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Feb. 10, 2007 - Art Bell

02:37:02

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Physics and Sci-Fi Science - Jennifer Ouelette

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	From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's time zone.
	So prolific and all covered ever so well by this program.
	Coast to coast and well beyond.
	Hi everybody, I'm Art Bell, here to escort you through the weekend.
	It is my honor and privilege to be doing so.
	It's going to be a very, very, very, very interesting weekend in more ways than one.
	Let me begin by announcing it is a free Streamlink weekend.
	What does that mean?
	Well, exactly what it says.
	We have Streamlink.
	Delivers this program on the web.
	And this weekend, it is free, free, free.
	In fact, eight free downloads that we have available.
	My five-hour show with Jim Sparks.
	Remember that one?
	The single best Abductee that I've ever interviewed.
	And we're going to interview Jim again, by the way.
	And Ghost2Ghost 2006, so you can get those and a lot more.
	You can sign up for our free streaming weekend on coast2coastam.com homepage.
	It runs through Monday at 6 in the morning.
	You can download 8 free shows, try out our numerous exciting features, which include classic shows, live broadcasts, Coast2Riders forum, Audio clips and our newest edition podcast with iTunes.
	That virtually automates the downloads of most recent coast-to-coast shows.
	So we can do nearly everything but wash your dishes!
	They're up to you.
	Alright, looking at the always ever-depressing news...
	New York sees 110 inches of snow in just 7 days.
	Oh my God!
	110 inches of snow in 7 days!
	With more than 8 feet of snow already on the ground, it's coming down sideways!
	So they're just... 110 inches of snow.
	Try and get that into your head.
	110 inches of snow.
	110 inches of snow.
	Most people are not 110 inches tall.
	That's a lot of snow.
	you General David Petraeus, I guess it is, took charge of U.S.
	forces in Iraq on Saturday.
	That's a no thank you job.
	Becoming the third commander in the war and declaring the American task now is to help Iraqis gain the time they need to save their country.
	And boy, that sounds like the Vietnamization of the war to me.
	Well, the Iraqization of the war to me.
	Barack Obama, hat in.
	He's going to run.
	Called up Abraham Lincoln's visage to remind us all that we can transform this nation.
	He told thousands shivering in the cold at the campaign's kickoff.
	Wonder how he'll do.
	So, we may have a woman running, and a black man running, and one of them may win.
	That would be a different walk for America for a while, wouldn't it?
	A Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Saturday blamed the United States for policy inciting other countries to seek nuclear weapons to defend themselves from, quote, an almost uncontained use of military force.
	He's talking about us.
	An almost uncontained use of military force.
	The locks at the Bahamas mansion where Anna Nicole Smith had been living, boy what a shock, huh?
	Changed for the second time in 24 hours Saturday.
	Depends on who ends up owning it, I guess.
	Several people obviously think they do.
	Three Italian women were brutally attacked while vacationing on a resort island off the coast of West Africa, dragged into the woods.
	Halted with stones, left for dead at the bottom of a hole, the sole survivor told all this to those who rescued on Saturday.
	Two pipe bombs sent late last month appear to be linked to a suspect who has been sending increasingly threatening letters to financial institutions since 2005.
	Now he calls himself... Why would a bomber call himself the Bishop?
	Or is that what we're calling him?
	The Bishop.
	R&B singer Gerald Levert's death last fall was the accident, was apparently an accident, or ruled that way, caused by a fatal combination, seems hard to get this accidentally, of prescription narcotics and over-the-counter drugs, combining to be, they say, Vicodin, Percocet, Darvocet, anxiety medication, Xanax, as well as two over-the-counter antihistamines.
	So a mistake.
	Alright, tonight's webcam is interesting.
	Tonight's webcam is a picture not of my new studio, as somebody... I wish, huh?
	Not my new studio, but tonight's webcam instead is Bob Bigelow.
	Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas.
	Now on Friday, Bob was kind enough to dispatch a helicopter.
	A helicopter, mind you.
	Over the hill and dale from Las Vegas to here in Pahrump, where it landed right behind my house, whisked my wife and I, by the way, she'd never been in a helicopter, so what an experience that was, and whisked us to Las Vegas to Bigelow Aerospace.
	Oh my God.
	I don't know what to say about this.
	Bob Bigelow has done it.
	Now, I'm going to arrange an interview mid-March Bob said mid-March would be good.
	And we're going to talk, because he has got sort of Little Houston there.
	That's what I'd call it.
	Little Houston.
	It is a complete manufacturing... preparation, manufacturing, testing, and then finally getting it to Russia where it flies.
	And as you know, he's got Genesis One already in orbit.
	And Genesis 2 is getting ready to go!
	Oh my God, the man has plans.
	I walked inside what's going to be a hotel.
	What's going to be a space hotel, eventually.
	I got to see things that other people just haven't seen and talked about things that Probably we can't talk about.
	I don't know altogether what we can and can't say, but I can tell you there are some big surprises coming up.
	That'll be mid-March.
	Bob Bigelow's an amazing man.
	He's a billionaire, and I've always acquitted him to the guy in Contact, because he really is very much like him.
	Bob's about my age.
	Or I'm about his, but depending on how you look at it, I guess I'm about his.
	He's got me by half a year or so.
	And he's a guy who's decided, well, you know, I've got all this money and so what the hell, let's see if the private sector can actually go to space.
	And you just, you can't even begin to imagine what he's going through with Washington.
	And I'll put them at the head of the list.
	And then, of course, other governments and bureaucracies to launch things into space.
	You just can't imagine!
	But you'll be able to after we do the program.
	So, what you see, I probably took about, I think, 85 photographs on the way, while there, and then on the way back.
	So, about 85 photographs, and that was just one photograph of Bob and I.
	Standing in the middle of his control room for Genesis 1 and then ultimately Genesis 2 and 3 and so forth.
	Yeah, he's got the whole control room right there.
	Now, there was not a pass going on, so you don't see controllers sitting at the seats.
	They only come in when there's a pass underway.
	He's got new facilities, S-band uplinks in Hawaii and Alaska.
	They made him paint the one in Hawaii green.
	Anyway, the bottom line to all this is that you're going to get to hear about a man who is probably going to turn what's done by the United States, or perceived done by the United States, on its ear.
	That'll be coming up in the middle of March.
	So that's the photograph up there.
	It was quite a, put it mildly, it was quite a day.
	I got to see The actual spacecraft itself, Genesis 2, which is getting ready to go.
	Alright, that much said, uh, this is gonna be a wild weekend because I intend to return to unscreened open lines.
	Unscreened open lines.
	Real unscreened open lines.
	That means you let them ring until I answer them.
	And then, you must immediately turn your radio off.
	In other words, as the phone is ringing, you must have your hand on the volume control of your radio, and then when you hear me say, hi, you're on the air, turn it off.
	Now, I know you won't, but I have to make that appeal.
	And then beyond that, it is your responsibility to have something intensely interesting to say or ask.
	Otherwise, your visitation will be abrupt.
	All right, we're going to take a break, and when we get back, a couple of quick little notes here, and then we'll launch into unscreened OpenLine.
	Stay right there.
	All right, here's the way it works.
	I'm going to give you the numbers.
	Let it ring until I answer.
	Now, if it rings for a while and then obviously disconnects you, you're going to have to redial.
	But the beauty of this is, if you do get through and you're paying for the call, You don't start paying for the call until I answer the phone, saves you a lot of money.
	So, west of the Rockies, 1-800-618-8255.
	East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	I can't do this like Ross.
	A wild card line, 1-800-501-4109.
	East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	I can't do this like Ross.
	A wild card line, 1-800-501-4109.
	First time caller line, 1-800-501-4109.
	For those of you way beyond, 1-800-893-0903.
	Now just a couple of items and we'll launch.
	I told you, I promised you that I would get back to you on the Gordon Michael Scallion experiment.
	893-0903. Now just a couple of items and we'll launch. I told you, I promised you that I
	would get back to you on the Gordon Michael Scallion experiment. Remember that Gordon
	Michael said, sleep with your head about 15 degrees from north.
	From magnetic north.
	And he had other suggestions of colors to filter sunlight with and music and so forth.
	And I wanted to let you know, apparently it works.
	One listener in North Carolina wanted to share the results of some of the suggestions given by Gordon Michael Scallion.
	I did not move my bed, but I positioned my head according to the instructions and these are the results within the first five minutes.
	My body felt like a battery, as if it would be recharged.
	It felt like currents of electric, of energy rather, running through my body.
	I felt a calmness and actually felt my heart rate change to a slower pace.
	Or this one.
	Art, I moved my bed the day after I heard Gordon.
	I do a lot of healing meditations on my back in bed.
	I've gotten more accomplished in the last few days than the previous several months.
	My energy feels like it's all going in the same direction, finally.
	Thank you, Gordon.
	Gordon.
	And I won't give any more than that.
	Anyway, the point is, I got many, many, many like that.
	Those are just samples.
	And apparently it works, so you're going to want to give it a try.
	If you didn't hear that show, go to the one with Gordon Michael Scallion, and check it out.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Extinguish your radio and proceed.
	Hello?
	Hello.
	Hi, my name's Wade Faust.
	I'm calling from... Okay, well, can we hold it?
	Turn your radio off, please.
	Oh, it's off.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Now, I'm a part-time listener.
	I don't get to listen all the time, but the reason I was calling was I heard about this huge explosion in Russia at the beginning of the century.
	Tunguska, I believe, right?
	Yeah, I'm trying to get clarification on it.
	I don't know exactly what happened, and I was wondering what you knew about it.
	Big rock, sir.
	Big rock.
	They think big rock.
	Actually, what they think is It was, I guess, a medium.
	A big rock actually would have wiped out the planet.
	So, medium-sized rock.
	I'll correct to that.
	And then an explosion in the atmosphere.
	That's what they think.
	But they don't have the rock.
	So, kind of like UFOs, you know, when you see a falling star, make a wish or whatever, you don't really know that it's falling anything.
	It's an unidentified falling something until it's recovered and you've got a steaming rock in your hands, right?
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hey Art, how you doing?
	I'm quite well, sir.
	Where are you?
	This is Ryan and I'm in Orlando, Florida.
	Okay, Ryan.
	after listening to the show last weekend when you had on, when we were talking about the UN report
	about global warming and all the stuff that you were talking about,
	and then right away on one of Georgia's shows earlier in the week, there's a scientist on there
	disputing everything that seems like most scientists now say about global warming.
	That's fine.
	It just makes me think sometimes, like I'm watching the news the other night
	and they tell us at 11 o'clock it's gonna be 32 degrees tonight,
	then you find out in the morning it only got down to 38.
	So if they can't predict the temperature for six hours from now,
	how do these guys really, if they have a grip on global warming?
	I'm thinking that instead of weather forecasting, sir, they should call it weather observing.
	Observing, yeah.
	That way we could say, currently it is, and you know they'd be right then.
	Yeah, that's the only time they're right, actually.
	It can be so confusing with someone, you know, I try to research as much as I possibly can, but you know, and I like to have both point of views, but it can be so confusing sometimes when you can hear someone who's an accredited researcher, you know, climatologist, say one thing, and then You know, the next night or the next day, someone who's an accredited researcher, climatologist, say the exact opposite.
	You're exactly right, sir.
	You're exactly right.
	Thank you.
	Look, the only thing that I hate is muzzling these people.
	Now, let me read you an interesting story.
	In the face of evidence agreed upon by hundreds of climate scientists, George Taylor holds firm.
	He does not believe that human activities are the main cause of global climate change and maybe it's going to cost him.
	He holds a rather unique title, State Climatologist.
	Now that's for Oregon, right?
	Hundreds of scientists last Friday issued the strongest warning yet, as the caller just said, on global warming, saying humans are very likely the cause.
	Most of the climate changes we've seen up until now have been the result of natural variations, according to Taylor.
	Taylor has held the title of state climatologist since 1991, when the legislature created a state climate office at OSU.
	The university created the job title, not the state.
	His opinions conflict not only with many other scientists, but with the state of Oregon's policies.
	So the governor wants to take that title away from Taylor and make it a position that he would appoint.
	Now, I don't agree with Mr. Taylor, as you well know.
	I think that the science with regard to global warming is now extremely well established.
	However, not allowing a healthy debate, whether it's somebody getting muzzled on that side of the debate, or somebody getting muzzled, and there's plenty of that happening on the other side of the debate, we all know that most of what's said about the climate, even when you say the word climate, or change, or global warming, or anything else, is just sort of outlawed.
	The whole damn thing is ridiculous.
	Let the debate go on on both sides.
	And just because Mr. Taylor thinks that it's a natural cycle, which it could be, and not the hand of man, is no reason to strip him of any title or anything else.
	Good Lord!
	This is America.
	Let's have raging debate about it until we're absolutely certain.
	And then we can still debate if you want to.
	That's what America's supposed to be all about, right?
	Let's go to a wild card line.
	The third, actually.
	You're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, this is William from Kansas City.
	How are you doing?
	I'm all right, William.
	Wow, Art.
	Long-time listener.
	I've called you one time, other time before, and we had talked a little bit about mass consciousness.
	And I wanted to ask you a little bit along those lines.
	Computer speeds are getting faster and faster and faster now.
	That's right.
	And I was wondering what you thought about computers being able to somehow decode the consciousness.
	Um, maybe when we get to a quantum computer.
	I don't think we're in that range right now.
	I think that even computers now, if what Per was doing was right, and I use it in the past tense because Per is closing down, I understand.
	Anyway, if what Per has been doing is correct, then apparently computers in some quantum way can sense mass consciousness or something about to happen even prior to the time when it's going to happen.
	It's really interesting, right?
	Absolutely.
	It's fascinating.
	But being in tune with it or, you know, in essence on the same vibrational frequency or whatever, not yet.
	Do you believe it's just Earth-bound phenomenon or do you believe it's a universal phenomenon?
	I tell you what, we're coming up on a break.
	I'm going to hold you over.
	How would that be?
	Thanks Art, sounds great.
	Alright, stay right where you are.
	Thanks Art.
	Break is what we're taking right now, so everybody stay right where you are.
	This is unscreened talk radio.
	It's called Coast to Coast AM.
	I'm Art Bell in the high desert.
	Not only can I not read them like Ross, but I can't even get them right.
	Wildcard line is area code 818-501-4109.
	First time caller line, area code 818, not 800, but 818-501-4721.
	Oh well.
	A Vancouver area company is set to publicly demonstrate a brand new quantum computer next week in what may be the first time the paradigm shifting technology leaves the research lab.
	Now it's not a monster, But it is a quantum computer.
