PSYCHOPHYSICAL INTERACTIONS WITH ELECTRICAL

PLASMA: THREE EXPLORATORY EXPERIMENTS

DEAN RADIN* & JOYCE ANASTASIA

INSTITUTE OF NOETIC SCIENCES

* Corresponding author, dradin@noetic.org

Abstract

Streams of ionized gas in an 8-inch diameter plasma ball were recorded by a webcam while participants
focused their attention toward or away from the plasma streams. They were instructed to hold the intention that the
illumination observed by the webcam should increase, or to withdraw their attention and intention. The plasma ball
in Experiment 1 was inside a sealed box 3 meters from the participant. After 10 sessions, the result was a significant
decrease in illumination when comparing the focus toward vs. away conditions (z = -2.7, p = 0.007, two-tailed);
control sessions without the participant showed no difference (z = -0.78, p = 0.44). Experiment 2 involved 10
participants, except the plasma ball was in an electromagnetically shielded chamber 4 meters from the participants,
with the chamber door open so they could see the ball. After 21 sessions the results were a significant increase in
illumination in both experimental (z = 5.20, p = 2 × 10-7) and control sessions (z = 2.3, p = 0.02). Experiment 3
involved 13 participants and 29 sessions, plus two types of plasma balls. It was conducted with the shielded chamber
closed and with three randomly assigned intentional goals: aim for the plasma streams to move up, move right, or a
baseline condition with no aim. The results showed that the recorded illumination differed when the intention was to
aim right vs. aim up (z = 5.01, p = 5.6 x 10-7). Similar results were obtained with the two plasma balls. These
experiments suggest that electrical plasma may be a promising physical target for use in mind-matter interaction
studies.

Keywords: electrical plasma, mind-matter interaction, psychokinesis

Introduction

I did not say that it was possible; I simply said that it happened. ― Sir William Crookes

In 1880, Sir William Crookes, President of the Society for Psychical Research from 1896
to 1899, presented evidence for a “fourth of state of matter” (Crookes, 1880). Beyond solid,
liquid, and gas, this new state, dubbed radiant matter, consisted of highly energetic, ionized gas.
In 1928, radiant matter was renamed plasma by Irving Langmuir (Rosenfeld, 1962).

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 Electrical plasma is now thought to make up about 99% of the visible matter in the
universe (Cleveland & Morris, 2014). It is also associated with anomalous luminous effects
reported throughout history, including phenomena called will-o’-wisps (Mills, 1980), ball
lightning (Jones, 1990; Shmatov & Stephan, 2019), von Reichenbach’s “Odic light” (van der
Sluijs, 2022), as well as lights in the sky associated with certain locations, including Marfa,
Texas (Stipp, 1984), Zeitoun, Egypt (Derr & Persinger, 1989), and Hessdalen Valley, Norway
(Hauge, 2010). Other reports of luminous phenomena, which are possibly associated with
electrical plasma, are also associated with the human body (Alvarado, 1987), including reports of
glowing ectoplasm (Alvarado, 2019; Crookes, 1889), moving points of lights observed during
seances (Frodsham, 1978), shimmering apparitions (Hall, 1962), and even unidentified flying
objects (Hernandez et al., 2018; Hynek, 1975).

A contemporary company claims to use electrical plasma to purportedly capture “subtle

energies” and later infuse those energies into other substances, like water (Vital Force
Technology, www.vitalforcetechnology.com). Some researchers have even proposed that
because of the complexity of the ionic interactions within electrical plasma that at times it seems
to show signs of sentience (Charman, 2016; Teodorani, 2015). In the late 19th century at the
Chicago World’s Fair, plasma streams were first publicly demonstrated by Nikola Tesla, who
had closely followed Crookes’ exploration of radiant matter (Tesla, 1900). Tesla stated in an
interview:

Inasmuch as Sir William Crookes, that distinguished scientist and my good friend, has
not hesitated to state openly his belief in telepathy, it is a reasonable flight of fancy for
me to say that my machine – so sensitive – may be affected by the human will. But
that is all it is – merely a pleasant speculation, founded on logical grounds. I have no
evidence to support it, but I have perfect right to state it – understand me – as a
possibility – no more.” (Phillips, 1898).

