In Marvel Comics’ spectacular and wildly popular X-Men series, mutants are endowed with vastly different abilities. Two such examples are Jean Grey, a young woman with powerful telekinesis, and Ororo Munroe, known as Storm, who has the ability to control the weather through psionic ability. Since Jean can manipulate matter, would it not stand to reason that she could manipulate the atmosphere to create weather phenomenon as Storm does? And if Storm is able to affect atmosphere and all its aspects, such as pressure, humidity and temperature, could she not also move solid objects, too?
In my second novel (currently in progress), the main character Ian possesses powerful telekinesis and uses it to create minute weather events like his comic book heroes, Storm and Thor. He has even grown his blond hair long to resemble the Marvel representation of the Norse god of thunder (Norse legend describes Thor with red hair and a beard). But could this be a viable possibility?
To explore this aspect, one does not need to consult pop culture, but need only look at scientific journals for examples of fact-based findings to support this hypothesis. Weather is an enormously complex system of processes which modern science still has not been able to grasp entirely the nature of the beast. To simplify it (as I must do for this article) could be considered an insult to the monumental and dangerous research being conducted by many brilliant scientists. The processes involved, temperature, pressure, humidity, interact so intricately that state-of-the-art instrumentation is only beginning to probe the mysteries of the atmospheric phenomenon.
The first aspect to address is temperature and the psionic power necessary to affect it. Such ability has been addressed mainly in fiction as pyrokinesis, the ability to control, ignite and/or extinguish the fire using only the mind (source: Wikipedia). Stephen King’s Firestarter and Junko Aoki in the very good Japanese film “Pyrokinesis” both feature young women with the destructive power.
But has pyrokinesis or the ability to affect temperature by telekinesis been noted in scientific literature? Among the plethora of citations there are on TK research, I have not found any references to the ability to start fires, but temperature manipulation is well represented. Professor Georgy K. Gurtovoy and physicist Alexander Parkhomov conducted experiments to test the influence of TK on a microcalorimeter(1). In these trials, an individual or operator was to alter the microcalorimeter from a distance from 0.5 km away from the physical system to up to 4000 km distant, by exerting their will on the system. The researchers regarded a success event or “hit” on the microcalorimeter when a change greater than 10 mV (2 x 10-3 Celsius) was recorded. They demonstrated successful “hits” in six of eight trials when the operator was 4000 km away and twelve of eighteen when the operator was in Moscow (up to 20 km distant). The paper does not specify on the timing of the experiments, i.e. coordinating the time period when the operator was concentrating on affecting the system and the times when the “hits” were registered.
In the extensive and exhaustive research written by Robert G. Jahn and Brenda J. Dunne on the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program(2) does not address temperature changes, but does focus on the manipulation of physical systems, such as random event generators (REG), which produce data streams of 200 binary digits per trial conforming precisely to a Gaussian representation. The results of such on page 199 of their work demonstrate that a prolific operator succeeded in shifting the mean of the outputs in the intended directions. The authors admit the effect was small but statistically significant, but the conclusions brought up a very important question: Could this same operator replicate the same results consistently? This question was answered in the affirmative based upon the data presented in the article of this operator’s cumulative results for the first decade of the PEAR program. The REG was described in an earlier work of Jahn at the beginning of the program(3).
William G. Braud in 1993 presented a paper(4) that culminated work of researchers that found similar results using REG’s. Braud also addresses the possibility of experimenter fraud in such cases by citing several examples of scientific literature that manage to rule out such scenarios.
It is interesting to note here that the results of the experiments only address the operators’ influence on the output of the REG’s but what is it that the operators are actually affecting? The REG used in Jahn’s experiments(3) is described in great technical detail, but again very little detail is given in the aspect of the REG the operators influence. The machine is generating noise in the megahertz range, but passes through a number of filters, with systems counting both positive and negative pulses, etc. The operator could have been affecting the system on a microscopic scale as described earlier in Jahn’s paper as a disturbance on the atomic level. In this case, it is an electrical system, meaning the operator is possibly manipulating the processes on the sub-atomic level, i.e. electrons. We can also consider pyrokinesis as the psionic ability at the atomic level, if we can define it as agitating molecules or particles of a substance to the point that combustion occurs.
Other work outside of the scope of this article has focused on the effect of telekinesis on the quantum level(4) and even affecting radioactive decay(5).
We have established now that the telekinetic-enabled mind can affect physical systems on the atomic and sub-atomic levels, manipulating temperature of materials and electricity or electron flow. Although the scientific literature I have read has not researched abilities to affect other systems such as humidity or pressure, two more essential factors for weather formation. If the temperature of solid matter can be affected by telekinesis, it would stand to reason that liquids and gases could also be susceptible to TK manipulation. With this ability one could create wind and possibly even rain. At this point, more research into meteorological systems is not in the near future. With the discontinuation of the PEAR program at Princeton this year, potential discoveries in this area may be delayed further since political pressure and the threat of ridicule from peers suppress new and serious forays into psychical research.
So could Jean Grey develop her power to rival Storm? Perhaps. It is within the realm of research but Ms. Grey has a lot of work and practice ahead of her. Storm has a big lead.
References:
1. Edwin C. May, Larissa Vilenskaya, Overview of Current Parapsychology Research in the Former Soviet Union, In Subtle Energies, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 45-67
2. Robert G. Jahn, Brenda J. Dunne, The Pear Proposition, In Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 195-245, 2005.
3. The Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective, Proceeding of the IEEE, Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 136-170, February 1982.
4. William G. Braud, Can Our Intentions Interact Directly With The Physical World?, Invited address at the Fifth Edinburgh International Science Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland, April 10-24, 1993.
5. Helmut Schmidt, The Strange Properties of Psychokinesis, In Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1987.