Brain waves, as they are known, moving through their most conductive vessel - how far can they travel? Is technology a tool that you would see being used to control their movement?
Does this even make sense…?
EEG’s can detect the EM field of the brain through 1/8" of skull and a few millimeters of skin. In theory, of course, they can travel infinitely far. The question is really how far away they can be detected, and I have no idea. I’d say not more than a few feet with the very best technology. After that, the brain signal is buried in the noise floor. As it happens, this is also an argument against telepathy.
a few feet? try a nanometer or two. electricity hates traveling through air.
by the way the op makes it sound like ‘brain waves’ are a thing or a substance. no way.
We aren’t talking about electricity, but about EM (electromagnetic) radiation. The skull is about 1/8" thick–far more than a few nanometers.
Way. Substance:no, thing:yes. As real as the waves your DSL modem sends out to post your message.
Brain waves - how about infrared? Well, they are generated as a result of brain activity. Sure they carry no information but they go along way and are easily detected…OK…I’ll go away now.
I just finished reading Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer, the third book in his Neanderthal Parallax series. In it, his character discuss “CEMI theory,” or “conscious electromagnetic information” theory, which holds that consciousness is a result of the electromagnetic field surrounding and pervading the brain. One of the characters asks if this means that telepathy is really possible – if consciousness is a result of an EM field, could Person One’s consciousness impinge on Person Two’s and allow Person Two to read Person One’s mind? The woman who brought the whole thing up says that no, CEMI theory has nothing to do with telepathy, because the frequency of the EM waves the brain gives off are in the 1-100Hz range, with the peak being around 40Hz, which means the wavelength of the most active range would be around 8,000km, and the best antenna for receiving an EM signal is one wavelength long. So unless people claiming to be telepathic have an invisible 8,000km antenna coming out of their brain, CEMI theory doesn’t give them a possible reason for their telepathy.
I love Robert J. Sawyer – his fiction involves the most fascinating things.
Anyway, it’s an interesting theory, and I’m currently trying to get ahold of the book Quantum Evolution, by Johnjoe McFadden (the person who apparently first put forth CEMI theory) to see what the details are. And I’d welcome any comments here.