Sequel to How the Hippies Saved Physics

On Jun 19, 2018, at 7:48 PM, Jack Sarfatti <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> wrote:

I now give a brief introduction to the Frohlich coherence effect. I learned about it directly from Herbert Frohlich at UCSD in La Jolla California 1967 - 68 when he visited Bernd Matthias’s superconductivity laboratory.

Classical kinetic theory of gases explains temperature as the random motion of particles. Consider a gas of electrons in a lattice exposed to a resonant electromagnetic pump field. The pump synchronizes the center of mass motions of the electrons suppressing their random motion in the un-pumped thermodynamic equilibrium into a less random more ordered non-equilibrium state. This lowers their effective temperature shielded from the ambient temperature of the environment as the resonant pump power increases to a critical threshold when the BCS phonon binding into Cooper pairs kicks in - as a result we get a macro-quantum coherent room temperature superconductor analogous to a macro-quantum coherent laser beam also in a forced non-equilibirum state.  This idea is very general also applies to the negative spin temperature of electric dipoles and magnetic moments and even to anyons in 2D quantum Hall effect devices for topological quantum computing. It also works in all living matter.

Quantum Coherent-like State Observed in a Biological Protein for the First Time

From the Journal:  Structural Dynamics

By Catherine Meyers

“So-called Fröhlich condensation, a state in which protein molecules' vibrational modes coalesce at the lowest frequency, was first predicted almost five decades ago, but never experimentally demonstrated until now

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 13, 2015 – If you take certain atoms and make them almost as cold as they possibly can be, the atoms will fuse into a collective low-energy quantum state called a Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1968 physicist Herbert Fröhlich predicted that a similar process at a much higher temperature could concentrate all of the vibrational energy in a biological protein into its lowest-frequency vibrational mode. Now scientists in Sweden and Germany have the first experimental evidence of such so-called Fröhlich condensation.

The researchers made the condensate by aiming terahertz radiation at a crystallized protein extracted from the white of a chicken egg. They report their results in the journal Structural Dynamics, from AIP Publishing and the American Crystallographic Association.

"Observing Fröhlich condensation opens the door to a much wider-ranging study of what terahertz radiation does to proteins," said Gergely Katona, a senior scientist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Terahertz radiation occupies the space in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared light. It has been proposed as a useful tool in applications ranging from airport security to cancer screening, but its effects on biological systems remains murky.

Katona said he is interested in studying how terahertz-induced Fröhlich condensation could change the rates of reactions catalyzed by biological enzymes or shift chemical equilibria. Such knowledge could lead to medical applications or new ways to control chemical reactions in industry, but Katona cautioned that the research is still at a fundamental stage.

As far as the safety implications for terahertz radiation, Katona said that the jury is still out. The effects he and his team observed are reversible and last only for a short time, he added.”

Herbert Fröhlich and F. Kremer Coherent Excitations in Biological Systems (Springer-Verlag, 1983)

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

 

How the Hippies Saved Physics

Excerpts

In my opinion, the quantum principle involves mind in an essential way […such that] the structure of matter may not be independent of consciousness!…Some component of the quantum probability involves the turbulent creative sublayer of ideas in the mind of the “participator.” —Jack Sarfatti, 1974

 

Kaiser, David. How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (p. 65). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint material: to Zane Kesey and the estate of Dr. Timothy Leary for permission to reprint the epigraph on p. vii, which originally appeared in Timothy Leary, “Preface,” Spit in the Ocean 3 (Fall, 1977): 8–11; to Jack Sarfatti and Taylor & Francis, Ltd., for permission to reprint the epigraph to chapter 4, which originally appeared in Jack Sarfatti, “Implications of meta-physics for psychoenergetic systems,” Psychoenergetic Systems 1 (1974): 3–8; and to the Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC, for permission to reprint quotations from the Richard P. Feynman papers. Copyright © 2011 by David Kaiser

 

“Harvard psychology professor turned poster boy for New Age antics and all things psychedelic. At the time Leary was still in a California jail on drug charges, though he had hardly stopped working. Together with novelist and counterculture icon Ken Kesey (of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and “Merry Pranksters” fame, and the inventor of the “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests”), Leary was busy editing a special issue of the quirky Bay Area magazine Spit in the Ocean, and he was eager to publish some of the far-out essays that the hippie physicists had submitted.12 Soon after that, one of the core members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group, Jack Sarfatti, showed up on the cover of North Beach Magazine, another San Francisco niche publication, in full guru mode: framed by a poster of Einstein and holding a copy of physicist George Gamow’s autobiography, My World Line. When novelist and Beat generation hipster Herb Gold composed his memoirs of life among the likes of Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, the first off-scale personality to appear in the narrative was Sarfatti, holding forth on quantum physics in the Caffe Trieste, North Beach, San Francisco.13 (Fig. I.1.) The media coverage was by no means limited to these “tuned-in” venues. Time magazine ran a cover story about “The Psychics” with ample space devoted to Fundamental Fysiks Group participants. Newsweek covered the group a few years later. California Living Magazine ran a long story about the “New new physics,” complete with head shots of several group members. In May 1977, the group’s Jack Sarfatti shared the podium with eccentric architect Buckminster Fuller and “five-stages-of-grief” psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross as a keynote speaker at a “humanistic psychology” conference. Not long after that, the San Francisco Chronicle devoted a half-page article to Sarfatti, depicted as the latest in a long line of “eccentric geniuses” to set up shop in the city’s bohemian North Beach area. Even newspapers as far away as the New Hampshire Sunday News covered the group’s intellectual peregrinations. Virtually overnight, members of the informal discussion group had become counterculture darlings.14

...

