New telepathy test, the sequel.

And the idea that no one has tested for such is a rather extraordinary claim in of itself.

Of course 30 seconds with a search engine would tell Michel H that such measurements have been done.

For example - form a search I typed in 30 seconds ago: https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/can-brain-waves-interfere-with-radio-waves/
You probably meant "from a search I typed in 30 seconds ago".

Your link says:
The human brain also emits waves, like when a person focuses her attention or remembers something. This activity fires thousands of neurons simultaneously at the same frequency generating a wave — but at a rate closer to 10 to 100 cycles per second.
Waves of frequencies between 10 and 100 Hz are not radio frequency waves:
Radio frequency (RF) is the oscillation rate of an alternating electric current or voltage or of a magnetic, electric or electromagnetic field or mechanical system in the frequency[1] range from around 20 kHz to around 300 GHz.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_frequency).

In addition, the very weak power radiated by the brain (this means, emitted in the form of very long wavelength electromagnetic waves) in this frequency range has, to my knowledge, never been measured, though it may have been estimated theoretically.
 
Waves of frequencies between 10 and 100 Hz are not radio frequency waves

Yes, that's the point. That's the frequency range in which the brain is known to emit electromagnetic radiation. It does not emit measurably in the RF band.

In addition, the very weak power radiated by the brain (this means, emitted in the form of very long wavelength electromagnetic waves) in this frequency range has, to my knowledge, never been measured, though it may have been estimated theoretically.

Why do you imagine it hasn't been measured? You act like you're the first person ever to conceive of the notion that ESP may use electromagnetic energy has a transport. In fact, it was a very early proposal, and rejected very early on even by pro-ESP researchers because no suitable radiation could be detected coming from the brain.

You're the one claiming RF electromagnetic energy emitted and received by the human brain might be used to communicate over distances of thousands of kilometers. You're the one who must prove your claim.
 
Michel H's assertion that telepathy may be an RF effect is riddled with problems.
The only two of the four fundamental forces that we know about that have effects above the subatomic scale are electromagnetism and gravity. We know that it can't be electromagnetism, because the human body doesn't emit electromagnetic radiation at any frequency (except maybe infrared, in the form of heat) at an strength that could be detectable across a room, let alone to the other side of the planet. It doesn't even make any kind of sense to propose that thoughts could be transmitted from one person to another by gravity. That's just not what gravity does. And the four fundamental forces of the Standard Model describe all of the ways in which matter can interact. There's no gap in our knowledge that telepathy can fit into.
 
Pretty clearly, we're never going to learn anything about telepathy here. But the question of frequencies for radio waves has been brought up. According to Wikipedia, Extremely Low Frequency radio (used to chat with submarines) is in the range 3 to 30 Hz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency

So could someone explain a little more to be about whether there are radio waves at these very low frequencies...with the understanding that my knowledge of radio is only a little better than pushing the button on the radio to choose a channel. So simple explanations would be appreciated.
 
Pretty clearly, we're never going to learn anything about telepathy here. But the question of frequencies for radio waves has been brought up. According to Wikipedia, Extremely Low Frequency radio (used to chat with submarines) is in the range 3 to 30 Hz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency

So could someone explain a little more to be about whether there are radio waves at these very low frequencies...with the understanding that my knowledge of radio is only a little better than pushing the button on the radio to choose a channel. So simple explanations would be appreciated.

There is, or can be, electromagnetic radiation at just about any frequency you like and, from ELF right up to gamma rays, they are all examples of the same phenomenon. Only the names we give them change, as we find it useful to classify them into various designated bands of frequencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
 
I'm not sure which -ography you mean. If you're talking about electroencephalography, that's measuring an electrical potential, not the radiated electromagnetic power. Standard EEG measurements are in microvolts and are measuring the voltage difference across various standardized points on the scalp. Electrocorticography does the same thing, but with the electrodes on the cortex itself. There's also promising technology coming out of Australia that uses endovascular electrodes. The brain has a very weak electrical field, but electric field encephalography is a thing. It requires considerable signal processing to obtain a usable reading, and that may be where you're getting values in watts. For a power density measurement, it would need to be normalized to a reference surface area. The brain also has a magnetic field, but it's even weaker, and magnetoencephalography exists too, and has the same limitations.

