SPECTRUM ARTICLE - SCANNING THE ISSUES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): NSA-RDP96X00790R000100040022-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 1, 2008
• Sequence Number: 22
• Publication Date: March 31, 1976
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2008/04/01: NSA-RDP96XO079OR000100040022-0
Perception of remote data:
needed-a theory explaining the phenomenon
For more than a hundred years, scientists
have attempted to determine the truth or fal-
sity of claims for the existence of a percep-
tual channel whereby certain Individuals are
able to perceive and describe remote data
not presented to any known sense. And for
the past three years, a program in the Elec-
tronics and Bioengineering Laboratory of
Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Menlo
Park, Calif., has been underway to investi-
gate those characteristics of human percep-
tion that appear to fall outside the range
of well-understood perceptuallprocessing
capabilities.
The March issue of the Proceedings of
the IEEE Includes a paper by two scientists
from that institute, which presents an outline
of the history of scientific inquiry into such
so-called paranormal perception and sur-
veys the current state of the art in parapsy-
chological research in the United States and
overseas.
Of particular interest to the. authors is a
human Information-accessing capability,
which they call 'remote viewing,' and
which pertains to the acility of certain indi-
viduals to access and describe, by means of
mental processes. information sources
blocked from ordinary perception. and gen-
erally accepted as secure against such ac-
cess.
For example, the authors have extensive-
ly Investigated the ability of a subject to
view remote geographical locations up to a
distance of several thousand kilometers
from the subject's physical location, given
only a known person on whom to target.
They also have carried out more than 50 ex-
periments under what they define as "con-
trolled laboratory conditions" with several
Individuals whose remote perceptual abili-
ties have been developed sufficiently to
allow them at times to describe correctly-
often in great detail-geographical or tech-
nical material such as buildings. roads, labo-
ratory apparatus. and the like.
What are the major findings from these
experiments? The authors claim that, first of
all, they have established that it is possible
to obtain significant amounts of accurate
descriptive information about remote loca-
tions. Also, the remote viewing phenome-
non was not found to be a sensitive function
of distance (an increase in the distance sep-
arating the subject from the scene to be
perceived from a few meters up to 4000 km
did not in any apparent way degrade the
quality or accuracy of perception). Another
important finding is that the use of Faraday-
cage electrical snielding did not prevent
high-quality descriptions from being ob-
tained. The authors maintain that, based on
their data, both specially selected and unse-
lected persons can be assisted in devel-
oping remote perceptual abilities up to a
level of useful information transfer.
In their experiments, the authors went
even one step further than just examining
the phenomenon of remote viewing In
space. They report that during the course of
the experimentation in spatial remote view-
ing, subjects occasionally volunteered the
Information that they had been thinking
about their forthcoming participation In a re-
mote-viewing experiment and had had an
image come to them as to what the target
location was to be. With that motivation, the
authors set out to conduct "very well con-
trolled experiments" to determine whether
they could deliberately design and execute
experiments for the sole purpose of observ-
ing such "precognition" (temporal remote
viewing) phenomena. (In these experiments,
the subject was required to describe the re-
mote location before the target was actually
selected))
Although these experiments were regard-
ed by the authors as successful, an explana-
t on for this phenomenon. as wall as fcr
spatial remote viewing, is not easily found.
as the authors themselves indicate: "Cur-
rently, we have no precise model of this
spatial and temporal remote viewing phe-
nomenon." However, they claim that these
phenomena are "not at all inconsistent with
the framework of physics as currently un-
derstood." For example, one hypothesis for
explaining remote viewing is that informa-
tion transfer under conditions of sensory
shielding is mediated by electromagnetic
waves of extremely low frequency (wave-
lengths in the 300- to 1000-km region). The
time reversibility-that is. effects (e.g.. ob-
servations) apparently preceding causes
(e.g. events)-may be explained, according
to the authors, in terms of "advanced" po-
tential, a legitimate solution of the electto-
magnetic wave propagation equations that
is conventionally discarded (in contrast to
the 'generally accepted "retarded" potential
solution) as "not corresponding to any ob-
seriable physical event." Quantum theory
and information theory are other disciplines
mentioned by the authors, where explana-
tions for the observed phenomena may be
sought. (H. E. Puthoff and R. Targ, "A per-
ceptual channel for information transfer
over kilometer distances: historical per-
spective and recent research." Proceedings
of the IEEE. Mar. 1976.)-G.K.
On lasers-devices and applications. The
Fifth Biannual Conference on Laser Engi-
neering and Applications (CLEA) in Wash-
ington. D.C., May 28-30. 1975 (jointly spon-
sored by the IEEE and the Optical Society of
America) featured a well-balanced program
of 175 papers on laser devices and applica-
tions. Of these, 32 were invited papers on
far-ranging subjects, including special talks
on the relevance of lasers in the energy
shortage by Edward Teller, and on optical
communications In perspective by R.
Kompfner. Thirty additional postdeadline pa-
pers were also presented. However, the
special February issue of the IEEE Journal
of Quantum Electronics, devoted to that
conference, contains only 12 of the papers
presented at the meeting: these were the
papers subsequently submitted for a full re-
view according to the procedures required
by the journal.
One of the topics addressed in the Issue
Is the use of lasers for welding of materials
with high reflectivity. Such welding-in par-
ticular, that of thin foils of highly reflective
metals to any baseplate-has proved diffi-
cult due to the high Intensity required to
overcome the reflective losses. The authors
of that paper claim that independence of
material surface properties and its reflecting
behavior can be achieved if the laser output
consists of a high-intensity first spike fol-
lowed by an emission adapted to the weld-
ing process. According to the authors. this
type of laser emission, called "fundamental-
mode laser pulses," can be optimized for
particular weld and material properties. (M.
Montanarini and J. Steffen. "Investigations
on laser welding," from. a Special Issue on
the Fifth Biannual Conference on Laser En-
gineering and Applications. IEEE Journal of
Quantum Electronics, Feb. 1976.)-G.K.
Acoustooptlcs revisited-a three-part
comprehensive review. Since the emer-
gence of the field of acoustooptic interac-
tions Involving incoherent optics and sonic
waves during the 1920s and 1930s. re-
search interest in such interactions has in-
creased steadily-resulting in many practi-
cal devices using light diffraction and modu-
lation, and in optical probing of sound waves
in gases, liquids, and solids.
January's Transactions on Sonics and Ul-
trasonics contains three articles designed to
cover the broad and mature, but expanding,
field of acoustooptic interactions and to pro-
vide up-to-date reviews of important as-
pects of this important subject.
The first paper under discussion-by 1. C.
Chang of the Applied Technology Division.
Itek Ccrp.-gives a 'concise review of the
basic principle of acoustooptic interactions
in anisotropic media using a coupled-wave
analysts.
The second paper, by R. V. Schmidt of
Bell Labs. includes an introduction to the
uniqueness and characteristics of thin-film
acoustooptic devices.
G. 1. Stegernan, a professor at the Univer-
sity of Toronto. Is the author of the third
paper, which serves as a brief review of the
basic principles and a survey of the state of
the art in optical probing techniques and ap-
plications. (Acoustooptic interactions-a
review. IEEE Transactions on Sonics and Ul-
trasonics. Jan. 1976.)-M.E. B
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