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Qualitative Analysis by Nicholas A. Reiter and Lori L. Schillig ABSTRACT: This scientific and theoretical paper examines an event involving spontaneous macroscopic
PK involving elements common to poltergeist activity. In depth analysis of the remains of two ceramic "Corelle"
vessels which broke simultaneously during emotional turbulance in the home indicate an unusual irregularity in the
fracturing of this product. Experiments were conducted to replicate this type of breakage, but were unsuccessful.
Examinations of the fractures were conducted with a Baird Atomic 916 Geiger counter and a Tracor Northern 5400
Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) mounted on a Jeol electron microscope. Research indicates that the only known
way to duplicate the break involves an acoustic disruption, such as a vibration into the ultrasonic and possibly
involving multiple frequencies or vectors. 1. Background In August of 1997, a co-worker acquaintance of NR came forward with an interesting story which seemed to involve spontaneous macroscopic PK. An event had occurred in the home of Mr. D early in the previous evening which involved the oddly timed, sudden breaking of two ceramic dishes. Circumstances surrounding the event included elements which seem to be common to cases involving spontaneous PK or poltergeist activity. The testimony of Mr. D is recounted here, and is followed by the results of in-depth analysis of the remains of the ceramic vessels which broke during the episode. We then conclude with a discussion of the results, and some theoretical considerations. 2. Mr. D's Story On the evening of the occurrence, Mr. D arrived home from work after picking up his 16 month old son at the babysitter's. Once at home, Mr. D began preparing supper in the kitchen for the child, and for he and Mrs. D, who was not home from her place of work yet. When Mrs. D did arrive home, she was in a stressed mood from a long day at her office, and became vocally perturbed at her husband. Mrs. D had apparently been looking forward to a bit of wind-down time to relax and read the paper before having to eat supper. As it was, Mr. D had food already in preparation (cheese and vegetable omelets), and Mrs. D was miffed at being rushed into supper. After a sharp exchange of words in the kitchen, Mrs. D turned away from the counter where Mr. D was preparing the eggs and cheese. Mr. D turned his back also, and began to stomp out of the kitchen. A few seconds after turning, Mr. D heard a pronounced "CRACK". Both he and Mrs. D turned around simultaneously and observed the following: The "Corelle" china bowl which held the stirred eggs had split open into three sections. The breaks were completely clean, and the bowl had fallen apart into neat, tidy pieces. The breaks tended to follow chords across the profile of the bowl, and followed the curve of the vessel. A matching "Corelle" china plate sitting about 20 cm away on the same counter had split apart also; again, very neatly with a "bite" shaped chunk falling away from the rest of the plate. The plate had on it the slices of cheese for the omelet. The Ds were, needless to say, wide-eyed and aghast. They immediately forgot their spat from only moments earlier. With a certain amount of trepidation, they cleaned up the mess and finished making supper. Mr. D had the presence of mind to take several good quality colour photos of the bowl and plate before moving anything or cleaning up the mess. Both pieces of the china plate, and the largest portion of the bowl, were presented to NR for analysis. 3. Circumstances Suggestive of Pk Humans have been breaking their dinnerware for centuries, oftimes over each other's heads. What properties of this case suggest that the anomalous was involved? We have isolated three factors which we believe, when added together, give the case of Mr. D a reasonable value for strangeness: l. The spontaneous splitting of the china, in the absence of any applied mechanical forces or thermal stress. No hot materials were placed in or near the china, nor were the pieces exposed to the influence of a microwave oven. 2. The simultaneous splitting of two discrete china pieces, which were positioned near each other, but which were not touching. 3. The juxtaposition of the splitting china with the argument between Mr. and Mrs. D. Mr. D was given a short interview by NR for the purpose of establishing whether or not similar events had occurred in either his or his wife's past. This was felt to be worthwhile, as we desired to know if one or other of the couple would be a more likely PK generator. Mr. D indicated that no similar events had ever occurred in the presence of either he or his wife. It was revealed, however, that several members of Mr. D's extended maternal family had been prone to anomalous personal experiences. While the issue remains uncertain, our opinion is that Mr. D may be a more likely PK source. More interviewing will certainly be necessary, however, if we are to firm up this conjecture. 