But as you would expect, electromagnetic radiation was one of the first things proposed to explain ESP and hence one of the first things eliminated by science via measurement, going back to the 1940s. The only measurable electromagnetic radiation emitted by the brain is in the infrared band. But then again, your buttcheeks also emit electromagnetic radiation in the infrared band, because both they and your brain are body-temperature objects.

The practical limit is that if a brain were emitting 10-20 watts of EMR in the radio-frequency band, it would be trivially easy to detect. In fact, it would be highly annoying to anyone else in the vicinity trying to do various things with some kinds of electronic equipment. We can easily rule out electromagnetic radiation as a practical vehicle for ESP.

But we have the cart before the horse. Scrambling to find a mechanism to explain an observation must wait until there's an observation. That is, the ability of a person to guess what someone else is thinking at a rate greater than chance is the inescapable requirement. Michel simply declares that he doesn't need to do that and that anyone who says he does must be a simpleton. Paradoxically he's still trying to get that happy p-value, but he has to visibly cheat to do it.

I heartily agree with the highlighted, and in principle with the rest of your post as well. However, electrical potentials, as measured in various EEG schemes, are inseparably connected with EM radiation: You can't have one without the other. The tiny currents/voltages we measure (microvolt potentials, as you mention) will in principle mean that there is EM radiation, but at very long wavelengths, where the radiation conditions are hopeless. I very much doubt it will even be possible to distinguish it from the atmospheric noise-floor (hence the mention of nanowatts).

Any other radiation, in any other wave-length, at a power-level that might enable transmission over even very short distances would require there to exist electrical potentials in the brain that our EEG equipment would certainly detect. You cannot transmit EM waves without having alternate currents.

Hans
 
...and the frequency is in the 10 to 100 Hz range.

Michel H's assertion that telepathy may be an RF effect is riddled with problems.

The main problem being lack of even an elementary knowledge about electromagnetics.

Hans
 
Indeed, I've seen my own brain ticking away on the EEG. (A lot of my EEs come from a neuroscience background and have some cool toys.) But that's where the gambit is. It's easy to say that various forms of electrically-based encephalography miss the mark because they're dealing with entirely the wrong frequencies. It's easy to bluff and say that diagnostic measurements of the brain's electrical activity won't pick up what's also happening -- allegedly -- in the kilohertz and megahertz ranges. But if that's the case, then I can measure your brain's EMR with the AM radio in my grandfather's old Mercedes.

Michel still hasn't told us the actual radiated power density or frequency he thinks this works on, and I suspect he never will. All we get are Googled-up Reddit theads and a lot of ignorant handwaving.



Which is why it was briefly contemplated and then discarded in the 1940s. Why someone who presents himself as a published physicist would even consider the notion today boggles my mind.

Now he can say that only he and perhaps a few other "thought projectors" are emitting these signals, thus the signals aren't going to be observed by measurements of the general population. (The early EMR experiments, however, used subjects who professed psi capabilities, or were "tested" to have such ability.) But there's the receiver to consider. In order for him to project his thoughts to significant numbers of people all over the world, those people would have to be susceptible to EMR at radio frequencies. And that susceptibility is not just something that would go unnoticed for the century or so in which we've used RF technology extensively. Why can't we use just plain old radio waves emitted by any old emitter to implant ideas in people's heads in a reliable way? Or even an unreliable way? All we seem to be able to do is make people nauseous and given them headaches.

Even if it was in a different frequency range, we would have to deal with it in EEG equipment. Picking up a vey weak VLF signal in the presence of a stronger RF signal is no trivial matter.

Hans
 
Incorrect. It has been explored extensively, for various medical purposes. It is in the nanowatt range (very very little).
I wonder where you got this order of magnitude.

If this is intended to be serious, perhaps you should provide a reference or a link to support your claim.
 