	Listen very carefully.
	Such a system would be governed by the rules of quantum physics, as opposed to classic physics laws such as mechanics, gravity, and Einstein's theory of relativity.
	Quantum mechanics rule particle interactions below the atomic scale, where the conventional laws of physics just simply break down.
	The fundamental element of a traditional computer is a bit, like a switch.
	Can only be in the on or off state at any given moment, or hold a value of either 1 or 0.
	In contrast, the fundamental element of quantum computing, the quantum bit or qubit if you will, can exist in multiple states at the same time, so every qubit is simultaneously on and off with a value of 1 and 0.
	The ability of a qubit to exist in both the on and off state simultaneously is what, theoretically anyway, would make a quantum computer astronomically more powerful than those that exist today.
	The caller on the line, I'm sure, is going to be interested in that.
	When can I get mine?
	We'll be right back.
	Hey caller, did you ever, you're back on the air, did you ever see that movie where they had the pre-crime police?
	Oh, absolutely.
	Tom Cruise?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That was it.
	All right, so if this consciousness thing turns out to be real on a quantum computer, which I just told you about somewhere down the line, can essentially communicate with the consciousness stream, maybe we'll have the pre-disaster squads out there.
	In other words, we'll be able to know about things before they're going to happen and maybe even stop them.
	Wow, if that isn't a double-edged sword.
	Yeah.
	It's kind of hard to wrap your mind around being on and off at the same time in a quantum world.
	It is.
	The whole quantum world is hard to get your head around.
	Absolutely.
	It's astonishing.
	The human is kind of like a quantum thing.
	It has a conscious and unconscious kind of an on-off state, which kind of mirrors that.
	I suggested that to one of my guests, I think last week or the week before, and they said no, that quantum is going to be a step ahead of even human beings.
	That we're not, as far as he knew, that quantum.
	I think that remains to be seen.
	Did the report that you just read, did it say how many qubits the computer was?
	Its 16-qubit device exploits a new approach, putting it into a category known as an adiabatic quantum computer, AQC, such a system designed to solve a single type of problem only.
	So it's a very early device, but it is indeed actually available.
	So this is the beginning.
	Absolutely fascinating.
	Yeah, the beginning.
	One more quick question for you.
	Sure.
	About a couple years ago you had a guest on, he was, I'm not sure what his name was, but he was a shaman in training at the time, I guess, and he's also a shamanistic drummer, and he was in Africa, and he's the same guy who, he was out in the bush with the shaman he was with, and the shaman was looking off in one direction and he was doing something else, And he kind of shifted his direction in that area and saw something slip.
	It looked like slip in and out of reality.
	Do you know what I'm talking about?
	I really don't, but I certainly know what you're talking about.
	I've talked to any number of people who have seen things in essence slip in and out of what we call our reality.
	And that also reminds me that, uh, and tomorrow night we're going to be talking about the ranch.
	I guess you know about the ranch, right?
	That winds also back to Mr. Bigelow.
	There was this ranch in Utah where really weird things began to happen.
	And Mr. Bigelow, being Mr. Bigelow, bought, bought the ranch.
	And they put up all kinds of video monitoring and audio equipment and state-of-the-art everything you can name, including human beings with very advanced night vision equipment.
	And I recall an eyewitness, a very credible scientist, telling me on the phone that they watched something open up like an O and something crawl out of that O.
	And then the O dissipated.
	So, oh yes, I know what you're talking about.
	First time caller line, you're on the air, hello!
	Hey Art, what's going on?
	You, at the moment.
	Hey, I either have a shadow person story you'd like to hear or a UFO story.
	Well, which means the most to you?
	Well, I'll tell you about the shadow person story.
	This happened to me and my friend about a couple years ago.
	We were going on a bike ride by my old high school.
	And we were making our way to the parking lot, which is located at the back of the high school.
	And from the distance, I got to see this... Well, at first I thought it was just a person walking.
	And you know, the parking lot was... It's a pretty well-lit area.
	And as we got closer, I noticed that this wasn't a person, a regular person.
	The way he was walking was what struck me as odd.
	His knees were bent, and he kind of had his hands close to his mouth like he was smoking a cigarette, but I didn't notice any smoke coming out, or a cigarette lit for that matter.
	And then um... Were you seeing this being straight on or in peripheral vision?
	Yeah, straight on.
	About 20 feet.
	And um... I looked at his face and that's when I noticed that he didn't have any facial features.
	He didn't have a face.
	No, I couldn't make out any nose, any mouth.
	But otherwise, when you looked at the outline of the body, it was there as in a human being's outline.
	Just no details, right?
	No details.
	I couldn't even distinguish clothing, for that matter.
	It just looked like a black figure, and at first... Did it disappear, or how did it make its exit?
	Or did you just lose track?
	Here's what was odd.
	The whole time when we were looking at it, it didn't even, to me, it appeared like it didn't even notice us.
	It didn't even what?
	It didn't notice us.
	It didn't notice you?
	No, it just saw him with its own business, like we weren't even there.
	And then, um, you know, me and my friend were following the sidewalk as it started turning.
	And, um, you know, I had asked him, you know, if he seen, cause he was in front of me and I asked him, I was like, did you see that?
	And he was like, yeah.
	And I was like, well, what was that?
	What was that?
	And he was like, I don't know.
	I don't know. But then I told him, I was like, let's turn around and see if it's still there.
	And we turned around and it was gone. And the only way that it could have left was the way that we
	were going or the way that we had came in through. Okay.
	Well, again, that's very much like in some ways, like what I was talking about, what Les Culler was
	talking about. It may well be that there is something in another dimension and it may not
	actively be entering our dimension. It may not even know it's here. Though on occasion, when we
	get these reports of things that are kind of like a shadow people, if you want to call them that,
	when they notice that they have been seen, it scares the hell out of them. And they just take off like
	bunny rabbits or, and, or disappears.
	So what these things are, we have no way of knowing.
	It's just that everybody, so many people, keep seeing them.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hey, how you doing, Art?
	I am well, sir.
	How are you?
	Oh, great.
	Hey, I just wanted to compliment you on something that happened about three or four months ago.
	You had a gentleman on your show, and you guys were talking about global warming.
	Yes.
	And then he made a comment about the movie, The Day After Tomorrow.
	Uh-huh.
	And he said it was the worst movie he ever saw, and you kind of, like, gritted your teeth a little bit.
	Oh, that's quite all right.
	I didn't make the movie.
	Yeah, I know, but you remember that time.
	Not offhand, but... Oh, you don't?
	I thought that maybe you would have stuck something in your mind about that.
	No, I probably would have had a little doll and been sticking pins in them, you know?
	I know.
	I just wanted to compliment you on your composure on that, because I know you really liked that movie a lot, and so did I. Well, I did.
	I thought it was... Actually, sir, it kicked off everything.
	You know, it really kicked off Global warming in the minds of the American people, and look where we are now.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Let's just hope it did open some eyes.
	Well, sure it did.
	Sure it did.
	Thank you.
	I don't remember, honestly, I guess, having... You know what?
	Maybe I do.
	Maybe I do.
	And I do recall that now, that he mentions it, and I did just sort of let it roll off, and that's alright.
	You know, if he didn't like the movie, that's fine.
	I have had anti-global warming guests on the program, quite a few of them, actually, and it is my understanding George just had one.
	That's fine.
	I think that all of this needs to continue.
	The debate, as I mentioned, really, really needs to continue.
	It's not over until it's over.
	Although, the fat lady is out there warming up, that's for sure.
	No pun intended.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hey, Art, how you doing, buddy?
	Big fan.
	Thank you.
	Hey, I've got an incubus, succubus, old hag story for you, buddy.
	Incubus, succubus, old hag, they're all different, aren't they?
	You know what?
	I'm not sure which one it is, but I'm just letting you know it was one of them.
	I want to tell you, in 1986, I'm in St.
	Louis, laying in my apartment, I hear a noise in the other room.
	Now, I've been suffering from the sleep paralyzation thing for many years.
	My whole family suffers from that.
	Okay.
	I hear a noise in my living room, and I go, what is that noise?
	I think I must have left the TV on.
	And then I realize, well, I didn't leave the TV on.
	And then out of nowhere, I start to hear footsteps coming into my bedroom.
	Right then, I try to move, and I realize I'm paralyzed.
	I'm frozen in my sleep.
	I cannot get up.
	Just that I'm losing my eyes just to look to the doorway and I see this black figure and the only I can describe is like almost like smoke but black smoke but in the perfect figure of a four-foot black girl with long ragged scraggly black knotted hair.
	She comes and she crawls onto my bed on her hands and knees and I feel the bed How was it?
	Huh?
	That's not PC.
	on the bed and she called and stopped me and started to have her way and it was the craziest
	most insane thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life.
	Oh wait a minute then, you were raped.
	I didn't want to use that word but exactly, I was raped by whatever it is, the incubus,
	succubus, whatever.
	How was it?
	Huh?
	That's not PC.
	So it was horrible, huh?
	It was horrible and you know what I did?
	I called the police.
	I eventually broke out of being frozen for my sleep paralysis, and I reached out and I grabbed her between my hands, and it felt like when you take two magnets and hold them together, how do you get that pressure thing?
	Yikes.
	It felt like between my hands, and I threw it off of me, and she flew up into the corner of the room and sat up there and laughed at me.
	My God.
	How do you know all this was not some artifact of your sleep condition?
	I mean, you're really sure it happened, right?
	Totally positive it happened.
	I've been suffering from sleep paralysis for many years, and I'm always... I've been reading on the internet about sleep paralysis, and I'm always interested in when you guys do shows about it, but believe me, the people that have been involved in sleep paralysis, there's a total difference between dreaming and sleep paralysis hallucinations, or what they call hypnogamic hallucinations, or whatever they are called.
	It's two different worlds.
	It's not even nowhere near close to a dream.
	Alright.
	I'm with you.
	I believe you.
	We all know, pretty much, when we're asleep and when we're awake.
	I cannot recall a time when I've had a dream.
	Can you?
	And you didn't realize the moment you became awake that it was a dream.
	You always know immediately it was a dream.
	So if it really happened, it really happened.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Art?
	That would be me, yes.
	I've been listening to you for years.
	I'm a truck driver.
	One night a couple of years ago, I heard what I thought was your show.
	Sounded just like you, sounded just like the show, but it wasn't.
	It was a guy named Phil Hendry.
	He does an impersonation of you.
	Yes, that's right.
	Have you ever heard it?
	Oh, many, many times, yes.
	It's funny, he does a very, very funny routine.
	He's got me down cold.
	Yeah, he does.
	He sounds just like you.
	But I got a big kick out of it, and I thought you would, too.
	Actually, I think Phil is still doing them, actually.
	Well, I think he retired about a month ago, I believe.
	In that case, he wouldn't be.
	Did he really retire?
	Yes, he did.
	Phil Henry retired?
	I had no idea.
	Yeah, the Premier wouldn't give him the money that he wanted, and he tried to go into television, and I don't think that's working for him, but maybe he'll come back.
	He called George one night.
	George had Richard C. Hoagland on, and it was Richard's birthday.
	Are you sure it was Phil Henry?
	Yeah, he called in pretending to be Walter Cronkite to tell him happy birthday, and Richard fell for it.
	George knew it.
	George was in on it.
	He totally fooled Richard.
	I had no idea Phil Henry retired.
	Wow.
	That's amazing.
	That's absolutely amazing.
	Alright, we continue with unscreened, totally unexpected, who knows what's going to happen, and that's the truth, open lines.
	First time caller line, you are on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	This is live?
	Well, you sound live to me.
	Hi, actually, yeah.
	You're talking about the quantum computers?
	That's right.
	What amazes me is the possibilities here.
	I'm speaking mostly because this is something that I don't really understand, but if this processor, what's processing this machine, obviously it's subatomic, it's on a strictly energy level, If we can manipulate this to where things can be both one and zero, or on and off at the same time, could we then... the possibility of something like, you know, the Matrix, or not necessarily a fictional or fake existence, but exist somehow in, you know, multiple places at the same time.
	Yes, yes.
	A quantum computer might eventually have the power to create a reality.
	Exactly.
	Yeah, that's absolutely correct.
	It might have that power, and that would be a mighty big power, wouldn't it?
	To be able to create and maintain a reality for all those who wished it, or worse yet, maybe some who didn't wish it.
	Well, that too, and it also leads to questions like, In a sense of manipulating our own consciousness, which is in and of itself an energy, and somehow transferring that energy to this same reality in order to, you know, the possibilities are just endless there.
	They are.
	And it looks like this world is directly ahead.
	I mean, when you get a news story that says the first quantum computer, albeit kind of like a Commodore 64 or something, by comparison, is here and available to be purchased now, well, we've all watched what's happened to regular computers, so you just know in the next, well, I don't know what, next decade or less, That we'll be able to, well, I'm not even going to venture a guess.
	It may be that in the next decade we'll have that matrix you just talked about.
	Yeah, I see it as a total possibility.
	A good one or a bad one, sir?
	It's like a previous caller said.
	It's a two-edged sword.
	It's a double-edged blade.
	Pretty much all technology is like that.
	Yes, it is.
	It's going to be another one of those things that, you know, could very well be the same way, and just on a philosophical level.
	No, you're absolutely right.
	And maybe the next war that we fight, we'll never fight.
	In other words, well, let's just take a country, for example, Iran.
	Instead of fighting a war with Iran, we simply turn on our quantum computer, we program it properly, We aim that programming properly, and everybody in Iran, including the leaders, walk around with a frown on their face, knowing absolutely that they're in a post-war world, a post-war world in which they lost.
	This is the way the world will end.
	I think they said it three times at the beginning of the stand, with this music in the background.
	I wonder how many of you remember that?
	What an incredible movie that was, The Stand.
	I just had an opportunity recently to watch it all over again, and it was every bit as good.
	This is the way the world will end.
	It may well.
	Jennifer Ouellette is a recovering English major who stumbled into science by Writing, that is, quite by accident, as a struggling freelance writer in New York City.
	She is the author of Black Bodies and Quantum Cats, Tales from the Annals of Physics and the Physics of the Buffyverse.
	She is Associate Editor of APS News, a monthly publication of the American Physical Society, writes for the American Institute of Physics TV project, Discoveries and Breakthroughs in Science, As well as its inside science news service.
	Jennifer is equally adept at writing about science in the popular press, most notably for Discover Salon and New Scientist.
	Wow!
	She has written about such varied topics as the acoustics of Mayan pyramids and New York City subways, fractal patterns in the paintings of Jackson Pollock, the science behind architectural arches and the precarious pitfalls of pseudoscience.