In the spring of 1974, a most unusual meeting took place. Two physicists—Fred Alan Wolf and Jack Sarfatti, who would soon become charter members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group—sat down with Werner Erhard in the lobby of the Ritz Hotel in Paris. Erhard, one of the leading exponents of the “human potential movement,” was at the top of his game. His est workshops (“Erhard Seminars Training”), forerunner of today’s self-help and personal-growth industry, had already grossed several million dollars and boosted Erhard to worldwide celebrity.1 He had asked Wolf and Sarfatti to meet with him because he was fascinated by the way physicists attacked complicated complicated and counterintuitive problems with rigor.2 The meeting did not get off to an auspicious start. Sarfatti felt restless, uninterested in the meeting; he had never heard of Erhard. Erhard’s gaudy outfit, accessorized by a beautiful female admirer hanging on his sleeve, put Sarfatti off even more. Sarfatti asked what Erhard did. Erhard grinned and replied, “I make people happy.” It was more than Sarfatti could take. Itching to leave, he said in a strong Brooklyn accent, “I think you’re an asshole.” As Sarfatti remembers it, Erhard rose from his chair—smile stretching from ear to ear—embraced Sarfatti right there in the hotel lobby, and said, “I am going to give you money.” Without knowing it, Sarfatti had used one of the catchphrases associated with Erhard’s sprawling self-help venture. Soon the money began to flow: thousands of dollars, all from this eager new patron of quantum physics.

...

Sarfatti was hired right out of graduate school to teach at San Diego State, and given the office next to Wolf’s. (Fig. 3.6.) Within a few years, the two were sharing quarters at home, too: much like the television sitcom The Odd Couple, they eachgot divorced around the same time and moved in together to share the rent. Fun times ensued. At one point, Wolf and Sarfatti borrowed a home-movie camera to shoot a short film together, along with students from one of Wolf’s classes. A frolicking piece, Wolf and Sarfatti joked that it had been filmed by a blind Argentinian director. Shot on the beach in San Diego in 1971, the film explores themes of forbidden knowledge and the intersections of science and religion. Wolf wanders the beach in rabbinical garb; Sarfatti, clad only in a loincloth, struts around as Jesus Christ.44 (Think Federico Fellini meets Mel Brooks.)

...

He announced his new plans in a letter to renowned Princeton physicist John Wheeler in the spring of 1973. (Sarfatti had met Wheeler a few years earlier at one of the NATO summer schools.) Sarfatti declared that he would leave his “uninspiring institution” and seek out “the best possible environment to create a great and historic piece of physics. I feel impelled by history—a certain sense of destiny,” he explained. (“I recognize that I may be suffering under some sort of ‘crackpot’ delusion, but I cannot accept that as likely. In any case, I must try,” he averred.) He longed to find one of the “few places left where physics has not been ‘polluted’ by the emphasis on applications, etc.”; some place where bold ideas on fundamental questions could still find a home.45

...

As if responding to this cri de coeur, the physics gods smiled on Sarfatti. Right around the time that Wolf’s invitation to Birkbeck College in London arrived, Sarfatti received a telegram from Abdus Salam. Salam was director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, and would soon win the Nobel Prize for his contributions to theoretical particle physics. Sarfatti had met Salam at Harwell in the mid-1960s, and Salam had been following some of Sarfatti’s publications since then. In his telegram, Salam invited Sarfatti to spend the autumn of 1973 at the Centre in Trieste. And so, as Sarfatti put it, “like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the movies, ‘On the Road to…,’ both Fred and I were unexpectedly on our way to Europe.” They visited each other frequently, Sarfatti often dropping by London or Paris staying with Wolf.

...

Quickly the paths converged. Saul-Paul Sirag read a paper by Sarfatti, written while Sarfatti was still in Europe, and told Elizabeth Rauscher about it. Rauscher struck up a correspondence with Sarfatti while he was in Trieste, and Sarfatti dropped by Arthur Young’s Institute for the Study of Consciousness as soon as he returned to California. Meanwhile, Sarfatti had already met Fritjof Capra in Europe; they overlapped in London and Trieste. By spring 1975, with Wolf and Sarfatti back from Europe and Capra installed in Berkeley, all the pieces were in place. As Rauscher put it recently, she had “the idea that it would be easier to learn about all this material”—nonlocality and its broader implications—“if we got together for informal discussions and lectures.”47

...

Sarfatti had a different idea. To him, the Geller tests forced physicists to return to the foundations of quantum mechanics. “The ambiguity in the interpretation of quantum mechanics,” Sarfatti argued, “leaves ample room for the possibility of psychokinetic and telepathic effects.” Most important, he elaborated, was the “intrinsically nonlocal” character of quantum theory. Drawing on a preprint of Bohm’s own latest grapplings with Bell’s theorem and nonlocality, as well as intriguing ideas from such giants of the discipline as Eugene Wigner and John Wheeler, Sarfatti argued that consciousness need not be separate from brute matter. Sarfatti maintained that quantum mechanics, properly understood, could provide the mechanism to account for psi effects like those exhibited by Uri Geller.

...

