Quantum Entanglement

Physics talks about a phenomenon called quantum entanglement. This is the concept that you can take two particles and entangle them, then, no matter how far you separate them, whatever you do to one, is also done to the other.

Orson Scott Card, in his Ender series of books, played with this concept. He used it directly with a communications device called the Ansible. This device used the principle of quantum entanglement (Card called it philotic threads) to enable instantaneous communication across space. You could have a fleet of spaceships many light years away and still stay in touch with them. He also played with it as a means of mental telepathy, a way to communicate mentally over vast distances. And he played around with it as a component of love. When two people's lives were entangled, whether they were family or just people that loved each other, they created an unseen bond that was physically real.

I think there is something to this. You hear stories all the time about a mother knowing that her child is in danger, even though they are in another room. You've probably felt a bond with a family member, loved one, or close pet that had an eerie quality to it sometimes.

I listened to a researcher talk once about their believed that telepathy in humans was a real thing. They speculated that this ability eventually atrophies because so much of what we say, our verbal cues, do not match what we are thinking. When an infant cries at night and wakes up its parent, the parent doesn't go in there mad at the baby for waking them up. They go in and hold the baby and make comforting noises. Do you feel comfortable when a baby is screaming? No one does. So the theory is that we are picking up on other people's thoughts, but once we learn language, that disconnect between words and thoughts causes us to disregard the thoughts.

I think the subject is at the cutting edge of science in the realm of physics, but maybe should be studied by psychologists, too.