Water Remembers?
Homeopathy Explained?
New
research suggests water remembers what has been dissolved in it, even after
dilution beyond the point where no molecule of the original substances could
remain. Dr. Mae-Wan
Ho reports.
For
more than a century, practitioners of homeopathy have used highly diluted
solutions of medicinal substances to treat diseases. Some substances are diluted
way beyond the point at which no trace of the original substances could remain.
It is as though the water has retained memory of the departed molecules.
This
has aroused a great deal of scepticism within the conventional medical and
scientific community. To this day, �homeopathic� is used as a term of derision,
to indicate something imagined that has no reality.
But
a series of recent discoveries in the conventional scientific community is
making people think again.
First, there were the South
Korean chemists who discovered two years ago that molecules dissolved in
water clump together as they get more diluted (see
SiS
15),
which was totally unexpected; and further more, the size
of the clumps depends on the history of dilution, making a mockery of the �laws
of chemistry�.
Now, physicist Louis Rey in Lausanne, Switzerland, has published a paper in the
mainstream journal, Physica A, describing experiments that suggest water does
have a memory of molecules that have been diluted away, as can be demonstrated by a relatively
new physical technique that measures thermoluminescence.
In this technique, the
material is �activated� by irradiation at low temperature, with UV, X-rays,
electron beams, or other high-energy sub-atomic particles. This
causes electrons to come loose from the atoms and molecules, creating
�electron-hole pairs� that become separated and trapped at different energy
levels. Then, when the irradiated material is warmed up, it
releases the absorbed energy and the
trapped electrons and holes come together and recombine. This causes the release
of a characteristic glow of light, peaking at different temperatures depending
on the magnitude of the separation between electron and hole.
As a general rule, the
phenomenon is observed in crystals with an ordered arrangement of atoms and
molecules, but it is also seen in disordered materials such as glasses. In this
mechanism, imperfections in the atomic/molecular lattice are considered to be
the sites at which luminescence appears.
Rey decided to use the technique to
investigate water, starting
with heavy water or deuterium oxide that�s been frozen into ice at a temperature
of 77K.
The absolute temperature scale
(degree K, after Lord Kelvin) is used in science. (The zero degree K is
equivalent to �273 C, and deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen which is twice as
heavy as hydrogen).
As the ice warms up, a first peak of
luminescence appears near 120K, and a second peak near 166 K. Heavy water gives
a much stronger signal than water. In both cases, samples that were not
irradiated gave no signals at all.
For both water and heavy water, the
relative intensity of the thermoluminescence depends
on the irradiation dose. There has been a suggestion that peak 2
comes from the hydrogen-bonded network within ice, whereas peak 1 comes from the
individual molecules.
This was confirmed by looking at a
totally different material that is known to present strong hydrogen bonds, which
showed a similar glow in the peak 2 region, but nothing
in peak 1.
Rey then investigated what would happen
when he dissolved
some chemicals in the water and diluted it in steps of one hundred fold with
vigorous stirring (as in the preparation of homeopathic remedies), until he
reached a concentration of 10 to the power -30 g per centilitre, and compare
that to the control that has not had any chemical dissolved in it and diluted in
the same way.
The samples were frozen and
activated with irradiation as usual.
Much
to his surprise, when lithium chloride, LiCl, a
chemical that would be expected to break hydrogen bonds between water molecules
was added, and then diluted away, the thermoluminescent glow became reduced, but the reduction of
peak 2 was greater relative to peak 1. Sodium chloride, NaCl, had the same effect albeit to a lesser degree.
It
appears, therefore, that substances like LiCl and
NaCl can modify the hydrogen-bonded network of water,
and that this modification remains even when the molecules have been diluted
away.
The fact that this �memory�
remains, in spite of, or because of vigorous stirring or shaking at successive
dilutions, indicates that the �memory� is by no means static, but depends on a
dynamic process, perhaps a
collective quantum excitation of water molecules that has a high degree of
stability (see "The strangeness of water and homeopathic
memory", SiS 15).
Rey L. Thermoluminescence of ultra-high dilutions of lithium
chloride and sodium chloride. Physica A 2003, 323,
67-74.
