Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-0 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Mind Over Matter: The Frontiers of Physics Conference Reykyavik, Iceland- At a five day meeting here, the "1977 Frontiers of Physics Conference',' scientists from the United States, France, Great Britain, Denmark and Sweden have presented laboratory data confirming the existence of the human mind as playing a role in physical events. For the first time, experimental physicists have agreed with their theorist colleagues that -the findings on the workings of the mind can possibly be integrated into a coherent theory of the universe. Data for experiments conducted over the past 'Live years confirmed the ability of a human being to view a scene anywhere on earth whether occuring now or in the future and to bend metal. or move an object suspended on a wire pendulum while seated several. yards away. The new evidence upsets the "Long-estlablished assertion by physicists that human mentation cannot affect large-scale physical eXper-imentation. in mathematical equations the problem has been avoided by reference to experimenters as "observers" external to and inde-,)ondent of the objects of Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0500280004-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/07 CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0500280004-5 Mind Over Matter Add 1 of their attention. In the l9th century it was held that such an observer clocked or measured a phenomenon but in no way interfered with it. With the development of quantum mechanics by Werner Heisenberg in the mid-1920's, a possible active role of the observer was admitted as an uncertainty at a micro-level state or in sub-atomic processes, but held to be so infinitessimal that it could not be measured. The findings of the of London, England, representing indust-y and technology, now own mental activity periments. conference, sponsored by the ORB Foundation and attended by some forty participants and the humanities as well as scie nce strongly suggest that the experimenter's may well affect the outcome of their ex- The perceptual experimental data was provided by laser physicist Russell Targ of the Stanford Research Institute at Menlo Park California. Targ reported that human subjects studied together with Dr. Harold Puthoff were able, while sitting in a laboratory on the west coast of the United States, accurately to locate human targets as far away as New York City and describe their locations and actions. Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0500280004-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/07: CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0500280004-5 Mind Over Matter Add 2 Targ concluded that distance in no way affected the accuracy of perceptions or their resolution and that such "distant viewing" could not be shielded or screened by any known substance thus far. More importantly, said Targ., the data collected suggested that the ability to see at a distance is by no means limited to the so-called psychically gifted but is accessible to almost anyone. A typical experiment in the Targ-Puthoff series involved a 25 year old medical student residing in California who described thelocation of his target: a dry fountain in Manhattan's Washington Square Park. Other subjects accurately depicted undera,round caverns in the mid-West and the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Dr. John B. Hasted,head of the Department of Physics at London University's Birkbeck College, described his 10,000 observations more than a dozen English children who could bend metal, as measured by sensitive strain gauges while seated several yards from them. Others caused distant hanging objects to bend and twist. Similar experiments have been successfully carried out in six other laboratories throughout the world, reported Hasted. ApggyMgyWrgeWs-eh2OOMDWLLtQift-IRDP969X),MdRUDBODMO04-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0500280004-5 Mind over Matter Add 3 Dr. Olivier Costa de Beauregard, Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, who specializes in relativistic and quantum mechanical theory commented, "Measured by all rigorous criteria of science, the experiments were meticulously performed on the basis of tight protocols and appropriate methods of evaluation. They should reas,onably convince anybody." Theoretical.support for "mind over matter" was offered by Costa de Beauregard and by Dr. Richard Mattuck of Copenhagen University's Xrsted Institute as well as by Dr. Evan Harris Walker, mathematician at the U. S. Army Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and Professor Elizabeth Rauscher, of the University of California at Berkeley. Further evidence for the capacity of the human mind to affect metal was furnished by Eldon Byrd, researcher at the U. S. Naval Surface Weapons Center's White Oak Laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland. Byrd elaborated on the extraordinary ability of a wide variety of geographically dispersed subjects to alter the properties of nitinol, a peculiar nickel-titanium alloy which once bent out of shape, can revert back to its original form under certain temperature conditions. After nitinol's "mind treatment" the metal no longer retained AplJrtweU*er)ftYease 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0500280004-5 Approved For Release 2000/08/07: CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0500280004-5 Mind over Matter Add 4 Accoustical emissions from grain structure in metal, inaudible to the human ear but.instrumentally recordable, were reported by experimental physicist Ronald Hawke of the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory in California. The sound emissions occured in the presence of subjects concen- trating on the metal though,thus far, the effects are too slight to be definitely attributable to mind action. Dr. Wilbur Franklin, Professor of Physics at Kent State University in Ohio summarized over fifteen types of physical experiments designed to test reports of other scientists about the effects of mind on laboratory instruments. Franklin has found effects which are not easily explained by known physical force fields. In the Loftleidir Hotel, site of the conference, one psychically gifted participant stunned Icelandic newspaper and television reporters by causing stainless steel coffee spoons to bend measurably within seconds without physical contact. In order to avoid misapplication of the new findings, an ethical statement by conference scientists was made. It affirmed formally that they would never allow the application of their work to further human conflict and at all times would respect and protect the rights and integrity of the human beings D through whom they were able to study the new processes. Approved For Release 2.000/08/07 ~Cl#-RPP96-00787ROO0500280004-5