In the late 1970s, Stanford University materials scientist William Tiller was exploring the
possibility of mind-matter interactions using a custom-designed plasma device as the physical
target (Tiller, 1990). His experiments were prompted by reports of anomalous psychophysical
effects purportedly associated with Kirlian photography (Krippner & Rubin, 1973), a high
voltage photographic technique purported to reveal energetic “auras” around living systems.

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Subsequent studies of the Kirlian method revealed that the purported auras were due to corona
discharge effects (Tiller, 1976), but Tiller felt that that explanation did not seem to account for
anomalies associated with Kirlian photographs. The gas discharge device developed in Tiller’s
lab was designed to provide a controlled way to study interactions between electrical plasma and
what he referred to as “human energy fields.” Tiller’s conclusion, based on a series of
experiments using his gas discharge device, was that “this energy can be directed by the human
mind” (Tiller, 1990, p. 270).

Following up on Tiller’s work, in the mid-1990s we explored the use of electrical plasma
as a physical target in a series of mind-matter interaction studies that were investigating a range
of personality and environmental factors thought to correlate with performance in these kinds of
tasks (Radin, 1993, 1996). The plasma device we used was a commercially available 8-inch
diameter glass sphere filled with xenon gas and energized by a central, high voltage electrode
(generally these devices have voltages from 2kV to 5 kV and run at a frequency of 30 kHz);
further technical details about these devices are not provided by the manufacturers, mainly
because this kind of device is marketed as a night light, a party decoration, or a science toy, and
not as a scientific tool. The ball generates an aesthetically pleasing, undulating display of
dynamic plasma streams that randomly move around inside the sphere. If the glass surface of the
ball is touched by a finger, the change in local capacitance causes the electrons in the plasma
streams to concentrate toward the touched location. Capacitance is related to the dielectric
constant, which is also known as relative permittivity, which we will return to later in the
Discussion section. These italicized terms are used in the discipline of electrical engineering to
describe properties of electric fields and how the charges associated with those fields are stored
between various materials.

Unlike in Tiller’s experiments, which involved placing one’s hands a few centimeters
from his plasma device, our experiment was designed to test if focused intention directed toward
the ball from a distance of 2 or more meters could influence the direction of the plasma streams.
The hypothesized effects were measured by placing a photodetector about 2 cm away from the
edge of the glass, and at the same level as the center of the ball. The voltage returned by the
photodetector, which reflected the light intensity it was exposed to, was the metric of interest.
Participants in the experiment were invited in alternating 30 second epochs to mentally urge the

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plasma streams to move toward the photodetector during intentional epochs, thus increasing the
overall light in that direction, or to withdraw attention and intention from the ball during
relaxation epochs. While the intention phase was in progress, the participants obtained real-time
feedback about their efforts in the form of a continuously updated graph displayed on a computer
screen.

Pilot tests using this apparatus with a half-dozen participants were intriguing. Indeed, the
results were so consistently positive that we decided that what we were observing must have
been due to one or more artifacts. Not having the resources to track down the presumed artifacts
at that time, we set the plasma ball aside and focused on other work. A decade later, after having
found that same plasma ball while conducting an inventory of laboratory items, on a lark we
decided to repeat the experiment, this time using a webcam to record the movements of the
plasma streams. The results were again significant, but once more we assumed that we must have
overlooked a mundane explanation, so the plasma ball was returned to inventory.

Another decade passed. Then we learned that an independent researcher had also reported
apparently robust mental interaction effects with a plasma ball (Schwartz, 2021). That report
encouraged us to revisit this experiment. A search of the relevant literature did not find any other
published studies in the interim that had used electrical plasma as a target for mind-matter
interaction experiments.

Method

As purely exploratory studies, the methods were not pre-registered.

Hypothesis

The hypothesis in these experiments was that the plasma streams in a freely operating
plasma ball would behave differently when attention and intentions were focused toward the
plasma as compared to when attention and intention were withdrawn. The precise ways that the
plasma behavior might react (meaning in alignment with the assigned intentions, or possibly
opposite to those intentions) was unknown, so two-tailed statistics were employed in all
statistical tests.