4. Physical Considerations of the Event and Analysis It was felt than an understanding of the mechanics involved with this case might provide valuable clues to the nature of many macro-PK or poltergeist events. A much more thorough discussion of PK physics is currently underway in the form of an expanded, parallel paper. However, cases such as this allow us to focus on specific mechanisms which may be supportive of the larger theory. How did the Corelle china break? Our first step was to establish an understanding of the composition of Corelle. Two engineers were consulted who had worked with Corelle ceramic in the past. One of these gentlemen had been on the design team for the platinum extrusion head used in the manufacture of Corelle. Corelle china in many ways resembles tempered glass. Indeed, it is a glass; or rather a layered sandwich of two distinct mixtures of glass. Two batches of lithium aluminasilicate glass, of slightly different composition, are co-extruded and pressed into the desired bowl or plate shape. When the layered glass piece cools, the surface and subsurface regions take on different degrees of contraction, ergo the surface ends up in a state of compression. In this way, the piece acts as a highly tempered, shock resistant unit. Instead of being clear like soda lime glass, however, the piece is pleasingly white or tan like china. This fact in itself presents us with yet another enigmatic characteristic of the Mr. D case. Corelle china does not usually break in the manner observed by the Ds. When a piece of Corelle breaks, it breaks apart dramatically, or bursts, into a multitude of very small shards, or cullet. It does not typically "fall" or crack apart into one or two large portions. This was confirmed first hand. The Corelle bowl from Mr. D was placed against a steel brace, and
struck sharply with a steel rod. A portion of about 10 cm What other means could possibly cause the type of break witnessed by the Ds? We take the Corelle plate, and subject a small region to the heat of a hydrogen torch flame. We heat the region to red incandescence. No breakage resulted. Heating the smaller broken away portion of the Corelle plate over a gas flame, then quenching it in cold water DID result in breakage, but similar in aspect to the mechanical blow (many tiny shards). One of the engineers consulted in the matter stated that Corelle china could sometimes spontaneously burst or shatter. He had witnessed this during initial product testing. Generally, however, two conditions had to be satisfied for this to occur. First, either a void or a minute crack in the surface layer had to be generated. Then, a sharp blow or vibration would cause the stress inherent in the entire piece to be relieved suddenly, causing complete shattering. The engineer was shown the broken Corelle from the D case. His opinion was that the long, clean breaks were very unusual. An interesting speculation offered was that such breakage might be the result of a strong SOUND or acoustic disruption. Our mutual speculation is that such a vibration would be well into the ultrasonic, probably above 20 kHz. Additionally, the acoustic energy involved might be of multiple frequencies or vectors, causing the ceramic to split along lines defined by interference. Close examination of the breaks reveals smooth, slightly meandering lines. No indication of faceting, or sharp, short contours is seen. A Baird Atomic 916 Geiger counter was used to check the china pieces for radioactivity. No increase in count rate over ambient was observed. The china pieces do not seem to have acquired any anomalous electrostatic properties, though analysis to determine dielectric constant or strength was not carried out. We made use of Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) to examine the possibility of chemical or compositional changes in the ceramic. A Tracor Northern 5400 EDS system mounted on a Jeol electron microscope provided mass spectra for two samples chipped from the Corelle bowl. One sample, "A", was taken from a region of the bowl about 2 cm away from the original break line. Sample "B" was taken from the original break line. Subtle differences in spectra are seen. However, because the glass batch mixtures for Corelle are proprietary, it becomes nearly impossible to tell if the small differences in mass peaks are due to the two glass formulations normally used, or if they are the result of an anomalous compositional alteration. EDS printouts are attached for reference. Please note that the main differences are seen with K and Na. It must be also noted that our EDS system is incapable of seeing elements lighter than fluorine (oxygen, carbon, lithium, etc.). Although the ZPF is typically not observable due to its utter non-coherence, and a very short mean
free photon path resulting from almost immediate self interference, the energy density of just one cubic
centimetre of free space is theoretically tremendous. One authority, Dr. H. E. Puthoff, has suggested a mass/energy
