"Psi proponents say that an explanation for ESP (like the ultimate explanation for electromagnetism, incidentally) may come from quantum physics. The science they usually invoke is quantum entanglement, the bizarre relationship that arises between two particles like electrons or photons that have interacted with each other. Even when the particles are separated by great distances, the act of measuring the properties of one—spin, for instance, if the particle is an electron—immediately impacts the properties of the other. Albert Einstein, who doubted whether entanglement was possible, famously derided the idea as “spooky action at a distance.” But entanglement is now accepted as an observable fact, if only in the realm of the very small.
Dean Radin, an electrical engineer who worked at Bell Labs before devoting himself full-time to the study of psi, has hypothesized how entanglement might lead to telepathy and clairvoyance. He suggests that the matter we are composed of, including the synaptic fluid between our neurons, is entangled with the universe at large, allowing for the anomalous transfer of information across great distances, such that somebody might dream of an airplane crash at the instant the airplane is going down.
To explain precognition, Radin proposes a different but related concept: time-symmetry of quantum events. This is the idea that microscopic phenomena, such as the motion of an electron through an electromagnetic field, would look the same regardless of whether time were flowing forward or backward. On large scales such time symmetry falls apart (which is why it is not possible to uncrack an egg), but some psi proponents think it may apply sufficiently to allow the reversal of cause and effect, enabling precognition.
Mainstream physicists recoil at these ideas. Anton Zeilinger, a quantum physicist at the University of Vienna, finds the suggested link between psi and quantum physics a “misuse” of the latter. “That sounds to me like saying we don’t understand this basic psychological phenomenon, we don’t understand quantum mechanics, therefore the two must be related,” he says. (See the DISCOVER Interview with Zeilinger.)"
- Daryl Bem's quest for ESP
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