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Equipment

In Experiments 1 and 2, an 8 inch diameter glass plasma ball lamp was used as the
physical target. In Experiment 3, a second 8 inch plasma ball was also used. Each ball cost about
US$40 and was purchased from Amazon.com. A Logitech HD Pro Webcam (model C920) was
secured to a small tripod and pointed at the ball from about 10 cm away, with the webcam at the
same height as the center of the ball. The webcam was configured to take images 640 × 480
pixels in size. Figure 1 shows the basic setup, and Figure 2 shows webcam images of the two
types of plasma balls used in these experiments.

Figure 1. Arrangement of plasma ball and webcam as used in these experiments. This
set up was used in Experiments 2 and 3. The box to the right of the webcam is a USB-
to-optical fiber translator used in Experiment 3 to transmit the webcam images to a
computer located outside the electromagnetically shielded chamber.

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 Figure 2. Snapshots from the webcam images of the two plasma balls used in these
experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 used the plasma ball on the left, and experiment 3
used both plasma balls.

In Experiment 1, the plasma ball and webcam were placed inside an opaque cardboard
box on a heavy wooden table about 3 meters from the participant. A small hole in the box
allowed for a USB extension cable to connect the webcam to a Windows 10 computer located 3
meters away. The box was sealed shut with opaque masking tape to exclude ambient light, and
the hole that the USB cable passed through was also sealed to block external light.

In Experiments 2 and 3, the plasma ball and webcam were placed on a small wooden
table inside the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) double-walled, solid steel,
electromagnetically shielded chamber (Series 81 Solid Cell chamber, ETS Lindgren Cedar Park,
TX, USA). Nothing else was in the chamber during the experiment. Electrical line power inside
the chamber was conditioned by a heavy duty electromagnetic interference filter designed for
this chamber (ETS-Lindgren filter LRW-1050-S1). The webcam was placed about 10 cm in front
of the ball, with the camera pointing at the center of the ball.

In Experiment 2, the door to the chamber remained open so the participants, who sat in
front of a Windows 10 computer about 4 meters from the ball, could see it through the doorway.
Other than the plasma ball and open doorway, there were no other sources of light inside the
chamber. The webcam’s output was carried by a USB extender cable to the computer that
controlled the experiment.

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 In Experiment 3, the chamber door was closed and the only source of illumination inside
the chamber was the plasma ball. To maintain the shielding integrity of the chamber, the
webcam’s USB output was converted into light pulses (Blackbox USB 2.0 fiber converter, model
IC404A-R2, Lawrence, PA, USA), then carried by optical fiber through a 2 mm diameter
porthole in the chamber wall (designed for that purpose), then to an optical receiver that
converted the light back into USB signals, and then on to the computer. The fiber porthole
through the chamber wall was sealed with aluminum foil to prevent any external light from
entering the chamber.

Protocols

All participants read and signed an informed consent. The experimental protocols were
approved by the IONS Institutional Review Board (designated RADD_2019_01).

Experiment 1
Matlab R2014b (Mathworks, Natick, MA) controlled all aspects of the experiment on a
Windows 10 computer. When the experiment began, a recorded voice welcomed the participant
and then spoke one of two instructions: “Now please concentrate,” which meant to direct one’s
attention toward the ball with intention to pull the plasma streams toward the webcam, thereby
increasing the measured overall illumination level, or “Now please relax,” which meant to
withdraw attention and intention from the ball. In addition to announcing the task, to provide a
nonverbal signal that a concentrate task was about to begin, the computer screen was
programmed to increase in brightness. Prior to relax epochs, the screen was dimmed.

Each attentional epoch was 20 seconds long, during which 100 webcam snapshots were
taken and processed in real-time by the computer, and each experimental session consisted of 20
alternating concentrate and relax epochs, for a total of 2000 mean illumination samples per
session. During concentrate epochs, the computer screen displayed a line graph that provided
real-time feedback about the mean illumination observed by the webcam. During relax epochs,
the graph was not shown. Between epochs there was a 2-3 second random pause (a time delay
randomly selected to be either 2 or 3 seconds, determined using Matlab’s randi function). During
the inter-epoch periods and spoken instructions, when the screen brightness was increased before

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concentrate epochs or decreased before relax epochs, no data were collected to provide time for
the participant to shift their attention.

The experiment was planned to have a total of 10 experimental and 10 control sessions
contributed by one participant. After five experimental sessions were completed, five controls
were run with the computer screen covered by an opaque cardboard shield and with the computer
sound muted (so the recorded voice instructions could not be heard). Then five more
experimental sessions were run, followed by five more control sessions. All sessions were
conducted by the first author.