Wheeler sent Sarfatti a preprint of his 1974 Oxford talk, for example, complete with its “participator” stick figure and self-actualizing universe cartoons, and it made a deep impression on Sarfatti. He began to cite it and build on its ideas even before Wheeler’s essay had appeared in print.29 Sarfatti aimed to stitch these diverse ideas together. If every quantum object were interconnected with every other via quantum entanglement (as per Bell’s theorem), and if consciousness played a central role in quantum mechanics (as Wigner and Wheeler had reasoned), then modern physics might provide a natural explanation for psi phenomena. From Wigner and Wheeler, Sarfatti took the point that everyone’s consciousness participates in shaping quantum processes, both by deciding which observations to make and by collapsing the multiplying possibilities into definite outcomes. Sarfatti recast Wigner’s main argument in terms of action and reaction. Surely matter can affect consciousness—LSD and other psychedelic drugs had made that lesson clear enough—so why not posit an equal and opposite reaction of consciousness on matter? To Sarfatti, such a move paid double dividends: it opened up a possible avenue for understanding psychokinesis, and it offered hope that Age of Aquarius students might come back to physics classrooms, finding new relevance in the subject.30 Most mental contributions to the behavior of quantum particles, Sarfatti continued, would be “uncoordinated and incoherent”—that is, they would each push in different directions and, on average, wash out. But, as Uri Geller seemed to demonstrate, certain talented individuals might possess “volitional control” such that they could impose some order on the usually random quantum motions. Some “participators” seemed to be more effective than others. Moreover, thanks to Bell’s theorem, these individuals could exercise their control at some distance from the particles in question. In short: perhaps Geller could detect signals from far away or affect metal from across a room because the quanta in his head and the quanta far away were deeply, ineluctably entangled via quantum nonlocality. Bizarre? No doubt. But was it really any more outlandish than Wheeler’s giddy flights?31

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Building on Erhard’s generous support, the PCRG expanded its circle of donors. George Koopman, yet another eccentric entrepreneur, became one of the group’s most significant backers. He had served as a military intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War. Some have alleged that when Koopman met members of the PCRG in the mid-1970s he was still working as an undercover agent for the Defense Intelligence Agency, covering covering what was known colloquially as the “nut desk”—that is, checking up on reports of UFOs and other occult or paranormal phenomena.27 In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, neither the CIA nor the FBI would confirm or deny that Koopman had ever been on their payrolls; the National Security Agency did confirm that Koopman never worked for them. The Defense Intelligence Agency reported finding no records associating Koopman with the PCRG, but remained mum on whether Koopman had ever worked for the agency.28 What is known for certain is that Koopman worked for a time making military training films as a contractor for the government. In fact, during the time he was sponsoring PCRG events, the FBI received a complaint against Koopman’s filmmaking company, alleging that Koopman’s Koopman’s firm had committed fraud against the U.S. government by acting on inside information from a local Air Force office. The tip, at least according to the complaint, had enabled Koopman’s firm to lower its bid and hence squeeze out competition for a particular film project. After vetting the information provided by the FBI, the local assistant U.S. attorney declined to pursue the matter.29 Koopman’s passion for filmmaking extended well beyond the occasional military training film. He coordinated stunts for the sleeper hit comedy The Blues Brothers (1980), starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, including several car chases and the famous scene in which a police car fell onto the roof of a tall building, having been suspended by an (off-camera) helicopter.30 Koopman liked to make things blast off as well as fall down.

...

Zukav’s book received a major launch in 1979 and that brought out the critics. Several reviewers were quick to attack what they considered the book’s scientific infelicities, heaping scorn upon Zukav’s main informants. One physicist, reviewing the book in Physics Today, complained that Zukav had been too heavily influenced by “the ‘Physics/Consciousness’ movement of northern California, and its leading spokesman, Jack Sarfatti.” A New York Times reviewer likewise fumed that there was something “truly insidious about this tract-posing-as-primer,” parroting, as it did, “the dubious notions of certain renegade physicists.”60 Zukav snapped into crisis mode, rewriting several sections of the book before its second printing. The result: most of the references to Sarfatti hit the cutting-room floor, and Zukav dialed back the discussions of quantum-enabled telepathy and clairvoyance. All reference to the Physics/Consciousness Research Group disappeared; Zukav wrote simply that “a friend” (otherwise unnamed) had brought him to the Esalen workshop. The heavily edited closing chapter hewed more closely to Henry Stapp’s interpretation of Bell’s theorem (which made little room for ESP or clairvoyance), moving Sarfatti’s unorthodox ideas—followed by Stapp’s critique—to a footnote.61 Naturally Sarfatti felt betrayed, and not only for what he considered an Orwellian rewriting of history. Sarfatti accused Zukav of reneging on their earlier deal: Sarfatti said the deal had been for him to receive 10 percent of the royalties in exchange for his extensive coaching. Instead, Sarfatti claimed that Zukav used the money to pay for the last-minute revisions, including the expense of producing new plates for the second printing.62 Although Zukav’s friendship with Sarfatti came to an abrupt end, the quick fix worked: The Dancing Wu Li Masters became a break-out success. Within its first four years the book went through nine printings; a paperback edition quickly sold another quarter million copies. The amended version received critical acclaim as well, sharing an American Book Award in 1980 with that other enduring favorite, Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach. The prominent publishing house HarperCollins brought out a paperback edition of Zukav’s book in 2001 as part of its Perennial Classics series.63

...