	A strong advocate of public outreach and education in the sciences and critical thinking in general, Jennifer presides over the popular science blog Cocktail Party Physics.
	Coming up in a moment, Jennifer Ouellette.
	You know, I would say in the sciences, probably by a ratio of about 9 out of 10, it's men, not women.
	Jennifer, welcome to the program.
	Thanks for having me.
	It really is about that ratio, Jennifer.
	Yes, I know, particularly in the hard sciences.
	Why?
	Why?
	Well, there's a lot of different reasons.
	A lot of it is, I think, cultural.
	A lot of it is the fact that, you know, basically it's been a male-dominated field for a very long time.
	Certain ways, you know, certain traditions and things are in place there that kind of, you know, favor a male culture.
	Women bring something different, I think, to the table.
	Our entire society bends it that way.
	Girls play with dolls, boys play with... Yeah.
	I wonder why that is.
	Does that really need to completely change for us to get as many women in science as men?
	No, I don't think so.
	I think that, you know, women might approach the subject differently.
	They might think in a different way.
	But that doesn't mean they can't bring something valuable to it without sacrificing specifically what makes them uniquely female.
	Oh, I completely agree.
	Completely agree.
	I just finished reading, and we were talking in the first hour about quantum computers.
	There's an announcement of a company in British Columbia that is releasing a quantum computer, albeit a very early one, but it's an actual quantum computer.
	Right, 16 qubits apparently.
	That's it.
	Now, that marks sort of a, I guess a demarcation line or something, doesn't it?
	It's the beginning of something very new?
	I think so.
	I've kind of been poking around the physics blogs trying to find out a little bit more about the announcement.
	I think a lot of people are waiting to actually witness the demonstration and see how well it works.
	There's been a little bit, I think, of hype in terms of it, but it's certainly a very, very important first step.
	I mean, 16 qubits of a working quantum computer is a very, very big advance.
	One has to wonder, when we get fully into the quantum computer world, if we are able to, and I guess we're going to, what it's going to mean.
	If you had a very, very, very powerful quantum computer, There are all kinds of things to wonder about.
	For example, might it be possible for a quantum computer to retrieve answers and information from, for example, another dimension?
	That I couldn't answer.
	That is intriguing.
	I don't think that's anywhere near the focus of what they're doing.
	They're just trying to basically solve very difficult math problems, what's known as NP problems.
	That's interesting in and of itself, because from what I understand, those sorts of problems are used in security, computer security systems.
	So if it became suddenly very, very easy to hack those problems, I mean, we might have a whole new issue of computer security ahead of us.
	In other words, what we consider to be unbreakable security right now would just completely break down.
	I would think so, yes.
	Oh boy.
	I don't think Orion will be able to do that.
	It's still a very rudimentary prototype, but it's certainly an important announcement, and I know a lot of people are looking to it with a great deal of anticipation.
	You write about very interesting things, and the first question is relevant.
	There is physics, I guess, in shows like Star Trek, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer and things like that?
	Monsters?
	Magic?
	How do you get there?
	And where do you get physics?
	I get a lot of skepticism, particularly from scientists, when they first hear the title of the book.
	But my argument, basically, is we're dealing with an actual universe.
	It's a fictional universe.
	But any time, when you're creating a fictional world, particularly in science fiction, that universe has to have rules.
	And the Buffyverse is no different from Star Trek or any other science fiction universe in that it does set up a certain amount of rules and physical laws.
	And while they can be bent and sometimes broken for purposes of the plot, in general, they do try and follow those rules.
	And so I just kind of use that to say, well, how does the Buffyverse work and what are some of the analogies that we can draw to our own world?
	What are the differences?
	What are the similarities?
	You know, and why are those differences there?
	Is it likely that there are other universes?
	That's a really intriguing question that a lot of different physicists are working on.
	There is a lot of talk about a multiverse.
	Stephen Hawking has talked about it.
	Basically, the thinking goes that if our universe started as kind of a random fluctuation in the space-time foam and then just sort of spontaneously inflated, then that opens up the possibility that somewhere along the line, another little random fluctuation might have spontaneously inflated.
	There could be another universe.
	Because separate universes don't really interact, just that that seems to be a law of physics, it's impossible for us to even know whether or not they exist.
	I mean, we could be one of many just kind of floating in space.
	And that's certainly an intriguing notion in current thinking in cosmology.
	Okay.
	Are we really sure?
	that there are not some conditions in which they do interact.
	They're kind of strangely, uniquely, and if they do, it certainly would explain a lot
	of the inexplicable.
	Well, I don't know if it explains the inexplicable, but it certainly is an intriguing notion,
	and it depends, I guess, on the model of the multiverse that you're looking at in the Hawking
	model, where you essentially have a baby universe budding off, connected by tiny wormholes.
	The minute you postulate the existence of a wormhole, then you've got the possibility of a connection.
	There's a lot of very good physics reasons why wormholes just don't last very long, and makes them almost impossible to reverse, you know, for anything material to go through them.
	But it certainly is an intriguing notion.
	Well, that was a whole mode of travel in Contact, of course.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	In fact, Kip Thorne was a Caltech physicist who came up with the prototype for the wormhole that was used in Contact.
	Basically, by postulating, well, if we had this form of negative energy that could hold it open long enough to get something through.
	Very, very interesting concept.
	We have yet to even find any example of negative energy or negative matter anywhere in the universe, but it's certainly an intriguing notion.
	Was that one wormhole, or was that a series of wormholes in contact?
	It seemed like a series.
	I think it was just one, but it's hard to tell because they take liberties, of course.
	I haven't read the book in a very long time.
	I saw the movie recently, and how you portray something on screen is sometimes very different from how you would do it in a book.
	Well, when they did it on screen, it appeared that she would come out of one and sort of look around, and things would be different.
	The stars would all be different.
	And then, boom!
	She'd be in another one.
	Well, that's true.
	That's true.
	I had forgotten about that.
	Yeah.
	I mean, certainly, if you can create one wormhole, then you can create more than one.
	It's just it takes a huge amount of energy.
	A lot of coordination.
	A lot of coordination.
	There's a whole lot of, you know, just Really advanced stuff that needs to happen in order to make it happen, but it's also what makes it such great science fiction.
	Okay, you have compared universes to the surface tension in soap bubbles?
	Oh, I haven't.
	It's actually a paper that was published last year in Physical Review Letters.
	I don't know if you're familiar, I'm sure you are, with the accelerating universe, the fact that the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up.
	And that's due to, they believe, something called dark energy and that's sort of, there's a number that they call the cosmological constant that is essentially a kind of tension pervading the universe that's kind of forcing it to speed up in its expansion.
	So there's a husband and wife cosmology team who have come up with this sort of theoretical model based on the surface tension in soap bubbles.
	Bubbles have that spherical shape because the surface tension along them essentially forces them to adopt a shape that has the
	minimum surface area possible.
	And it's somewhere between a sphere and a cube, essentially.
	The trouble with soap bubbles is they burst.
	Yes, exactly, and we do not want that to happen to our universe.
	It's not suggested that it could, is it?
	No, no, it's not, thank goodness.
	I mean, obviously the analogy is not perfect, but it is very, very interesting,
	some of the similarities that they've found.
	They're not saying it's just like our universe, they're saying that we can learn something by conducting
	these experiments using a particular kind of soap bubble, because, I mean, it
	gets very complicated, but it essentially ties into one of the competing theories
	for the expansion of the universe.
	Okay, well what this expansion apparently means is that somewhere in the dark future, or pun intended I guess I ought to say, we're going to be entirely alone.
	In other words, somewhere we're going to be able to look into the night sky and the stars are going to be literally gone.
	Yeah, that's a really terrifying thought to me because I've always loved looking at the stars and essentially I believe that that's That's kind of what cosmologists are saying.
	I mean, you know, if the universe expansion is accelerating, then what's going to happen is things are going to just get farther and farther apart until to the point where the light from the stars will not be able to reach us.
	It will just have too far to travel, and we will be in darkness.
	And the universe will become a very cold, dark, lonely place.
	What about our nearer neighbors?
	Mars, the other planets, our own Sun?
	Uh-huh.
	Well, chances are, by the time all that happens, the sun... I believe this is well after the lifetime of our sun, so actually, chances are we won't even survive.
	But when our sun dies, we die.
	In fact, even before our sun dies, it's basically going to puff out and engulf us, so we'll probably die in a fiery death before we ever have a chance to be all alone in the cosmos.
	I spent a day on Friday with Robert Bigelow.
	He's Bigelow Aerospace.
	He's already got one private satellite in orbit getting ready to launch number two.
	And one of the points he was making, I actually traveled to Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas, he said we're going to have to eventually Figure a way to get off this planet, because one way or the other, it's going to die.
	Or we're going to die, and it's going to keep going.
	One of the two.
	We're going to need to be able to colonize Mars and other planets, or else.
	He's got a point.
	In fact, there's a physicist at Columbia named Michio Kaku who would take it one step further, who thinks that we need to actually find a different universe.
	That's right.
	I know him very well.
	He says, in fact, let's run some of that by you.
	I'm sure then you've heard his theory about Type 1, Type 0, 1, 2, and 3, and so forth.
	Yes.
	Yes, I have.
	Would you generally agree with that?
	I'm in no position to argue with someone that smart.
	But yeah, I kind of do.
	And I also agree that we're basically Type 0 or less than 0 at this point in terms of what might be possible.
	But I actually really enjoyed reading his books, particularly the most recent one, Parallel Worlds.
	It kind of rehashes some stuff from his earlier book, but he's got some really great stuff there about the possibility of seeding a baby universe, of growing our own baby universe and seeding it.
	And I love that.
	It was actually the basis for a great sci-fi novel by Greg Benford called Cosm.
	I loved it as well.
	Now, what he said, though, that, you know, I really pressed him to the wall.
	He said we're Type 0.
	We're on the cusp of being Type 1.
	But when you really do press him to the wall, he said the odds of going from 0 to 1, making it, surviving the discovery of Element 92, are almost 0.
	Yeah, I'd trust his odds on that.
	Which is too bad, because I would actually really like to see some of that, to play around with some of those ideas.
	It is too bad.
	Yeah.
	Now, when you look around the world right now, there's lots of evidence that that seems to be right.
	In what sense?
	Well, more and more people either getting the bomb, or wanting the bomb, or working really hard on getting the bomb.
	Uh-huh.
	Now, Eventually, somebody's going to use it.
	Yes, that's true.
	And I guess that might even explain something else that bothers me.
	Though it might be young in the eyes of some, SETI has been looking for a signal for a long time.
	And gee, maybe it's true, Jennifer, that societies, or worlds, That life is fairly common and it comes along and it gets to a certain point and then destroys itself.
	And if that is true, then we wouldn't hear from them.
	Probably not.
	Maybe that's why we have not heard from them.
	Well, there's probably a lot of reasons.
	I'm trying to think.
	I know I've heard something about this.
	There's a physicist who basically, I mean, his premise is if there was, you know, if there was life anywhere near us, then, you know, the proof would have been that we would have heard from them by now.
	I mean, he basically calculated the odds and the likelihood of it.
	That doesn't mean that, you know, there aren't, you know, other universes and, you know, maybe, you know, people like, or beings like us, you know, in those, but again, we're postulating that there's no possibility of communication or interaction between those.
	So, we would have no way of knowing.
	We might as well be millions of light years away from them.
	Huh.
	It feels awfully lonely.
	I know!
	The cosmos is a big, cold place.
	I'd be so happy if we suddenly got any kind of a signal.
	Anybody!
	Anywhere out there!
	I wonder how it would change the world, and if it would really change the world if we made contact of some sort.
	Well, it's funny because that's obviously been the premise of a number of science fiction movies.
	Almost never good, with the possible exception of close encounters of the third kind.
	I'm not sure, but I do know that given human nature and how we react to the unknown and the unfamiliar and what's not, you know, we're rather xenophobic even among our own kind.
	I shudder to think of what we might, how we might react to something that's nothing like us.
	I do too.
	Mostly we shoot first and ask questions later.
	Exactly.
	You know, we react in fear to what's unknown.
	Mm-hmm.
	Even governments.
	In other words, not just individuals.
	Individuals, of course, do that with the unknown, but so do governments.
	And I don't, for one second, doubt that our government would take a pot shot at something that it thought was in its airspace that ought not be.
	Oh, yeah.
	And I'm quite sure that's happened.
	Oh?
	Well, you may be referring to something from another nation, or do you think that there have been unknowns from elsewhere?
	Oh, I'm sure what I meant was that accidents like that would happen.
	Sorry.
	Okay.
	There are a lot of things here on Earth that are inexplicable.
	Certainly, science can't take a bite out of them, even though they seem to be really going on.
	Things like telepathy, things like, well, you know, there are all these experiments that have been going on at Princeton, for example.
	Yes, and they just closed the ESP lab there.
	How sad is that?
	Well, you know, I really kind of admire this guy for sticking to his guns.
	I think he's like 76 and he's just tired of fighting it.
	Yeah, I've got a quote here somewhere.
	I've actually got the story, but what he basically said was, if they don't believe by now, they're not going, they never will.
	Right, right.
	Oh, here it is.
	If people don't believe us after all the results we've produced, then they never will.
	And with that, he's closing the doors.
	Well, I think he's leaving it to others to kind of follow in on his work.
	Although, I have to say, you know, Their results, we're looking at, you know, two or three parts out of a 10,000 kind of thing.
	They're statistically not very significant.
	I mean, I would have liked to have seen a little more solid data in that respect.
	Well, at 76 years of age, he deserves to go rest for a while and have fun.
	All right, Jennifer, hold tight.
	Jennifer Ouellette is my guest.
	I promise you, it's going to be a very interesting night.
	From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
	Here I am, Jennifer Ouellette is my guest.
	She's written a book called The Physics of the Buffyverse, and we'll get to what the Buffyverse is like, as well as a lot more.
	We'll be back in a moment.
	Once again, Jennifer Ouellette.
	Jennifer, welcome back.
	Thanks.
	Alright, so telepathy, telekinesis, all of these interesting things that have been experimented with and looked at.
	I take it you don't really believe human beings can do them, or do you?
	Not in the way we conventionally think of it.
	I mean, it's a very attractive thought.
	I mean, and it makes perfect sense.
	It seems like it should exist because we communicate, you know, our cells communicate electrically.
	Brain signals, you know, electrochemical signals and things like that can actually have very positive, you know, measurable physical effects on the body.
