Cognition 2.0

Just finished reading Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. If you haven't read it, don't worry I won't give up the ending; however, there are topics he touches on that could either be left out or should be used as an element for the plot. Concretely, I'm referring to the hint (yes, just a hint) of 'Noetic Science'. Unfortunately, Noetics do not form part of the plot nor does it help deciphering or finding anything new in the book. It all came down to a huge dark warehouse where characters go through some action moments, but Noetics seems to be as dark a theory for Dan Brown as the warehouse that one of his characters, Kathryn, uses as a lab.

Enough said about Dan Brown's book... However, the book mentions only one fact, or rather pseudo-fact. It brings up the experiment that was done in 1910 by Dr. McDougall in Boston, where he claimed having discovered the mass of the human soul by measuring the weight change experienced at the moment of death. Apparently, there was a more or less consistent drop of body mass equivalent to 21 grams at the time the individual died. He used 6 subjects, of which 2 measurements were discarded due to external circumstances, and 1 measurement was flawed. Eventually, we have a 50-50 chance that the result of the experiment has any meaningful scientific value. Nevertheless, in the book, the tall, beautiful brunette scientist succeeds to measure to a great degree of accuracy with the aid of high-tech equipment the change of weight of an expiring human being into afterlife.

Be it what it may, let's assume it were possible and that science did effectively confirm the change in body mass upon reaching death. What would it tell us? What could be concluded from that 'little' fact and change of mass? What would physicists conclude from the fact that the principle of conservation of mass could be violated? Just to mention a few...

The first one to be elated by the discovery might even be a physicist, namely Roger Penrose. In his book The Emperor's New Mind he develops a potential connection between thought and, not only quantum mechanics, but gravitons. The expiration of brain activity could potentially release gravitons, i.e. gravitational wave particles, that would potentially account for the apparent change in bodily mass.

Another connection, which would interest me more, would be the connection between Noetics and Quantum Theory. It is similar to Penrose's conjecture with respect to the quantum aspect of human thought, however I'm looking at it from the perspective of human consciousness as a vehicle for mass creation. For what you say?

Picture this: your body, the chair you are sitting on, the computer you are reading this on is nothing but empty space. The size of the atoms and particles making them up is negligible compared to the space between them. The sense of form, weight, colour, etc. are attributes that our human mind imposes on the world around us. Sure there are electro-magnetic fields that we interact with, as well as other fields such as the gravitational field of the Earth, and so on. Those fields are nothing but mathematical constructs to explain the effects of matter on its surrounding space, but the real essence of matter is still unsolved. Enter the Higgs Boson.

It is assumed that particle physics describes matter as waves of probability. However, these waves do not account for the mass of a particle, such as the mass of a proton, or neutron, or electron, or even the absence of mass of other such particles as the photon, the neutrino, etc. The differences in their mass is attributed to a very old particle, the Methusalem particle, also called Higgs Boson in honour of its discoverer. The discovery is mostly theoretical, as it hasn't been measured yet, but is required for the equations of quantum mechanics to accommodate what is called mass. The new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN is precisely trying to create such high energy collisions, that it would create the conditions at the very beginning of our universe just before particles acquired mass after the Big Bang. If the energy of the collision is high enough, scientists are expecting to see Higgs Bosons flying as a result of the experiment and so confirm its existence.

On the other hand, if we don't find the Higgs particle in the LHC experiments, then we are back to square 1. Where is mass coming from? And here the answer would hint to Noetics. Mass would be then the result of observation by a conscious being. By conscious I mean to describe an animate object as opposed to an inanimate one. Animate object possess 'animae', i.e. spirit, soul, awareness, however you'd like to describe them. This could be a touch point between science and meta-physics, where an event from the realm of meta-physics would have a physical quantity correlated. In essence, this would mean that the fact of having an anima allows you to measure and experience mass. Without it, it's all fields and waves.

So, if souls experience and measure mass, they, by the law of reflexivity, would also have mass. That mass would be lost when the person dies and would be returned to... 'heaven'? Difficult to explain, but there would have to be a repository of mass in the world that animae transform into and then materialize back into ordinary matter. Such a repository would be the Higgs Boson. When an anima leaves the observer, it creates a Higgs Boson. When the Higgs Boson is absorbed by matter, it creates an anima. The Higgs Boson would be the 'Heaven Particle', if this held true...

To conclude this meta-physical blog, or rather sci-fi blog, it would all come down again to being able to observe the Higgs Boson. But would it possible? How would we achieve it? For once, it could end up being cheaper to capture Higgs Bosons from dying people than from building LHCs. Also, so many people die and are born daily, that the chances of seeing one would be very high. Finally, if the 'Heaven Particle' were observed, then we could go out and use our telescopes to measure what the density of Higgs Bosons in the universe would be. That could give us a clue if we are alone in this universe, or if there are other animae out there. Just plug in the values into the Drake equation: