Use of "Quantum Interferometry" at Megalithic Sites

Cross-Domain Integration to Measure Strangeness at Sacred Locations

Quantum interferometer model credit: Alexander Franzen; Aerial shot of Sacsayhuaman credit: Salkantaytrekmachu.com

Finding Consilience: Idealism–Realism Axis

Go visit a sacred ancient site, if possible one featuring a high density of megalithic architecture, and when you get back tell me, hand on heart, you didn’t feel something.

Something is ambiguous. Something can be absurd. Bernado Kastrup, a CERN physicist and depth philosopher, outlined in his beautiful book “Meanings in Absurdity” the key thesis for and against both ontological “realism” and “idealism”. Before reading Kastrup’s work, I had always considered myself a realist.¹ After I put my Kindle down, took a second, and looked at the wall, I had come round to idealism, not full circle, but at least enough to place value in both perspectives moving forward.

“Analytical idealism” posits that the world is constituted of phenomenal “mental states”. However, unlike “weak-objectivity”, which only requires one or more people to observe something, for something to be “strongly-objective” it must exist outside of observation. If everything is mental states, even the “outside world”, at least according to idealism, observation is kind of all we have.²

Moving past the philosophical thought experiment of whether a falling tree makes a sound if nobody is in the woods to hear it, or Einstein’s notorious rhetorical question “Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?”, but staying within the confines of John Wheeler’s “universe as a self-excited circuit” model, and the succinct quote, perhaps attributable to Carl Sagan, that reads something like “Life is the universe trying to understand itself”, we can extrapolate a couple of important things regarding observation and perception.

Philosophically, the “self-excited circuit” is closed at the point at which the universe looks back in at itself. Similarly, the “understanding” of the universe can only come from the perspective of the thing understanding it. In both these cases, at the point at which the circuit closes and at the level of the thing generating the understanding, observation emerges because it is all there is. Not only this. What is the “component” resulting in the closing of the circuit? What is the “Life” doing the understanding that leads to observation? Yes–us humans. Thus, not only in this sense is there only observation, but all observation is anthropocentric: all we have is human-based observation. At least, as far as I can tell, according to the idealists.

However, when you sit on a chair and the arrangement of atoms in the material structure of the wood keeps you from dropping to the floor, very clearly there is something “real” going on. Something external to the construct of the mind only; a collection of forces, relations and processes however ambiguous and hard to observe, outside the influence of your mind in so far as you physically interact with the collection of atoms we call a chair. Many relations are happening across many scales of reality. That is a superficial reason as to why completely abandoning realism would be jumping-the-gun, at least insofar as completely righting-off idealism would be as well. Accordingly, seeking consilience seems a better way to spend our time. Building a bridge, Immanuel Kant’s “Critiques of Pure Reason” gives both mental and physical perspectives equal ontological status.

Tending towards this, I believe that this what both Kastrup’s “analytical idealism”–a form of “objective-idealism” which grants an “external world”–and Ana-Maria Cretu and Michela Massimi’s "perspectival-realism”– “the idea that there are multiple ways of acquiring knowledge about the world and multiple different descriptions of mind-independent entities, none of which are objectively true”³–attempt to do, albeit from the shade of their respective corners.

Anyway, fearing philosophical weeds, I only mention the idealist–realist tension in passing, in order to make the following presupposition clear:

Ambiguity is inherent to our world, so too ambivalence, so too absurdity, so too strangeness.

Turning to Quantum

Talking about strangeness, when we begin to enhance our observational lenses and “zoom in”, what do we see in subatomic spaces? Many smart people might reply: particles in space. Perhaps, more specifically: particle fields and space. Then, even more specifically: seemingly empty space that probably holds intrinsic properties, allowing matter wave forms to exist over time, neither concepts we fully understand yet, because we cannot coherently observe nor harness them. Neither smart nor specific, I would say: we see absurdity.