	The problem is when you're going, you know, trying to go from brain to brain, it just You'd need a very, very strong signal, and you'd need a very, very precisely tuned frequency, and it just would not... You'd need something extra.
	However, I'm very fond of quoting Arthur C. Clarke.
	He was basically saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, which I think is a wonderful quote.
	And that actually got me thinking about what it would take to do something.
	I mean, we communicate through invisible radio waves all the time.
	And with the current wireless phenomenon, you know, certainly it looks like, you know, it might be possible one day to maybe have something like this, but it would be technologically based.
	Basically, you would need a transmitter and a receiver in every person and everything, and then you might then be able to have this give and take.
	That's not really so far out.
	Is it, in other words, some sort of amplification for your brainwaves and then some sort of transmission and reception capability?
	Exactly.
	In fact, they're already experimenting with basically implants on the motor cortex of the brain.
	They've done it in monkeys.
	They've actually worked with it in people who are paralyzed so they can move cursors on a computer screen with their thoughts.
	These are all very much in the early prototype stages, and there's a lot of issues.
	Chief among them being biocompatibility, because these things tend to degrade over time, and it can be very life-threatening.
	But it's a really interesting concept.
	I don't believe in telepathy or telekinesis in any kind of magical sense, but I do believe that we could get to the point where technologically we could achieve something that looks like that.
	It's just that it would be based in science as opposed to magic.
	I wonder if there are going to be a lot of ethical issues involved in that.
	Possibly.
	Possibly.
	What did you have in mind?
	What were you thinking?
	Well, I don't know.
	There's a lot of people out there who are scared to death of implants and to them it is, believe me, it is the number of the beast.
	It is the end of life as we know it.
	Well, that's again fear of the unknown.
	When barcodes first came out, people freaked.
	I mean, I remember, you know, I grew up in the 1970s and Everyone was convinced that we would all be required to get a barcode on the forehead or the back of the hand, and that would be the number of the beast.
	Don't rule that out!
	In other words, in your hand, instead of having to have a card, it would be a lot more secure to just sort of wave your hand over the sensor.
	Yes, and they are experimenting with RFID tags, you know, implanted sort of things.
	I mean, it's not all that far out.
	Yes, I can see how that would make some people uncomfortable.
	Either you're comfortable with the technology or not.
	But eventually, I think people get used to it.
	We don't think anything about, you know, supermarket barcoding anymore.
	No.
	And I often wonder, you know, when they're sitting there ringing up 120 things that you just bought, And you're not paying... I don't pay attention.
	I really don't pay attention.
	I'm sure there are a lot of people who do, but you've got to wonder, are they really getting the price right?
	Right.
	I don't pay attention either.
	You know if it's way off and suddenly you've got a $2,000 grocery bill, but you have no way of knowing otherwise.
	Well, right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Well, let's wander further out again.
	We are told That the beginning of everything was this great explosion, this giant explosion that emanated from something even smaller, perhaps, than a cork that has become all that is now.
	Right?
	That sounds pretty right, yeah.
	It sounds right, in other words, what they say.
	That is the working theory, but the truth is that, you know, We have this Big Bang, but physicists are still kind of, you know, toying around with it, trying to figure out, you know, what was there before the Big Bang?
	I mean, why did these particular conditions exist that gave rise to the Big Bang?
	And we don't actually know that.
	Doesn't that violate everything we think we know, in a way?
	In what sense?
	How could all that is, that so much mass, come from something with virtually no mass?
	Well, but it came from something with a whole lot of energy.
	And, I mean, Einstein's E equals MC squared is basically about energy mass conversion.
	All of that stuff was basically created, you know, from these primordial, from this big primordial explosion.
	You had this very hot, dense environment.
	Surely you're familiar, I'm sure, with the notion of virtual particles.
	Oh, yes.
	Yeah.
	And basically you had these, you know, matter-antimatter particle pairs popping out of existence.
	What scientists don't understand is that, for some reason, matter won.
	There was a slight discrepancy.
	There should have been equal numbers of each, because everything we know about physics is, you know, that it's symmetrical in terms of, you know, matter, anti-matter, energy conservation, and all that sort of thing.
	For some reason, a very slight asymmetry occurred, so that all the anti-matter was wiped out and there was a little bit of anti-matter, and that literally did become everything we see around us today.
	And I agree with you, it is just mind-boggling.
	That is, in fact, to the best of scientific knowledge, what happened.
	Is it indistinguishable from magic?
	Oh, I don't think so.
	I mean, it's an actual mechanism.
	It's something that, you know, we can actually see the remnants in the cosmic microwave background radiation, you know, of these explosions.
	So we actually do have a record of it, an experimental record of what happened All those billions and billions of years ago.
	So, in that respect, it's not magic.
	I mean, magic is something that we don't understand, that we think just kind of happens.
	And I don't think that's the case at all.
	We might not know the answer, but there's no doubt in my mind that someday we will.
	And that in turn will raise even more questions, because that's the beauty of science.
	Almost every scientist that I have the honor to interview doesn't believe in God.
	How about you?
	I call myself an agnostic.
	I'm a little unusual in that I had a very religious upbringing.
	I was raised by evangelical Christians.
	So I actually do have a very extensive knowledge of the Bible, and I have a great deal of respect for people who believe, for people who have faith.
	I don't confuse it with science.
	To me, those are two very, very different things.
	And I finally just had, I think, to get to the point where I could be honest with myself and say, you know, this really isn't real to me the way it is, say, for my parents.
	It is real to them.
	I believe it's real to them.
	For me, it just isn't.
	And I feel that what's more important is that you be honest with where you stand and that you don't disparage people who maybe believe differently from you.
	Oh, not at all.
	Not at all.
	But with respect to the actual question, the answer is no?
	No.
	There is no proof of it, and I don't have the kind of faith that can go without, you know, at least some shred of evidence.
	Everything I think that is there can be explained scientifically.
	You know, that there's an actual natural mechanism, there's really no need for a God.
	It doesn't mean there isn't one, you know, and we could all be surprised and find that there is one.
	In general, I'm not a fan of organized religion or theology, even though I might, you know, acknowledge that there might be a God.
	Well, I'm in the same camp as you.
	I kind of, I don't know, I kind of think there might be a God, because somehow or another it makes sense to me, but that there could be a much larger intelligence than ourselves, that there could be intelligent design.
	However, a lot collides with it in science, and so I guess I'm kind of agnostic, but I guess I wish I believed, and I sort of envy the comfort that's given to those who do absolutely have faith.
	There's a lot of comfort there.
	Yes, yes there is, and I very much agree with you on that.
	I mean, part of me would like to believe, but if I'm really honest with myself, I have to say that I don't.
	And that's something that, you know, obviously coming from my background, I had to come very much to terms with.
	Well, somebody said that death is a little slice, or sleep is a little slice of death.
	And when you sleep without dreaming, or conscious remembrance of dreaming, it's not so bad.
	So if death is just kind of like sleep without dreams, wouldn't be all that bad, I guess.
	Well, and we wouldn't know the difference.
	To me, the most frightening thing about death is just not existing.
	That's right.
	It's impossible for us to conceive of that, because our universe is us.
	I mean, the world does revolve around us in terms of our own psyche.
	Okay, is there nothing in your science background that says, well, maybe consciousness, which certainly we don't fully understand yet, Is a bunch of electrons racing around doing their job and maybe at the moment of physical death there is some sort of continuation.
	It's possible.
	It is, you know, because I mean if we accept that matter is neither created or destroyed, you know, our bodies may die but something must continue and I think that's kind of the root at the idea of, you know, the soul or whatever.
	I mean people just have, it's just impossible for them to conceive of the fact that That animating force doesn't go somewhere.
	But you're right.
	We don't know the first thing about consciousness, really.
	We can't emulate it in the lab.
	Our best artificial intelligence doesn't even come close.
	You're right.
	And when we go to an island somewhere, or the deepest reaches of some continent where nobody's ever been before.
	We always find the natives worship something.
	So there must be something in our brains that demands that we worship something.
	I've often wondered about that.
	There are certainly... I think that we need to understand and we need an explanation for things and there is something in human nature that just seems to just want something bigger to take care of it.
	That created everything.
	Certainly, if you look at mythologies from the world over, and this is my English major background talking, you see a lot of the same motifs and themes.
	You actually do see Christ-like figures pop up over and over again, traveling to the underworld and coming back, and things like that.
	You have the whole voyage of the hero that Joseph Campbell talked about.
	And you see it in every single culture.
	So there clearly does seem to be some very broad, universal human themes.
	Again, that's a very, very nebulous area of science.
	It's really tough to get hard data on that.
	What about the Bible?
	There's so much in there, all these miracles that occurred, and then so much documentation found hither and yon to seem to back it up.
	It's obvious something happened.
	Yeah, I mean, I tend to look at the... I mean, I find the Bible very fascinating.
	When I was a kid, I loved reading it.
	The stories are fantastic, and the poetry is gorgeous.
	As a literary work, it's stunning.
	The problem, I think, is that these are very, very old texts.
	By the time all these stories are written down, they've been passed orally for hundreds of years, if not longer.
	And we all know that things get lost in the translation.
	So there might be some element of truth in these things, but whether they were actual miracles, I'm not so sure.
	I personally would love to see a neurological explanation for glossolalia, for speaking in tongues.
	Uh-huh.
	So would I. I know scientists are working on trying to understand what is happening in the brain at that time.
	I know when I was growing up I saw it all the time.
	I was never capable of it.
	Some people do seem to be able to do this and I would like to know what's going on in their brains that enables them to do that.
	Is there any science looking at that?
	Actually, there is.
	There is.
	It seems to be a neurochemical process.
	They've actually done brain images of people while they were speaking in tongues to try and figure out what's going on.
	I haven't read up on those studies, so I can't speak to what they found.
	I don't think they were particularly conclusive, but they did have some interesting, you know, interesting, you know, ideas floating about.
	Planning a blog post on it at some point in the future, because I find it very, very interesting.
	If you were given the option, Jennifer, to continue to exist, but inside a processor, as opposed to inside a body, Would you take that option over death?
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not sure I would.
	I like the body.
	I like food.
	You know?
	I like sex.
	I like all these various things that make us, you know, that tie us uniquely to this earth.
	There's actually an X-Files episode that was written by William Gibson where, you know, a young couple did just that.
	They basically uploaded their consciousness into a computer, you know, to kind of live forever, be united forever in that.
	I don't know.
	I think that one of the beautiful things of being human is that we do have this animal, higher nature, this mind and body kind of connection going.
	And I would really be loath to lose that.
	Very well explained.
	Well, I'm not sure that we're all that far from it.
	The day may come when, you know, with these new computers and all the rest of it, one day we may be able to virtually upload ourselves and I wonder if everything would go, if our consciousness would, for example, go.
	I mean, we can copy a computer program and we get a precise copy.
	So, wouldn't there come a time when we could virtually copy the brain?
	Well, we know so little about the brain that, not in my lifetime, would be my guess, although who knows the way computer technology is advancing.
	But that would raise a very important issue.
	I mean, we talk in genetics about the dangers of cloning, and we've managed to clone sheep and all these various things.
	We haven't yet managed to clone a human, but certainly people are worried about that.
	Are you sure?
	Pardon?
	Are you sure?
	No, but I haven't heard any reports on it, and I'm going to go with what's in the literature.
	Well, if they did it, I have this feeling they might not report it for all kinds of good reasons.
	And if they can clone animals, I don't think it's that much of a reach to clone a human.
	Is it really, technologically?
	Well, I'm not a geneticist.
	Probably not.
	I would guess that there's probably some minor tweaking that has to be done, but I also think that there's a real Barrier, you know, that some part of it doesn't want to go there.
	And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
	I personally would not want to see my consciousness cloned.
	I like my consciousness to be individual.
	I'm not sure your consciousness would be cloned.
	I think there would be a consciousness in the new you, but it would be a separate consciousness.
	Interesting.
	Maybe.
	Well, we know so little about it.
	You know, I haven't read enough Daniel C. Dennett to really know.
	We are getting ready, I think, in the world now to fire up a particle accelerator, right?
	Yes, the Large Hadron Collider.
	What do you think will happen?
	Well, I actually, you know, I'm not sure they're going to find evidence for extra dimensions and some of the more exotic things they're looking for, but I think there's a very good chance we'll see evidence for the Higgs boson, which is what essentially gives Adam's Mask gives things their mass, why we weigh so much, essentially.
	And as opposed to, you know, yes, we eat a lot of cheeseburgers, but why we have any mass at all basically comes from the Higgs boson.
	Beyond that, it'll be very interesting to see what happens if they get to higher and higher energies.
	And certainly, they actually just announced plans for the Next Generation Linear Collider, which is intended as kind of a complement to the LHC.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah, yeah.
	An international group, I think, in Beijing just released a report.
	It's going to be huge, it's going to be expensive, and it's intended scientifically to complement what's going to happen at the LHC.
	Ideally, I'd like to see some evidence, pro or con, for something like, say, string theory, which has been really criticized heavily in recent years for not having any experimental evidence to back it up.
	I heard Brian Green speak and he was basically saying, look, even if we're wrong, we'd like to know we're wrong.
	We'd like to test it and have evidence for or against.
	So if I had a wish list for what would come out of the LHC and subsequently the ILC, it would be something like that.
	I would like to, you know, at least get some evidence one way or the other, whether we're on the right track.
	Do you believe that string theories, when they fire these up, let me rephrase that, do you think that careers will fall or rise based on what happens with the accelerators?
	I don't necessarily think that's the case.
	I think that the string theory backlash has already begun in earnest, but I don't think someone's career is going to be ruined.
	I mean, science progresses in a sense.
	I mean, failure is just as much a part of that progress as success is.
	You have to be able to take these kinds of risks and put these ideas out there.
	The nature of science is to hypothesize and then basically, you know, to test it and see, you know, whether or not it's true.
	I mean, scientists actually can be kind of irritated in that respect because you say an idea and then they immediately start poking holes in it.
	But that's essentially how they test things and that's how science advances.
	Speaking of holes, black holes, should we create a black hole?
	Is that a bad idea?
	Well, if you're talking about the LHC, the kinds of black holes that they think might appear would be really, really tiny.
	So tiny that they would almost evaporate almost instantly.
	One hopes.
	Pardon?
	One hopes.
	Actually, they're pretty sure.
	Pretty sure.
	Okay.
	On that note, hold tight.
	We'll be right back.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Here I am, along with Jennifer Ouellette.
	What a very pleasing lady indeed.
	I have thought for a very long time that there's a possibility that one day some scientist somewhere, I mean I'm sure that black holes are going to be fine and we get the right accelerator, we'll, you know, we'll create one and it'll just go and the world will be well.
