A couple of years back my father-in-law forwarded me an article about neutrinos. Knowing I was into physics, he thought I might be interested. Was I ever! I’ve just tried to find the article and can’t, and so have spent the last half hour surfing websites, trying to get my bearings again. What I have concluded is that a) I need to get a masters in physics to understand most of what I’ve just read and b) OMG! This is crazy shit! (In the most respectful, awestruck use of the term, of course.)

Here is my laywoman definition of a neutrino: a very, very small particle. So small that any mass at all could not be detected for decades worth of testing. So small, and so amazingly constructed, that it can move through matter practically unhindered. Wikipedia says it would take a light-year of lead to block half of the neutrinos produced by the sun.

The article I first read about them talked about them moving so fast, and so unobstructed, that an explosion in space, some light years away (if I remember correctly) sent neutrinos to a detection tank, on the other side of the earth from where the explosion actually occured, instantaneously. They went through the earth, is what I’m saying. Instantly. From very, very far away.

This may not knock your socks off, but the first time I heard it, my feet were dern naked. Instantly.

Why, you ask?

Well, here’s the thing. If there are particles this small and this free of limitations…and this difficult to detect with all our most fancy neoneopostpostmodern trillions-of-dollars-worth scientific techniques–particles we’re only beginning to understand, and that challenge us to speculate on other sorts of undetectable “things”–then it seems plausible to me that some of the psi phenomenon that people observe and experience (clairvoyance, esp, psychokinesis, etc.), and that scientists have so far been unable to conclusively prove, are actually the result of matter like this. Little tiny particles traveling between people. What if we are all emitting particles, all the time, and it is these that are resposible for people knowing, for example, from a distance that a loved one has died or been injured, like right when it happened? What if the phenomenon of discoveries happening nearly simultaneously across the globe–like in science or math, for example–could be explained, in part, by actual particles traveling instantly outward from their sources (i.e. the people making them), enlightening others in the field in a subconscious way?

What if all the phenomenon that people have for centuries attributed to a spiritual realm, are really all part of the material universe? What if physical and spiritual are really the same exact thing??

I’m going to write more on this topic next time, but let this intro suffice: I totally get off on this sort of thing.

Wow.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Philosophy, Psychology, Religion/Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.