Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (32 page)

Finally, it should also be mentioned that in classical physics Einstein described time as relative, after proving that time is not an absolute constant in the universe. When his lifelong friend Michele Besso died, Albert Einstein wrote to his family, “He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

So even in classical physics remote influences like gravitation and the relativity of time were accepted ideas.

What Is a Wave?

Before I describe the many challenging and often incomprehensible aspects of quantum theory, let us try to familiarize ourselves with a few more important concepts from classical physics. What is a wave? A wave is a standing or traveling disturbance moving through air (as in sound waves) or water or space. Light is also a wave phenomenon, that is, an electromagnetic wave with a magnetic and an electrical component. What is true for light, namely that it possesses both a particle and a wave aspect, also pertains at subatomic level to matter (see figure).

Later in this chapter I will describe in more detail that according to the laws of quantum physics, we cannot determine the exact location of a quantum particle; we can only establish the particle’s probable location. The equation expressing this probability is known as the particle’s wave function.

Matter as a complex field of standing waves. Extreme enlargement (x 700,000) of platinum (Photo:Pennsylvania State University). The white dots are individual atoms. At atomic level, matter behaves like a field with standing waves.
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Matter as a complex fi eld of standing waves. Photograph by Dr. Erwin W. Mueller.

The Definition of a Field

What is a field? A field is a complicated concept: although a field cannot be perceived, it does have a visible effect. The magnetic field is a case in point; it has a penetrating, space-filling capacity and can exert an invisible, remote influence on metal objects such as a compass. The electromagnetic field is a physical field produced by electrically charged objects. A field requires no medium to exert its remote influence; it occupies the vacuum of empty space. A field is itself a form of space.
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In classical physics (local causation), a field denotes coherence in a system, ensuring a correlation or rhythmic cohesion between all parts or components of that system. If something happens in one part of the field, it automatically happens in the system as a whole. A disturbance in a field always travels at a maximum speed, the speed of light. A gravitational field can be considered an immaterial and invisible domain that can instantaneously influence our visible, physical world.

Electromagnetic Fields

An electromagnetic field is a physical phenomenon that causes only charged particles to move. The electromagnetic field extends indefinitely throughout space and describes the electromagnetic interaction. It is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Electromagnetic fields are an integral part of the organization of all material systems, from atoms to galaxies. As well as the basis of the function of our heart, brain, and body, they are at the core of all the electrical equipment that contemporary society depends on. All the information we receive on a day-to-basis is encoded in waves or wave functions of the electromagnetic field. It is encoded in these waves as differences in frequency or wavelength. An electromagnetic field has a near-infinite capacity for storing information in frequencies, or phase speeds, without causing any disturbance or interference. Imagine the vast quantity of information that reaches us on the fiber-optic cable network that nearly all homes are hooked up to these days as well as the information transmitted between continents by way of cables on the ocean bed. Or imagine the global reach of the Internet with more than a billion Web sites or the information that is available worldwide via GPS satellites for use in such diverse applications as car navigation systems and cell phones.

Fields, Frequencies, and Information

Wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency. Hertz (Hz) is the unit of frequency, and 1 Hz equals 1 cycle per second. The electromagnetic spectrum is very broad: the ultraviolet (UV) light of a tanning bed or x-rays have a wavelength of less than 100 nanometers at a frequency of over 3x10
¹⁵
Hz. Visible light has a wavelength ranging from 300 to 800 nanometers while a radar or satellite TV uses a wavelength of 1 mm to 3 cm, a microwave oven a wavelength of 10 cm, mobile telephone a wavelength of 30 cm (at a frequency of 1 GHz), TV a wavelength of 1 m (300 MHz), medium-wave radio a wavelength of 300 m (1 MHz), and submarine communication a wavelength of more than 3,000 km (less than 100 Hz). The greater the wavelength, the lower the frequency and the better the reach or reception. The alternating current of our domestic electricity is 50 Hz. The sound waves that we can hear (at a young age) have a frequency ranging from 20 to 24,000 Hz. All sensory perception is based on information obtained from waves: we can see colors thanks to the information from light waves, and we can hear different sounds and tones thanks to sound waves with different frequencies. We feel warmth on our skin thanks to thermal waves: the infrared light of the sun, which has a frequency of approximately 10
¹³
Hz.

The information that astronomers draw on for their theories about the origins of the universe is largely based on images obtained by the Hubble space telescope. With the help of this telescope astronomers have recorded images of galaxies at a distance of 5 billion light-years, and they have seen exploding stars 42 million light-years away. Because information about these extremely remote events has been retained in light waves, we now have crystal clear images of them. Information encoded in light waves is retained, unchanged, for at least 5 billion light-years. The capacity for storing information in wave functions seems potentially infinite and eternal.

Our worldwide communication is based on the encoding and decoding of information stored in particular frequencies (wavelengths) of the electromagnetic field, which is not immediately visible to our senses. In order to receive and retransmit this information, we use radio, TV, mobile phone, and wireless Internet technology. Our entire worldview is constructed on the basis of all the information we receive into our consciousness by way of the senses. Our consciousness uses this information to form our conception of the world and of ourselves. In order to receive this vast quantity of information into our consciousness, we need a receiver to pick up, or decode, the factual information encoded in waves: cell phone, radio, TV, and wireless computer.

Quantum Theory and the Particle–Wave Complementarity

As said before, quantum physics emerged at the start of the twentieth century because certain natural phenomena could no longer be accounted for with classical physics. Scientists had known for some time that when metal is heated, the actual increased intensity of the light, especially in the ultraviolet spectrum, does not correspond with the predicted increase. In 1900 Nobel Prize–winning physicist Max Planck came up with the mathematical description of a discontinuous interaction between light and matter that he called quanta. This discontinuity is reminiscent of a ball that bounces down a staircase and lingers briefly on each step but can never be observed between two steps. This discontinuity was called a quantum leap. A few years later Albert Einstein developed the hypothesis that light also moves in packets (light quanta), and in 1905 he gave this energy packet the name
photon.
In 1926 an experiment confirmed his photon hypothesis.

For centuries the properties of light have been one of the biggest problems in physics. According to the seventeenth-century Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Christiaan Huygens, light behaved like a wave, whereas Newton believed it consisted of particles. In the famous double-slit experiment, first conducted in 1801 by the English physician and physicist Thomas Young, light is passed through either a double narrow slit or, after one of the slits has been closed off, through a single narrow slit. When the light passes through both slits, it behaves like a wave, with interference creating dark and light bands (see figure). Interference is the phenomenon we see when we throw two pebbles into a pond and the ripples intersect. Interference patterns create some bigger waves while making other waves disappear; these waves are the equivalent of the light and dark bands in the double-slit experiment. When Young published his double-slit experiment in 1802 and concluded that light behaves like a wave, he was showered with scorn and hostility because his results ran counter to Newton’s particle theory of light. Young’s publication, critics at the time argued,

But things proved to be even more complex. If a very faint light travels through both slits, with only a single photon passing the slits at a time, there is a possibility that the light will also behave like a particle; in this case the light will be distributed evenly across the entire projection plane (a photographic plate), and the interference pattern of light and dark bands will disappear. However, this happens only when scientists want to know the exact position of the photon and record which slit the photon passed through. Only if an instrument positioned in front of or behind the slits measures if and where a photon has passed do we know the photon’s exact route and if the light continues to behave like a particle. The same applies when a measurement is carried out behind the slits and the measuring instrument is not switched on until the photon has passed the slits but has not yet reached the photographic plate. Because of the measurement, the photon still behaves like a particle. If we do not take any measurements during the experiment, the light continues to behave like a wave.

The double-slit experiment, with interference creating bright and dark bands.

Double-slit experiment, with interference creating bright and dark bands. Illustration by Maura Zimmer.

Nobel Prize–winning physicist Niels Bohr called this phenomenon
complementarity.
The light behaves either like a particle or like a wave, depending on the setup, but not like both at the same time. Particles and waves are complementary aspects of light; they are incompatible and never visible at the same time. The problem for physicists was that, depending on the experiment design, light could behave like either a wave or a particle. With the double-slit experiment, an astounding thing was discovered: the behavior of light depends on the researcher’s decision to install extra measuring instruments or to open one or two slits. The researcher’s deliberate choices regarding the experiment design determine whether the light will behave like a wave or like a particle. This brought about a profound transformation of the core structure of the basic general physical theory: the connection between physical behavior and human knowledge was changed from one-way traffic to a mathematically specified two-way interaction that involves selections performed by conscious minds. As Bohr put it, “In the great drama of existence we ourselves are both actors and spectators.”
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