	But someday I worry that some scientist somewhere on the edge, the cutting edge of some science is going to push a button And there's going to be a lot more than a little pop.
	We'll be right back.
	Jennifer, is there any reason to worry that that could happen?
	That one day some scientist will push a button on the cutting edge of something and get a reaction that we all will dislike?
	Well, you know, it's funny because every time a new machine opens up, this sort of question comes up.
	I mean, it's been happening since like the 1950s.
	It certainly happened when Fermilab opened up.
	Everyone was terrified they were going to create a supernova.
	And with the LHC, it's all about the mini black holes.
	The key word here is mini.
	I mean, mini doesn't quite get it across.
	They're literally going to be indistinguishable from subatomic particles.
	And they're going to last just about that long.
	I don't know, you're probably very familiar with Stephen Hawking's theory of black holes.
	It turns out that they do emit Little bits of radiation.
	Essentially, this is called Hawking radiation.
	It causes them to gradually evaporate.
	They basically lose mass.
	The radiation comes from the black hole losing mass and over time it evaporates.
	And how fast it evaporates depends on how big it is.
	A really big, massive, rotating black hole at the center of one of the galaxies, it's going to take billions of years.
	But something the size of a subatomic particle, it's going to be there for such a short amount of time that we won't even know we've seen it.
	They actually think they might have seen one at Brookhaven.
	They have a machine there called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.
	But it lasted so short that all they really got was some data in the form of a lot of squiggly lines, and they're really debating whether or not it's a mini black hole or not.
	So, in general, when scientists talk about probabilities, they always say, well, if you press them, they'll say there's a tiny, tiny chance.
	They really mean a tiny, tiny chance.
	They mean that basically, over the entire history of the universe, maybe just a little bit beyond the end of our universe, if we waited that long, we might have something really dangerous.
	Which means that there's really no real danger from the LHC.
	They can't rule it out.
	No honest scientist will rule it out completely, because probabilities being what they are, you know, scientists never close the book on anything, really.
	Yeah, I'm not saying it won't happen, but the other day here in Fronton, Nevada at one of the casinos, somebody won $18 million on a penny machine.
	Yeah.
	So eventually... Yeah, but to give you... that's actually a very, very good analogy.
	Yeah, they might have won $18 million, but in order for, say, something that could consume the world to be produced at one of these Hadron Colliders, they would have to have that happen roughly 20 times in a row.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	And I'm being generous.
	When we're talking about probabilities and odds, that's the kind of probabilities we're talking about.
	So, I'm not losing a lot of sleep over the mini black holes.
	Maybe I saw The Stand too recently.
	Have you ever seen it?
	I'm not familiar with The Stand.
	Everybody I know raves about it.
	Basically at the beginning of it said this is the way the world ends and you know somebody in a lab dropped a test tube full of some sort of horrible designer killing virus flu type thing and that was it.
	Well did the world end or did humanity get wiped out?
	I mean there's a difference.
	Well you had to have a story so they couldn't totally wipe out humanity and of course there was some continuation but basically most everybody died.
	Mm-hmm.
	And certainly a virus could potentially achieve that.
	Yes, a flu pandemic could achieve that.
	A virus could achieve it.
	Biological warfare could achieve it.
	A nuclear bomb, if we set off several at once, could almost wipe out the human race by bringing on nuclear winter.
	We could certainly make our planet uninhabitable for us, but... I wonder if we're doing that now.
	There's some good evidence for that.
	It seems that science has not quite closed ranks, but just about has closed ranks on this whole global warming thing.
	Right.
	I mean, there's still a few random scientists who are kind of casting doubt on it, but I think there's a pretty strong consensus.
	When you've got thousands of scientists all the world over coming up and saying, well, Basically, you know, this is happening.
	There is a slight increase in terms of the Earth's overall temperature, and it does seem to be coming from man-made processes.
	I'm going to kind of go with the consensus on that.
	It's just, you know, there's just a preponderance of evidence there that, you know, after a certain point, you can't ignore it.
	You can sit there and poke holes in some of the methodologies, but they've been doing that for quite some time, and I think you're right.
	I think there is a very strong consensus at this point.
	When you look at the North Pole, 40 or 50 years ago, and you look at it now, it looks like about 40% of it has melted.
	Now when 40% of the North Pole melts, when they're getting ready to navigate across the new sea that is going to be there instead of ice, it just seems like that is going to have a big impact somehow or another on the world.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I've seen pictures before and after of the North Pole and it's terrifying.
	It really is.
	And the ice sheets down south don't look all that stable.
	They're beginning to talk about them beginning to break up in cracks they didn't know were there.
	And of course if the Ross Ice should melt, there'd be quite a change in sea level.
	Yeah, there would.
	I've actually seen schematics of, say, New York City under several feet of water.
	Basically, half the California coast would be underwater and things like that.
	Obviously, these are models and these are worst-case scenarios, but it's definitely a possibility.
	Regardless of whether or not you think that worst-case scenario is going to transpire, I think it's very obvious that we need to do something to at least stem the tide a little bit.
	We're past the point where we can ignore it and pretend that it's not happening.
	Well, in our generation, I guess we can say we'll be alright.
	But I'm not sure about our children.
	And then there's this trigger thing, where it kind of feeds on itself.
	I worry about that one.
	Oh.
	You've heard about that, right?
	Yeah, yeah, I have.
	The more ice it melts, the more water you have, the more absorption you have, and the more ice you've got melting, and so forth and so on.
	Yeah, and it just speeds up.
	It goes faster and faster.
	Exactly.
	And it would seem the weather is changing.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's funny, because people, every time it gets hot, people think that, you know, there, global warming is true, and then we get a cold snap like we've had recently, and everybody thinks that therefore it's bunk, and I think it's a misunderstanding of what we mean by climate change.
	Yeah.
	But we're going to definitely get more extreme weather patterns, I think.
	I've got this really interesting story from Britain.
	They've had a pretty good snowstorm over there.
	And they're teaching the people in Britain about snow.
	For example, how to make snowballs.
	Really cute!
	Anyway, it does look like it's changing, and that brings me back to Mr. Bigelow and Michio Kaku, who think that eventually we're going to need to be able to get off this planet, and we sure don't seem to be moving very much in that direction.
	We went to the Moon, and then gave up.
	Yes, I've kind of been there, done that.
	And as far as I can see, there's really no plans for manned missions to Mars, and I mean, NASA's really kind of been, in terms of their manned space flight program, has really kind of been hurting in recent years.
	It's all been on unmanned exploration.
	I love Mars Rover.
	I love the pictures that have come back.
	But, you know, I'm kind of wondering why we haven't gone back.
	Well, they announced, President Bush announced that we would go back to the moon and then didn't fund it.
	And if you look at the amount of funding for NASA as compared to the years when we went to the moon, it is just a tiny fraction of what we had.
	So we're not going back to the moon?
	Probably not.
	No, not with the way the current funding levels are going.
	But, you know, all of science is suffering in that respect.
	Good point.
	I mean, Brookhaven almost had to shut down because there was budget problems in Congress.
	They were kind of saved at the last minute, but that's the second time in the year, second year in a row, that they've come this close to having to shut down for six months.
	And that's a major physics facility.
	That's right here on Earth.
	So, obviously going to the Moon is just not high on anyone's priority when things like that are so pressing.
	And we're not really pointing our children toward science anymore, or they don't want to be pointed toward science.
	I'm not sure what's going on, but in America, science sure is taking a back seat, and it scares me to death.
	Yeah, it's like they want all the benefits of science.
	They want their iPods and their BlackBerries, but they don't actually want to know anything about how it works.
	And eventually that's going to come back and bite us in the butt, because we're not going to have that next generation of brilliant scientists if we don't really start encouraging people.
	And that includes women, as we were talking at the beginning of the show.
	We've really got to start drawing on all kinds of expertise, different ways of thinking, different ways of approaching old problems.
	Well, I hope something is done.
	Unfortunately, we get the iPods, we get the new technology, most times we invent it here, and then it's refined and produced elsewhere and sent back to us, contributing to the imbalance of our budget.
	Right.
	Nevertheless, here you are.
	So, tell me about the Buffyverse.
	In what way are physics different?
	Well, I always say that the Buffyverse has the one thing that we don't have and that's like a huge amount of extra energy of a very special kind.
	It's kind of this extra mystical energy.
	You seem very literate in your advanced physics and you know that a lot of the problems with things like creating wormholes and closed time-like curves and some of these really advanced exotic permutations of space-time are really energy problems.
	And that is not the case in the Buffyverse.
	You do get closed timeline curves.
	You do get time folding back on itself.
	Portals opening up all over the place.
	So at least some of that energy is negative energy.
	And you have other dimensional worlds.
	So the things that we can only dream about and theorize and hypothesize about in our world are actually very real in the Buffyverse.
	And it's all done in this kind of very fun You know, monsters, good versus evil kind of, you know, superhero fight, but the physics there is actually quite advanced and quite interesting.
	I wonder if there really could be such a universe.
	I guess the answer is, there could be.
	Right, we just never know about it.
	Absolutely there could be, you know?
	But since they're not allowed to interact, we wouldn't be able to know.
	I mean, how do we know there isn't like a little baby universe somewhere that has these things in existence?
	We don't.
	And maybe if somebody writes about them, they pop into place.
	Oh, gosh, there's a writer that does that, Fick Tons.
	Oh, there you go.
	Is it Robert Heinlein?
	I can't remember which writer it is, but basically a sci-fi writer came up with this idea that, you know, basically every book, every fiction that's created has its own little universe, and at some point they all start traveling and visiting each other's books.
	It's kind of amusing.
	I like the idea a lot.
	So do I. When I asked Michio Kaku, Dr. Kaku, about time travel and other universes, he suggested that the answer to time travel and any possible problems associated with time travel, paradoxes and such, would be that when you go back and kill your grandfather, a new universe is instantly created, one in which everything unfolds in a perfectly proper manner.
	Mm-hmm.
	That's not a new idea.
	It's actually kind of interesting, and it's actually a feature of the Buffyverse and a lot of other examples of science fiction, these kind of alternate realities that happen.
	It dates back to the 1950s and a guy named Hugh Everett III.
	If you know your quantum mechanics, you know about Schrodinger's cat paradox.
	How can a cat be both dead and alive?
	You have that superposition of states.
	Open the box, you look.
	The wave function collapses and it becomes either dead or alive.
	Everett wanted to know, well, what happens to the other possibilities?
	And he decided that for every single possibility, every choice, every irreversible event that takes place, a different, a new universe is created so that all the possibilities exist simultaneously somewhere.
	There's some real philosophical problems with that right off the bat, which is, you know, if you do that for everything right down to the subatomic level, you've just got billions upon billions, an infinite number of universes.
	But it's a nice idea.
	I struggle and struggle, Jennifer, with quantum mechanics.
	Oh, we all do.
	And, you know, I just, I'm a communications guy.
	All my life I've been in radio, one way or the other, ham radio, you know, commercial broadcasting, radio, radio.
	And, to me, particles separated have to, in some manner, communicate with each other They have to.
	There has to be some kind of communication that's exceeding light, right?
	Wrong.
	That's one of those really fine distinctions that I don't quite get about quantum mechanics, but it's wrong, because I've had it explained to me about 8 million times, and like you, I struggle with it, because, you know, it does seem like that should be happening, but I tend to view it as kind of, rather than having information traveling faster than the speed of light, That's actually not the way it works.
	It's more like a logical deduction.
	You know, there's actually no information being sent, but you know, if you have two particles and you split them and one is red and one is green and you know that's starting out, and you look at your particle and it's red, you know without any information going anywhere that the other one must be green.
	You know?
	I know, but... I understand what you're saying.
	I mean, quantum mechanics is weird and those little nuances are really important and they're very, very hard for some of us non-scientists to get our heads around.
	And that's one of them.
	That's a real big sticking point.
	They've attempted communication through quantum mechanics and it's never worked.
	In other words, you should be able to somehow send a message using quantum mechanics, but the answer is no, right?
	No, they can't send a message.
	They have been able to quote-unquote teleport particles, but it's not the way that we would conceive of teleportation on Star Trek.
	Essentially, Um, what happens is the original particles, you know, when you scan it, you essentially destroy it.
	And then you have to kind of do this little tricky thing with entanglement so that basically you create a new particle, an entirely new particle in a new location.
	They've actually done it, you know, over, you know, several kilometers.
	I mean, and they've done it with like clouds of atoms over a few feet.
	They've actually done some really amazing things with little clouds of particles through this little method.
	But they can only do it once.
	Because you destroy the original particle, and they have not been able to encode any kind of information on those particles.
	These are those nuances that we all get hung up on.
	And science wants things that are utterly repeatable.
	Oh, absolutely.
	It's not useful to us if we can't encode information and then have it work over and over again.
	You need a certain robustness in any kind of system for it to be useful at all.
	Why was Star Trek so seemingly accurate, so far ahead of its time?
	Well, I'm not sure it was particularly far ahead of its time.
	I mean, the creator, Gene Roddenberry, was actually very plugged into the physics community, and he was very intrigued by some of the stuff that at the time were kind of notions that were being bandied about, but that we had no evidence for, black holes being one of them.
	For a long time, we didn't think black holes could exist.
	We thought they were entirely theoretical, and then in the 90s, we realized, hey, there they are, which should give us hope for things like string theory, because there's a lot of ideas that turned out to be true.
	I wouldn't say that Star Trek got it right, but that Roddenberry was plugged in with the scientific community that got it right.
	Well, they sure did.
	Things that are yet ahead of us, some things that have already occurred, and many that are obviously fairly close, I guess, or now being more than just imagined a little bit.
	Right.
	Well, I mean, we can't actually afford to do something like the holodeck, but we can do some amazing things with holograms.
	That alone is huge.
	Are quantum computers eventually going to be able to create that kind of a world, do you think?
	I'm not sure if it's really a question of processing power, which I think is the main advantage of quantum computing.
	You get like very, very rapid parallel processing so you can solve things.
	Computers are always going to be kind of limited.
	This gets back to the question of consciousness and things like that.
	Right.
	In fact, that was going to be my next question.
	Is artificial intelligence Is that going to be part of the quantum world?
	In other words, at some point, is it a matter of storage?
	Is it a matter of processor speed?
	What is it?
	Well, I think until we figure out what human consciousness is, we can't even begin to emulate it.
	And that's still very much an area of debate.
	I mean, everything I've read on AI, they're still arguing with each other over what constitutes artificial intelligence.