Then there is Brian Josephson. While a graduate student at the University of Cambridge in the early 1960s, Josephson published a short paper on electrical currents that might tunnel between a thin slice of ordinary metal sandwiched between two superconductors. Experimentalists observed the predicted effect within months, and the “Josephson junction” earned Josephson a Nobel Prize in 1973, at the tender age of thirty-three.20 Today such supersensitive junctions are hardwired into everything from quantum computer prototypes to instruments that measure neural activity inside the human brain. By the time Josephson accepted his prize in Stockholm, however, his research interests had turned squarely to Eastern mysticism, the nature of consciousness, and parapsychology. He traveled to San Francisco late in 1976 to check out Puthoff and Targ’s psi lab and to deliver a talk for the Fundamental Fysiks Group. Sarfatti’s Physics/Consciousness Research Group under-wrote the expenses for Josephson’s two-week trip. A reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle covered Josephson’s visit, describing how the young Nobelist “padded around” Sarfatti’s Sarfatti’s Nob Hill apartment “in maroon sox,” while the two compared notes on their evolving theories of quantum entanglement and psi. Josephson continued to speak at conferences on parapsychology alongside Puthoff and Targ, Rauscher, and others, even providing the keynote address for the fabled 1977 conference in Reykjavík, at which Ira Einhorn had mysteriously failed to show.21 (Fig. 8.1.) When the New York Review of Books ran a feature article in 1979 that was critical of efforts to use quantum theory to explain psi phenomena, Josephson teamed up with Costa de Beauregard, Mattuck, and Walker to write a feisty reply.22 Josephson’s passion for the topic has not wavered to this day. He directs a “mind-matter unification” project at Cambridge and vigorously defends parapsychology from naysayers.23

...

Sarfatti enthused that “I shall be the new Henri Bergson of San Francisco. I shall hold an ongoing seminar in Adventures of Ideas discussing Borges, Buddhist logic, QM [quantum-mechanical] logic, Whitehead, James, Einstein, Bohr, Goethe, Physics as Conceptual Art, etc.” Sarfatti promised “a grand vision to set before the eyes and ears of the San Francisco artistic-literati. I shall sing it and deliver it in poetic cadence. New forms of inquiry, new modalities of thought and expression for the new physics!” In his excitement, he signed his letter, “Professor of Quantum Cabalistic Art.”60 Sarfatti was scheduled to deliver an inaugural lecture entitled “Plato’s anticipation of quantum logic” at the Art Institute a few months later. He printed up copies ahead of time and mailed them out to his long list of recipients. John Wheeler thanked Sarfatti for his copy, and recommended further reading: one of Wheeler’s favorite studies of the poet Samuel Coleridge.61 But it was not to be. Around the time that the visiting lectureship was to begin, Sarfatti began corresponding with MIT’s Viki Weisskopf, the senior physicist who had recently coached Fritjof Capra along the road to The Tao of Physics. Sarfatti had invited Weisskopf to join an advisory board for the Physics/Consciousness Research Group. Weisskopf declined, as usual in his gentlemanly Austrian manner. “Naturally I am interested in what you are doing and find some of your things reasonable and useful,” Weisskopf assured Sarfatti. But two major sticking points remained. “One is your connection to Werner Erhard,” about whom Weisskopf held a rather low opinion. “The other is your constant connection to such silly things as ESP, coincidences of events, etc., with quantum mechanics. As you know, it is my strong opinion that they have nothing to do with each other.”62

...

 Weisskopf, who had fled fascism in Europe as a young physicist, had done some reading about Erhard. By that time Erhard and est had begun to receive some negative publicity for purportedly authoritarian tactics.63 Weisskopf had also spoken with graduates of the est training, although he had not received “any feedback, positive or negative, from the physicists” who had attended the recent Coleman-Jackiw conference, including his own department-mate Roman Jackiw.64 Weisskopf tried to end his letter on a more upbeat note. “I hope you don’t interpret this letter as a declaration of war between you and me,” Weisskopf closed to Sarfatti. “On the contrary, as I say I am always interested in what people like you are doing and I like to discuss the issues they are interested interested in with them.” But he made clear that he would not participate in any official capacity with the Physics/Consciousness Research Group.65 Similar advice came in from Martin Gardner, the Scientific American columnist and leading organizer, together with physicist John Wheeler and magician James Randi, of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). “Jack, my friend, take my advice and get out of the psi field,” Gardner counseled. “It’s sicker than you suspect. Nobody is in the least interested in trying to ‘explain’ psi by Q[uantum] mechanics, or electromagnetism, or the weak force, or quarks, or tachyons, or anything else. All the funders care about is practical results—i.e., miracles.” Gardner hoped Sarfatti could make a clean break. “You’re too honest, and know too much science to be wasting your talents trying to get funding for theoretical work on the nature of consciousness” from patrons in the human potential scene. “Do something honest,” Gardner suggested, “like, maybe, rob a bank” or “make a porno movie.”66 Spurred by these correspondents, and deeply insulted at not having been consulted about the Coleman-Jackiw conference, Sarfatti broke with Erhard—one of his principal sources of funds—with gusto. “Until recently I never took a close interest into what Werner and est were really about,” Sarfatti declared in an open letter that summer. “After all the chap was giving me and my colleagues considerable money, so why be so impolite as to inquire too deeply? After all physicists are notorious prostitutes anyway.” ... Sarfatti announced that “If such distinguished men as Gardner and Weisskopf take their time to keep me honest, the least I can do is to keep Werner Erhard and est honest.”67

...

