Of all the odd explorations by science into the possibility of alternate universes, a century-old device called the phoropter may be the strangest of them all. If you've ever visited an optometrist or an ophthalmologist you may have submitted to a phoropter. Created in 1917, it places different lenses or combination of lenses before you eyes so your doctor can determine what kind of glasses you need.
As you peer through the various lens the phoropter carries you look at a chart on a wall and identify letters or numbers, which tells your doctor what refractive error your eyes have and he can thus choose the appropriate corrective lenses. In 2003, Kevin Blunting, a physicist at the Diametric Institute for Physics in Simi Valley, California, picked up some ophthalmological research that wife had brought home. She was an optomotrist and was interested in the phenomenon of "heterophoria," that tendency in some patients for one eye to deviate its direction from its partner eye, causing a split vision. Patients suffering from heterophoria have reported seeing flashing lights and even flashes of images that weren't actually there.
These "visions" were long dismissed by researchers as aberrations or imaginings. But Blunting wondered if, by introducing electric current and an imaging screen like an old-fashioned cathode-ray TV, it would be possible to view these images. He convinced his bosses to let him try using a standard electrode array used to measure brain waves, attached to the phoropter and the screen. Study volunteers with heterophoria sat before the imaging screen and looked through the phoropter. What Blunting and his colleagues saw was extraordinary.
Apparently the patients were indeed seeing things that were out of place, sights not found inside the test lab. A foggy city street appeared, and in another case a baby. The images never last long, no more than a few seconds.
Blunting found that by boosting the signal through the use of elaborate and powerful batteries, clearer pictures that stayed on the screen longer were possible. But were these nothing more than the thoughts of the volunteers being projected (an extraordinary feat in and of itself)? What evidence was there that these were other worlds?
Surprisingly, when a vision of Market Street in San Francisico appeared on the screen there was a very clear street sign. The street was named "Blancaro Road," not Market Street. More anomolies in identity appeared on other sites as well. For example, there was a sighting of not one Eiffel Tower in Paris, but five of them, clustered in a pentagon shape. There was a group of Asian pedestrians on a street in Hong Kong, all of them with Icelandic-style blonde hair.
The initial research has been scoffed at by researchers in both ophthalmology and physics, but Blunting's research continues. Is it a really a view into a universe that is slightly different from ours? Or is it an elaborate scam? We still don't know.
As usual, this blog is also in aid of promoting my new novel, Mayhem, which could can read for free on Wattpad or buy at Amazon's Kindle site. If you'd like a free sample for your Kindle, click here.
As you peer through the various lens the phoropter carries you look at a chart on a wall and identify letters or numbers, which tells your doctor what refractive error your eyes have and he can thus choose the appropriate corrective lenses. In 2003, Kevin Blunting, a physicist at the Diametric Institute for Physics in Simi Valley, California, picked up some ophthalmological research that wife had brought home. She was an optomotrist and was interested in the phenomenon of "heterophoria," that tendency in some patients for one eye to deviate its direction from its partner eye, causing a split vision. Patients suffering from heterophoria have reported seeing flashing lights and even flashes of images that weren't actually there.
These "visions" were long dismissed by researchers as aberrations or imaginings. But Blunting wondered if, by introducing electric current and an imaging screen like an old-fashioned cathode-ray TV, it would be possible to view these images. He convinced his bosses to let him try using a standard electrode array used to measure brain waves, attached to the phoropter and the screen. Study volunteers with heterophoria sat before the imaging screen and looked through the phoropter. What Blunting and his colleagues saw was extraordinary.
Apparently the patients were indeed seeing things that were out of place, sights not found inside the test lab. A foggy city street appeared, and in another case a baby. The images never last long, no more than a few seconds.
Blunting found that by boosting the signal through the use of elaborate and powerful batteries, clearer pictures that stayed on the screen longer were possible. But were these nothing more than the thoughts of the volunteers being projected (an extraordinary feat in and of itself)? What evidence was there that these were other worlds?
Surprisingly, when a vision of Market Street in San Francisico appeared on the screen there was a very clear street sign. The street was named "Blancaro Road," not Market Street. More anomolies in identity appeared on other sites as well. For example, there was a sighting of not one Eiffel Tower in Paris, but five of them, clustered in a pentagon shape. There was a group of Asian pedestrians on a street in Hong Kong, all of them with Icelandic-style blonde hair.
The initial research has been scoffed at by researchers in both ophthalmology and physics, but Blunting's research continues. Is it a really a view into a universe that is slightly different from ours? Or is it an elaborate scam? We still don't know.
As usual, this blog is also in aid of promoting my new novel, Mayhem, which could can read for free on Wattpad or buy at Amazon's Kindle site. If you'd like a free sample for your Kindle, click here.
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