Volume 19: Pages 169-173, 2006

Mental Control of a Single Electron?

Ronald A. Bryan

Department of Physics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843‐4242 U.S.A.

Over the years there have been numerous accounts of certain individuals' purported ability to affect material bodies by mental intent alone. I propose to look for such an effect, but with an experiment requiring far less energy than needed in previous accounts, i.e., some 23 orders of magnitude less. The experiment is to mentally flip the spin of the valence electron of a single Mg⁺ ion undergoing laser‐induced fluorescence (LIF) at 280 nm in a 50‐G (gauss) magnetic field. Flipping the spin would turn off the LIF. If the person could flip the electron's spin again, restoring LIF, then spin flips creating long and short intervals of LIF could send a message in International Morse Code. If the person could also control the ion's LIF at a distance, as suggested by frequent reports of distant healing, etc., then it would appear that his or her intent is not mediated by the electromagnetic, weak, strong, or gravitational field. Instead a new kind of field might be responsible. It might propagate as a soliton, since solitons do not weaken with distance.

Keywords: laser‐induced fluorescence, entanglement, soliton, mental intent

Received: October 27, 2003; Published online: December 15, 2008