Stopping time and gaining speed and direction

I've broken my new watch. It lasted two weeks. Of all the useless powers to have, destroying watchers has got to be top of anyone's list. After zapping numerous watches, too many to list, I discovered a cheap one (the one before my last) that lasted more than a month. My father had the same skill, so I am thinking it is inherited.  I had actually began to relax, then, I had a stressful work-related week in Brussels.  My worst day of the week, Thursday, obviously was too much for the watch and it stopped. Given that it chose that particular day to die perhaps, I generate electromagnetic waves when in distress? Perhaps sufficiently intense to stop watch mechanisms? This business of messing with mechanical systems via distance seems nonsensical at first. But we all emit huge quantities of infrared radiation every moment of our lives. Sit in a packed conference room for a whole day soon you will become aware just how much heat energy is being constantly radiated from humans around you. Plants have an electromagnetic field around them that can be picked up. So is it too much to speculate there is a field of sorts around us? It's time I understood this thing.  Or is it purely imaginary? Can these magnetic fields do stuff?

Well, some aquatic animals, such as sharks and rays, have acute bioelectric sensors providing a sense known as electroreception (they can sense your body’s electricity in the water- darn them!), while migratory birds navigate in part by orienteering with respect to the Earth's magnetic field. In an extreme application of electromagnetism the electric eel is able to generate a large electric field outside its body used for hunting and self-defense through a dedicated electric organ.  So living things already use interaction with magnetic and electric fields to detect prey, navigate long distances and even to attack others. In addition, electromagnetic radiation at a certain frequency range has found a place in modern medical practice for the treatment of bone healing and for nerve stimulation and regeneration.  So electric and magnetic fields do quite a lot of stuff.

We all exist in the earth’s magnetic field which depending on your geographical location can be anywhere from (30 - 70) x 10^-6 Tesla.  Doesn’t sound a lot does it?  If you stand under high direct current transmission lines there can be an additional magnetic flux of around 20x 10^-6 Tesla produced.  Fast passenger trains based on magnetic levitation produce high magnetic flux densities close to the motor.  But inside the cabin the fields are relatively low, below 100 x 10^-6 Tesla.  Mind you a thousand times stronger localised fields can result from inductors beneath the floor of passenger coaches.  MRI machines use magnetic flux densities of 0.15-3 Tesla (usually limited to exposure of less than an hour).  However medical staff can be exposed for longer periods of time and in researching brain functions fields of up to 10 Tesla can be used.  There are many ways static magnetic fields interact with living matter.  Magnetic induction, magnetic mechanical and electronic interaction.  Static fields exert Lorentz forces over moving electrolytes and give rise to induced electric fields and currents.  So for example our flowing blood can be affected.  It is thought that the sinoartial node of the heart that controls cardiac pacing is perhaps the most sensitive to magnetic fields but that as long as we stay beneath 8Tesla things should be fine.  8Tesla applied to rats reduced blood flow, which is worrying, admittedly.  In fact, in magnetic fields above 4Tesla rats show aversion and avoidance characteristics.  It is suspected that the fields at this strength may interact with the vestibular apparatus - the parts of the ear responsible for balance.  Time varying magnetic fields as low as 2-3 Tesla can cause vertigo and nausea if patients/workers move within the field.  These magnetic fields induce currents in living tissues and in accordance with Faraday's law of induction these effects are substantial, especially if we move around within them.  That is the weird thing about electric and magnetic fields, they are quite different in how they operate.

If we are charged and within an electric field we experience immediately a force dependent on our charge and the strength of the electric field.  Magnetic fields however are related to the strength of the magnetic field, our charge and our velocity.  So we could be in a strong field and not know until we start moving. It is that velocity that will induce the full force.  

This always makes a fundamental statement to me about life.  On this magnetic planet we are governed by her rules and perhaps there are spiritual metaphors to be learned.  i.e. if you want change in your life, move!  Only when you move will the forces available to you come into play.  Being stationary will not avail.  Makes you feel that getting going is so important, just so that you can experience the dynamic powers that could be there.  Sailors know that unless a sailing yacht is moving steering does not work.  It is the movement of the boat that makes being able to steer possible.  It doesn’t matter if you have to tack in odd directions to catch the wind, you will achieve more by gaining some velocity.  Then work out where you want to go.

PS I have decided to give up on watches.  Don’t know why or how I break them but the evidence is clear, I do.  Time to accept that as a fact and move on.  It’s all quite new and I keep looking at my wrist for the time and of course there is nothing there.  The sad part is I am still surprised by its absence and it has been three weeks!  This getting old is tricky dicky.

“Do you think I got washed in on the tide?”

