Of Mice And Sheep

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." _ Albert Einstein

It was a chilly morning that day. It was also Eid. I had been up the whole night in anticipation, not of Eid itself (as exciting as that is for a 7 year old) but because I was going to witness my first sheep slaughtering. My mom had insisted that I will not be allowed to watch, but I didn’t care. Being the stubborn me, I knew that when the time came I will figure out a way. Sure enough, at 5:30 am I was out there watching the two sheep being prepped. After a back and forth with my mom she must have realized what a waste of time and effort it would be to convince me to go inside (Hint: huge waste). Well, this was one of those times (there are many) where I admit that my mom was right. The sight of the sheep being slaughtered was one of the most horrific I have ever witnessed until this day. But it was something else that stuck in my mind: how the sheep had been unsettled the whole night and getting louder and louder leading up to the slaughter. Did they know what was awaiting them? At the age of seven the answer was very trivial to me, sure they did.

As I grew up I started to see the problems with this explanation. To mention one, the sheep would have had to be either: 1- highly intelligent and capable of observing our behavior on the day to conclude that our activities were leading up to their slaughter. Or, and I always thought this was the slightly less outlandish possibility, 2- they had the ability to glance into their grim and unfortunate future… somehow. Apart from that I had no real explanation to what I saw (or very likely what I thought I saw). As usual, life went on and I never attended a slaughter ever again. But the unsolved mystery still bothered me. After all, no one likes to be proven crazy by his own hands. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one.


In 1967, Robert Morris PhD, noticed a similar phenomenon with his lab rats. He observed that the rats which were destined to be killed that day were noticeably more aggressive in their behavior. He pondered the same things I did (or I pondered the same things he did for chronological considerations, no pun intended). In her Book, “The ESP Enigma”, Diane Hennacy Powell M.D., a former professor of medicine at Harvard University and a practicing psychiatrist, told the details of the paper which Robert Morris presented in 1967 at the winter meeting of the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (now known as the Rhine foundation). Having decided to investigate his suspicion that his rats may have been precognizant of their grim future, Dr. Morris designed a very elegant experiment. To test his hypothesis he used a chamber in which the floor was divided into squares (known as an open field in psychology experiments). He released one rat at a time into the chamber and observed how many squares it ventured into. After that, the rats were given to another experimenter who determined randomly whether the rat was to be killed or spared (probably through a mechanism such as coin flipping). Neither the data collector nor the executioner had prior knowledge as to which rats were to be killed. In other words, this was a double blind study. When the data, collected from 9 repetitions, were examined, Dr. Morris found that the rats that were killed were significantly less explorative than those that were spared (statistically significant here). The results were astonishing. The only explanation, given the tightly controlled experimental design, was that the rats had some way of knowing that they were soon to be sacrificed. The mechanism however remains unknown.

Since hearing of this experiment I have tried to obtain the original paper which Dr. Powell described. Unfortunately, I could not find an electronic copy of the paper, which is not surprising given it was published in 1967. Nonetheless, being a scientist, I cannot take someone else’s word for it without seeing the data myself. Though Dr. Morris’ (late professor at University of Edinburgh) and Dr. Powell’s reputation speaks for itself, I will continue my attempts to obtain a copy of that paper. Having said that, I have been able to get my hands on some recent, but slightly different, experiments by other researchers that show the same conclusions.

These results are not very surprising to me, for reasons that will become clear in subsequent blog-posts. However, the caveat here is that even if the results in these experiments were true, one has to remember that, as in any animal model, what is of mice is not necessarily that of men. When it comes to precognition and thought transfer through time in humans, more relevant and robust data is needed. Do we have such data? Stay tuned to find out.

On Dreams, Dogs, Ping Pong Balls and Time

Last night I had a dream about finding my Doberman that was stolen from me over 8 years ago (yes, stolen Doberman, talk about a pseudo-paradox). At the time I was devastated by the loss but managed to get over it eventually. Eight years later, I wake up with a feeling of distress as if I had lost Diesel yesterday. Have I really gotten over that loss then? This incident supported further my suspicion that we, humans, never really get over our significant losses. But is it just a case of strong memory and/or the reawakening of subconscious thoughts? Perhaps, but I think there is more to it than just that. To attack this subject properly, one has to understand the nature of time (yea, right. Like that’s possible).

So what is time? Einstein contended (and proved) that time is a 4^th dimension. What’s a dimension? you may ask. Well, it’s something you should really know by the time you can read this blog. Ok, back to the question of time. Since time is a dimension one might imagine that it might be possible to move back and forth on it. Well, Einstein seemed to have conflicting viewpoints on this issue. He proved that one can, indeed, travel into the future by moving at a speed close to the speed of light (twin dilemma anyone?). His theories, however, argue that to travel back in time one will have to move faster than the speed of light, which he proved is not possible. Likewise, he argued that transfer of information at a speed higher than c (c = speed of light) is also impossible. Well, there is a pretty good chance Mr. Einstein was wrong on that count, argues the quantum entanglement theory. Now, what the hell is that?! you may, again, ask.

Quantum entanglement theory sloppily explained:

Ok, imagine 2 electrons or ping pong balls for that matter. I put each in a closed box and tell you that they both are spinning but one has the opposite spin direction of the other. At this point each ping pong ball has a 50% chance of spinning clockwise and 50% chance of spinning counter clockwise. In quantum physics terms, each ball is spinning in both directions at the same time (remember schrodinger’s cat?). I then give you one box and send you to one end of the universe, leaving the other box behind. There, you get curious, and without anyone around to stop you, you open the box. Now what happens? You see a spinning ping pong ball, duh. But here is the not-so-trivial implication. By opening that box and observing the spin direction of your ping pong ball, now you have changed the spin direction of the other ping pong ball all the way across the universe instantaneously, from spinning in both directions to spinning in one direction (opposite of the ball you’re carrying). Basically you have transferred information instantaneously (but please don’t try this at home). I don’t know about you Mr. Einstein, but that’s a teeny tiny bit faster than your c. But who frikin cares and what does all this ping pong crap have to do with a stolen dog?!

Well, it may be impossible for one to physically travel through time (and stay in one piece that is). However, what if it were possible for information and thoughts to be transferred through time? What if, all memories are not equal? In other words, if our present self is receiving information and thoughts from a different point in time, namely the past, would this information count as a memory? Not in my books (99.99% valid personal opinion). The implications here are massive but the assumption is outrageous. In the series of blogs to follow I will show you evidence that it may not actually be that crazy. Yes, seeing into the future is possible and yes, seeing into the past is too. Any doubts? You better have many. It will, however, be my pleasure to shred them to pieces as we go along. Until then, stay safe and don’t operate any time machines.