Sol Entangler

Circular Diffraction: Arago's Spot

 I want to woo Her not view Her

Pet Reality until She purrs

Longing to merge with Dame Nature bodily

Yearning to mingle my substance with hers

And them content with merely observing

Are nothing but Nature's voyeurs.

The goal of quantum tantra is to discover a new way of connecting with Nature that involves both mind and quantum mechanics. An early interview by Abu Ben Nooma, author of Red-Light Bardo captures some of the spirit of this quest as does Rudy Rucker's short fiction Panpsychism Proved recently published in Nature magazine. 

While searching for that all-important clue to a quantum-tantric breakthrough, Nick has been amusing himself by writing dozens of QT-inspired poems and designing/building a handful of "Preposterous Devices" that attempt to capture some of the flavor of this new science. Since these devices possess no theoretical basis (the science they pretend to demonstrate does not yet exist), they are mere guesses, shots in the dark, desperate premonitions and hardwired petitions to my Muse to grant me fresh inspiration for quantum-tantric gadgets that will actually work and for a new vision of Nature that will change the world.

My first preposterous device was called "The METAPHASE TYPEWRITER" after the hypothetical "metaphase membrane" that separates matter and mind. The MT uses a quantum-random radioactive source and Geiger counter to drive an English-language biased text generator. The MT was conceived of as an "empty channel" that might be possessed by living beings, by discarnate entities, by angels, devils or spirits of any variety. The Metaphase Machine was operated during the 1970s in a great variety of high psychic energy situations without any noticeable success.

Metaphase Typewriter: Yellow plastic tube houses radioactive source and Geiger counter

 Later with the help of Richard Shoup, who then worked at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, I devised the QUANTUM METAPHONE which converted the metaphase device into a quantum-driven voice box, a kind of supernatural "Siri" designed to let spooks speak. None deigned to talk to us.

Metaphase Sound Machine by Dmitry Morosov, Moscow. This project was commissioned by Future Everything (Manchester) and Laboratoria Art & Science Space (Moscow)

 Recently a few artists have been inspired by the MT to produce quantum-driven devices of their own design. Lynden Stone, working at Queensland University in Australia instigated the Metaphase Typewriter Revival Project producing a quantum text generator using modern physics hardware and computer interfaces that was exhibited in both Australia and America. Lynden's doctoral thesis explored some of the history of art inspired by modern physics which includes her lovely painting Schrödinger's Puss featured at the bottom of this post. Meanwhile, in the former Soviet Union, prolific Moscow multi-media artist Dmitry Morosov (who goes by the name "::vtol::") produced a sound and motion machine driven by quantum-random nuclear decay which ::vtol:: claims was inspired by the Metaphase Typewriter.

The biggest flaw in the metaphase class of quantum mind-matter devices (Quantum Answering Machines) seems to be the assumption that spirits can alter radioactive decay to send messages to the living. A promising direction for further QUAM research might be to seek different sources of quantum "randomness" to drive the communication channel, for instance the recent device of Shi et al at the University of Singapore that derives random numbers from fluctuations in the quantum vacuum.

Dr & Mrs Future testing the Stellerator

 Another class of preposterous device (hoping to connect minds together using quantum theory) works on the notion of linking two people's consciousnesses together by, loosely speaking, arranging for them "both to attempt to observe the same photon". This purported quantum linkage is achieved by having both participants view light whose "radius of coherence" extends across both of their retinas. This kind of device might be called a Quantum Intimacy Machine (QUIM).

The first quantum intimacy machine (called the STELLERATOR) exploits the fact that the "lateral coherence radius" of light from distant stars is huge. The star with the smallest lateral coherence radius is Betelgeuse in the Orion constellation. This star's LCR is eight feet wide; every other star in the sky has a larger value of LCR.

The value of the LCR, loosely speaking, is a measure of the width of the photon wavefunction, an indication of the extent to which a single photon can "be in two places at once" while still maintaining its integrity (oneness).

There is a sense in which light from Betelgeuse is made up of a collection of eight-foot wide pancakes of light, each representing a single photon. These photon pancakes are very thin (the longitudinal coherence length is comparable to the wavelength (a fraction of a micron)) so that these stellar discs are less like flapjacks and more like very thin crepes. And each of these single-photon crepes is hurtling down from every star in the sky at the speed of light.

The stellerator is a simple hollow tube which allows two observers to focus their attention on a single star and to compete as to who will "collapse the crepe-shaped photon wave functions" from that star. The guess/hope/conjecture is that this simple activity of constrained star gazing will link the minds of the participants in a new and notable way.

One big flaw in Stellerator theory is that the photon pancake is so large that every object inside an 8 ft radius (in the case of Betelguese) is competing for the same photon. Thus the participation of two human retinas in "collapsing the photon wave function" is minimal compared to the grass, the rocks, the dirt around you. What's needed is a coherent source made of smaller pancakes, pancakes the same size or smaller than the dark-adapted human iris (about 3 mm).

The Lunerator uses reflection to produce two coherent beams.

 Enter the LUNERATOR, a purported quantum intimacy machine that uses the Moon as a source of coherent light. The size of the coherence disk is inversely proportional to the apparent size of the heavenly body. Stars appear very small so their coherence disks are large. On the other hand, both the Moon and the Sun loom large in the sky (apparent diameter of about 1/2 a degree) so their lateral coherence radii are correspondingly small, approximately 0.1mm (about 10 times the size of a red blood corpuscle), hence able to shoot comfortably thru the iris-hole of any human being.

The Lunerator takes a stream of moonlight (which consists of tiny amoeba-sized wafers of elemental light) and, using a half-silvered mirror, splits this photon stream in two and directs each half stream to a different observer. Now according to quantum theory, each photon wafer TAKES BOTH PATHS, so each observer in theory can compete to collapse the wave function of the same photon with God-only-knows-what effect on the subjective experiences of the participants in this peculiar new way of sharing lunar light.

A brand new improvement on the Lunerator is the SOLARATOR (called by some a Sol Entangler) which is similar in many respects to the Lunerator (same lateral coherence radius, for instance) with the added advantage of higher intensity and spectral separation. (Spectral purity increases the longitudinal coherence length, thereby making the photon pancakes thicker). Instead of using a half-silvered mirror to split the beam in two, the Solarator employs a mirrored diffraction grating provided by a blank DVD disk masked down to a working diameter of a few millimeters. As with the Lunerator, the two beams (now each a pure spectral color rather than cream-colored moonlight) are sent to two observers who compete to collapse the same photon's two-part wave function.

The Solarator uses diffraction to produce two coherent beams

Solarator in action.

 When I first conceived these various photon-sharing-based quantum intimacy machines, I believed that they were each an example of quantum entanglement. But that is not the case. Each of the photon wave functions in all of these three examples is factorable, hence not entangled. The only non-locality which these devices possess is a kind noted by Einstein early in the quantum game when he noticed that light from a single atom is supposed to emit a wave function which travels to all parts of the universe where at every moment it represents the probability of a photon being observed.

But when that photon is actually observed at one single place, the probability of it being observed somewhere else instantly drops to zero, seemingly violating the relativity rule that nothing can travel faster than light. It's this kind of non-locality that's operating in these three putative quantum intimacy machines. However, hundreds of labs all over the world daily produce truly entangled photon beams which might be utilized for the next generation of truly entangled preposterous devices. For example, Nicolas Gisin and his buddies at the University of Geneva are already experimenting with ways of entangling human retinas using entangled light. Perhaps the next quantum tantra breakthrough will occur accidentally tomorrow in some optics lab in Switzerland.

[After this post was published, Lynden Stone reminded me of conceptual artist Jonathon Keats's Quantum Marriage in which a committed couple ceremonially bath themelves in TRULY ENTANGLED LIGHT produced by sunlight passing thru a non-linear crystal. Thanks, Lynden.]

We hold these truths to be self-evident --

This direct, non-symbolic experience of Nature-from-inside

That the Universe is filled with billions of invisible conscious beings

That every sentient creature lives equally near to the mystery

That deep reality is waiting for us to ask the right question.

Erwin's Puss by Lynden Stone, housed at Centre for Quantum Dynamics, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

Four Preposterous Devices

Metaphase Typewriter Hardware

But will she Lunarate on the first date?

The goal of quantum tantra is to open up new connections with Nature, using insights derived from quantum physics, to join human minds with one another and with the myriad invisible minds around us. There are hints of quantum tantra in the works of Schopenhauer, Wordsworth, and many science-fiction stories, but few have so concisely expressed the aim of the quantum tantrika better than deep ecologist Ted Roszak in his book Where the Wasteland Ends:

Suppose this ability we have to find something of ourselves in people should be expanded so that the same personal transaction occurred with animal and plant.