Sam was amused his watch had stopped.  It had become a running joke in the family because his father Ted had ruined watches consistently for decades.  Now that his father was gone Sam found his shared ability to either stop watches or make them run slow forged a vital link with his dad.

It wasn't because they manhandled them or smashed them against corners of tables by accident.  This unusual talent to mess with watches was weirder than simple carelessness.  

His father had been a young man on holiday in a small coastal village when his ability to interfere with such devices first occurred.  He'd treated himself to a cheap watch.  It had cost less than a fiver so he had not expected it to last forever.  It had stopped by the time he wore it back to his basic bed and breakfast that evening.  Taking it back to the shop, the reluctant shopkeeper replaced it.  Two days later that watch also stopped and Sam was back in the small shop.  This time the shopkeeper was belligerent.

“What are you doing to my watches?” He asked Ted.

Ted responded,

“If you had enough turnover your watches wouldn't be such old stock that they've stopped working.”

The shopkeeper, a high pitched red haired Scotchman was livid and pulling a battery tester from under his counter took the watch battery out and tested it.  The battery had lost a lot of its charge and Ted had gloated in being proved right.  He proceeded to lecture the shopkeeper on the lifespan of all batteries.

“You do realise, even on the shelves, in packets, batteries run down?”

The shopkeeper’s face was as red as his hair and he muttered,

“Do you think I don’t know my own business?”

As he blustered, he took a fresh battery tested it and then inserted it into the watch.  Feeling righteous and successfully assertive about the whole business Ted left with a working watch once more.

It lasted three days before stopping again.  Ted was back in the shop aware that there would be unpleasantness ahead but determined nonetheless.  However, this time the Scotchman would not countenance any exchange or another battery.  Despite all Ted’s arguments he would respond with the same line, red eyebrows high in outrage

“Do you think I got washed in on the tide?”

Ted walked home defeated with this effective one liner.  He told himself such isolated tiny shops were probably filled with obsolete batteries/watches.   What on earth had he expected from such a rural location, so little frequented. 

Later that year he’d bought a fancy watch.  The type young men go for when they want to impress!  Ted had just met Sam’s mother and in his excitement to create a favourable image had lashed out on a hundred pound watch.  It looked good and on their first date Ted had admired the young girl opposite almost as much as his swanky new expensive timepiece.  With such a girl on one arm and another beauty on his left ticking away Ted had experienced one of those rare moments of sweet triumph that come too rarely in life.  As it turned out he won the girl’s heart but the watch died almost as quickly as its cheap predecessor.

Ted was relieved that the five year guarantee on his new watch meant he was able to get it fixed for free in the sleek fancy city shop he’d bought it in.  However, after returning to the shop twice with the stopped watch he noted that the suave young salesman was becoming as suspicious as the red-haired Scotchman.  He commented to Ted,

“You do realise, sire, that the watch is not waterproof.  If you get it wet that will effect the mechanism.”

Ted pointed out that he didn't get it wet unless perhaps a drop of rain on the way to work.  The salesman seized on this and pointed out that if Ted had wanted to wear the watch in downpours he should have opted for the waterproof model in the first place.  There followed an insidiously pointless and fruitless argument about the type of rain Ted walked in.  Had it been the soft Irish rain as Ted claimed, or the tropical downpour the young salesman favoured.  The upshot was Ted left with a broken expensive watch.

Disgruntled by the whole affair Ted threw the wretched watch in a small dish and forgot about it.  By now his new wife was pregnant, with Sam, and Ted had discovered a new world beyond material possessions.  This tiny life growing inside his wife was a part of him and a part of her.  At times Ted thought his heart would explode with happiness.  Who knew the world could be filled with all this richness.  

It was years before Ted’s ability to stop/ruin timepieces became clear.  Only those he wore were affected.  If he carried the watch in his pocket, something he proceeded to do until well into his eighties, they worked fine.

Now, Sam had discovered he had inherited his father’s strange knack.  Instead of just accepting his lot Sam had gone online to do some amateur research.  Where there others like him and his late father?  What caused this unusual effect?  Was there a scientific explanation?  He discovered PEARS Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research which involved a scientific study of consciousness-related physical phenomena.  There was an interesting video of how the research began.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/implications.html

However, the following information on the project seemed to concentrate on selling dvds, lamps that changed colour with human consciousness, or devices that sent you random text messages based on your mood.  These were marketed at ridiculous prices to the gullible and desperate. Sam, gave up and accepted his lot.  He remembered his father’s last words in the hospice.

“Do you think I'll get washed out on the tide?”

  

His mother and he had loved that with his last breath he had used the red-haired Scotchman’s line and managed to touch them with his gentle humour.