Seen from the right vantage point, superluminal signals would travel backward in time: a message would be received before it was sent. No wonder the idea makes the hairs on the backs of physicists’ necks stand on end. As one acclaimed textbook author put it recently, physicists are particularly “squeamish about superluminal influences.”2 Such chicanery dredges up all kinds of causal loopholes. You could send a retroactive telegram instructing your grandmother not to marry your grandfather. Or, on a brighter note, you could warn your forebears to divest their stock-market holdings a day before the great crashes of 1929, 2001, or 2008—the ultimate in insider trading. The possibilities would be truly Orwellian: sending messages faster than light could allow us to rewrite history to suit our present-day whims, or, as one wit put it, to “change yesterday today for a better tomorrow.” Perhaps, some argued, such signaling was already occurring. After all, what were mental telepathy and precognitive clairvoyance but messages received outside the usual channels?3 While his paper on Bell’s theorem was in press, Herbert and other members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group continued to brainstorm about the “intrinsically almost obscenely non-local” behavior of entangled particles.4 In September 1975, Jack Sarfatti gave a presentation to the group on “Bell’s theorem and the necessity of superluminal quantum information transfer.” A month later, Herbert followed up with his own presentation on “Bell’s theorem and superluminal signals.”5 That December, Berkeley physicist and Fundamental Fysiks Group member Henry Stapp also weighed in. As he put it, “the central mystery of quantum theory is ‘how does information get around so quick?’” To Stapp, Bell’s theorem and the landmark experiment by group member John Clauser led to the “conclusion that superluminal transfer of information is necessary.”6 And so the agenda was set. The question of superluminal information transfer, and whether it could be controlled to send signals faster than light, would occupy Herbert, Sarfatti, and the others for the better part of a decade. Their efforts instigated major work on Bell’s theorem and the foundations of quantum theory. Most important became known as the “no-cloning theorem,” at the heart of today’s quantum encryption technology. The no-cloning theorem supplies the oomph behind quantum encryption, the reason for the technology’s supreme, in-principle security. The all-important no-cloning theorem was discovered at least three times, by physicists working independently of each other. But each discovery shared a common cause: one of Nick Herbert’s remarkable schemes for a superluminal telegraph. Little could Herbert, Sarfatti, and the others know that their dogged pursuit of faster-than-light communication—and the subtle reasons for its failure—would help launch a billion-dollar industry. Like Nick Herbert, Jack Sarfatti was quick to appreciate some of the practical payoffs that a faster-than-light communication device would bring. In early May 1978, Sarfatti prepared a patent disclosure document on a “Faster-than-light quantum communication system.” The document was the first step in a formal patent application. In addition to filing his disclosure with the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks in Washington, DC, he sent a copy to Ira Einhorn, scrawling across the top: “Ira—please circulate widely!” (This was a year before Einhorn would be arrested for murder; his “Unicorn preprint service” was still in full swing.) Sarfatti’s proposal bore several signs of the Fundamental Fysiks Group’s discussions. It began by citing Clauser’s experimental tests of Bell’s theorem, before citing a preprint of Henry Stapp’s paper on superluminal connections, which Sarfatti most likely received directly from Stappat one of the group’s weekly meetings.

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Potential applications abounded. For one thing, Sarfatti reasoned, such a device could transmit a human voice across vast distances, with no possible eavesdropping. If the slit-detector detector efficiency at A were controlled by some transducer, such as a microphone, then the pattern of vibrations from the speaker’s voice would become encoded in the varying sharpness of the double-slit interference pattern. A loudspeaker on the other end could then retranslate the pattern of interference fringes received at B into sound waves. “The application to deep space communications is obvious,” Sarfatti concluded: messages could be relayed instantly across vast, cosmic distances. Benefits would accrue closer to home as well, such as “giving instant communication between an intelligence agent and his headquarters”—that is, espionage. Clearly his prior experiences with Harold Puthoff, Russell Targ, and their remote-viewing experiments at the Stanford Research Institute had left their mark. “In this case,” Sarfatti clarified, “we would not use the above system but would use the same principle using e.g. correlated psycho-active molecules, such as LSD, affecting the neurotransmitter chemistry.” Presumably the image of CIA agents doped up on LSD, communicating instantly with operatives half a world away via correlated brain impulses, seemed no more far-fetched than the parapsychological effects in which Sarfatti had been immersed for years.9

...

Sarfatti leapt on Eberhard’s parting observation that quantum mechanics itself might be surpassed by some more general theory, in which controllable superluminal signaling might survive. After all, Sarfatti reminded his interlocutors, “superluminal precognitions”—psi visions of the future—“exist as facts in abundance in my own laboratory of the mind. Am I to ignore facts simply because old men are afraid to experience them?”19

...

Sarfatti was “slow to admit his mistakes,” as the reporter put it. Stapp and Sarfatti had “argued for a year before Sarfatti admitted” that his original scheme would not work.20”

I am now writing in 2018. Where do things stand on the issue of using quantum entanglement as a communication channel that is part of the physical explanation for our own consciousness as well as engineering applications? Although a few physicists are still trying to do what I gave up on I think they will fail because a larger post quantum mechanics (PQM) is needed. After Einstein developed special relativity in 1905 he tried to use it to explain gravity and he failed. It took Einstein another ten years to extend his theory to general relativity in which real gravity (not to be confused with g-forces) is explained as the real force-free weightless motion of small masses in 4-dimensional space-time that is curved by much larger concentrations of mass density.  Gravity is like signaling using entanglement. If two particles A and B are entangled then any strong local measurement of any property of A will not depend on any action done on particle B. Therefore, it is not possible to use quantum entanglement as a stand-alone keyless communication channel the way we tried to do in the 1970s. You can used entanglement to encode messages and to teleport quantum information (aka “qubits”) only if you also have a classical physics signal, i.e. key to unlock the message. You cannot unlock the message faster than the speed of light in vacuum, nor can you send the message backwards in time. This is true for all dead matter. It is not true for living matter like us. We know this from brain experiments and also from the remote viewing experiments done by Puthoff and Targ in the 1970s. These facts are debunked by many, however, I will ignore their torpedoes and forge full steam ahead. I first proposed this idea at Stuart Hameroff’s 1996 Tucson meeting on Consciousness. My qualitative ideas given there were described in 2009 by Michael Towler in his Cavendish Laboratory Cambridge University lectures on David Bohm’s pilot wave theory.  

