Future Photon Experiment

Julia Mossbridge, Loren Carpenter and Daniel P. Sheehan* are raising funds for an experiment to test the hypothesis that the interference pattern in a single-photon double-slit experiment is influenced by the future duration of the illumination. The idea seems to be that the photons are somehow interacting with other photons in the future (I must admit I don't see how this idea relates to previous hypotheses about how psi might influence double-slit experiments). The crowdfunding web page is here (so far nearly $10,000 have been raised, towards a target of about $19,000):
https://experiment.com/projects/are-we-c...ng-in-time

Details of an unpublished pilot study which produced statistically significant results are given here:
https://experiment.com/u/3C3Qng

There are also some short video presentations about the experiment on Julia Mossbridge's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/choosejoy69/videos

(* Edit. Confusingly, there appear to be two different men named Daniel P. Sheehan with an interest in the paranormal. One is a lawyer who has written about UFOs and conspiracy theories, but this one is a Professor of Physics at the University of San Diego.)

Julia Mossbridge, Loren Carpenter and Daniel P. Sheehan* are raising funds for an experiment to test the hypothesis that the interference pattern in a single-photon double-slit experiment is influenced by the future duration of the illumination. The idea seems to be that the photons are somehow interacting with other photons in the future (I must admit I don't see how this idea relates to previous hypotheses about how psi might influence double-slit experiments). The crowdfunding web page is here (so far nearly $10,000 have been raised, towards a target of about $19,000):
https://experiment.com/projects/are-we-c...ng-in-time

Details of an unpublished pilot study which produced statistically significant results are given here:
https://experiment.com/u/3C3Qng

There are also some short video presentations about the experiment on Julia Mossbridge's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/choosejoy69/videos

(* Edit. Confusingly, there appear to be two different men named Daniel P. Sheehan with an interest in the paranormal. One is a lawyer who has written about UFOs and conspiracy theories, but this one is a Professor of Physics at the University of San Diego.)

What they observed was that when they counted the number of photons over the first minute at a minimum of the interference fringe pattern, they found that both the mean and the standard deviation of the photon count were positively correlated with the total duration of illumination. (The usual idea in a psi double-slit experiment is that when a subject's attention is directed towards the apparatus, the fringe pattern is weakened, which would mean an increase in the photon count at a minimum.)

The size of this effect seems to be huge compared with that in some other psi double-slit experiments. The mean photon count rose from 34 for the shortest duration (90 seconds) to 36 for the longest (210 seconds) - an increase of 6%. But obviously the data are very noisy, because the slope of the regression line was associated with a not-hugely-significant p value of 0.02.

It seems that during a subsequent pilot experiment they discovered a problem with the calibration of the device. In the second pilot, when the duration was randomly decided 22 seconds into the run (instead of 90 seconds), the results weren't found to be statistically significant.

Courtesy of David Metcalfe - there is an 85-second update on the experiment here:

Here's another brief update from early October, in which Julia Mossbridge mentioned that she was hoping to present some results at two talks later that month. I'm not sure whether or not that happened, though:

Here's another brief update, in whch she says that at Roger Penrose's suggestion she is now giving priority to a single-slit protocol, which is producing results that are more consistent and easier to interpret. She hopes to submit a paper on this in January:

Yet another brief update. This one is a bit more substantive - she says they are finding a very robust effect, but it's so robust that she thinks it may be an artefact. She is investigating, and apparently she thinks that either (1) she'll be able to rule out the artefact explanation or (2) it will need further investigation: