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2026-10-08 — Parapsychology Foundation (parapsychology.org)

Investigator run 1 (STEP I). Reached from Google query "Martin Ruderfer" neutrino.

What was found

  • Martin Ruderfer, "Neutrino Theory of Psi Phenomena", in B. Shapin and L. Coly (eds.), Communication and Parapsychology (Proceedings of an international conference, Parapsychology Foundation, New York, 1980), pp. 121-149. Scanned PDF, 29 pages, with the conference discussion afterwards. [web] https://parapsychology.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/8-Neutrino-theory-of-psi-phenomena-Martin-Ruderfer.pdf The citation (pp. 121-149, PF New York 1980) is confirmed by B. Carr (2015) in APA PsycNet record 2016-23796-016 [web] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-23796-016 (Google snippet).
  • Saved: research/files/Ruderfer-Neutrino-theory-of-psi-phenomena-PF.pdf (966 KB, image scan, no text layer). OCR by tesseract at 200 dpi: research/pages/psi-ocr.txt (an evidence file, not for publishing). OCR quality is good for prose; exponents in numbers are often garbled, so the numbers below need checking against page images before anyone relies on them.

This is not the 1973 Prague paper ("Neutrino Theory of Extrasensory Perception", Part I of the JPRS translation, still missing), but a later and longer statement of the same theory. It is the first full text of claim 5 to be found. It largely closes the source gap for claim 5 in claims.md.

The argument, in Ruderfer's own terms [web: PDF above, OCR; pages are printed page numbers]

Method: "binary reasoning". He asks 17 yes/no questions, each answered from the evidence he cites, and treats 2^n as a measure of support (p.121-122).

  1. Every ESP process must carry an unobserved transfer of energy, because "an inviolate tenet of information theory is the association of an energy transfer with every information transfer" (p.122-123).
  2. Ehrenwald's theory: if some unknown agent excites neurons, known biopsychology accounts for the fragmentary character of ESP. Ruderfer calls the excitation the "ESP channel", after Osis and Turner (p.123).
  3. No conventional energy source fits. Long range, penetration of Faraday cages, mines and water, and the bandwidth Bibbero estimated for telepathy (Proc. IRE 1951) together rule out electromagnetic radiation, except perhaps in rare cases (p.123-124).
  4. Physics already admits unobserved energy in the vacuum: the Dirac sea, Wheeler's Planck-scale vacuum, and the neutrino sea, whose energy "may far exceed all the observable energy in the universe" (Pontecorvo and Smorodinskii 1962) (p.124).
  5. Of these, only neutrinos are known to interact with matter. The V-A (vector-axial) cross-section rises with energy, so low-energy neutrinos must still interact a little (p.124-125).
  6. For low-energy neutrinos the most important coupling is scattering off electrons, and the electrochemical energy levels in living cells are similarly low (p.125).
  7. Resonance. By E_e = h f_e and E_nu = h f_nu / 2, a neutrino has the same frequency as an electron of twice its energy. If scattering is resonant at matching frequency, binding energies of about 0.1 eV give about 10^13 Hz of bandwidth (OCR reads "1.2 x 10^1? Hz"). The physical basis is his phasor theory: the neutrino is "a helical form of electromagnetism", the photon "a resonant interaction of a neutrino and antineutrino", and the electron "a resonant interaction of two neutrinos". He also states that "the Schrödinger equation derives directly from Maxwell's equations" (p.125-126). Resonance needs matching helicity; the right-handed antineutrino "may be relevant to interaction with right-hand molecules, as DNA and RNA" (p.126-127).
  8. Evidence offered: the Davis solar-neutrino deficit (about 1/3 of the expected number). One of the proposed explanations is his own resonant neutrino-electron scattering (Lett. Nuovo Cim. 10, 393, 1974), needing a cross-section about nine orders of magnitude above V-A inside the Sun. He links it to stellar evolution, stellar oscillation, flare energy, novae and supernovae (p.127).
  9. Detectability by tissue: noise rate f/M (his eq. 2) and noise power P/M (eq. 3). With his resonant cross-section, about 100 Hz/g from p-p solar neutrinos (mean 0.263 MeV), and P of about 5 x 10^-7 erg/s for a 1300 g brain, which he compares with about 10^5 optical photons/s (exponents uncertain in OCR) (p.127-128).
  10. Living things may already use solar-neutrino detection, for circadian timing and navigation. 1/f noise at the nodes of Ranvier in frog axons (Verveen and Derksen 1968) is offered as consistent with this (p.128-129). - Proposed experiment (Fig. 1, p.129-130): a positron-emitting radioactive source of a few kilocuries, in a lead shield on a retractable cable above a test area holding inanimate matter, plants, insects, fish, birds or small mammals. Measure 1/f noise, biological rhythms, orientation and behaviour. Control: a gamma-only source of equal gamma intensity. He estimates the source cost at about $500,000, shareable with work on the Davis anomaly. "Any unusual behavior associable only with the presence of the neutrino flux provides experimental proof of detectability."
  11. Neutrino sea statistics restated (p.130-132; this bears directly on claims 1, 2 and 4). Earlier estimates assumed Fermi-Dirac statistics "only because neutrinos are fermions". He says this has no observational support, citing "Pauli's discussion of the connection between special relativity and statistics" (his ref. 16, Ruderfer 1974 rebuttal). The new justification is particle-antiparticle symmetry: in the photon the neutrino and antineutrino spins are aligned, but in the sea they are randomly oriented, so "it is particle-antiparticle symmetry which effectively determines the appropriate statistics". Fermi-Dirac would apply "only to the extent of its departure from particle-antiparticle symmetry". He cites Davis and Ray (Phys. Rev. D 9, 331, 1974) as showing that general relativity disallows a gravitational limit for massless neutrinos. Using Marx's (1963) observed upper limits, doubled for antineutrinos (Table 1), he obtains T of about 2.3 x 10^9 K (OCR), S/2 of about 8.0 x 10^28 erg/cm^2 s (OCR exponent uncertain) and rho/2 of about 120 g/cm^3 (OCR). The spectral peak is at u = 2.80, a neutrino energy of 0.28 MeV, with a mean of 0.10 MeV. Because this is close to the 0.263 MeV solar mean, he concludes the sea is near equilibrium with stars. Note: this is a different and far larger estimate than the 1972 letter (33 K, 64 erg/cm^2 s, capped by closure density). The 1980 paper drops the closure cap. 12-13. A coherent change of state in N molecules perturbs the neutrino sea, and the effect falls off as 1/r^2. Equating gives a range r = N^(1/2) s (eq. 8): a "long-range force" peculiar to living, redundant tissue. Synaptic vesicles (N of about 5 x 10^3 molecules?, s of about 1.5 x 10^-6 cm) give a range of about 10^-4 cm, about the spacing of synapses, so "stepping-stone" excitation can cross the brain. He links this to E. H. Walker's theory of consciousness (Math. Biosci. 1970), with the neutrino sea replacing Walker's quantum tunnelling. The brain's state is then "impressed on the neutrino sea and is propagated throughout space" (p.132-135). 14-16. The mind is not wholly in the brain. A "primordial intelligence" in the vacuum, and a three-stage model (Fig. 3: psi agent, then mind channel, then neutrino sea, then ESP channel, then matter), with a "psi channel" between agents that is "not restricted to the velocity of light". He says the neutrino mechanism is distance-limited, though receiver feedback (automatic gain control, after Hoffmann 1940) could hide the 1/r^2 fall-off. PK by the same mechanism must fall off quickly with distance (p.136-139).
  12. Tests he proposes for the psi channel: out-of-body targets that are extraterrestrial or atomic; he discusses Besant and Leadbeater's Occult Chemistry. Discoveries made in dreams (Kekulé, Loewi and others) are also discussed (p.139-141).