	It certainly isn't something as simple as the Turing test.
	John Searle's famous Chinese room paradox doesn't really seem to be very overly simplistic.
	Daniel Dennett has some very interesting ideas on it, but again, those are also quite controversial.
	I think until they find some sort of consensus on what it is and how they're going to define it and get a little bit more understanding of how our brains work, I don't think we have any chance.
	Jennifer, hold it right there.
	We're at a break.
	I have to break here.
	We'll be right back.
	Here I am.
	Let me set this up a little.
	I'm well aware that we're all traveling in time.
	We're all moving along at exactly the speed of time, right?
	So we're traveling in time from the present into the future.
	We're constantly doing that.
	I'm also aware that if we fire ourselves off in a rocket and go light years out and come back, we have essentially traveled in time.
	But I'm eternally curious Whether, save those two possibilities, time travel will ever be possible.
	I speak now of a machine with levers and knobs and probably lots of energy that'll take us backward in time or into the future.
	In a moment, we'll ask.
	Okay, Jennifer, a time machine.
	Well, you know, I'm as fascinated by time travel as you are, but we're not going to get Doctor Who's TARDIS any time soon.
	But I actually do love the idea of being able to travel, you know, back in time.
	You had talked about, you know, special relativity and how if you travel faster and faster you can actually travel into the future.
	Do you have a cell phone?
	No, no I don't.
	That sound that we're hearing, do you hear that?
	Yeah, I heard it just briefly and I don't know what that is.
	That's a cell phone processor.
	Somebody is close to some piece of critical equipment between you and I with a cell phone.
	Oh, okay.
	Anyway, proceed.
	But in terms of traveling back in time, unless you can travel faster than the speed of light, which is impossible, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, you can't go back in time.
	But general relativity actually does allow for the Theoretical possibility that if you have sufficient energy or mass, you could actually bend space-time sufficiently so that a point in the future could fold over and touch a point in the past.
	They're called closed time-like curves.
	And I love this, because it also takes care of... You essentially create a time loop, kind of like what happens in Groundhog Day, where you just keep repeating the same day over and over again.
	What I like about that, I mean, the way it's portrayed in Hollywood, there's always some person who remembers, who's aware that this is happening.
	In an actual closed time-like curve, you're actually constantly traveling forward in time, and yet somehow you keep ending up in the past, the same place where it touches over and over and over again.
	It actually solves the problem of, without having to create alternate realities, it solves the problem of, can you go back and kill your own grandfather?
	I think the big question, the answer is no, because there's only a certain point To which you can go, and if you're not aware of it, you can't actually change the outcome of events.
	You just constantly replay that chain of events.
	So that could, it's within the realm?
	Well, you need a lot of energy, like all the energy in the entire universe, and possibly a little more.
	I know, it's a daunting challenge.
	But they do have, and there's papers every year about this, about whether time travel is possible.
	The most recent one has to do with kind of like this donut-shaped configuration.
	It's basically a wormhole version of a closed timelike curve where basically you just travel in a spiral inside this little donut-shaped thing.
	And the closer you get to the hole, the further back in time you go.
	That's actually being worked on.
	That is actually being worked on by theoretical physicists.
	I'm not making that up.
	Oh, no, it is.
	It is.
	I interviewed a man who's working on that, and if he gets the funding, he's going to actually give it a shot.
	Which would be very interesting to see.
	Yes, it would.
	I'd like to know where he's going to get the energy.
	If they can figure out how to do that, that would be great, I think.
	It would be incredible.
	It would open up so much.
	Okay, well, is there anything in the interview that we have not yet covered that you would enjoy covering?
	Anything that I missed?
	There's a lot here.
	year? Yeah, there kind of is, although we covered some of the big ones. No, I think we've pretty much covered it. I'm...
	I'm actually quite interested in sound.
	In fact, my third book is probably going to be about that.
	Recently, I've gotten very, very interested in a phenomenon known as infrasound.
	I mean, we're all familiar with ultrasound.
	It's used for imaging.
	It can actually, you know, stop bleeding in accident victims and break up kidney stones and things like that.
	Infrasound is kind of really low frequencies that we can't hear, that aren't aware of.
	Certain animals use it to communicate, like manatees and elephants.
	What I found intriguing is that even though we can't hear it, sound is mechanical energy, and we are often kind of aware of infrasound, and that many scientists think that it actually explains the whole sensing a ghostly presence phenomenon.
	There's a very famous tale.
	A guy's actually doing research on this, and it's from 1998, I believe, where he actually saw a ghost.
	He felt the prickling on the back of his neck and he saw a ghost.
	And it turned out to be infrasound at a certain frequency resonates with the natural frequency of the eye and basically causes you to hallucinate.
	It causes an optical illusion.
	And the brain tries to make sense of that by creating this visual illusion.
	I think that's actually very interesting.
	That's almost cooler than ghosts being real.
	So there goes the ghosts.
	There goes the ghost, I know.
	But, you know, if it's replaced by something that's as cool as that, you know, I'm willing to let ghosts go.
	I love a good ghost story as much as anyone, but that's a really, really wonderful explanation.
	I'm really pleased that there's research going in on that.
	Let me go back to ultrasound for a moment, because I've got a little baby girl, even at my age, on the way.
	Oh, wow!
	And we recently did an ultrasound, and oh my God, have they come a long way with ultrasound!
	Did you get the 3D one?
	Yes, we did.
	3D in color.
	Those are art.
	Yes, now, how is that done?
	I can only imagine that the infinitesimal difference in the return of the sound must produce the three-dimensional effect.
	is that done? I can only imagine that the infinitesimal difference in the return of
	the sound must produce the three-dimensional effect. That's just a guess.
	It's actually in the way they process it. The computers have gotten so good that they
	can actually take signals, basically the way ultrasound creates images, it bounces the
	signals off and then uses that data construction image.
	They've gotten to the point where they can get such precise information, such precise resolution, that they can reconstruct computationally this 3D image.
	Is that done by measuring In other words, if the hand is, let's say, three inches farther away from the originating sound than, I don't know, the belly, then you can show the hand is down with respect to the belly.
	You should be able to, I would assume.
	Generally, the way ultrasound is, they basically do it right on the skin so that you don't actually have that happen, you don't have that kind of interference.
	It's really in how they process the incoming data.
	They get much higher, much more precise information and they're able to therefore get a much higher resolution image and then create that sort of 3D effect.
	It's beautiful.
	I'm so thrilled you got that.
	It's astounding.
	I sat there with my jaw on my chest.
	It was just amazing.
	It just makes it real, doesn't it?
	It certainly does.
	And so you've got another book coming out, and it's about sound, and you think that might explain ghosts, huh?
	Well, I think it's a very intriguing idea.
	I haven't actually started the third book yet, but there's definitely going to be a chapter on infrasound, because not only does it explain ghosts, but it turns out that we can actually use it to learn a little bit more about the behavior of volcanoes and tornadoes and various natural phenomena.
	There's apparently a whole, you know, infrasound is everywhere.
	Define infrasound for me, please.
	Infrasound is essentially just, it's basically a sound wave, it's just at a very, very low frequency.
	I think the frequency for which, for the ghostly phenomenon, it's like 18.98 hertz, well below what human beings can hear.
	But apparently we are still subliminally kind of aware of it.
	I mean, because it's a mechanical energy, because it is vibrating around us.
	You know, we do pick up on it subconsciously.
	That's not all that far from Schumann frequency, right?
	I'm not sure what Schumann frequency is.
	That's an Earth frequency or something, down around... The Earth frequency is probably a little bit lower than that even, but certainly volcanoes are, you know, do have that That infrasonic frequency, and that's related to the Earth's frequency.
	And they can actually tell when they're getting ready to erupt by studying the infrasound and some of the patterns that emerge.
	Essentially, volcanoes moan when they're getting ready to erupt.
	It's like they have a stomach ache or something.
	Fascinating.
	I've heard sound samples of it.
	It's really creepy sounding.
	So there's something in our brains that resonates with those frequencies.
	At certain frequencies, yes.
	There's something about that 18.98.
	They think it's basically the natural resonant frequency of the optic nerve or the eyeball.
	So, basically, the mechanical vibration coming in from the sound actually stimulates that and will cause these sensations.
	It doesn't do it in everybody, which I think is kind of interesting.
	Some people are more sensitive than others, which would certainly explain why some people think they're psychic and other people think they're crazy.
	Does science explain everything?
	For example, I interview people, Jennifer, that have died, and they come back with impossible stories of the kind of treatment they were getting, the things that were said by the physicians and EMT people that were treating them while they were dead.
	Clinically dead.
	No heartbeat, no respiration, nothing.
	But they come back and tell people what was said and what was done.
	And then they also tell these stories about, you know, the white light and the relatives and all the rest of that.
	Yeah, I haven't actually looked deeply into that, but I did read a very interesting science fiction novel a few years ago by Connie Willis called Passages.
	She really does very well in terms of coming up with real science.
	A lot of it has to do with biochemical impulses and electrical impulses in the brain.
	The neurons basically die very, very slowly.
	Essentially, these things are like SOS signals to the brain, basically trying to kick-start it and reboot the system.
	I can't speak for them being aware of what was going on around them when they were supposedly brain-dead.
	Again, this gets back to we really don't understand much about how... There it is.
	That's somebody's cell phone.
	That's very interesting.
	It's not mine.
	I left mine in the other room for exactly that reason.
	It may be one of our board ops or somebody at the network with a cell phone.
	That's very interesting.
	Mine's in the other room as well.
	Weird radio waves.
	Weird things happen.
	Yeah, they do.
	But I recognize that particular pattern and that's from a cell phone processor.
	Anyway, so these frequencies may explain a lot.
	I think they may.
	I mean we're just beginning to kind of investigate infrasound.
	People have known about it for a very long time.
	We're to the point now where instruments are extremely sensitive and scientists can actually Really get down to the nitty-gritty and study these things in depth and you know how it works.
	And the more we know about how the brain works, of course, which we don't know very much at all.
	How come?
	It's just really hard to study it.
	It's a very complex thing.
	It's hard to image it.
	It's hard, even with, you know, more advanced technologies like fMRI, it's just very, very difficult to see what's going on in there because these things happen so fast and all that electrical activity is really hard to track.
	I've actually heard, Jennifer, that there have been people in accidents that, for example, have lost up to half their brain or more and continue to function fairly normally.
	Yeah, I've heard that too.
	I haven't actually, you know, don't have any evidence for that, but I mean, I've definitely heard it and it can happen.
	I mean, the body can adapt in some really amazing ways sometimes.
	I mean, I've heard of people getting brain damage in one area and actually Another part of their brain will step in and try and make up the difference.
	Certainly, we know that when people lose a limb, their bodies adapt.
	It takes some time for the brain to retrain and for the motor impulses to retrain, but the body is an amazingly adaptable machine.
	So you dismiss then most of a great deal of what we talk about on this program, people who have the ability to, well, I'm going to come right back to something that I wish I wasn't coming back to, but I have to because it was my experience.
	I had an experience of a precognition, Jennifer, there's no question about it, I'm not going to bore everybody by repeating it, but Um, I saw something ahead of time that was going to happen to my car.
	It came washing over me in waves and waves and waves, telling me it was going to happen.
	And sure enough, all five or ten minutes into this undeniable wave after wave of forcing me to go look at my car, I went out there and watched a guy get in his car, put it in reverse, and smack into my car.
	And it so disoriented me when it actually happened that I fell to my knees, got back up, opened the sliding door and said, hey, I saw that.
	He stopped.
	We talked.
	It was okay.
	But he hit my car.
	Yeah.
	And I knew he was going to hit my car.
	You know, it's funny because I think every single one of us has had something like that happen where we just felt the inevitability of something and then it happened.
	I would be very careful of saying that I dismiss Things that you normally talk about on your show.
	I would just not ascribe it to magic.
	To me, the world is not magic.
	The world is more wonderful than magic.
	Just because we can't explain it now doesn't mean we won't be able to explain it, because after all, things like radio waves, you know, if you took a radio back, you know, a thousand years, people would think it was demon-possessed.
	I don't call it magic.
	I call it precognition, and it absolutely happened.
	Period.
	It just happened.
	Now, it's never happened again.
	I couldn't make it happen if I wanted to.
	I didn't want it to happen when it did, but it happened.
	Uh-huh.
	Now... I don't have an answer for that.
	A very good friend of mine, you know, believes that she's psychic.
	I would say that she's extremely intuitive and very good at reading people.
	But again, I mean, these are things we don't actually, you know, know.
	These are the kinds of mysteries about how the brain works that You know, I hope that one day we'll be able to explain.
	Well, it's not repeatable, so it's not science.
	It's really, yeah, it's very tough to repeat something like that.
	But I can assure you it was real.
	I have no doubt about it, because I mean, we've all experienced something like that, where, you know, we just kind of felt, okay, this is going to happen, and then it did.
	This was way beyond that.
	Really, it was way beyond that, Jennifer.
	It was wave after wave after wave hitting me like monster ocean waves crashing on me.
	I was angry at it.
	I was watching TV at the time.
	And so I got up and I went over and I looked at my car and it was fine and I said, what a bunch of...
	So and so, sat back down, watched the news, and the waves started coming again, even stronger, to the point where I finally had to get up again, stood in the window, watched the guy walk down the sidewalk, get in his car, put it in reverse, and hit my car.
	Now, that wasn't subtle.
	No, no.
	Although I'm curious why it was your car.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Do you love your car?
	I didn't.
	No, I don't.
	Cars are useful.
	I don't have emotion.
	No.
	Well, it's a very interesting story, but as you said, it's irreproducible, so there's no way you can test it or do anything to repeat that.
	So it's hard to put that into the realm of science, but I wouldn't call it magic either.
	It's just something we cannot yet explain.
	But it's real, so that means that there are things out there that are not just 18, what was it, 18.79 or whatever?
	18.98 hertz.
	98 hertz, thank you.
	In other words, not everything can be explained by some sort of science.
	I think it can, maybe not the science we have today, but I'm not backing down on that.
	No, no, huh?
	I actually, I was a late convert to science, but I think it's a really great way of looking at the world, because it does insist, you know, on testing and reproducibility and things like that, because the human brain, we're pretty good at fooling ourselves.
	I'm really good at wishful thinking, and I'm really good at tricking myself into thinking something must be true, because I want it to be true, and science keeps me honest.
	Um, it's just that science is so cocksure about things, and, uh, you know, I just know that some of these other things are true, and one day you're gonna... I mean, every day, Jennifer, I see stories, AP stories and so forth.
	Some scientist saying, we previously thought such and such was true, but today science learned that, well, so-and-so is true.