Suppose that ability began to reach out further still, discovering a reality of inventive pattern and communicative vitality even in what we once regarded as the dense, dead stuff of the world.

Suppose the whole of creation began to speak to us in the silent language of a deeply submerged kinship.

Suppose we even felt urged to reply courteously to this address of the environment and to join in open conversation.

Ah yes, what then? In my search for radically new communication channels with Nature, I have conceived, built and tested four Preposterous Devices, four real quantum machines whose premises are so silly that they almost certainly will fail to work. However, if even one of these devices strikes gold, it would change our concept of the Universe in a big way. I am encouraged in my quixotic quest by the fact that although we know a good deal about how matter operates, we know almost nothing about the way our own consciousness works and are supremely ignorant about non-human forms of awareness. And each one of my Preposterous Devices, which include the Metaphase Typewriter, the Quantum Metaphone, the Stellerator and the Lunarator, depends for its alleged operation on the X factor of consciousness.

The purpose of the Metaphase Typewriter (now retired due to decay of its radioactive core) was to provide a communication channel for discarnate spirits. The premise behind its operation is that quantum processes are so Heisenberg-uncertain that they can be manipulated by spirits. (Perhaps you too are a spirit manipulating your body via quantum processes in your brain.) The Typewriter consisted of a radioactive source, a Geiger counter and a computer interface. The quantum-random Geiger pulses were used to drive a typewriter whose operation was biased by second-order English language statistics. (We got these statistics from an unclassified NSA publication.) The Typewriter was tested in many "high-psychic-energy" environments--most notably an all-day event in San Francisco to contact the spirit of Harry Houdini. As one might expect when dealing with random events, several amusing coincidences occurred in these experiments but never any prolonged clear text from the other side.

The Quantum Metaphone uses the same quantum-random hardware as the Typewriter but is hooked to a Votrax speech synthesizer and biased with second-order English speech statistics. Robert Anton Wilson described the output of the Metaphone as sounding "like a Hungarian reading Finnegans Wake". The one psychic we exposed to the Metaphone (Matthew Manning) found it irritating and opted to influence (unsuccessfully) the quantum text generator.

Both the Stellerator and the Lunarator are attempts to quantum-entangle two human minds by exposing their eyes to coherent light. (The silly premise here is that quantum-entangled retinas might lead to quantum-entangled brains which in turn might entangle the associated minds.) The intent is to experience new forms of intimacy not accessible to those still mired in classical ways of thinking about the world. Since looking at laser light might be dangerous, I decided to use safer and more natural sources of coherent light, namely the Moon and the stars.

Visible stars possess a "radius of coherence" of several feet or larger so that when you and your partner look up at a star (and are close together) you are standing inside that star's coherence radius. But you are also standing inside lots of other star's coherence discs. The Stellerator is merely a hollow tube which allows you and your partner's retinas to be excited by light from the target star and no others. Does communal consciousness ensue when two or more people look thru tubes at the same star? The Stellerator was first tested by a gang of happy amateurs immersed in an Esalen hot tub on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean under the starlit sky. No huge increase was observed in our already high level of conviviality.

The alleged effect of the Stellerator depends on the LARGE coherence radius of visible stars while the operation of the Lunarator depends on the SMALL coherence radius of moonlight. The coherence discs from the Moon are small enough to fit inside the light-adapted pupil of the human eye. In the Lunarator, moonlight is split by a half-silvered mirror so that half goes into his eye and the other half goes into hers. There is a sense in which you two are both competing for the same photons. I have built a version of the Lunarator but have not yet tested it. One a priori reason for doubting the possibility of Lunarator-induced empathy is that even if the Lunarator only induces a common mood (no signaling), it is easy to show that the presence or absence of such a mood could be used for signaling, and that signaling could, in principle, be superluminal.

I present these brief notes on Preposterous Devices to give some notion of the direction of research at the Quantum Tantric Ashram and hope that others may be inspired to develop even more preposterous quantum machines that will succeed in changing the consciousness of the experimenters in new and entirely unexpected ways.

Could you be
my quantum mate?
Let's go outdoors
and Lunarate.

Sun and Allan test out the Stellerator