Does anyone know how to conduct particle physics experiments 'in the field"; that is, not in a collider or controlled conditions in a laboratory, but actually testing for particle interactions in the real world involving people and objects etc?
Atmospheric and Solar Neutrino experiments use naturally occuring rather than laboratory or reactor produced neutrinos. Is that the type of thing you had in mind?
How you would use people I'm not sure. Certainly for any experiment to be reliable it must have controlled conditions at the point of observation otherwise your results may well be meaningless. No?
If you are looking for cosmic rays, there are many options to involve people. Most cosmic ray experiments are done in the field. Cerenkov telescopes (e.g. Veritas) are also in the field. Neutrinos were already mentioned here. However, if you are looking for a modest and simpler experiments, one can measure the muon magnetic moment, and muon capture, muon lifetime, and pair production in the laboratory with a relatively inexpensive setup.
There is always a possibility to go back to the old tools of particle physics - exposing nuclear emulsions to cosmic rays high in the mountains or sending these emulsions into higher layers of the atmosphere. There is always a chance to catch some interesting interactions when scanning the emulsions with help of a microscope.
@Rolf and others: the types of experiments I am referring to involve simulating or directly measuring everyday phenomena such as people's thoughts effecting events in the real world and co-incidences that have a significant meaning to an individual. e.g. I have a thought about a person I haven't seen for some time, the next day I see that person in a shop; or I turn up to a restaurant location and the restaurant called 'The Wedgetail' has closed down, the next day on the radio, the announcer says, there is a wedge-tail aircraft flying over Sydney Harbour today.
In particular I am interested if anyone has any insight into understanding these phenomena scientifically in terms of particle physics and neuroscience.
In regards to neutrinos as particles that have been measured as massless and moving at the speed of light: I interpret their existence as likened to a little piece of skin or shell that has broken off from their associated larger particle.Could it be a valid claim to say that neutrinos might be involved in allowing us to experience these phenomena such as a single person being in many places at once; they could be allowing us to experience for example the perception of someone in a shop standing next to us even though they may be many light years away. There seems to be a greater level of understanding that is required in how particles in the universe are attracted or 'attached' to the particles in our brain;our tool for perception and sensation, thought and cognition.
Hi,
I think that there some misunderstanding here. Particle physics deals with the simplest entities in nature. Their behaviour is studied under extreme conditions that never exist inside someones brain.
You are looking for explanation of things in the most complex thing in nature: the human brain. But, as I indicated above, the two things do not affect each other.
Take for example the neutrino. Such a particle may go through ones brain and the probability that it interacts with the brain material, i.e. that it exchanges some energy and affects the brain's state is so low that if you kept shooting a neutrino/second since the big bang none of them would have interact with the brain up to now. Obviously, the neutrino canot be connected with brain's functions.
What Rolf had probably in mind is the possible presence of quantum mechanics effects in the brain. Unlike particle physics QM deals with low (among other things) energy situations that may occur in the brain.
I don't think that the existance of QM processes was shown to affect the brain, but one cannot exclude such a possibility either.
Our brain is rather a poor detector of subtle phenomena hapening at the level of elementary particles. Of course when exposed to high radiation (for example when travelling in space to the planet Mars), some destructive processes can affect functioning of our brain and so influence certain mental processes(hallucinations for example) but this is (probably) not of great interest. Some persons claim to be super sensitive to the electromagnetic waves, trying to live in a special environment, but this is not yet proven scientifically. Certainly the brain is not a quantum computer, although (as stated above) existence of some quantum processes in brain can not be excluded as well. So let's continue to use our brains in an indirect way (analyzing measurements obtained from the dedicated detectors) to explore the QM world.
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