CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100005-4

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Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100005-4
STANFORD RESEARCH INSTITUTE
MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA 94025
June 27, 1972
2
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At the suggestion of Russell Targ I am writing you about an
observation in the laboratory involving one Ingo Swann, a New York
artist. To introduce myself, I am a lasor physicist at SRI and
co-author of the book "Fundamentals of Quantum Electronics, " by
Pantell and Puthoff, a Wiley publication.
Through some private correspondence I received some informa-
tion from Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler at City College, New York, that
they had done some experiments in the Department of Psychology with
Ingo Swann, a young man who had done some rather amazing things in
their laboratory, including the raising and lowering of temperatures
at thermistors placed some distance from his body. Since he was
coming out to the West Coast, it was suggested that perhaps, as a
physicist with sensitive equipment available, I might like to work
`with him in an experiment or two. I agreed and invited him out.
In order to eliminate the possibility of trickery, I decided
on an experiment where if trickery were successful, that would be
nearly as important as any direct effect he could produce. At the
suggestion of Dr. Little (Stanford Physics Dept. ) I made arrangements
to use the superconductor shielded magnetometer being used in the
quark experiments of Dr. Arthur Hobbard, Stanford Physics Dept. This
magnetometer is located in a wotl in the Varian Physics building, and
is shielded by an aluminum container, copper shielding, and, most
important, a superconducting cannister. Dr. Hebbard assured me that
in tests with large electromagnets no signals have been induced in
the shielded magnetometer from the outside. The magnetometer is of
the SQUID varicty.
:
Prior to the experiment a decaying magnetic field had been set
up inside the magnetometer, and its steady docay with time provided
a background calibration signal which registers as a sine wat > output
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calib.
ion field.
The system had been running
for something on the order of an hour with no noise. Ingo was shown
the setup and told that if he were to affect the magnetic field in .
the magnetometer it would show up as a change in the output recording.
He then placed his attention on the interior of the magnetometer (his
description) at which point the frequency of the sine wave doubled
for a couple of cycles (sco output), or roughly 10 seconds. As you
can imagine, we were quite amazed, and Art then said, "Well, maybe
it's noise -- it would really be something if you could stop the sine
wave altogether." Ingo proceeded to do just that, as can be seen in
the graph, for a period of roughly 10 seconds. Nfc then "let go," at
which point the output returned to normal. Wo asked him to describe
what he had done, and he explained that he could see the apparatus
inside and that looking at different parts created the effect. As he
described what he was doing, the recording traced out a cycle as had
occurred originally (double frequency) . A rather peculiar dip in the
recording took place then, and upon questioning him as to what was
happening, he said he was looking at a now part, the niobium ball
sitting in a cup which was inert for now in the magnetometer experi-
ment (it is used in the quark experiment). We asked him to refrain
from thinking about the apparatus, and the normal pattern then traced
out for several minutes while we engaged. him in conversation on other
subjects. At one point he started to discuss the magnetometer again,
at which point the tracing went into a high frequency pattern. At
our request he stopped, and we terminated the observation as he was
tired from his effort. We then left the lab, and Art Hebbard then
continued to run the apparatus for over an hour with no trace of noise
or nonsinusoidal activity. At various times during this and the
following day where similar data were taken, the experiment was observed
by numerous graduate students, and also by Dr. Little of the Physics
Department, and by Dr. Martin Lee from SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator),
the designer of the electron storage ring.
An interesting side light of the experiment was that Ingo was
able to describe rather well what the interior of the device looked
like, apparently with some form of direct observation.
I am quite
certain that he would not have had a chance to look at a diagram
beforehand, as he did not know that we were going to use this particular
piece of apparatus until we arrived in the laboratory.
At this point I wish to state that I consider this an observation,
not a controlled experiment. There are variables I would want to
chock if we bad time and money, such as whether it was the recording
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This could be tested by a disconnect of the apparatus from the
recording equipment to see if the recording would continue to change
- on command.
Sected
DiscotuEi
Uri
There is not much more that can be said about the observation.
If further work were to validate the observation, the implications
aro staggering, to say the least. However, before we speculate I
think it is necessary to remain cautious and try to arrange for Ingo
to return from the East Coast and to perform some carefully-controlled
experiments to see whether the phenomena continue to hold under
rigorous and well-defined conditions.
As a postscript, we did try to repeat the temperature experiment
using a hp quartz thermometer and did get the variations requested.
However, the environment was not well controlled, so I consider the
.experiment suggestive but inconclusive.
If you wish further information on this or have any suggestions
please do not hesitate to contact me further about this matter.
With best regards,
Dr. H. E. Puthoff
Senior Research Engineer
Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory
Bldg. 30.
326-6200, Ext. 3202
HEP:st
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