Pretty clearly, we're never going to learn anything about telepathy here. But the question of frequencies for radio waves has been brought up. According to Wikipedia, Extremely Low Frequency radio (used to chat with submarines) is in the range 3 to 30 Hz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency

So could someone explain a little more to be about whether there are radio waves at these very low frequencies...with the understanding that my knowledge of radio is only a little better than pushing the button on the radio to choose a channel. So simple explanations would be appreciated.

Jack by the Hedge's answer is correct, and he's pointed you to a reasonably good explanation of the electromagnetic spectrum. As wavelength and frequency change (reciprocally), the way electromagnetic waves affect other things in the natural world changes. That's the impetus for chopping up the spectrum into distinct bands, giving them different names, and for practical purposes talking about them like they were different phenomena.

Technically any frequency lower than infrared (another arbitrary slice of the spectrum) is "radio waves." But we chop up even that part of the spectrum and call it different names such as "microwaves." Microwaves are just radio waves, but at a frequency that -- among other things -- has a profound effect on water molecules.

The useful radio spectrum -- radio waves whose frequency-dependent properties make them useful for sending signals across long distances -- get chopped up into sections that have names you may have heard of: VHF, UHF, etc. Or also, the AM band, marine radio, etc. Frequencies measured in the kHz, MHz, and GHz are especially useful for terrestrial (and solar system) communications for various reasons all having to do with their physics.

Part of the physics is the ability of waves at different frequencies to penetrate objects of various densities. Visible light won't pass through human bone, but x-rays (higher frequency) will. But high-frequency radio doesn't go through water: the water absorbs it and gets hot, which is the microwave oven principle. There's a particular frequency of infrared to which human skin is especially transparent, and that's used for all kinds of medical purposes like communicating with subdermal implants. Another part of the physics is the electrical power needed to generate those waves in the appropriate materials. And a big part of the physics is the size of the antenna that's most efficient at producing and detecting those waves. The wavelength (the reciprocal of frequency) and the effective antenna length relate to each other.

So we circle back to the ELF radio used to talk to submarines. Low-frequency radio can propagate great distances through all kinds of materials. But the antenna required to produce that wave at a useful amplitude is basically the size of a county. So of course the U.S. military built some. The one you cited to was strung overhead as a wire. The one in Michigan was subterranean. You may recall the Titanic's antenna for its Marconi wireless was strung between its two masts. (Not tecnnically ELF radio, but it illustrates the relationship among frequency, antenna size, amplitude, and efficiency.) Congruently, the submarine that wants to pick up ELF radio transmissions has to trail a long wire antenna out behind it.

And at 1-3 Hz, the waveform doesn't change very fast over time. So there's a limit to how much information you can modulate onto such a signal in a given space of time. The price for being able to talk to a submarine halfway across the globe, aside from the cumbersome size of the base station, is that you can't really say very much because you have to talk very slowly.

So when Michel says that 30-100 Hz is not radio waves, he's wrong in the physics sense. But we understand that what he means is that it's not among the frequencies of radio waves that are practically useful for conveying reasonably large amounts of information over reasonably long distances, using reasonable antenna sizes and reasonable input power requirements.
 
Jack by the Hedge's answer is correct, and he's pointed you to a reasonably good explanation of the electromagnetic spectrum. As wavelength and frequency change (reciprocally), the way electromagnetic waves affect other things in the natural world changes. That's the impetus for chopping up the spectrum into distinct bands, giving them different names, and for practical purposes talking about them like they were different phenomena.

Technically any frequency lower than infrared (another arbitrary slice of the spectrum) is "radio waves." But we chop up even that part of the spectrum and call it different names such as "microwaves." Microwaves are just radio waves, but at a frequency that -- among other things -- has a profound effect on water molecules.

The useful radio spectrum -- radio waves whose frequency-dependent properties make them useful for sending signals across long distances -- get chopped up into sections that have names you may have heard of: VHF, UHF, etc. Or also, the AM band, marine radio, etc. Frequencies measured in the kHz, MHz, and GHz are especially useful for terrestrial (and solar system) communications for various reasons all having to do with their physics.