Experiment 2
In this study, the participant’s task was again to mentally “pull” the plasma streams
toward the webcam during 20-second concentrate epochs. Prior to performing the task,
participants were invited to touch the plasma ball to see how that action caused the luminous
streams to be drawn toward their fingers. They then returned to the computer to begin the
experiment. During relax epochs, participants were asked to withdraw their attention from the
experiment and think about something else. During concentrate epochs, it was suggested that
they could express their intention in several ways: (1) Imagine that their fingers were touching
the plasma ball, (2) imagine they could move their hand inside the plasma ball, or (3) simply
gaze at the graph on the computer monitor and intend that the line being drawn on the screen
would go up.

In this experiment two webcam images were taken 0.1 seconds apart and the average of
the two illumination means was used as the metric of interest. One hundred such means were
recorded during each of twenty 20-second epochs, for a total of 2000 samples per session. This
averaging procedure was an attempt to create a more stable, and thus perhaps more sensitive,
illumination metric. As in the first experiment, no data were collected during the random inter-
epoch periods or during the spoken instructions and changes in screen illumination levels.

A total of 20 experimental and 20 control sessions were planned, where each control was
run either immediately before or after each experimental session, determined according to the
availability of each participant. Recruitment was by convenience by the second author from
among IONS staff and visitors, with no special selection criteria other than their expressing an
interest in trying the experiment. Most of the participants had previously participated in
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experiments conducted in our laboratory, or they had reported experience with one or more
practices involving focused attention, like meditation.

Experiment 3
In Experiment 3, the participant’s task in the concentrate condition was to imagine that
they were touching the plasma ball either on the top or the right side (according to the assigned
instructions). The purpose of this dual task was to see if intention caused different outcomes to
be observed in the plasma stream. This more refined “directional” test of intention could not be
evaluated within the single task design in the first two experiments. In the relax condition, they
were asked to imagine not touching the ball and to withdraw their attention and intention from
the experiment. In each session there were 10 aim right, 10 aim top, and 10 relax or no aim
epochs, presented in a new randomized order per session, for a total of 30 epochs. As in the other
experiments, between each epoch the computer idled during a randomized inter-epoch latency of
2 to 3 seconds.

Each epoch was 20 seconds in length, during which 150 webcam images were taken, for
a total of 4500 samples per session. Unlike in the first two experiments, where each recorded
sample was the mean illumination of the entire plasma ball image, in this study the full webcam
image (640 x 480 pixels) was also recorded.

A total of 30 experimental and 30 control sessions were planned, with the control
sessions run immediately after each experimental session. As in Experiment 2, participants were
selected by convenience and no webcam data were collected while the spoken instructions were
being announced or when the screen illumination level changed prior to each epoch.

To assist participants in performing this task, a second plasma ball (powered off) that had
the same shape as the two balls used in this study was placed in front of the participant to act as a
target “effigy.” This was intended to help them focus on the task via the kinesthetic cue of
touching the ball. Thus, when a recorded instruction said to “Now touch the top” or “Now touch
the right,” the participant physically touched the effigy ball in the appropriate location with an
index finger. When the recorded instruction said, “Now relax,” they withdrew their finger and
their attention from the experiment.

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Analyses

Experiments 1 and 2
In the first two experiments, the metric of interest was the mean illumination level
observed by each 640 × 480 pixel webcam image. With each session consisting of 20 epochs of
100 webcam images per epoch, the data from each session consisted of an array of 2000 mean
illumination values. To analyze the results, each array was linearly detrended (Matlab function
detrend), then normalized (zscore)

Figure 3. (Top). Mean illumination for each webcam image over the course of one
session. (Bottom). Same data linearly detrended, then z-score normalized. The lines
alternating from -2 to +4 shows the timing of the intentional epochs, with -2
indicating the relax epochs and +4 the concentrate epochs.

To compare illumination levels recorded during concentrate vs. relax epochs a

nonparametric randomized circular shift technique was used (Manly, 2007). This involved first
determining the overall median difference between all samples recorded in the two conditions.

