Prizewinning Author's New Book Cites Scientific Proof Thought Can Change

Prizewinning Author's New Book Cites Scientific Proof Thought Can Change Reality

Richmond, VA (PRWEB) August 22, 2006 -- For years scientists have maintained that awareness and thought are the results of electrons jumping across synapses in the brain and that thought remains at all times inside the skull. But according to Stephen Hawley Martin, prizewinning author of the new book, “A Witch in the Family,” this basic tenet of modern science doesn't line up with the facts.

Martin said, “Quantum physicists know that the observer of an experiment can affect the outcome. A specific example was reported on about ten years ago. In an experiment suggested by John Archibald Wheeler, the eminent physicist who helped develop the atom bomb, particles of light seemed to ‘know’ what experimenters had in store during a ‘double slit’ experiment. In other words, the thoughts of the researchers affected what happened. Versions of this experiment were carried out at the University of Munich and at the University of Maryland.”

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In the experiment Martin referred to, scientists used a photon gun that fires one photon at a time. Both slits were open and a detector determined which slit a photon passed through. A record was made of where each photon hit. With one photon shot at a time, there could be no interference, and as one would suppose, the photons did not make the zebra pattern. But when the detector was turned off, and it was not known which slit each photon passed through, the zebra pattern reappeared.

Noble-winning physicist Richard Feynman called this the "central mystery" of quantum mechanics, that something as intangible as knowledge -- in this case, which slit a photon went through -- changes something as concrete as a pattern on a screen.

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