Towler’s slides 25 and 31 in http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/PWT/lectures/bohm8.pdf

“Living matter and back-action 

In certain dark corners of the internet, can find speculation of the following nature: 

• Propose the wave function/pilot wave is intrinsically ‘mental’ and capable of qualia. 

• Equate the pilot wave with the mental aspect of the universe, generally: the 
particles are ‘matter’, and ‘mind’ the pilot wave. OK, who cares, except.. 

• ‘Mental’ aspect of universe upgradeable to life/consciousness by self-organization. Happens when a physical system uses its own nonlocality in its organization. 

• In this case a feedback loop is created, as follows: system configures itself so as to set up its own pilot wave, which in turn directly affects its physical configuration, which then affects its non-local pilot wave, which affects the configuration etc.. 

• Normally in QM this ‘back-action’ is not taken into account. The wave guides the particles but back-action of particle onto wave not systematically calculated. Of course, the back-action is physically real since particle movement determines initial conditions for next round of calculation. But there is no systematic way to characterize such feedback. One reason this works in practice is that for systems that are not self-organizing the back-action may not exert any systematic effect. 
• 
  Well, it’s not obviously wrong..! 

[see p.346, Bohm and Hiley’s Undivided Universe).] 

Two-way traffic 

Important to note that pilot-wave theory does not take into account any effect of individual particle on its own quantum field (though Bohm and Hiley briefly sketch some ideas about how this might happen, see e.g. Undivided Universe pp. 345-346). 

• Idea that particles collectively affect quantum field of a single particle is contained in the standard notion that shape of quantum field of a particle is determined by shape of environment (which consists of many particles, and is part of the boundary conditions put into the Schr ̈odinger equation before solving it, even in conventional QM). 

• Celebrity nutjob Jack Sarfatti (see e.g., er.. www.stardrive.org) in particular has emphasized the need for an explanation of how the individual particle influences its own field and has proposed mechanisms for such ‘back-action’, also emphasizing its importance in understanding the mind- matter relationship and how consciousness arises (see earlier slide). 

• Assuming that notion of such an influence of the particle on its field can be coherently developed, we can then have two-way traffic between the mental and the physical levels without reducing one to the other. Role of Bohm’s model of the quantum system then would be that it provides a kind of prototype that defines a more general class of systems in which a field of information is connected with a material body by a two-way relationship. 

• Quantum theory is currently our most fundamental theory of matter and Bohm suggests that, when ontologically interpreted, it reveals a proto-mental aspect of matter. This is the quantum field, described mathematically by the wave function, which is governed by the Schr ̈odinger equation. Bohm’s suggestion is known as panprotopsychism.. so at least you learned a new word today..!”

Note Towler’s 2009 remark: “But there is no systematic way to characterize such feedback.” is no longer true since 2015 see Sutherland below.

Brian Josephson was working along parallel lines at around the same time.  

Paper published in Foundations of Physics, Vol. 21, pp. 197-207, 1991, (c) Plenum Press. 

Utilisation of Quantum NonLocality[1]

 

Brian D. Josephson[2] and Fotini Pallikari-Viras[

 

“The perception of reality by biosystems is based on different, and in certain respects more effective principles than those utilised by the more formal procedures of science. As a result, what appears as random pattern to the scientific method can be meaningful pattern to a living organism. The existence of this complementary perception of reality makes possible in principle effective use by organisms of the direct interconnections between spatially separated objects shown to exist in the work of J.S. Bell.

1. INTRODUCTION

Bell(1,2)[4] has given arguments that appear to demonstrate the existence of direct interconnections between spatially separated objects. But at the same time there are arguments(4-6) that appear to show that no real physical manifestations of these interconnections actually exist. The thesis developed in this paper is that it is only from the point of view of quantum mechanics that these connections appear to be unphysical, and that there is a different, complementary point of view, one associated specifically with the activities of living organisms, in terms of which the interconnections may be very concretely real, and capable of being put to practical use.”

My 1996 qualitative proposal was followed by the first mathematical breakthrough for post-quantum mechanics in in a 2002 paper by Antony Valentini who had allegeldy attended a lecture by Josephson on this idea at Cambridge.

 

Subquantum Information and Computation

https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0203049

Antony Valentini

Abstract: “It is argued that immense physical resources - for nonlocal communication, espionage, and exponentially-fast computation - are hidden from us by quantum noise, and that this noise is not fundamental but merely a property of an equilibrium state in which the universe happens to be at the present time. It is suggested that 'non-quantum' or nonequilibrium matter might exist today in the form of relic particles from the early universe. We describe how such matter could be detected and put to practical use. Nonequilibrium matter could be used to send instantaneous signals, to violate the uncertainty principle, to distinguish non-orthogonal quantum states without disturbing them, to eavesdrop on quantum key distribution, and to outpace quantum computation (solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time). ..

7 Outpacing Quantum Computation 

Quantum theory allows parallel Turing-type computations to occur in different branches of the state vector for a single computer [24]. However, owing to the effective collapse that occurs under measurement, an experimenter is able to access only one result; the outputs of the other computations are lost. Of course, by clever use of entanglement and interference, one can make quantum computation remarkably efficient for certain special problems. But in general, what at first sight seems to be a massive increase in computational power is not, in fact, realised in practice. 

All the results of a parallel quantum computation could be read, however, if we had access to nonequilibrium matter with a very narrow distribution. ...