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Then the original condition array was circular-shifted (Matlab function circshift) a random
amount (randi), and the same median difference was re-calculated based on the new array (call
this randomized median difference array IR). This procedure was repeated 1,000 times to form a
distribution of possible differences, and then a z score was formed as z = (IO – µ)/ σ, where IO
was the original median difference, and µ and σ were the mean and standard deviation of the
distribution of 1,000 IR values, respectively. This process was repeated for each session, and then
the resulting z scores for all experimental and all control session were determined, separately,
using the Stouffer Z method (Stouffer et al., 1949).

The hypothesis predicted that the overall Stouffer Z in the experimental sessions would
deviate from chance expectation when participants mentally tried to draw the plasma streams
toward the webcam, and that no significant effects would be observed in the control sessions.
Two-tailed p-values were employed to be conservative, and because it was unknown if the
resulting outcome would conform to the intended instructions.

Experiment 3
This study included four new design features. (1) Plasma streams appeared immediately
when the ball was powered on, but we noticed that the ball itself warmed up over time because
of the heat radiated from the plasma. To help avoid possible temperature-induced temporal
artifacts, the ball was turned on and allowed to warm up at least 5 minutes before each session.

(2) Rather than use the mean illumination level of the webcam image as the metric of
interest, a matrix of illumination values was formed based on each recorded 640 × 480 × 3 (red-
green-blue pixels) image. To form this matrix, each image was first converted into 256 grayscale
levels (Matlab rgb2gray), then resized into a matrix of 320 × 240 elements (to improve
computational efficiency), and then the mean was determined for each group of 10 × 10 pixels in
that matrix. This resulted in a matrix of 32 × 24 means for each webcam image.

(3) Three attention instructions were presented in random order: (a) intend the plasma
streams to move to the right of the ball, (b) to the top, or (c) withdraw attention and intention and
relax. As in the other experiments, a random inter-epoch period (2 to 3 seconds) was also
inserted between each successive epoch, and no data were recorded during the inter-epoch
periods or during announcement of the attentional instructions.

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 (4) Two plasma balls were used to see if the results obtained in the first two experiments
might have depended on the type of device. As shown in Figure 2, one of these balls had clear
glass, so the plasma streams were clearly visible. The second had frosted glass, so the plasma
streams were less visible.

There were two differential comparisons of interest: (a) how did the mean illumination
matrix behave when the instructions were to mentally push the streams to the right as compared
to the “no aim” condition, and (b) the same question when mentally pushing the streams to the
top of the ball, again as compared to the “no aim” condition. The distribution of light produced
by the plasma ball was not expected to be completely uniform, so the data matrix from each
control session was subtracted from its matched experimental matrix.

Then each matrix was partitioned into aim right epochs, aim top epochs, and relax or no
aim epochs, according to the random sequence generated at the beginning of each session. To
evaluate these comparisons, per session, a randomized permutation method was used whereby
the means for each cell in the no aim matrices were subtracted from the associated means of the
aim right and aim up matrices. Then the attentional conditions of each original session were
randomly scrambled, and new mean differences were formed. This process was repeated 1000
times to create a distribution of possible mean matrices (call this RM). That distribution was used
in turn to create a z-score normalized matrix as z = (zM – µ)/σ, where zM was the original mean
differential matrix, and µ and σ were the mean and standard deviation of RM, respectively.

The resulting z matrix per session was then divided into two portions: All cells on the
right side (columns 17-32) of the matrix and all on the left side (columns 1-16 ), and then
likewise for all cells on the top (rows 13-24) and bottom (rows 1 – 12). This procedure resulted
in 384 cells on the right and 384 cells on the left (i.e., 16 × 24), and likewise 384 cells for the top
and 384 cells for the bottom of the matrix (i.e., 12 × 32). The left vs. right and up vs. down cells
were then (separately) compared using a Wilcoxon rank sum test, resulting in two p-values for
each session, one for aim-right and one for aim-up. These p-values were in turn transformed
back into z scores. The z scores were then combined across sessions as a Stouffer Z to see if the
two types of intentional aims produced differences in the mean illumination matrices.

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Results

Experiment 1

The 10 planned experimental sessions resulted in a decline in illumination during the

concentrate epochs as compared to the relax epochs, with the difference associated with
z = -3.00 (p = 0.003, two-tailed). Control sessions resulted in a null effect, with z = 0.41 (p =
0.68). Figure 4 graphs the median illumination data observed by the webcam across the 10
experimental sessions (median being more conservative than the mean), then smoothed using a
one epoch length moving average, and then highpass-filtered to improve clarity (Matlab function
highpass).