	So, they're backing down all the time.
	Well, that's the nature of science.
	Your statement that... I think scientists sometimes come off as cocksure, but in fact the nature of science is exploration.
	Even something as... They're very, very sure about the second law of thermodynamics.
	That has yet to be violated and that sort of thing, but they're still testing it.
	They're not pouring a lot of money into it, but they still admit that the possibility that somewhere along the line E equals mc squared might be violated.
	You know, entropy might be violated.
	They do test these things.
	It's the nature of science to change, to progress, and that what we once believed, we want to move forward.
	I've got it.
	All right.
	Listen, we're going to take a break here.
	When we come back, we'll open the lines for Jennifer Ouellette.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Here I am.
	Jennifer Ouellette is my guest, and a very good one indeed she is.
	Quite the scientist, and quite the mainline believer, that's for sure.
	We all know, well not all of us, many of us know that there are things that happen that science simply cannot explain, no matter what the hurts.
	However, if it's not repeatable, if it's not documentable, science just simply cannot embrace it.
	And that's kind of the case with Jennifer.
	She's straight down the line, but if you'd like an opportunity to ask her a question, because there is a lot of real stuff going on with real science right now, here we are.
	Pick up the phone and join us.
	In a moment, Jennifer Ouellette and all of you.
	All right, Jennifer, welcome back.
	I want to give you a chance to plug your book.
	Well, actually, books, plural.
	You've got one coming out, or one in the works, rather, but what should we look for now?
	Well, I have one book called Black Bodies and Quantum Cats.
	It's essentially a series of short essays on physics history, tied into various pop culture and literary references.
	And then the second one is The Physics of the Buffyverse, which basically uses Scenes and examples from Bucket the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel to talk about real-world physics concepts within this imaginary world.
	Are you going to ever sit down and just write a pure science fiction book?
	I don't know.
	That might be kind of fun, I think.
	It would be fun.
	It would be good, too.
	It's people like you that turn out the good ones.
	It's something that's definitely in the back of my mind.
	There's certainly a lot of cool physics out there that, you know, it would be very, very fun, you know, to take it like one step further and do that what-if scenario with it.
	That's actually what makes science a lot of fun anyway.
	Exactly.
	And I like, the books that I read tend to be those that are based somewhere in science.
	In other words, they're not so far out that they are as magic.
	You can imagine it might be so.
	Right.
	But you can actually take them places that, you know, you might not be comfortable taking them, like in a laboratory environment, which is, you know, why science fiction is such a powerful thing.
	Exactly.
	All right, here we go.
	Jerry in Michigan, you are on with Jennifer Ouellette.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	I had a question regarding anti-gravity.
	Okay.
	I know a really well friend of mine who's into physics.
	He was discussing to me, I guess he was researching it.
	And I guess some research company, like I said, I heard it through him, so I'm not familiar with anything like that.
	But I guess they were able to use different frequencies to, I guess, kind of create anti-gravity.
	I don't know, like I said, I'm not quite familiar with physics, so... Okay, are you possibly referring to the experiment in which they, for example, had a mouse in mid-air, that kind of thing?
	Not really.
	I was just, pretty much, he was talking to me about it.
	I guess it was using different frequencies to, I guess, create anti-gravity.
	It sounds to me like you're talking about the magnetic levitation.
	Yeah, that's the road I was going down.
	I haven't heard anything beyond that, have you?
	No, no, I really haven't.
	They've done some amazing things with that.
	I mean, there's the famous levitating frog experiments that were done a few years ago.
	But they actually, yeah, you can use magnetic fields and manipulate them to make them strong enough to support the weight of, say, a mouse or a frog or something.
	It's not anti-gravity.
	Anti-gravity has a very, very specific meaning in a physics context, and that's not what this is.
	It sure looks like it, but it's not.
	Is there likely ever to be, as the name would suggest, anti-gravity?
	Well, again, I'm no expert on this, but some might say that the dark energy that is causing the universe to accelerate in its expansion It's a bit like anti-gravity.
	It basically is a push outward as opposed to a contracting inward.
	So, you know, we don't actually know what that dark energy is.
	They prefer to call it dark energy as opposed to something like anti-gravity.
	But it does seem to be that same similar type of mechanism.
	Well, it sure would be a spiffy way to get into space.
	Yes, yes it would.
	And actually that sort of Yeah, it would definitely help.
	West of the Rockies, Frank in Washington.
	Your turn with Jennifer Willett.
	Hi.
	Good evening.
	I just wanted her thoughts on quantum computers.
	It occurs to me they're like the 21st century of the Manhattan Project.
	And I'm thinking a quantum computer in a religious, fanatical group could be a bad thing for a lot of people.
	I'm wondering if just because we can do a thing doesn't mean we should do a thing.
	That's a reasonable question.
	Jennifer?
	Well, just because we can... Yeah, that last part is good.
	I'm not quite sure what you're worried about with the quantum computing bit because all it really is is faster processing speeds in terms of solving problems.
	I'm not sure, you know, how that could be... I mean, it would have to be It all depends on how it's used.
	But even so, I'm not quite sure what you think is going to be the danger there if it gets in the hands of, say, a religious group.
	Yeah, I wasn't clear on that either.
	The second part of the question, I think, is a very good one.
	You know, it's like, just because we can do something, does that mean we should?
	That's an ethical question that I think that we all struggle with.
	Certainly many of the scientists on the Manhattan Project struggled with it.
	They got so wrapped up in the problem, in working the problem, they sort of forgot what it was they were doing.
	I think Robert Wilson was sitting despondently while everybody else was wildly celebrating it.
	Richard Feynman relates this anecdote, and he basically says, Why?
	What's the matter?
	It's an amazing thing!
	We've split the atom!
	And he basically just said, This is a terrible thing we've made, and we can't undo it.
	So that's a very important question, and I think anytime we're talking about new technologies or things like that, we need to ask, how can this be used?
	And, you know, how can we ensure that it's used right?
	Jennifer, is there anything else that physics sees ahead, like the atomic bomb?
	In other words, is there anything anybody's working on out there that has potentially as negative consequences as it does positive?
	I can't think of anything offhand.
	I'm sure there are.
	Again, technology is all about how it's used.
	I mean, a gun is fine in the right hands.
	You put it in the wrong hands and it's lethal.
	The same thing is true of anything.
	I would be terrified of, you know, certain kinds of germ warfare or genetic warfare or chemical warfare, things like that, releasing viruses.
	That sort of thing worries me.
	Well, you know we're working on it, and if we're not, somebody else is.
	That means we are.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That scares me more than anything, much more at this point than a nuclear bomb, although nuclear bombs are terrifying in and of themselves.
	For example, is it not to be possible to genetically target a specific racial group, just as an example?
	Possibly not yet, but I would assume that with the advances going on in genomes, I mean, they're going to be able to target some amazing things.
	They might be able to tailor-make molecules or viruses or things to target something very particular.
	Whether that be race, we would need to get a much more precise mapping of the human genome and a lot of things would need to happen, but there's an explosion going on in that area, so who knows?
	And Jim, in Massachusetts, you're on with Jennifer.
	Hi.
	Yes, Art Jennifer.
	Yes, I would like to know, on a lighter note, if you knew that there was a movie that was made with sub and infrasonics.
	It was called Earthquake.
	Really?
	Yes!
	In theaters, they used specially designed speakers and hugely powerful amplifiers, and this was the come on For the movie itself.
	No kidding.
	And you might be able to research it.
	Also, I'd like to ask you if you have done any research on the extreme low frequency work that was done by the Navy and is now which is used for communications for submarines.
	I have not.
	I'm not quite sure what you're referring to in that last bit.
	I would love to see that that infrasound movie.
	I think that's an awesome idea.
	You do have to amplify it, but it sounds really creepy and amazing, the clips I heard, and I can only imagine what it must sound like in a theater.
	Yeah, well, you'd have to have, you'd have to have, especially, you'd have to be able to get a hold of one of these special-designed ALTAC 817s, but as far as the Navy is concerned, they pretty much pioneered extreme low frequency and was able to use it Four submarine communications that they can actually go through the entire.
	I think they actually go into the Earth's crust or something and they put a rider frequency within.
	Those, uh, within those, uh, frequencies.
	Yeah, I know he's right.
	They are using extreme low frequencies, uh, to communicate.
	Right.
	That makes perfect sense to me, because when, the lower frequencies have, uh, they're actually able to travel longer distances with less interference.
	You get much clearer signals, less distortion of the information and the, the signal that you graphed on.
	So that makes perfect sense to me.
	Well, the Navy has done something, Jennifer, because they have these giant antennas in the upper Midwest that they were using to communicate with submarines.
	And I believe that they've pretty well scrapped that, and they've gone to something they're not talking a lot about.
	So they have some manner of communication with submarines that's newer and that I don't know about.
	And I think it involves extreme low frequencies, but a different way of doing it.
	Bobby in California, you're on with Jennifer Ouellette.
	Jennifer, relative to your comments on the mind kind of conjuring up ghosts, I'm an artist and the only scientific basis I have for this comment is that I know for a fact that there are areas in your field of vision that your mind actually concocts for deficiencies in your eyes' ability to see.
	Yes.
	With that in mind, I know that through my study of art, and especially through trying to teach people to draw, that their mind seems to take the convenient way out and use symbols that they've developed for things, instead of actually seeing what's in front of them.
	And I was wondering if that could somehow also contribute to people having visions, Right.
	Well, that actually ties in, I think, to what I was saying, where, you know, the eyeball basically vibrates in resonance with the infrasonic wave at that particular frequency, and the brain has to make sense of that signal.
	Right.
	And I think you're absolutely right.
	We have a way of filling in the gaps, of creating something that we recognize, basically trying to make sense of the world around us.
	The brain can play tricks.
	I think it's a survival mechanism, actually, because the practical things probably kept you alive at one time.
	Exactly.
	We're not sympathetic to aesthetic sensibilities.
	But yeah, that makes perfect sense to me.
	Again, this is an example of, you know, the mind can trick you.
	The mind is really an amazing thing.
	It's amazing that I'm thinking this straight at this hour of the night.
	Thank you, Art.
	Thank you, Jennifer.
	You bet.
	Thank you.
	We all know, for example, Jennifer, that dogs and other animals seem to be aware of things like volcanoes and earthquakes before we are.
	Yes.
	And they believe that it's because the animals are just more tuned to those frequencies, those infrasonic frequencies.
	They actually pick up on the vibrations that we humans are just not attuned to pick up on.
	But I'm sure we have all, you know, at some point there was a hurricane that passed through the DC area and you could actually feel something in the air when it was coming through.
	That's the first quasi-scientific thing I've heard you say.
	But it's not quasi-scientific because it turns out that Well, you have the pressure change.
	Yes, exactly.
	I was very much aware that something was changing, and I wasn't quite sure what it was.
	My brain was trying to make sense of it.
	And you do get the pressure change in terms of the atmosphere, but you also get these infrasonic emissions from things like wind and things like that, and that actually makes a difference.
	We do pick up on those.
	You know, it's not that I, again, it's not that I ascribe it to magic.
	I just, you know, I just think that there are certain things that, you know, we can become attuned to, you know, if we just train ourselves.
	Then, wouldn't it be possible, Jennifer, to use these infrasonic frequencies in a specific way?
	In other words, receive them Come up with something extremely sensitive to them, and then come up with another frequency that we could audibly hear that would coincide with an increase in the infrasonic frequencies that we're looking for.
	In other words, a kind of a warning device for whatever.
	You're absolutely right, and they are working on this.
	Oh!
	You thought I was going to poo-poo that, didn't you?
	Well, sort of, yeah.
	They are very much interested in doing this, particularly when it comes to things like volcanoes.
	There's actually a guy out in Hawaii who is, you know, he's just starting this work, but he's basically trying to study the breaking of waves to kind of get a sense for when waves get dangerously high for surfers out there in Hawaii, because it's actually very, very difficult to predict, you know, tides and waves and things out in that open area.
	And basically, you do that.
	You have these very, very sensitive instruments that pick up all the infrasonic waves.
	In order to make sense of them, you do have to amplify them.
	You basically have to... Right, and perhaps even convert them to a frequency that... Exactly.
	You know, exactly.
	And he's done that as well.
	That's how you actually make them audible.
	All right.
	Charles in Bay City, Michigan.
	Your turn with Jennifer.
	Hello?
	Charles?
	Let me try again.
	Charles in Michigan.
	Now you're on the air.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Thank you, Art.
	Jennifer, I was wondering if it would be possible, instead of time-traveling into the past, if it would be possible to time-view the past by harnessing or capturing or restructuring light waves emitted from a given point in time and space to witness an event as it actually took place.
	That's an intriguing idea.
	I mean, it's certainly how we Know things about our universe.
	We're basically seeing light from events that happened billions and billions of years ago by the time it reaches us.
	Whether we could focus that on our own history, that's going to be tough.
	Yeah.
	I don't know how you'd do that.
	Conceptually, I see where you're coming from on that.
	I just don't know how we'd do it.
	Yeah, we'd have to somehow pull the light back to a given point in time and space, and that'd be really difficult to do.
	Yeah, it'd be extremely difficult.
	Well, maybe someday.
	It's a very interesting idea, though.
	Goodness!
	The history that you could correct... I know!
	I mean, people are constantly rewriting history, of course.
	The old saying goes, the victors get to write the history.
	Right.
	So if we could actually visualize things that occurred in the past, and time was not a factor, sure it would be fun to go back to the time of Christ, wouldn't it?
	Yeah, but I'm not sure we could change anything.
	I mean, basically, even if we could do what the caller's describing, we would just be seeing the light.
	I mean, we can't, you know, we may see light from a distant supernova, and that tells us that a star has exploded, but we can't actually change the outcome of that event.
	Wild Card Line, Sean in New York.
	You're on the air with Jennifer.
	Hi.
	Good morning.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	Sure.
	Oh, by the way, in the movie Earthquake, the term that Hollywood used for the special effect was censor-round.
	It was a good movie.
	I saw it when I was a kid.
	I have what may be a really dumb question.
	The term photon, a-photon, is there such a thing as a-photon?
	Is it a quantitative measurement or a qualitative measurement, as in a quality of of visible radiation rather than a quantitative thing.
	It's an actual thing.
	It's a particle.
	It's basically a light particle.
	It's what light is made of.
	And it has mass.
	Oh, no it does not.
	It does not have mass.
	And nor does it have a charge, which is why light travels in a straight line.
	You can basically bend other kinds of charged particles with electromagnetic fields.
	You can't bend light.
