For many years, parapsychologists have faced two main tasks: firstly, to prove that psychophysical phenomena exist, and, secondly, if so, then to explain how they work.
It is quite logical that most of the researchers of the "psi" -phenomenon devoted themselves to studying the first problem. However, the lack of a coherent theory of extrasensory perception has cast a shadow over the entire field of research. Critics point out that these phenomena are so scientifically unlikely that any other explanation for the positive results of the experiments, including fraud, should be considered first.
Indeed, telepathy, clairvoyance and foresight seem to contradict the elementary laws of physics that govern our lives. How can information be transmitted from one person to another, or from a phenomenon to a person, if it does not come through known sensory channels?
Traditional physics postulates that signals of any kind cannot travel faster than the speed of light, and that as they travel through space, they lose their strength. What rational explanation can parapsychologists give to foresight when information about an event comes to a person before this event occurs? How can they explain how a telepathic message reaches its goal without being affected by distance?
Some researchers answer these questions by citing theories, or at least interpretations of theories, and suggesting that "psi" effects may be incompatible with the modern scientific paradigm.
Such researchers believe that some physical descriptions of the Universe can only serve as models, or metaphors, shedding light on the mechanism of "psi" phenomena. Such models include electromagnetism, multidimensional geometry, and quantum mechanics. Below we provide a description of these models.
I. INVISIBLE WAVES
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With the discovery in the nineteenth century of electromagnetism, which described the undulating movement of certain signals from source to receiver, one of the earliest models of extrasensory perception emerged. Physicists have discovered that light, infrared thermal energy, and other phenomena make up the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation (left), with extremely short, high-frequency waves, such as X-rays, on one side, and extremely long, low-frequency waves, such as X-rays, on the other side. like radio waves from distant galaxies.
Except for light and heat, humans cannot sense electromagnetic radiation. Perhaps, the researchers suggest, "psi" information also moves in an invisible way, like radio waves, and can only be perceived by those people who can tune their "psi" receptors. It was assumed that the "psi" waves should be in the low-frequency part of the spectrum.
However, "psi" waves have never been discovered, and this model still has not been able to explain the speeds exceeding the speed of light and the inexhaustible energy that have been suggested in the foresight and telepathy reports. Currently, most parapsychologists consider the hypothesis of the electromagnetic nature of ESP to be only a simplified model of this phenomenon.
II. THE MULTIDIMENSIONALITY OF "PSI" -REALITY
Another, more recent, model of supposed "psi" effects places them in a dimension that is outside, but interacts with the four dimensions of space and time that we perceive. This model can be illustrated as follows.
If a line with only one dimension - height - moves through space, then this shape, unfolded in time, is a plane, that is, a figure with two dimensions - height and width. Moving in space and time and gaining depth, the plane will transform as it moves into a three-dimensional cube.
These three dimensions are the only ones that we can see, but we do not see the time dimension as clearly. The length of the cube in time adds a fourth dimension to its shape, creating a new shape called a hypercube, hidden from the human eye, but accessible to mathematical vision.
Some mathematicians have suggested that the universe can “take up to twenty-six dimensions. Psychophysical theorists believe that human consciousness itself belongs to one of these additional dimensions that cross our four-dimensional world.
If this is so, then to the four "hard" coordinates of space and time, a fifth, "soft" "psi" coordinate is added. If our consciousness somehow penetrates into this additional dimension, then we will be able to explain how information is transferred without obeying traditional laws.
However, in the absence of physical evidence to support the existence of additional dimensions, the idea of the existence of a plane of consciousness remains nothing more than an exciting speculation.
III. QUANTUM RELATIONSHIP
One of the most popular models of supersensory communication is based on a paradoxical view of the world through the eyes of quantum mechanics. This science describes the behavior of matter at the subatomic level, where elementary units are not particles or waves, but have the properties of both, and where it is impossible to say with certainty that matter exists. Rather, it has a "tendency toward existence" expressed only as a mathematical probability.
The microcosm of subatoms lives according to different laws than the macrocosm that we know. A well-known example of this is the paradox illustrated below. In this thought experiment, two particles, say an electron and its antiparticle equivalent, a positron, collide, annihilating each other and creating two photons that are carried away in different directions.
According to the strange laws of quantum mechanics, photon A does not have properties such as rotation or speed until they are noticed by an observer; the measurement process itself, as it were, “destroys its wave function” and gives it a random value.
At the moment when the observer still measures photon A, giving it some rotation, photon B gets reverse rotation, no matter how far from each other they are and despite the fact that it is not associated with the first particle. Photon B in some way instantly "learns" what photon A is doing.
This phenomenon, confirmed by physical experiments, suggests that the elements of the Universe are interconnected in some hidden way, perhaps at some hypothetical sub-quantum level that includes our consciousness.
If so, then clairvoyance, which supposedly allows the sensitive (psychic) to instantly learn about the plane crash, being at a great distance from it, is quite possible.