billion? Wedon’t know. When we look at consciousness, what is embodied in that? How many bits? We don’t know.” In a way, it doesn’t matter. What’s important for our does-the-soul-exist purposes is that changes can be detected. The energy loss created by a soul heading out the window can, in theory, be detected as a weight loss.
The Fairbanks company does not make a scale for Gerry Nahum’s purposes. Does anyone? Possibly. Scales have traveled a surprising distance since Macdougall’s day. There are scales that easily and accurately measure micrograms, a microgram being a millionth of a gram. Measuring a billionth of a gram—a nanogram—is also possible, though costly. “What about a picogram?” muses Nahum. That’s a trillionth of a gram—10 to the minus-15 kilograms. “Can we measure that? Yeah, we can. Remember I gave you the figure ten to the minus-thirty-eight kilograms?” I remember: in the discussion of the weight of one bit of information. “I’ve just told you I can measure fifteen orders of magnitude of that. The question is, can I measure the next twenty?” Maybe he doesn’t have to. Assuming the consciousness is made up of a vast number of bits, maybe he can get away with the picogram scale.
Nahum says the electromagnetic field arrays around the box are more problematic than the scale. None of these detectors operate over the entire electromagnetic spectrum, so Nahum would have to overlap and improvise. Despite this, he thinks it could be done.
But what if the soul—the residual energy/information that doesn’t register on our electromagnetic energy detectors—doesn’t go somewhere else, but just, you know, snuffs out? Ceases to exist? That has always been my own depressing, humdrum assumption regarding death. No can be, says Nahum. Standing in the way is the First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy is neither created nor destroyed. Ithas to go somewhere. Nahum says he became convinced that this applied to the consciousness when he was five years old. Around the age you and I were puzzling out the intricacies of the shoelace, Nahum was “thinking about how it had to be conservative, that there’s no way out.” Nahum swivels to face me. “The question then becomes, Where does it go? The question is not, Is it there? It’s there.”
We sit quietly for a minute, allowing the guest to absorb this rather dense helping of quantum theory. In a corner of the ceiling, a fluorescent light flickers and goes out. Applying the First Law of Thermodynamics, we know that elsewhere in the universe, an unattractive though cost-efficient glow has just appeared.
Though Gerry Nahum has long been consumed by matters of the soul, he is not a religious man. However, he has had some interesting encounters with the Catholic Church. “I approached them, naively, years ago. To get funding. I outlined it like I just did for you.” I picture the bishops in their high-backed chairs, Nahum tucking “Your Excellency” here and there in his warp-speed, single-spaced prose.
The monsignors didn’t understand the specifics of Nahum’s proposal, but they understood enough to know that it made them nervous. “They have a system of belief where they know what the answer is. They don’t need quote-unquote proof. And if [the results don’t] agree with what they know, it’s a disaster. They don’t want to take that risk.” After Nahum’s first audience, he was invited back. Now the mood had grown solemn. Outside experts had been called in, theologians with backgrounds in cosmology and physics. Not only did they not offer to fund Nahum’s project, they did their best to talk him out of it. They spoke of a “divine design” for the division of the worlds, and tried to make the case that Nahum’s experiment threatened a breach of that division. Theconsequences, they warned, could be dire and unfathomable. “They envisioned that there was a potential for opening a dark ‘schism’ that might unleash some type
The Fairbanks company does not make a scale for Gerry Nahum’s purposes. Does anyone? Possibly. Scales have traveled a surprising distance since Macdougall’s day. There are scales that easily and accurately measure micrograms, a microgram being a millionth of a gram. Measuring a billionth of a gram—a nanogram—is also possible, though costly. “What about a picogram?” muses Nahum. That’s a trillionth of a gram—10 to the minus-15 kilograms. “Can we measure that? Yeah, we can. Remember I gave you the figure ten to the minus-thirty-eight kilograms?” I remember: in the discussion of the weight of one bit of information. “I’ve just told you I can measure fifteen orders of magnitude of that. The question is, can I measure the next twenty?” Maybe he doesn’t have to. Assuming the consciousness is made up of a vast number of bits, maybe he can get away with the picogram scale.
Nahum says the electromagnetic field arrays around the box are more problematic than the scale. None of these detectors operate over the entire electromagnetic spectrum, so Nahum would have to overlap and improvise. Despite this, he thinks it could be done.
But what if the soul—the residual energy/information that doesn’t register on our electromagnetic energy detectors—doesn’t go somewhere else, but just, you know, snuffs out? Ceases to exist? That has always been my own depressing, humdrum assumption regarding death. No can be, says Nahum. Standing in the way is the First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy is neither created nor destroyed. Ithas to go somewhere. Nahum says he became convinced that this applied to the consciousness when he was five years old. Around the age you and I were puzzling out the intricacies of the shoelace, Nahum was “thinking about how it had to be conservative, that there’s no way out.” Nahum swivels to face me. “The question then becomes, Where does it go? The question is not, Is it there? It’s there.”
We sit quietly for a minute, allowing the guest to absorb this rather dense helping of quantum theory. In a corner of the ceiling, a fluorescent light flickers and goes out. Applying the First Law of Thermodynamics, we know that elsewhere in the universe, an unattractive though cost-efficient glow has just appeared.
Though Gerry Nahum has long been consumed by matters of the soul, he is not a religious man. However, he has had some interesting encounters with the Catholic Church. “I approached them, naively, years ago. To get funding. I outlined it like I just did for you.” I picture the bishops in their high-backed chairs, Nahum tucking “Your Excellency” here and there in his warp-speed, single-spaced prose.
The monsignors didn’t understand the specifics of Nahum’s proposal, but they understood enough to know that it made them nervous. “They have a system of belief where they know what the answer is. They don’t need quote-unquote proof. And if [the results don’t] agree with what they know, it’s a disaster. They don’t want to take that risk.” After Nahum’s first audience, he was invited back. Now the mood had grown solemn. Outside experts had been called in, theologians with backgrounds in cosmology and physics. Not only did they not offer to fund Nahum’s project, they did their best to talk him out of it. They spoke of a “divine design” for the division of the worlds, and tried to make the case that Nahum’s experiment threatened a breach of that division. Theconsequences, they warned, could be dire and unfathomable. “They envisioned that there was a potential for opening a dark ‘schism’ that might unleash some type
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