	The only thing that really bends light is An intense gravitational field, and that's just because you're curving spacetime and it's following it.
	So you would define a photon as?
	A particle of light.
	It's an actual thing.
	It's an actual real thing.
	I mean, we can actually observe them, we can split them, we can do all kinds of things with them.
	A particle of light, but no mass.
	Alright, no more time.
	We're going to break here and come back for one more segment.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Listen everybody, tomorrow night Colm Kelleher is going to be here, along with George Knapp.
	It's been a long, long time since I've talked to George Knapp.
	And among other things, we'll talk about Area 51, we'll talk about the Ranch and NIDS and what's going on with the...
	Robert Bigelow, other than aerospace, though that's certainly his central interest right now, and rightfully so.
	So that's coming up tomorrow night.
	In a moment, Jennifer Ouellette is right back with all of you.
	Jennifer, have you ever read a book called Gravity by Tess Gerritsen?
	No, no, I haven't.
	Okay.
	Hunt it down and find it and read it.
	And I'd love to have your reaction as a scientist to it.
	She's a doctor and she just took a stab at science fiction.
	And oh my God, what a book that was.
	I rarely will read a book twice.
	That's one of the ones I've read twice.
	It was so good, so enjoyable.
	Who's the author again?
	Tess Gerritsen.
	Okay, I'll take a look at that.
	Always looking for new science fiction.
	Oh, that's hot stuff.
	Justin, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, I guess, you're on with Jennifer Ouellette.
	Yes, Jennifer, I believe the vast majority of the world's population is either from the scientific community or the religious community.
	And I believe they're both in search of truth.
	Wouldn't it benefit both sides if they thought it together as opposed to going their own separate ways and just bashing each other?
	I would agree that they need to stop bashing each other.
	I try very hard not to do that, because I think it just has a polarizing effect and that doesn't really benefit anybody.
	I think the real problem with them seeking the truth together is that they have such very different methodologies for how they go about it.
	They just approach the issues so completely differently from such completely different perspectives.
	There are certain things that I think rightly do belong in the realm of religion, you know, that have nothing to do with science, and there's nothing wrong with them.
	I mean, you can basically have faith and believe in whatever you like, as long as you don't pretend that it's science, you know?
	And I agree that there needs to be a little bit more civil discourse.
	I doubt whether they can explore together, because they explore in such different ways.
	Does that answer your question?
	Yes.
	Well, I'm a Christian.
	I'm very glad to hear when you said that you don't believe in God, that there's a possibility.
	I'm willing to admit that there's a possibility that there is not one.
	I think the conflict comes from, I'm right no matter what, on both ends.
	Exactly.
	Actually, the big conflict and all the killing seems to come about by, my God is the only one.
	Right.
	Basically, someone basically saying, but you know, there is a certain branch, a certain type of scientist that does have that same, you know, well, my view is right and yours is wrong, and you know, and that seems to, there really does seem to be a very, very strong attacking on both sides these days.
	The two worlds have become very, very badly polarized.
	I think it's too bad because it gives the wrong impression, I think, of both.
	Well, if science can dig down to the bottom and explain the Big Bang, then there might be some serious problems.
	Yeah, there might.
	Is there any chance we'll get close to that in our lifetimes, Jennifer?
	Do you think?
	I'm probably not the best person to ask that.
	I mean, close to our lifetimes?
	Hard to say.
	That is like the big question.
	I think they're certainly working on it.
	You know, anything that knocks Genesis right between the eyes is going to cause a big problem.
	Well, I think that the problem there is that people seem to feel that, you know, that the Bible has to be literal.
	And I've never really understood that, even though I was raised in that tradition, you know, that the world had to be created in seven very literal days or whatever.
	And I love the quote by Galileo, where he basically, you know, when he was embracing Copernican view of the world, where he basically said, you know, that the Bible, you know, tells you how to live.
	It does not tell you how the heavens move.
	It's not a scientific text.
	And for you to expect it to tell you anything other than how to live is giving it too much responsibility.
	All right.
	Delhi in Michigan.
	You're on the air with Jennifer.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Yes, it is Deli from Michigan calling.
	Hi Art and hi Jennifer.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	It's a real privilege to be able to talk to you.
	I wanted to know, Jennifer, if you're familiar with Dr. Nick Begich or his recent book, Controlled Mind?
	No, no.
	I can't say I am.
	Okay, well, it would be a good idea because he's working on things like HAARP and energy weapons, that sort of thing.
	Are you familiar with HAARP up in Alaska?
	Not really, no.
	It's an ionospheric heater that has the potential to actually reflect so much energy back to Earth That it could map underground tunnels and bunkers, Jennifer.
	Oh, nice!
	Well, that energy, though, in order to penetrate Earth has to penetrate all the biological things walking around on it.
	And it could actually be used, potentially, for warfare to cause biological entities to become confused, disoriented, or worse.
	Well, if I'm still on, I'd like to I'm going to ask a few more questions.
	I'm a victim of some type of directed electronics and I'm affiliated with a group that was recently written about and reported in the Washington Post.
	In fact, Dr. Nick Begich was on and did respond to the article.
	He has been contracted by the Lay Foundation to help the victims who have who are making allegations that they've been victimized by different types of directed electronics.
	And when I heard you mention infrasound, I just had to call in because the suspicion is that it is being used to, in fact, do an audio input into the human brain that bypasses the human ear and no one else can hear what we are hearing.
	Delia, how do you know you're a victim, if I might ask?
	How do I know I'm a victim?
	I have medical records.
	Of course, I can't prove to you what I'm hearing.
	I'm not able to record it, but somehow someone is in constant communication with me and has been for four and a half years.
	I have a visual disturbance, a hearing disturbance.
	I get an audio playback instantly of all my thoughts that are mixed up with conversations from other people.
	Okay, well, with no way to prove what's affecting you, I don't see how you can proceed.
	In other words, there's got to be some science that says, alright, here's the radiation that's affecting you.
	We can measure it, we can prove that it's affecting you biologically and move from there, but if you can't prove it, It's just an allegation.
	There are many people, Jennifer, who feel they're being affected by some sort of energy or some sort of sound, and who knows?
	Somebody probably is working on it.
	But proving it, I don't know.
	Yeah, proving it is hard.
	I also know that there's certain neurological phenomenon or disorders or whatever where, you know, synesthesia and things like that, where people can taste colors or something like that.
	These things can happen, and oral hallucinations are part of that.
	I mean, you can actually, you know, to you it is real.
	I mean, you really are hearing these things, but whether someone is actually targeting your brain, again, as Art says, you would need to be able to identify the source and measure it and that sort of thing.
	Some neurological disorders would have you tasting metal.
	Yeah.
	Okay, Keith in Iowa, you're on with Jennifer.
	Hi.
	Yes.
	I read about these people that were using harmonics, and they were using them like a lens to focus gravity.
	And by focusing gravity to a focal point, they increased the amount of gravity greatly at that focal point, but like halfway between the lens and the focal point, there was a null area That gravity was next to nothing, and they could actually float objects in that area.
	And they were theorizing that if you had a large enough lens, effective lens, that you could float just about anything.
	Keith, what's your take on that?
	Who's doing that?
	I can't remember the source.
	Yeah, I'm not familiar with that experiment.
	Is that your total theory, or is there any grounds to that?
	I think we're getting back to the confusion of, you know, what is anti-gravity, what is floating, because as I said, magnetic levitation is actually very real and very powerful and you can actually do these things, but it is not anti-gravity.
	I'm not familiar with the experiment you're describing at all.
	So, without any idea what your source is, I can't really respond to that.
	Okay.
	Wild Card Line 3, Jim in, it says Turkey.
	Turkey what?
	Yeah, Turkey is correct.
	I'm here in Ankara.
	Really?
	Wow!
	Well, first off, thank you very much for doing your whole internet program.
	It's been about two and a half years since I've been able to listen to you.
	Oh yes, you're in on the free weekend.
	No, I actually subscribed to it about a week and a half ago.
	Very good.
	But, after that, first for Jennifer, I had a question.
	At one time I did quite a bit of infrasonic analysis and I was wondering if she knew of any other New technology, at one time they were using lasers to measure the height of the thermosphere and stratosphere because using infrasonic analysis it bounces off the thermosphere and stratosphere and you cannot get a good location.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Does she know anything about that?
	I don't know specifically.
	I do know the instruments, you know, have improved.
	They still struggle with that.
	I mean, it actually is very difficult.
	You're absolutely right.
	It does bounce off.
	A lot of the infrasonic research that I'm familiar with tends to be a little bit closer to home, less in the atmosphere.
	But I will be researching that in the next year, and if I ever come back on, you can ask that question again, and I'll have an answer for you.
	So you're still just using seismic data to get a good location?
	I believe so, yeah.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Jim, what are you doing in Ankara?
	I'm just a technician.
	Technician.
	All right.
	Well, listen, it's fascinating stuff and thank you for the call.
	Jennifer, you obviously really lit a fire here with this infrasonic stuff.
	It's a really cool area and I'm really looking forward to investigating it further.
	Well, obviously a lot of people are very interested.
	Rex in San Francisco, you're on the air with Jennifer.
	Hi.
	Oh, yes.
	Hello.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	Sure.
	This is just a comment on what you said earlier, Jennifer, about you refuted the parallel universe theory.
	I refuted the parallel universe theory?
	You said the reason that can't happen is because there would be an infinite amount of universes.
	Oh, you're talking about many worlds.
	I was not refuting parallel universes per se.
	I'm sorry.
	Anyway, the thrust of what you said is that that can't happen because there would be an infinite amount of universes.
	That particular interpretation, the many worlds interpretation.
	Well, you know, why couldn't there... is that the best way to refute that, though?
	I mean, it leads one to believe that universes can only be finite, the way you said it.
	And that doesn't make very much sense, unless you believe in God or something like that.
	I'm not quite sure.
	You refuted that theory because you said, well, if that were so, then that would mean that there would be an infinite amount of universes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And that's just simply too many.
	I mean, you can't have... An infinite amount of universes is too many.
	Well, doesn't that... Is that really the current... That's not too far out of the mainstream, is it, to think that there are an infinite amount of universes?
	Yeah, but those aren't infinite in number.
	I mean, the unusual thing about the many worlds theory is it's saying that every time, say, that you have, you know, a quantum particle or something happens at the subatomic level, a new universe gets created to account for that.
	You've got billions upon billions upon billions every second being created, and that's just ridiculous.
	That is not the same thing as the brains and the various multiverse scenarios proposed by String Theory, by Stephen Hawking, and some of the others.
	They're very, very different things.
	There could be an infinite amount of large universes.
	I think you need to be careful about the infinite there.
	That's what I mean.
	I think you should be careful about it.
	We'll agree to disagree on that.
	Okay.
	I just have a comment on your experience, Mr. Bell?
	Sure.
	I think I was doing a bit of mind reading, if you don't mind my bragging.
	It seems to me the first thing you ought to do would be to analyze your thoughts about your neighbor.
	Maybe you subconsciously saw your neighbor in a bad mood that you had parking too close.
	Maybe there was a wild teenager that you noticed.
	You know, there's a whole host of those things.
	You didn't go to first, I don't think, at least on the air.
	I think I was reading Jennifer's mind.
	I know she was probably thinking the same thing.
	There's a whole host of things, but none of them Um, provides an easy explanation for what happened to me, and I don't really want to go over it again, but it was not a subtle thing that happened to me.
	It was anything but subtle.
	It was demanding, it was overwhelming, and I wouldn't begin to try to explain where it came from, why it happened, or any of the rest of it, just that it did happen.
	Justin in Oregon, you're on with Jennifer.
	Hi.
	Oh, wow, Art Bell.
	Well, I just want to thank you for letting me come on.
	It's been a long time.
	I've been listening to you ever since I was a little kid with my father.
	Anyways, I just wanted to make a comment, and maybe a question if I could, about the fact that certain technologies are coming about, and I've noticed that technologies I have heard have already come about way before we even know about it.
	Let's just say, for instance, like you said about the technologies with computers, I've noticed that cars now, they have drive-by-wire, and now that cars can discern when there's something coming towards it, and that will slow the car down.
	And I was wondering if that had anything to do with the type of theories that Jennifer has about the fact that there's certain technologies that are coming about with computers, And I've noticed, and I've had many people talk to me about when they were older, about when I've had a friend, a couple of friends, that were in the Army way back when, covering around Area 51 about technologies that they had seen way beforehand, and now they started introducing them into the United States.
	And I just didn't know if maybe, you know, if she knew, maybe they're starting to already introduce them way beforehand.
	I think, Jennifer, what he's asking, without directly asking it, is whether we are getting technology from elsewhere.
	Whether there's technology that we're becoming aware of through other sources that you'd probably quickly deny exist, being fed into mainstream industry.
	There's actually a very clear developmental timeline for these technologies.
	They might seem like they're springing out of nowhere, but they're really not.
	They've been in development for quite some time.
	They're all based on something that came before.
	They're really not coming out of nowhere.
	It's not like I'm discounting that.
	I'm just saying that we can actually point and say, this research and this research and this product and this and this and this all combined together to get this, and we did it ourselves.
	Over time.
	So, in other words, you don't see any technology out there that is so far advanced that it was such a giant jump that it's inexplicable how we got there.
	No, no.
	I think these things are very well documented.
	Okay.
	Very quickly, Matt in Ohio.
	You're on with Jennifer Willett.
	Hi, Jennifer.
	Hi.
	Yes, I have a question and a comment for you.
	Okay.
	My question is, the movie, The Day After Tomorrow, about the global warming.
	Oh, right.
	I'm sure you get this question a lot, but I was wondering if that is actually possible.
	You know, it was obviously exaggerated for Hollywood effect.
	I mean, no, the science was not particularly good in that.
	It basically played up a lot of things that you probably couldn't back up.
	But I mean, as in most fiction, there's a kernel of truth to it.
	It's just that they blew it all out of proportion.
	They combined a lot of stuff.
	So I would not use it as, say, a scientific treatise on what could possibly happen on global warming.
	Nor was it intended to be.
	Nor was it intended to be.
	It's a great movie.
	It's a lot of fun.
	Yeah.
	You know.
	Exactly right.
	As has all of this been a great deal of fun.
	Jennifer, thank you for being here.
	I really enjoyed it.
	Hey, listen, good luck with your new book.
	Obviously, it's got a lot of interest.
	So, back to it you go.
	Thanks, and we'll do it again, Jennifer.
	Okay, great.
	Thanks a lot.
	Take care.
	And this is Crystal Gale with a voice that speaks for itself.

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