We have argued that immense physical resources are hidden from us by quantum noise, and that we will be unable to access those resources only for as long as we are trapped in the ‘quantum heat death’ – a state in which all systems are subject to the noise associated with the Born probability distribution ρ = |ψ|2. 

It is clear that hidden-variables theories offer a radically different perspective on quantum information theory. In such theories, a huge amount of ‘subquantum information’ is hidden from us simply because we happen to live in a time and place where the hidden variables have a certain ‘equilibrium’ distribution. As we have mentioned, nonequilibrium instantaneous signals occur not only in pilot-wave theory but in any deterministic hidden-variables theory [15, 16]. And in pilot-wave theory at least, we have shown that the security of quantum cryptography depends on our being trapped in quantum equilibrium; and, that nonequilibrium would unleash computational resources far more powerful than those of quantum computers. 

Some might prefer to regard this work as showing how the principles of quantum information theory depend on a particular axiom of quantum theory – the Born rule ρ = |ψ|2. (One might also consider the role of the axiom of linear evolution [25, 26].) 

But if one takes hidden-variables theories seriously as physical theories of Nature, one can hardly escape the conclusion that we just happen to be con- fined to a particular state in which our powers are limited by an all-pervading statistical noise. It then seems important to search for violations ρ ̸= |ψ|2 of the Born rule [3–7].”

Valentini’s slightly flawed but brilliant breakthrough above was followed 13 years later by Roderick Sutherland’s 2015 equally brilliant paper which implicitly corrects a conceptual error in Valentini’s 2002 by showing that an unobservable a “sub-quantum” level is not needed any more that a mechanical aether was needed in Einstein’s special relativity. The non-equilibrium matter involves classical statistical mechanics and thermodynamics when pushed into the Frohlich coherent phase described below.

Lagrangian Description for Particle Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics -- Entangled Many-Particle Case

https://arxiv.org/abs/1509.02442

Roderick Sutherland

Abstract: “A Lagrangian formulation is constructed for particle interpretations of quantum mechanics, a well-known example of such an interpretation being the Bohm model. The advantages of such a description are that the equations for particle motion, field evolution and conservation laws can all be deduced from a single Lagrangian density expression. The formalism presented is Lorentz invariant. This paper follows on from a previous one which was limited to the single-particle case. The present paper treats the more general case of many particles in an entangled state. It is found that describing more than one particle while maintaining a relativistic description requires the specification of final boundary conditions as well as the usual initial ones, with the experimenter's controllable choice of the final conditions thereby exerting a backwards-in-time influence. This retrocausality then allows an important theoretical step forward to be made, namely that it becomes possible to dispense with the usual, many-dimensional description in configuration space and instead revert to a description in spacetime using separate, single-particle wavefunctions.  ... 

This paper focuses on interpretations of quantum mechanics in which the underlying reality is taken to consist of particles have definite trajectories at all times (e.g., [1,2]). It then enriches the associated formalism of such interpretations by providing a Lagrangian description of the unfolding events. The convenience and utility of a Lagrangian formulation is well-known from classical mechanics. The particle equation of motion, the field equation, the conserved current, action-reaction, the energy-momentum tensor, etc., are all easily derivable in a self- consistent way from a single expression. These advantages continue in the present context. Since a Lagrangian description is available in all other areas of physics and continues to be useful in modern domains such as quantum field theory and the standard model, it is appropriate to expect such a description to be relevant and applicable here as well1. 

In addition to the advantages already listed, the Lagrangian approach pursued here to describe particle trajectories also entails the natural inclusion of an accompanying field to influence the particle’s motion away from classical mechanics and reproduce the correct quantum predictions. In so doing, it is in fact providing a possible explanation for why quantum behaviour exists at all – in the general case considered here, the particle is seen to be the source of a field which in turn alters the particle’s trajectory via self-interaction. ...

20. Discussion and Conclusions 

The aim here of formulating a Lagrangian description for a particle interpretation of quantum mechanics has been successfully carried out for the general case of entangled many-particle states under the assumption that the particles have ceased interacting30. The model provides a separate Lagrangian density for each particle in four-dimensional spacetime, thereby avoiding the need to resort to configuration space. Both the availability of a spacetime description and the ability to maintain Lorentz invariance are made possible by incorporating final boundary conditions and retrocausality into the model. The proposed Lagrangian density expression then provides all the usual formalism for answering any question we wish to ask. It provides a clear picture of events at all times, accompanied by field equations, particle equations of motion and conservation of energy and momentum. 

The Lagrangian expression nominated in this model seems to be the only one that is consistent with a particle ontology for relativistic quantum mechanics in the many-particle case. Within the non-statistical version of the model, where the Lagrangian density is not accompanied by the joint distribution assumption (54), the particle acts as the source of a field and the particle and field then mutually interact via the particle equation of motion (59) and the relevant field equation, e.g., Eq. (63). However, once the statistical assumption (54) is also included, we obtain the special case corresponding to quantum mechanics. The particle equation of motion then simplifies to the form of a guidance equation and the source term in the field equation becomes zero, resulting in a retrocausal version of the Bohm model. This is essentially the same as the “causally symmetric Bohm model” formulated in [10], the only difference being that the earlier presentation was mainly non-relativistic, whereas now the formulation is fully Lorentz invariant (as well as being extended to Lagrangian form). This causally symmetric model reduces back further to the standard Bohm model once a weighted average is taken over the unknown future boundary conditions and they are integrated out. 

