Is it possible for one to peer into the future? If so, what does that mean? Is the future set or does one merely see a possible future? Scientists in Edinburgh have been intrigued by a black box, or a random event generator, that seemingly has an uncanny ability to foresee future 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 sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy.
Dr Roger Nelson of Princeton University is heading a project, based on earlier research, called the Global Consciousness Project. The aim of the research is to determine whether mankind shares a single subconscious mind. The research actually began in the 1970s by Professor Robert Jahn of Princeton who was one the first scientists to take paranormal research seriously. He focused his work on the areas of telepathy and telekinesis using then state-of-the art technologies.
He used a black-box, or random event generator (REG), to generate two numbers – a one and a zero – in a totally random sequence akin to coin flipping. The generated patterns were then plotted on a graph and not surprisingly produced a fairly consistent flat line, precisely as the law of chance dictates. Small deviations did occur from time to time and appeared as gentle curves on the graph.
Professor Jahn wanted to know if the power of suggestion alone could influence the results of the electronic coin flipping – his results were remarkable.
Dr.Nelson took notice of his colleague’s work and expanded upon it. He brought these machines along to group meditations and duplicated Prof.Jahn’s results over and over. What these men were seeing were dramatic shifts in the generated output.
Flabbergasted, Nelson decided to hook up a series of these REGs to each other via the internet. The REGs were located in various locations around the world to maximize the randomness. Again, the endless stream of data produced a fairly consistent flat line – until 06 Sept 1997. On that day the graph suddenly shot upwards recording a massive shift in out-of-sequence numbers. REGs from around the world were recording the same thing. Whether it was a coincidence or not 06 Sept 97 was the day of Princess Diana’s funeral, watched by an estimated audience of 1 billion.
That did it for Nelson who was now convinced the two events were somehow related. Joined by scientists from around the world in 1998 the The Global Consciousness Project was born.
There are now 65 EGGS (renamed REGs) located in 41 countries and they continue to produce unusual results. Massive shifts in data were recorded just prior to several major world events such as Nato bombing of Yugoslavia to the Kursk submarine tragedy to America’s hung election of 2000. They even routinely record global celebrations like New Year’s Eve.
Then something happened that truly stunned the researchers. Just hours before the murderous terrorist attacks on Sept 11 the machines went crazy. It happened again in December just 24 hours before the earthquake and resulting tsunami struck.
But what does this mean? Dr.Nelson and his colleagues may be stumped but they are not without theories – one of them being time travel. Not to sound like a re-broadcast of the Art Bell show, time travel is not at all that farfetched.
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.
Prof Bierman at the University of Amsterdam explains,
There’s plenty of evidence that time may run backwards. And if it’s possible for it to happen in physics, then it can happen in our minds, too.
You have to read the rest of this article – it’s amazing stuff.
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649#121
Editor’s note: rednova.com is no longer online. I have found a cached version of the original article. It appears below.
Can a 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.
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 sceptics. But 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 centred 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 realising.
And machines like the Edinburgh black box have thrown up a tantalising possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future. The project is also the most rigorous and longest-running investigation ever into the potential powers of the paranormal. Professor Robert Jahn, of Princeton University during the late 1970s, 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 as 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 billion people around the world watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Dr Nelson was convinced that the two events must be related in some way. So, in 1998, he gathered together scientists from all over the world to analyse 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. 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 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 2003, 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? ‘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.’ 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.
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