Discussion (p.143 ff.): the discussants are Rudolph (an information theorist who objects that Shannon's theory says nothing about energy), Morris (who asks about Bibbero's bandwidth), Byers, Irwin, Nash(?), Storm and Ullman. Ruderfer answers that he chose "yes" to Q1 "for a very practical reason ... we are assuming that the present laws of science apply". Speaker names are from OCR and need checking.

Ruderfer's own works cited in the paper (new leads, priority 1) [web: PDF ref. list p.142]

  • Specul. Sci. Tech. 1978, vol. 1, pp. 29, 147 and 533.
  • Electronics and Power (IEE) 1965, 11, 164 (phasor-neutrino theory) and 1972, 18, 370 ("Electron structure").
  • Am. J. Phys. 1971, 39, 116.
  • NAPS Document No. 01930 (Microfiche Publications, 440 Park Ave. S., New York, 1972), cited for phasor theory.
  • NAPS Document No. 02052 (1973), sec. 19 and 20, cited for the psi-agent model and PK energy estimates.
  • Phys. Lett. 54A, 363 (1975), "Are solar neutrinos detected by living things?"
  • Lett. Nuovo Cim. 10, 393 (1974) and 10, 826 (1974).
  • Parapsych. Rev. 1977, 8(2), 13.
  • Proc. IRE 1952, 40, 1734 ("Telepathy and the Quantum").
  • Science 1949, 110, 245 ("The Concept of Action as a Measure of Living Phenomena", the macroscopic quantum of action of living things).
  • Physics of Failure in Electronics vol. 2 (1964), p. 361 (mortality and the Second Law).
  • J. Res. Psi Phen. 1976, 1, 53.

The NAPS (National Auxiliary Publications Service, ASIS) microfiche documents look like Ruderfer's long-form theory deposits. They are the most complete statement of the phasor theory that the 1972 letter rests on.

How it bears on the claims

  • Claim 5 (neutrino mechanism for ESP): full argument now available.
  • Claims 1-2 (statistics): a second, different justification (particle-antiparticle symmetry) beside the 1972 signalling argument. Reviewers should compare the two.
  • Claim 3 (photon = neutrino + antineutrino): extended to the electron = two neutrinos, and to Schrödinger from Maxwell.
  • Claim 4 (energy density): the 1980 estimate differs by many orders of magnitude from the 1972 one, because the closure cap was dropped.
  • Testable proposals: the shielded positron-source experiment (Fig. 1), and the solar-neutrino and circadian/navigation link.