Figure 4. Z-score normalized, linearly detrended, median illumination observed by the

webcam over 10 sessions, then smoothed with a moving average one epoch in length,
and then highpass-filtered to further enhance clarity. The dotted line at -0.15 indicates
the “relax” epochs; the dotted line at +0.05 indicates the “concentrate” epochs. The
up-arrows indicate that in 7 of the 10 relax epochs illumination increased; the down-
arrows show that in 8 of 10 concentrate epochs illumination decreased.

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Experiment 2

Twenty planned experimental and control sessions were contributed by 10 individuals,

including the second author, who contributed 12 of those sessions. One additional session was
conducted, so the total number of sessions was 21, and all data were included to avoid selective
reporting. Experimental sessions resulted in z = 5.2 (p = 2.0 × 10-7); control sessions resulted in z
= 2.3 (p = 0.02). Figure 5 shows the experimental results using the same method as in Figure 4.

Figure 5. Data analyzed as described in Figure 4. The up-arrows indicate that in 7 of

the 10 concentrate epochs illumination increased, and the down-arrows indicate that in
8 of 10 relax epochs illumination decreased.

Experiment 3

Thirty planned sessions were contributed by 13 individuals. The first author contributed 4
of those sessions and the second author contributed 15. The other participants each contributed
one session. This analysis required matched experimental and control sessions, and one of the
post-experimental controls failed to record properly, so a total of 29 sessions were ultimately
analyzable.

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 The results shown in Table 1 indicate that the distribution of plasma streams differed
significantly when the assigned instructions were to aim right vs. aim up. During aim right
epochs the upper right corner of the webcam image became brighter, and during aim up epochs
the upper left corner became brighter. Figures 6 and 7 graphically illustrate this intentional
differential effect. Also of interest is that the effect sizes for the two plasma balls were
approximately the same for the right side vs. left side comparisons, as shown in Figure 8. This
suggests that the results of this experiment did not depend on the type of plasma ball, at least for
this specific comparison.

One may ask why the streams moved up for both intentions, including during the task to
aim right? Interestingly, the streams moving up is consistent with what happens when one
physically touches a plasma ball. That is, the highly energized electrons that compose the
streams randomly dance around the inside of plasma ball “looking” for a way to release some of
that energy. If a person touches the glass with a finger, the electrons immediately find a way to
escape to a lower energy level through the person’s body. As that happens, a flood of electrons
rush to escape, making the stream brighter but also heating up the gas inside the ball. That in turn
makes the gas rise, pulling the stream along with it. This suggests that the streams moving up
may be due to an effect similar to actually touching the ball. While speculative, this is
reminiscent of an experiment investigating a “voodoo effect” using an effigy of an intended
target, which in that study was the human body (Rebman et al., 1995). The outcome of that study
suggested that what one does with an effigy may manifest in a similar way in the actual target.

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 Table 1. Results of Experiment 3. Effect size in the table is z/sqrt(N).

plasma ball intention comparison z score p (two-tail) effect size

-8
#1 & 2, N = 29 aim right right vs left 5.42 6 x 10 1.00
aim right up vs down 2.05 0.04 0.38
aim up right vs left -1.93 0.05 -0.36
aim up up vs down 1.66 0.10 0.31

#1, N = 21 aim right right vs left 4.70 3 x 10-6 1.03

aim right up vs down 2.11 0.04 0.46
aim up right vs left -0.59 0.56 -0.13
aim up up vs down 2.25 0.02 0.49

#2, N = 8 aim right right vs left 3.23 0.001 1.14

aim right up vs down 0.35 0.73 0.12
aim up right vs left -1.25 0.21 -0.44
aim up up vs down -0.33 0.74 -0.12

Figure 6. Quiver plot for the aim right instructions (arrow pointing to the upper right)
and the aim up instructions (arrow pointing to the upper left). This shows that the
different intentions resulted in different plasma stream behavior. The Cartesian
distance from aim right to aim up (the tips of the two arrows) is associated with z =
6.51, p = 3.76 × 10-11.

