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article: New research suggests water remembers what has been dissolved in it, even after dilution beyond the point where no molecule of the original substances could remain.
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports August 25, 2003
For more than a century, practitioners of homeopathy have used highly diluted solutions of medicinal substances to treat diseases. Some substances are diluted way beyond the point at which no trace of the original substances could remain. It is as though the water has retained memory of the departed molecules. This has aroused a great deal of skepticism within the conventional medical and scientific community. To this day, 'homeopathic' is used as a term of derision, to indicate something imagined that has no reality.
But a series of recent discoveries in the conventional scientific community is making people think again.
First, there were the South Korean chemists who discovered two years ago that molecules dissolved in water clump together as they get more diluted (see Molecules Clump on Dilution, SiS 15), which was totally unexpected; and further more, the size of the clumps depends on the history of dilution, making a mockery of the 'laws of chemistry'.
Now, physicist Louis Rey in Lausanne, Switzerland, has published a paper in the mainstream journal, Physica A, describing experiments that suggest water does have a memory of molecules that have been diluted away, as can be demonstrated by a relatively new physical technique that measures thermoluminescence.
In this technique, the material is 'activated' by irradiation at low temperature, with UV, X-rays, electron beams, or other high-energy sub-atomic particles. This causes electrons to come loose from the atoms and molecules, creating 'electron-hole pairs' that become separated and trapped at different energy levels.
When lithium chloride, LiCl, a chemical that would be expected to break hydrogen bonds between water molecules was added, and then diluted away, the thermoluminescent glow became reduced, but the reduction of peak 2 was greater relative to peak 1. Sodium chloride, NaCl, had the same effect albeit to a lesser degree.
It appears, therefore, that substances like LiCl and NaCl can modify the hydrogen-bonded network of water, and that this modification remains even when the molecules have been diluted away.
The fact that this 'memory' remains, in spite of, or because of vigorous stirring or shaking at successive dilutions, indicates that the 'memory' is by no means static, but depends on a dynamic process, perhaps a collective quantum excitation of water molecules that has a high degree of stability (see The strangeness of water and homeopathic memory, SiS 15).
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports August 25, 2003
For more than a century, practitioners of homeopathy have used highly diluted solutions of medicinal substances to treat diseases. Some substances are diluted way beyond the point at which no trace of the original substances could remain. It is as though the water has retained memory of the departed molecules. This has aroused a great deal of skepticism within the conventional medical and scientific community. To this day, 'homeopathic' is used as a term of derision, to indicate something imagined that has no reality.
But a series of recent discoveries in the conventional scientific community is making people think again.
First, there were the South Korean chemists who discovered two years ago that molecules dissolved in water clump together as they get more diluted (see Molecules Clump on Dilution, SiS 15), which was totally unexpected; and further more, the size of the clumps depends on the history of dilution, making a mockery of the 'laws of chemistry'.
Now, physicist Louis Rey in Lausanne, Switzerland, has published a paper in the mainstream journal, Physica A, describing experiments that suggest water does have a memory of molecules that have been diluted away, as can be demonstrated by a relatively new physical technique that measures thermoluminescence.
In this technique, the material is 'activated' by irradiation at low temperature, with UV, X-rays, electron beams, or other high-energy sub-atomic particles. This causes electrons to come loose from the atoms and molecules, creating 'electron-hole pairs' that become separated and trapped at different energy levels.
When lithium chloride, LiCl, a chemical that would be expected to break hydrogen bonds between water molecules was added, and then diluted away, the thermoluminescent glow became reduced, but the reduction of peak 2 was greater relative to peak 1. Sodium chloride, NaCl, had the same effect albeit to a lesser degree.
It appears, therefore, that substances like LiCl and NaCl can modify the hydrogen-bonded network of water, and that this modification remains even when the molecules have been diluted away.
The fact that this 'memory' remains, in spite of, or because of vigorous stirring or shaking at successive dilutions, indicates that the 'memory' is by no means static, but depends on a dynamic process, perhaps a collective quantum excitation of water molecules that has a high degree of stability (see The strangeness of water and homeopathic memory, SiS 15).
