by Karen Frazier, Managing Editor
Paranormal Underground e-Magazine

This month’s Scientific American (February, 2009) features an interesting little news tidbit on something called “Quantum Afterlife.” Sounds right up my alley – quantum physics, afterlife – of course I need to blog about it!

Recently, quantum physicist Seth Lloyd of MIT was investigating the use of photons for illumination. He was trying to win DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) funding for his research. Well – it worked for him. But there was a caveat – quantum illumination would work, but only if quantum entanglements were destroyed.

Quantum entanglement – or “spooky action at a distance” is the proven principle in quantum physics where particles that become linked receive and react to information simultaneously, no matter where each particle exists in time and space. So, even if the two particles are separated by light years and a million years, they will both receive and react instantaneously to the same information. I’ll pause for a moment to let you reflect on the implications of this.

What Lloyd discovered is that when the entanglement was destroyed in the quantum pairs, the pairs still retained the same information and the same benefits as before the destruction of the entanglement. In other words, there is still some entanglement intact, even after its destruction. This is being referred to as quantum afterlife.

Lloyd’s findings are still too new to have really fleshed out all of the whys or hows. But, as always in quantum physics, what it shows us is that what we currently understand about the universe is miniscule, and that our measurements and perceptions aren’t necessarily the ultimate reality.

When we have a piece of evidence, the only thing we can do with it is examine it perceptually. In our case, our perceptions are based in the three dimensions that we are able to perceive – plus time. When we run anything through our brains, our thinking is limited by that limited perceptual ability.

That being said, our universe has far more than the dimensions that we perceive. There are at least nine folded dimensions (as borne out by mathematics) – probably even more than that. We can’t perceive those dimensions because they are beyond our way of physically interacting with the universe. Not only that, but particle entanglement shows us that what we perceive to be time and distance are likely merely perceptual. They don’t necessarily have anything to do with ultimate reality – at least on a quantum scale. And since quantum particles and vast empty spaces make up the very fabric of our universe, I’d say this is kind of a big deal.

So, as paranormal investigators – here we sit with our limited perceptual ability, gathering evidence and assessing it. Yet, we’re missing huge chunks of information. Until we find ways to measure beyond what we can perceive, and start to then incorporate those new measurements into our world view (and our investigations), then we probably won’t know what’s really going on out there.

It is why I believe anything is possible. New discoveries that are even stranger than paranormal events are being made every day. And for us, as humans, it is difficult to wrap our brains around anything that falls outside of our ability to perceive. While this certainly doesn’t prove that the paranormal is, indeed, a reality, what it becomes for me is a reality check. There is more to ultimate reality than I can ever know. And so, my mind will remain open and at the ready to learn amazing new things about our universe.