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Figure 7. Significant cells (at z ≥ 2.3, p = 0.02, two-tail) for the two attentional aims
shown as white squares, showing that aim right (upper image) tended to produce
brighter plasma streams in the upper right of the image, and aim top (lower image)
tended to produce brighter streams in the upper left.

pg. 17
 Figure 8. Comparison of effect sizes for both plasma balls combined, and for each ball
considered separately, with 95% confidence intervals.

Discussion

In alignment with what we had observed in previous informal studies, three new
experiments suggested that electrical plasma may be reactive to distant attention and intention.
The first experiment with one participant resulted in reduced illumination during the
concentration epochs, the second with 10 participants resulted in increased illumination, and the
third with 13 participants showed significant variations in plasma intensity that differed
depending on the intentional instructions. There is no obvious reason why the results differed
from one experiment to the next, but the results appear to be promising enough to warrant
follow-up studies.

Could there be a more mundane explanation for these results? Recall that in each of these
experiments the computer screen was programmed to become dimmer during relax epochs and
brighter during concentrate epochs. This feature was employed to nonverbally alert the
participant that the next epoch was about to begin. The webcam in all cases was located 3 to 4
meters away from the participants, and it was optically shielded in experiments 1 and 3, but it is
conceivable that the varying levels of light emitted by the computer screen may have caused an
artifactual differential effect in experiment 2. In that experiment, the plasma ball and webcam
were 4 meters apart, the computer monitor was pointed away from the webcam, and the webcam
was pointed toward the ball. However, the webcam and monitor were still within line of sight.
Given the differential increase in illumination obtained in this study, these results could be

pg. 18
interpreted as an artifact caused by the webcam picking up the brightening and dimming of the
computer screen during the concentrate and relax epochs, respectively.

Experiment 3 was designed to rigorously isolate the webcam and plasma ball from the
computer screen, the participants, and, by being housed inside a heavily shielded chamber, also
from possible influences from ambient electromagnetic fields. It also tested whether the type of
intentions “aimed” at the ball, and the type of ball, made any differences in the observed
behavior of the plasma. The results showed that the plasma behaved significantly differently
during the aim right and aim up tasks, and that the two plasma balls showed similar results.

Is there a theoretical explanation for these observed effects on plasma? A fully

satisfactory explanation is not available yet, but a recent speculation by Thompson provides a
possible clue (Thompson, 2021). He points out that the parameters of the Standard Model of
particle physics, which rests upon values of presumed constants that define our physical world,
are renormalized. Without going into the technical details, renormalization is essentially a
mathematical trick devised to make the equations of Quantum Field Theory (our most refined
theory of the physical world so far) work, where “work” means that the results of the equations
provide a reasonable match to the observable world. The problem is that it is possible to
renormalize in many ways, and in so doing one could end up with different values for the
constants. Thompson suggests, based on this apparent flexibility, that to optimize their survival,
the minds of living systems may be able to slightly alter some of these “constants” to help
optimize their survival. He proposes that the mind does this by adjusting permittivity
(specifically the ”permittivity of the vacuum”), as briefly alluded to in the Introduction section,
above. Mental influence of permittivity would allow for all sorts of interesting physical changes
to occur, and such changes would be especially noticeable in charged particles, precisely like
those found in electrical plasma. In fact, Thompson specifically proposes that the mind might be
able to cause discernable changes in the light generated by a fluorescent tube, which is a prime
example of a common, practical application of electrical plasma.

Another possible explanation is that plasma is simply a highly reactive substance, as

evidenced in a plasma ball by the mercurial behavior of the plasma streams. As such, plasma
could be viewed as a highly dynamic, random physical system. Given the experimental evidence
that intention can probabilistically influence the fall of dice, polystyrene balls, and the output of

pg. 19
truly random number generators, then this might provide another mechanism for how the mind
could influence plasma (Radin & Nelson, 1989; Dunne et al., 1988; Radin & Ferrari, 1991).

Conclusion

Electrical plasma, the “fourth state of matter” first proposed by Sir William Crookes in
1880, is associated with a broad range of reported anomalies, including a suggestion that the
complex behavior of plasma streams almost seems to exhibit sentience. The three experiments
reported here provide evidence suggestive of a psychophysical interaction effect consistent with
previous informal observations in our laboratory and one independently reported experiment
(Schwartz, 2021). Given that plasma balls are widely available and relatively inexpensive, they
appear to be especially promising targets for use in future mind-matter interaction studies.

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