In narrowing to the quantum mechanical case via assumption (54) it should be noted that, although the source term goes to zero, this does not mean that the field becomes zero. The field is still there propagating with the corresponding particle and influencing the particle’s trajectory (as in the standard Bohm model) but it is not actually being emitted or absorbed by the particle. If the particle’s velocity were to stray away from the value enforced by Eq. (54), there would then be net emission or absorption. In this context, the existence of the field could perhaps be attributed to some “non-equilibrium” period in the past or future when the particle’s 4-velocity was/will be different from that given by (54). In such a non-equilibrium state, the Born probability rule would also no longer hold, thereby introducing the possibility of new experimental consequences (as has been pointed out previously in the context of the standard Bohm model [20-22]). An interesting topic for further research would be to explore whether the equation of motion (59) presented here tends to restore each particle to the equilibrium state corresponding to quantum mechanics, thereby providing an explanation for the persistence of this special case. Note that the particle's generalised 4-momentum is conserved in this case and so no energy or momentum is exchanged with the field. This does not mean, however, that the particle's 4-velocity is constant, as can be seen from expression (83) for the generalised 4-momentum derivable from the Lagrangian density. This definition allows the 4-velocity to vary continuously with position via Eq. (55) in such a way that consistency with the quantum mechanical predictions is maintained. 

It should also be noted that taking the present step of adding retrocausality into the standard Bohm model introduces a number of improvements into that model. In particular: 

1. The model can easily be set in Lorentz invariant form 

2. The model becomes local from a spacetime viewpoint 

3. A general form of the model can be formulated which is applicable for any wave equation 

4. A configuration space ontology is avoided, with the many-particle case remaining in four- dimensional spacetime 

5. A separate velocity expression can be provided for each of the n particles in an entangled state, rather than just a single, overall velocity defined in 3n dimensions 

6. The correct statistical correlations can be maintained while employing a separate wavefunction for each particle 

7. A physical interpretation can be provided for the negative values of the Klein-Gordon “probability” density [23] 

1. A Lagrangian formulation becomes possible

9. Energy and momentum conservation is restored

1. A source is provided for the guiding field in the more general case

       11. Action-reaction between the particle and the field is restored in this case. 

Concerning possible future work, although the configuration-space wavefunction for many particles has been successfully excluded from the ontology here, it remains a relevant mathematical function in this model. A more ambitious project for the future might be a formulation expressed in terms of the ontological quantities only and not involving this wavefunction. Finally, a possible application of this model is that it opens an alternative path to quantum gravity by providing a definite, ontological energy-momentum tensor for insertion in Einstein’s gravitational field equation. This non-statistical tensor thereby allows the Einstein curvature tensor on the other side of the equation to remain non-statistical and unquantised without introducing any mismatch or inconsistency. A more detailed formulation of this approach can be found in [19]. 

30 A possible method of generalising this model to the cases of continuing interaction and of creation and annihilation is outlined in Secs. 8 and 9 of [18].”

I now give a brief introduction to the Frohlich coherence effect. I learned about it directly from Herbert Frohlich at UCSD in La Jolla California 1967 - 68 when he visited Bernd Matthias’s superconductivity laboratory.

Classical kinetic theory of gases explains temperature as the random motion of particles. Consider a gas of electrons in a lattice exposed to a resonant electromagnetic pump field. The pump synchronizes the center of mass motions of the electrons suppressing their random motion in the un-pumped thermodynamic equilibrium into a less random more ordered non-equilibrium state. This lowers their effective temperature shielded from the ambient temperature of the environment as the resonant pump power increases to a critical threshold when the BCS phonon binding into Cooper pairs kicks in - as a result we get a macro-quantum coherent room temperature superconductor analogous to a macro-quantum coherent laser beam also in a forced non-equilibirum state.  This idea is very general also applies to the negative spin temperature of electric dipoles and magnetic moments and even to anyons in 2D quantum Hall effect devices for topological quantum computing. It also works in all living matter.

Quantum Coherent-like State Observed in a Biological Protein for the First Time

From the Journal:  Structural Dynamics

By Catherine Meyers

“So-called Fröhlich condensation, a state in which protein molecules' vibrational modes coalesce at the lowest frequency, was first predicted almost five decades ago, but never experimentally demonstrated until now

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 13, 2015 – If you take certain atoms and make them almost as cold as they possibly can be, the atoms will fuse into a collective low-energy quantum state called a Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1968 physicist Herbert Fröhlich predicted that a similar process at a much higher temperature could concentrate all of the vibrational energy in a biological protein into its lowest-frequency vibrational mode. Now scientists in Sweden and Germany have the first experimental evidence of such so-called Fröhlich condensation.

The researchers made the condensate by aiming terahertz radiation at a crystallized protein extracted from the white of a chicken egg. They report their results in the journal Structural Dynamics, from AIP Publishing and the American Crystallographic Association.

"Observing Fröhlich condensation opens the door to a much wider-ranging study of what terahertz radiation does to proteins," said Gergely Katona, a senior scientist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Terahertz radiation occupies the space in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared light. It has been proposed as a useful tool in applications ranging from airport security to cancer screening, but its effects on biological systems remains murky.

Katona said he is interested in studying how terahertz-induced Fröhlich condensation could change the rates of reactions catalyzed by biological enzymes or shift chemical equilibria. Such knowledge could lead to medical applications or new ways to control chemical reactions in industry, but Katona cautioned that the research is still at a fundamental stage.

As far as the safety implications for terahertz radiation, Katona said that the jury is still out. The effects he and his team observed are reversible and last only for a short time, he added.”

Herbert Fröhlich and F. Kremer Coherent Excitations in Biological Systems (Springer-Verlag, 1983)

 

Kaiser, David. How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival . W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

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