From Alaska to Chile, Norway to New Zealand, 65 random number generators (RNGs) were going about their business generating random numbers. Then the unexplainable happened. But more about that later. The RNGs are part of a larger scientific effort called the Global Coherence Initiative (GCI), a research project that uses a vast array of magnetic field detectors to monitor fluctuations in the earth's geomagnetic fields. They also measure pulsations and resonances in the ionosphere--the portion of the atmosphere extending approximately 30 to 250 miles above the Earth--associated with what scientists call "excitations."

Picking up good vibrations and monitoring excitations. . . sounds suspiciously like The Beach Boys are running this project. But I wander off topic.

So far, the research has yielded some interesting and perhaps significant findings. Stripped of scientific jargon, the discoveries fall into three interrelated categories:
  • The Earth is communicating with us.
  • We are communicating with the Earth.
  • And, we may also be influencing the function of computers.
The fact that the Earth communicates with us may not come as a galloping surprise to those who actually get out of their lab or office and pay attention to the natural world. To borrow an axiom from the newspaper trade, that's a dog-bites-man story, meaning not much of a story at all. Still, the challenge has always been to capture and accurately interpret the communications.

Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher is an astrophysicist and nuclear scientist whose resume includes Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Lawrence Livermore Lab, and consulting gigs with NASA and the U.S. Navy. She and her late husband built sensitive detectors that monitor shifts in the geomagnetic field. They found that up to three weeks prior to major geological events such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, the Earth's magnetic field noticeably changes. That allows for a high degree of predictive accuracy. According to the Global Coherence Initiative website, Rauscher was able to anticipate the Mount St. Helens blast. More impressively, in the 10 months following the eruption, she "predicted 84 percent of the seismic activity occurring within a 100-square-mile area around a single detector."

However, the possibility that humans are not merely observers, but are interconnected with these fields, is a quantum leap into conjecture. That's a man-bites-dog story, suitable for FOX News. I say conjecture because how we are connected is not yet known, although the effects of ionospheric fluctuations have been documented. One theory is that the Earth, the ionosphere, as well as humans, generate compatible hertz frequencies. Regardless of the method, strange things happen when the Earth's magnetic fields fluctuate. Traffic violations, accidents, mortality from heart attacks and strokes, and incidence of depression and suicide spike. Further, there are measurable changes in brain and nervous system activity, memory acuity, and athletic performance. Stranger still, subjects display altered sensitivity in a wide range of extrasensory perception experiments. Even the synthesis of nutrients in plants and algae is impacted. And, according to GCI, "changes in geomagnetic conditions affect the rhythms of the heart more strongly than all the physiological functions studied so far."

It's possible that if changes in the Earth's magnetic field can portend earthquakes, then perhaps what we call hunches, or intuition, or sudden unease, or simply thinking about a long forgotten friend shortly before he calls, may actually be a result of our brains "synchronizing with the rhythm of the electromagnetic waves generated in the earth's ionosphere." We swim in these fields constantly, and it may be that occasionally some of us align with the flow long enough to garner information and perhaps glimpse the future.

Which brings us to the 65 random number generators. It's hard to know how to categorize this finding. Perhaps it's a dog-is-man story. The experiment was part of the Princeton-based Global Consciousness Project. It expanded on prior research at the Institute of HeartMath "which has shown that emotions not only create coherence or incoherence in our bodies but, like radio waves, also radiate outward and are detected by the nervous systems of others in our environment." Which may explain why people are either pleasant or unpleasant to be around for no evident reason.

It turns out that collective human behavior may be transmitted through the field to impact computers as well. Scientists found that during extreme emotion-evoking events, like the death of Princess Diana, the random numbers being generated became noticeably less random. By far the biggest change occurred just before, during, and in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Now, here are some caveats: No one knows how this happens, or even with absolute certainty if emotions are the cause. That's an educated guess. To be sure there are skeptics a-plenty because there are quacks a-plenty. On the other hand, two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites monitoring the Earth's geomagnetic field detected anomalies during the same period.

All of which leads me to wonder if I could be having an impact on my computer. Is it remotely possible that Windows and I are co-creating the occasional crash? It does seem as if machines malfunction more often when I'm in a hurry, or angry, or anxious. And we all know people who are just not on friendly terms with computers. The minute they sit in front of a PC the thing seizes up or does something unexpected. But when help arrives, the computer seems to be acting normally. I've always presumed that a lack of skill was the problem, but the vacillating random number generators suggest it could be skill combined with state of being.

It seems improbable that matter could be remotely affected. And even the great Einstein was baffled by unexplained influences. So much so that he called them "spooky action at a distance." We now know them as quantum entanglements, the phenomenon of two electrons separated by great distances that will instantly mirror each other's spin when one is altered. Experimental results have demonstrated that however the "communication" between electrons occurs, it travels at least thousands of times faster than the speed of light which, of course, Einstein proved isn't possible. Ergo, spooky.

Then there's the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, who believes that the shape of water molecules can be altered by human intent. And he's published some impressive pictures to prove it. Emoto discovered that a beaker of water labeled with negative words like "hate" or "kill" will produce deformed, fragmented crystals, while a beaker labeled with positive words like "love" or "gratitude" will produce beautiful, symmetrical crystals. Even music appears to influence the structure. When samples were bombarded with heavy metal music, the water did not form crystals at all and displayed chaotic structures. While classical music produced well-formed, harmonious structures. The implication is that water is connected to individual and group consciousness. Again, if true, no one knows exactly how.

In his title essay, The World As I See It, Einstein said: "The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious." Indeed, it's hard to know what to make of all this. At the very least, we may have powers and capabilities beyond our present understanding. As for me, I intend to shore up my relationship with my aging computer, still chugging along with woefully outdated software. Maybe I'll start by posting the words "thank you" on it.

Hey, can't hurt.