Part of the physics is the ability of waves at different frequencies to penetrate objects of various densities. Visible light won't pass through human bone, but x-rays (higher frequency) will. But high-frequency radio doesn't go through water: the water absorbs it and gets hot, which is the microwave oven principle. There's a particular frequency of infrared to which human skin is especially transparent, and that's used for all kinds of medical purposes like communicating with subdermal implants. Another part of the physics is the electrical power needed to generate those waves in the appropriate materials. And a big part of the physics is the size of the antenna that's most efficient at producing and detecting those waves. The wavelength (the reciprocal of frequency) and the effective antenna length relate to each other.

So we circle back to the ELF radio used to talk to submarines. Low-frequency radio can propagate great distances through all kinds of materials. But the antenna required to produce that wave at a useful amplitude is basically the size of a county. So of course the U.S. military built some. The one you cited to was strung overhead as a wire. The one in Michigan was subterranean. You may recall the Titanic's antenna for its Marconi wireless was strung between its two masts. (Not tecnnically ELF radio, but it illustrates the relationship among frequency, antenna size, amplitude, and efficiency.) Congruently, the submarine that wants to pick up ELF radio transmissions has to trail a long wire antenna out behind it.

And at 1-3 Hz, the waveform doesn't change very fast over time. So there's a limit to how much information you can modulate onto such a signal in a given space of time. The price for being able to talk to a submarine halfway across the globe, aside from the cumbersome size of the base station, is that you can't really say very much because you have to talk very slowly.

So when Michel says that 30-100 Hz is not radio waves, he's wrong in the physics sense. But we understand that what he means is that it's not among the frequencies of radio waves that are practically useful for conveying reasonably large amounts of information over reasonably long distances, using reasonable antenna sizes and reasonable input power requirements.

Ah. I knew a little of this, but mostly not. So thanks for the extra explanation.
 
I wonder where you got this order of magnitude.

If this is intended to be serious, perhaps you should provide a reference or a link to support your claim.

Oh, dear. You really don't know these fields very well (pun intended). Encephalography is extremely well plowed ground. The electrical and electromagnetic properties of the human nervous system are hardly hidden knowledge. Surface-mount EEG electrodes require conductive gels to produce usable signals up into the micro- range. Purely radiative measurements are an order of magnitude lower. This was implied in the link that another poster gave. The only comment you had on that was to point out an inconsequential typo.

Bluff and bluster are not going to work here, Michel. For a physicist, you seem reluctant to talk about physics. Jsfisher asked you some very pointed questions about how your proposed "brain radio" would work, in order to be able to propagate useful signals over distances of thousands of kilometers. Your only response was a hastily-Googled Reddit thread that went on to explain the difficulty of doing such a thing, and the equipment and radiated power required. You yourself provided no answers. You clearly don't know much if anything about how radio is used practically to communicate.

You attached a number of 20 W to the brain's alleged radiative power capacity without providing any reference. Since the brain only consumes 12-15 watts, you have a problem right there. Methinks you Googled something without really understanding what it was trying to say.

You've refused to provide any sort of estimate of the frequency you think your brain radio operates on, but in dismissing some of the lesser-used lower frequencies, you've implied that it must be higher. And that becomes a problem because the higher frequencies are crowded with users, such that the spectrum has to be divvied up and doled out to the highest bidders, with fierce competition for it and hostile responses to encroachment. A 20-watt transmitter in the mid-megahertz range would be the equivalent in power and range to a rogue aircraft radio blaring out to everyone within a radius of dozens of kilometers.

You ignorantly declare that "to your knowledge" the ability of the brain to transmit and receive at these frequencies has not been measured. Of course it has, way back in the 1940s. There was no detectable emission, and this is now a commonly known fact. But the fact you are comically trying to dodge around is that in 2021 such transmitters could hardly be ignored. They would be wreaking havoc on all our attempts to communicate. Every single hertz of the useful spectrum is being used, along with clever ways to eke more out of every band. There's no room for brains broadcasting globally on the same frequencies.

In your attempt to shift the burden of proof, you've drawn attention away from your utter inability to provide any sort of useful detail on how you think a brain radio would work. You haven't solved any of the obvious problems. You haven't done anything that I would expect from a physics PhD. What a worthless qualification in your case if all you can do is bluster your way through your proposal. We can add neuroscience to the growing list of things you seem to think you're qualified in, but in which you have no useful knowledge.

Every good academic knows that the first step in research is the literature search. But you seem almost entirely ignorant of the prior work in ESP research, which explored the possibility of electromagnetic radiation as the transport. And even though you've never published in the field, you arrogantly suppose that if you were to do so, you'd be bringing to it a transformative methodology -- one that's fundamentally indistinguishable from cheating.

The bottom line is that it's time to stop presuming that you're the smartest guy in the room and time to start behaving as though your stated goal really meant something. You say you want to achieve greater scientific acceptance for your claims. But you have no respect for what has gone before you and no respect for the present state of the art, and no apparent desire to inform yourself in the fields that pertain to your claims. You seem to think that whatever little you know is already sufficient. What you seem to want is for everyone else to lower their standards to accept your specific claims on your specific terms. The way to win people over doesn't often begin with consummate, ill-founded arrogance. As far as you're able to demonstrate it here, you're really not that smart.
 
Anyway...The music I was listening to yesterday afternoon was the Faust and Boffard recording of the Fauré violin sonatas and some short pieces; the reference to a Belgian was that I could have played a recording of the sonatas by the late Arthur Grumiaux, who was Belgian.

And I did loads of thinking about Belgium as I played them, twice, honest!
 
Anyway...The music I was listening to yesterday afternoon was the Faust and Boffard recording of the Fauré violin sonatas and some short pieces; the reference to a Belgian was that I could have played a recording of the sonatas by the late Arthur Grumiaux, who was Belgian.

And I did loads of thinking about Belgium as I played them, twice, honest!

Whoever out there's listening to Justin Beiber, STOP IT!


I can't hear it in my head, but someone, somewhere's bound to be and they should just stop & listen to something better, anything.
 
Ah. I knew a little of this, but mostly not. So thanks for the extra explanation.

You're welcome. The shorter answer, I think, is that a lot of people know a lot about radio without needing to be physics PhDs. The practical requirements and limits of RF technology are not esoteric, niche knowledge. So when someone says, in effect, that the brain is just a radio, then a whole lot of people are going to know immediately, with great confidence, that such a thing isn't possible.
 
I wonder where you got this order of magnitude.

If this is intended to be serious, perhaps you should provide a reference or a link to support your claim.

EEG signals are in the 100 microvolt range. They are the only signals ever found to be emitted by the brain. The impedance of brain tissue is around 500 ohms (like other tissues). That's about two orders of magnitude down, power-wise. The frequency is about 100hz. This corresponds to a wavelength of 300 km. The size of the human skull is about 30 cm. For an antenna, that is another four orders of magnitude of reduction, so yeah, perhaps I was a bit optimistic. we are probably talking a fraction of a nanowatt.

And Michel H, if you don't understand this rough calculation, you are, quite frankly, not qualified to discuss this subject.

Hans
 
EEG signals are in the 100 microvolt range. They are the only signals ever found to be emitted by the brain. The impedance of brain tissue is around 500 ohms (like other tissues). That's about two orders of magnitude down, power-wise. The frequency is about 100hz. This corresponds to a wavelength of 300 km. The size of the human skull is about 30 cm. For an antenna, that is another four orders of magnitude of reduction, so yeah, perhaps I was a bit optimistic. we are probably talking a fraction of a nanowatt.

And Michel H, if you don't understand this rough calculation, you are, quite frankly, not qualified to discuss this subject.

Hans
You are actually not justifying your claim of a fraction of nanowatt for the brain power in any way.

In addition, you said:
The impedance of brain tissue is around 500 ohms (like other tissues).
But this actually doesn't make any sense because the impedance is an integral (not a local) quantity.

One can talk about the impedance of a resistor, or even of the brain, but not of a tissue, which has a certain conductivity (but no impedance).
 

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