitting not sound but 'vibes'...Subject: Electric vibes in the air
I want to rattle off an impromptu list of what I believe are fairly 'everyday' experiences, that might be better accounted for using this model. What these all have in common, though, is the suggestion that
The basic idea is that nervous systems in social species have evolved as transmitters of feelings like fear and pain, and especially social feelings like love and respect. If you're in a room with someone who's uptight, you can be 'infected' with some of that feeling. This can happen even if only one person is upset and is concealing it well... you still may feel a tension in the air...
At the other end of the emotional spectrum is the phenomenon of musicians getting into a groove, which could easily turn out to be a literal state of resonant vibration. (My guess is that these emotional vibes are most important in the subsonic frequency range-- 30 Hz and below, down to 0.1 or 0.01 Hz or lower. They seem to have a sound component as well, though...)
There are many other sorts of situation where we feel less or more in tune with those around us, with lovemaking being the most extreme example, where a good 'intuition' about what the other is feeling is the key to giving pleasure...
There's a sense that these phenomena are less effective with increasing distance (some people you can't wait to get away from!), but there's a related set of phenomena that seem to take place at a distance... Especially if you've been close to someone, you seem at times to feel their emotions at a distance-- especially if they're angry with you. (I find that I consult my 'inner model' of a person who's angry at me, asking whether they've cooled enough to try a new approach... I've learned to trust this 'image' much more than I ought, if it were really based entirely on my last visual/auditory contact with them!)
So I'd like to leave open whether these transmissions of feeling may have some sort of 'PGP' encoding, where the more you get to know someone, the more able you are to pick out their signals at a distance, and the more able too, to direct a feeling like anger at one single target...
(Some people have a knack for 'getting under your skin'. This might be a sort of astral hacking/cracking... ;^/
Blowhards and browbeaters seem to have refined their forcefulness in this domain, and I'm curious to explore whether the electron-model might allow a metaphorical sort of 'wind' that one can 'blow hard' at another, to cause them pain... (Flaming is the e-version of this-- vibes sometimes carry very clearly over the net... I don't claim to have an explanation for this twist.)
The same sorts of tension that affect vibes in a room, will also affect the sounds there. Someone comes into the room behind me and trips over a chair-- even that 'random' sound can convey plainly whether the tripper was angry or not. Angry crashing usually sounds very different than non-angry. (Yes, there are lots of counter-examples to this! But you remember them because they're not the norm...)
If a couple is fighting, and one is doing dishes in the other room, the clanking of the dishes will clearly speak their emotional state, no matter how carefully they try to conceal it...
And there's the story Jung tells, of his first meeting with Freud-- when Freud was expressing skepticism about psychic phenomena the sideboard gave a loud crack, and Jung said 'That was a psychic effect, and to prove it, in a moment there will be another...' (there was). These creaks and cracks from wood walls and furniture are very much intensified by changes of vibes...
And I'd like to suggest that the human species, as a whole, has been suffering for several milennia under a social order that depends on the denial of this whole domain, as a way of maintaining intimidation and alienating us from our healthiest instincts to freedom...
j the robot wisdom pages jorn@mcs.com http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/