About levitation, OBEs, and refrigerators

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation was the link of this morning. See also this. I glue a little piece of text here.

Now, in another report that sounds like it comes out of the pages of a Harry Potter book, the University of St Andrews team has created an 'incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together.

Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this phenomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts.

Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate but they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.

From the article one learns also that Leonhardt and Philbin have worked out how to turn the Casimir force from attraction to repulsion using a specially developed lens placed between two objects. Nothing has been done yet in practice but the idea is fascinating.

Levitation and large hbar

By going to Wikipedia you learn that Casimir force between conductors is a genuine quantum effect analogous to van der Waals force between neutral atoms. It becomes the dominating force between conductors in submicron scale. In the case of two conducting slabs the force per area is given by

F/A= -hbar×π²/240a⁴,

where a is the distance between slabs. Casimir force is clearly attractive and becomes strong in short length scales.

What makes this interesting from the point of TGD is hbar proportionality of this force (recall the identification of dark matter as macroscopically quantum coherent large hbar phases). For large values of hbar Casimir force increases. If Casimir force can be made repulsive by using the proposed lense arrangement then large hbar would amplify the levitation effect and one might perhaps consider levitation even in macroscopic scales.

Leonhardt explains that Casimir force is one of the basic mechanisms behind friction in nano length scales. This comes as a news for me. Casimir force increases with Planck constant and I would have expected that friction force is reduced as Planck constant increases. The fault in my thinking is that I associate friction force directly with dissipation. Thinking it again, I realize that friction interaction means at quantum level only an interaction leading to a formation of a bound state of two objects. This state has some binding energy and in the lowest energy state the object sticks to the surface. Friction interaction opposes the sliding of the object along the surface and some minimum force is required to put the object sliding. This brings first in my mind a macrocopic quantum jump from ground state to a state in which sliding takes place. The next mental image is more microscopic: the momentum feed must be larger than some critical value to induce the splitting of the bonds between object and surface.

What happens as object slides along the surface? In particular, how the rate for the dissipation of energy depends on Planck constant? Denote by V the potential energy of the friction force. A simple dimensional argument based on Golden Rule, the rate for the dissipation of energy in the initial state |i> with energy E_i should look like follows

dE/dt propto (1/hbar)×∑_f |V_i,f|²/(E_f-E_i) .

Here V_i,f is the matrix element of the interaction potential energy between states labelled by i and f. How this rate depends on hbar depends on V, the spectum E_f of energies, and on the energy dependence of the sum over E_f. If the set of states remains the same, the state sum gives no dependence on hbar. One expects that Casimir force gives to E_f a contribution proportional to hbar and if initial and final state in the sum have same kinetic energy as they naturally have in a model for the dissipation, E_f-E_i would be proportional to hbar. Therefore dE/dt would not depend on hbar. Hence the first guess is that the rate of dissipation does not depend on hbar if caused by Casimir force whereas for friction caused by fundamental forces the rate should decreates like 1/hbar.

About levitation experiences

So: are yogis able to increase their personal hbar temporarily? I would guess "No". I have had a lot of levitation experiences during states between sleep and awake and I feel always as being awake. During these experiences I have even performed tests to check whether this is the case or not and become convinced that I really levitate. Only after wake up to ordinary state of consciousness I have realized that it was a dream after all. These experiences as a rule involve very pleasant wavy-like bodily sensations and what I find remarkable is that the usual unpleasant sensory noise is absent. Around 1985 I had long-lasting experience in which I experienced body was for long times in this fantastic "enlightened" state but this happend during wake-up consciousness.

In TGD Universe these experiences might result when my magnetic field body with large hbar moves and performs wave-like motion whereas biological body remains as such. Usually it would be magnetic body which would be at rest whereas biological body would move. The interference effects for dark photons mediating communications between biological body and field body could generate dynamical hologram like representation giving rise to the sensations of movement and wavy motion. If biological body sleeps it does not contribute to the ordinary sensory mental images which involve this unpleasant noisy aspect. Small dissipation for magnetic body having large hbar means that its contribution to unpleasant noise is small. Also train illusion and sensation created by thinking about falling down from cliff could be understood in terms of simulations performed by magnetic body.

Similar experience during wake-up but without levitation experiences suggests that the brain areas responsible for creating somatosensory mental images about body must have been sleeping and the remaining sensory input have kept the cognitive representations at magnetic body reasonably realistic. My magnetic body had however also rather adventurous travels around globe, galaxy, and Universes (plural is not a typo!) but the crucial parts of my brain were definitely wake-up: I could remember these episodes and there was no wake-up following this state.

It is interesting that during these flying experiences I always have found it impossible to go too far away. I can fly to some height but cannot continue anymore. In one dream involving fascinating experiences of a completely dissipationless spinning and ideal rectilinear motion my brothers brought me back as I tried to leave my apartment. That I lived in fifth floor was probably not the reason! Could it be that magnetic body cannot just take and leave the biological body to survive without cognitive representations and that the collective conscious entity containing the magnetic bodies of people with whom I strongly quantum entangle took the command over the irresponsible behavior of my magnetic body;-)?

During experiences induced by the noise of refrigerator (which I heard during dream) I felt that the refrigerator strongly attracted my body. The experience was very pleasant and I had to make a difficult decision whether I shall find what happens if I let it go: I was however always so afraid that the refrigerator would "capture" my soul that I woke up. Perhaps it was a wise choice: otherwise my magnetic body might be now part of the magnetic body of that damned refrigenerator;-).