• Question: Could humans ever master using the \'Force\', or will we be forever without a way to control things with our mind.

    Asked by gandalfthegrey to Fiona, Jane, Joanna, Michelle, William on 19 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Michelle Murphy

      Michelle Murphy answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Deep question I had to think about this one. We can use magnets to control forces like gravity but for us to physically do or achieve something I think we will always need our minds and I think Yoda must have had a very good mind to master “the” force.

    • Photo: Jane Henry

      Jane Henry answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Parapsychologists study things like telepathy – mind to mind communication, psychokinesis – mind moving or affecting matter, apparitions, telekinesis and the like. Psychologists at Edinburgh and Northampton and Hertfordshire universities (search for R Wiseman, C Watt, D Delanoy for example). Some telepathy experiments suggest it is possible for some people access information telepathically. They do very well controlled double blind experiments. Dean Radin an American scientist is a leading researcher on psychokinesis. He and others have done millions of trials where people try to influence a very well controlled random output. They find a consistent but very small effect, like getting 51 out of 100 heads instead of the 50 that would be expected by chance when tossing a coin. Some telepathy experiments get a much stronger effect ie people guessing right much more often. There are many very clever experiments in this area. Rupert Sheldrakes website gives you a chance to take part in some simple experiments in this area. I should add that metaanalyses of various parapsychology experiments have come to different conclusion as to whether a force like telepathy or psychokinesis in real. But the results are promising enough to justify further work.

    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hello good question! I honestly believe that in the future there will be a way to control things using only our mind – science is all about discovery and as a scientist I believe that anything is possible!

      In the university where I work we actually do experiments to see if people can use mind power to predict or control future events – this branch of psychology is called ‘parapsychology’ and it’s very interesting.

    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Woo, that is a good question. How cool would it be to be able to turn on the tv or switch off lights just by thinking about it?! Actually there are some really cool experiments designed to find ways to help patients with spinal cord injuries where they are trying to reconnect the connections that are lost at the spinal cord break. So what they have is a device that is connected to the part of the brain that is active when you want to move, and a wire to a stimulator on the muscle that would do that movement. In spinal cord injuries, the brain still wants to tell the muscles to move but the site of the break stops the message getting through and there is hope that that gap from the brain to the muscles can be bridged by implants someday in the future. There is a long way to go but still it is very exciting and in a sense those people who have implants like that will be controlling things with their mind!

    • Photo: William Davies

      William Davies answered on 19 Jun 2010:

      I wish we could! In Star Wars Episode I, it says that apparently the force is carried by something beginning with the letter m (can’t remember the exact name) which live in your blood cells. Presumably we could purify these from someone’s blood, grow them up in the lab, and then inject them into other people. Although I think they only work if you have also had special Jedi training from Yoda, or someone similar

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