content of 10 The ZPF is also considered to be electromagnetic radiation of an extraordinarily broad bandwidth and would therefore contain all frequencies from nearly 0 Hz to beyond those of gamma radiation. More often, this concept is framed in terms of photons of many energy levels. In this sense, the ZPF may truly be thought of as the ultimate "white noise" source! Our theory proposes that the chaotic patterns of neural emissions may couple by interference with the ZPF, since the ZPF background contains all frequencies and vectors. In doing so, the human brain may occasionally act in a fashion similar to the biasing signal on a power transistor. A portion of the ZPF spectrum, corresponding to neural emission spectra, may become temporarily cohered, and therefore capable of doing considerable work. This work could manifest in many surprising and counter-intuitive ways. In the cases of solid state matter breaking, bending, softening, or interpenetrating, complex waveforms of high power from the ZPF could drive atoms to higher energy levels via NMR, stretch inter-atomic bonds, cause diathermy style heating, and be transformed into acoustic energy. This last possibility would appear most likely in materials of a dielectric nature, such as ceramic, rock, and even living bodies. Many effects popularly attributed to PK, upon careful scrutiny, seem to have a possible link with SOUND or acoustic energy. Could the case of Mr. D's china fall into this theoretical structure? We consider the speculations of the ceramic engineer who suggested that the Corelle breakage may have occurred from a sonic disturbance. Empirical studies making use of electronic circuitry producing chaotic EM fields at high power densities are planned, and equipment is currently in the construction phase. Our goal is to be able to confirm unusual physical changes in target samples, occurring at intervals far more frequent than predicted statistically, when said samples are placed with the chaotic field. In short, we predict that electronically produced PK or poltergeist effects are possible, and that these effects should allow us to model PK as related to humans. 5. Summary and Discussion We establish, then, the following: Two pieces of Corelle ceramic ware were observed by rational witnesses to have spontaneously broken in a peculiar manner. The circumstances of the event, defined in sections 2 and 3 of this report, strongly suggest that some sort of psychokinetic effect was involved. From in-house experimental data, and from engineering opinion submitted by two ceramics specialists, the breakage of the Corelle was atypical, and to date, is not reproducible by us. No discernible changes in chemical or physical properties were observed in the remaining portions of the ceramic. The artifacts from this case certainly presented themselves in a straightforward manner for analysis. We acknowledge, however, that careful examination of the Corelle pieces did not provide definitive proof of extra-normal physical influences. The attributes of the case discussed in section 3, along with the professional opinions that the Corelle breaks were highly unusual, remain our core evidence for an anomalous event. Further attempts at duplicating the long, clean breaks in the Corelle are ongoing and involve attaching piezoelectric transducers to the china surface, which in turn are pumped with a range of high frequency signals. It is important that physical and chemical analysis, even if of a very elementary level, be performed on glass, ceramic, and metal artifacts from other cases suggestive of spontaneous PK. From a more extended database, we feel that convincing evidence for such types of PK could emerge, as well as a coherent theoretical model for the phenomenon. Other investigators of similar cases are encouraged to contact us directly for data sharing and collaboration. The analytical systems and means at our disposal are available for analysis of artifacts from these cases. As mentioned in section 4, a parallel research effort is underway which is directed toward the goal of developing a new model for PK, in conjunction with the development of actual hardware which may provide conclusive proof for this model. Essentially, our model may be summarized in these general terms: The human brain produces a multitude of very low level electromagnetic signals, emanating from neural activity. These signals are of an extremely low average power density, many orders of magnitude below any DIRECT measurable physical interaction with bodies remote from the human in question. However, despite the infinitesimal power density involved, the bandwidth of neural emissions seems to be quite wide. Thus, the human brain may be viewed as an emitter of low level electromagnetic "white noise". This EM field may also be portrayed as chaotic, containing a vast number of frequencies and components, which continuously shift as neural activity changes and different portions of the brain are used. We believe that neural emissions are, at least at times, capable of coupling with the outside
world via the entity known in quantum electrodynamics as the Zero Point Fluctuation, or zero point energy of free
space. The ZPF is considered to be the totally non-cohered background radiation of free space, the result of
continuous annihilation of electron-positron pairs. The ZPF has been successfully confirmed in recent years as a
photon pressure upon very finely balanced, gold coated plates, called the Casimir force In closing, we once again encourage other investigators working in this arena to contact us at the addresses provided. By sharing results and speculations, the overall magnitude of these works may be enhanced tremendously. We would also like to thank our families, correspondents, and especially Mr. and Mrs. D for their contributions and support. Hopefully, some fruit of our efforts will repay all for their many kindnesses. REFERENCES
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area burst apart into many small shards, at least 10 or 12.
grams per cubic centimetre
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