"Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next."
– Jonas Salk
I need to be nicer to all those tiny atoms serving us, especially those inside my body. That extends outside of me, too, to the animals and plants. Golly, rocks are made of atoms. Water is made of atoms. I guess we are all connected.
Have you heard of the "Split-beam scientific experiment? I had heard of it. Most of us have. Still, I didn't understand it. However, I was intrigued when I read Gregg Braden's account of it in his book, The Spontaneous Healing of Belief.
Why scientists thought of shooting a proton (a light particle) through a hole is beyond me, but it turned out to open the door to quantum physics.
I always wondered about people who thought metaphysical people were cuckoo and was tempted to ask, "Have you ever read anything about quantum physics? It's crazier than anything we can conjure.
Were those scientists playing around in the lab one day, or were they seriously investigating light particles? I don't know. I hope they were playing, for much is accomplished with a glad heart.
The first split-beam experiment occurred in England in 1909 and is still being discussed today. Physicist Geoffrey Ingram Taylor found a way to shoot "the stuff of atoms," that is, quantum particles of light called photons from a projector to a target some feet away. He placed a barrier between the projector and the target. He must have figured something was afoot, for the barrier had two slits.
The thought at the time was that a photon is a particle. That proton was pulled out of the atom as a particle. Therefore, one would think it would go through a hole through which it was aimed, like a bullet, and hit the target on the other side.
However, the photons did something unexpected.
They passed through both holes.
Just as water can travel through a window screen as it thaws from ice to a liquid, Taylor's photons did something similar.
The photons, they surmised, instead of being a particle, became a wave, and that wave could pass through multiple openings.
This was mind-boggling. Because until that time, there was nothing in conventional physics that could change the nature of its existence.
Thus, a new kind of physics entered the picture—quantum physics. (A quantum is a packet of discrete energy.)
Taylor and his associates asked these questions:
1. How did the particles know' there was more than one opening?
2. What caused the particles to change into waves to accommodate the two openings?
Then they went on to ask a third question.
"Who knew there was more than one opening in that barrier?"
Their answer?
The people in the room.
Was it possible that the people's consciousness in the room influenced the particles?
This opened the door to something almost unthinkable at the time. It suggests something that the most ancient and cherished spiritual traditions have stated since the beginning of our existence: That thoughts and beliefs affect matter.
Yeah, I know, it's weird.
This experiment has been repeated many times with fancier and more sensitive equipment. In 1998 Israel's Weizmann Institute confirmed and published "Quantum Theory Demonstrated: Observation Affects Reality."
They stated that photons are influenced by being "watched," The more intense the watching, the greater the watcher's influence on how the particles behave.
When I first heard that experiments with atoms are influenced by being watched, I thought that we caught those tiny atoms sitting on the toilet, and they were embarrassed. So, they jumped up and did something else.
I'm not up on the latest discoveries on what is happening with quantum physics, but I know that the old image of the atom as a nucleus with electrons buzzing around it like a solar system now has another view. Now there is a thought that the electrons that buzz around the nucleus are more like a fog. They are probabilities.
Old though--that the electron, or electrons, are buzzing so fast that if you tried to touch one with a needle, you would always hit it. New thought—they are a realm of probabilities. There is a possibility of a particle being everywhere and anywhere.
Yeah, that boggles my mind too.
We could take that further, but I don't want to go too deep into physics. Besides, I'm not a physicist. I'm a scout. I go around finding things and bring them home. I could be a hunter-gatherer, but I don't hunt animals. I hunt for ideas. And I like being a scout for I can ride my horse while searching for the best road to travel.
This view of the world as possibilities opens a whole new way of thinking. Some say this field of possibilities is consciousness, and everything happens in the field. That would explain why poking an atom in Los Angeles is instantly felt by its sister atom in New York.
Don't blame me. I'm only the scout.
