TAKING SCIENCE TO THE "FRINGE"

Saturday, March 6, I did an experiment in blending art and science. At an art opening I showcased, for the first time, the original video footage from an experiment in physics that I conducted during New Year's eve of this year. The experiment was to determine what would happen if an attempt were made to produce a "wall of light" that would stand in free space and consist of a number particular properties produced by a proprietary technology that I have. Small experiments had already been conducted that produced the visible effect of an area of free standing light produced by the reflection of a strobe from a wall. The New Year's Eve test was to see if a wall of light could be produced that would fill a space in a room and have a number of particular "interesting" attributes.

This experiment has its origins in speculations by Nikola Tesla, the famous inventor and visionary who died in 1943. The online article, Nikola Tesla, at livephysics.com states in part that

"Tesla began to theorize about electricity and magnetism's power to warp, or rather change, space and time and the procedure by which man could forcibly control this power. Near the end of his life, Tesla was fascinated with the idea of light as both a particle and a wave, a fundamental proposition already incorporated into quantum physics. This field of inquiry led to the idea of creating a "wall of light" by manipulating electromagnetic waves in a certain pattern. This mysterious wall of light would enable time, space, gravity and matter to be altered at will, and engendered an array of Tesla proposals that seem to leap straight out of science fiction, including anti-gravity airships, teleportation, and time travel."

Anyone following the developments in temporal mechanics will recognize similarities between the above comments, about the power of light to warp space and time, with the research of the University of Connecticut's Ronald Mallett, as seen below.

My experiment's intention was rather modest in comparison. It was simply to see if a wall of light could be created and what it would look like. The results were very interesting, more so because the entire experiment was video taped. In the two hours worth of footage, there are times when parts of the room vanish completely and all that is visible is wall of white light that extends from one side of the room to the other, creating a white void. Making matters even more interesting are the times that I seemed to partially and then completely disappear into this void even though I was wearing all black except for my pants. My vanishing seemed to only happen a few times but the complete disappearance of the room, from the camera's point of view, happened repeatedly and for extended periods of time.

My experiment at the art show was to see if people could relate to it, as the footage mostly consisting of the flashing, pulsating wall turning the TV screen into a strobe light itself. It was only if you took a moment to watch it that you could notice what was happening. I found that those that did were fascinated by what they saw.

"If I blink my eyes, all I see is white and then black, white and then black..." one kid said. I told him to stick around and the footage would do that without his eyes blinking. He was astonished to see that I was right. The screen went from clearly showing the room pulsating in white light, to suddenly disappearing and replaced by alternating white and black. The wall of light had extended to completely cover the room, from side to side, blocking it completely from view.

The screen shots below are as follows, left to right:

The shot below shows the room being lit by the strobes. You can see the back wall, the ceiling tiles and side walls in the shot. In the one next to it is a screen shot of the wall of light. Notice that all signs of the room are gone. Nothing was changed except that the proprietary nature of the process was clearly having an effect.

Below you see me confronting this wall of light. Again, the room is not visible at all. The photo to the left is my initial approach. Notice how, in the photo to the right, a blue glow seems to begin to appear around me.

In the photo below the glow is even more prominent.

In the final two photos, I begin to disappear, despite the fact that I am wearing black and the lighting wasn't changed. In other words, if the lights permit me to be visible at all, why suddenly would I appear to vanish if nothing was changed unless the wall of light was beginning to take on greater density and thus not only making the room vanish but me as well.

Now, I want to be clear that by "vanish" I mean visibly, at least to that camera. I don't ever remember seeing myself start to disappear but I do know that I saw what looked to me like a white void appearing in front of the wall. I know that "void" was the wall of light and not a opening in the wall, but to have that also captured on video is meaningful. It removes the experience from just the anecdotal and into the objective realm.

The important thing is that the wall of light was created and real enough to block out the view of the back and side walls of the room. This wall was not because I had lights aimed at the camera but because light was reflected off of the back wall and then a portion of that light beginning to form the wall in the space of the room.

The next step is to see how the properties of the wall of light can be improved and then what the wall can be made to do. Isn't it interesting that light can be programmed to carry information? Can it create some effect in space and time, like Tesla surmised? Only further experiments will answer that question.

In an earlier blog I talked about how I wanted to develop a company that would be the real Massive Dynamics from the TV show, Fringe, even to the extent of the more extreme examples of possibletechnology. I think you can see now how I wasn't kidding...