Thinking back to our bridge, “relational quantum mechanics” as proposed by Carlo Rovelli becomes a keystone used to account for the ambiguity at the quantum scale by abandoning absolutism surrounding the state of a system and positing that the state of a quantum system is relative to the observer. A bridge is formed by the abutments of abandoning the absolute nature of systems in general, ambiguity is invited in, just how in epistemic and analytical idealism the “realist” world can not account for the innate absurdity observed within it. Yet some interpretations, like Bohmian Mechanics, insist upon a superstructural reality of a relational event, imposing the state of the system to be real with or without the specific observational lens through with reality is interpreted (e.g. an earthquake leaves visible seismites—ripples—across the land, even if it is not recorded by a seismometer, or even if nothing or nobody (conscious agent) is around to feel it⁴). However, despite ambiguity, despite strangeness, we can indeed, like the “invisible” earthquake, walk the lines of reality by measuring aspects of the quantum space.

*Enter quantum interferometry*

In a nutshell: metrology–the ability to measure–at the quantum scale, requires precision beyond classical limits. Whether measuring electrons, neutrons, photons or other subatomic states, one method of measuring requires analysing changes in distance smaller than the diameter of an atomic nucleus, or gravitational waves that stretch spacetime by less than the width of a proton.

To see how interferometry fits into this in a simplistic sense, imagine two pebbles simultaneously dropped into a lake. Some of the resulting ripples–waves–will overlap, some will join and grow bigger (constructive interference), and others will cancel eachother out (destructive interference). Interferometers look to measure these interferences in various ways in order to more accurately measure the space and the systems situated within that quantum space at that specific time.

Unlike the simplistic analogy of surface ripples, these devices work by splitting coherent quantum states (like firing photons or atoms through lasers and mirrors) along different paths as the resulting interference pattern is exquisitely sensitive to tiny differences in path length, gravitational fields, or other physical effects that occur along those paths, so by recombining them to measure the differences researchers can infer unbelievably small changes in the quantum environment. This does, admittedly, make it highly susceptible to background “noise”, but with continual advances in quantum technology this weakness may be fortified and interferometry may become robust enough to expand in scale.

Technically, quantum interferometers are “quantum” because they integrate quantum mechanical processes into their operating systems. “Spooky action at a distance” was used by Einstein to describe what is now known as “quantum entanglement”–the situation in which, after two subatomic particles interact their subsequent states thereafter become “coupled”–“entangled” even over vast quantities of space and time.

Non-locality and retrocausality aside, other absurd emergences from the quantum scale involve “superpositions”–when a subatomic particle can be either a, b, not a, not b, neither a nor b, or both a and b at the same time (yes, that hurt my head too). Then there is quantum “squeezing”–a process in which you give the subatomic particle a big old hug.⁵ All jokes aside, from “measuring gravity” to better understanding the properties of light, biological systems and the study of metrology in general, these strange quantum occurrences are integrated into quantum interferometers and out the other side pings some pretty groovy results.

So yep– something ambiguously absurd is going on at the quantum level, but fear not: technology like quantum interferometry is bringing us ever closer to mapping the sub atomic space and, in doing so, understanding the strange processes occurring here, there, I guess: everywhere.

On the topic of everywhere, let’s now return back to that something felt at the sacred sites adorning the opening of this article.

Megalithic Quantum Spaces

Having laid the foundations for the argument that both idealism and realism are ontologically valuable, and in the act of doing so suggesting absurdity and ambiguity should be part of our ontological understanding of the world around us, and by seeing that the strange ontology is backed up by the latest breakthroughs in quantum physics, the following question emerges:

When we apply this world model to some long-standing mysteries outside the regular domain of quantum mechanics, say, like the location and perhaps function of sacred, and more specifically megalithic sites around the world, what may be learned?

When conducting cross-domain analysis as a layman, the first pattern-matching procedure involves looking for overlaps. Lucky for me this oneis glaringly obvious, especially for someone who has visited and studied these sites quite extensively. I am referring to the characteristic absurdity. My two-part article series “Doorways To Nowhere” explored such nonsensical elements featured at, and shared across, megalithic sites, so please reference that for specific examples of what, for simplicity sake, I will now label “ambiguous features”.⁶

Doorway to Nowhere at Yazilikaya, Turkey (Thecatcherintherye/ CC BY-SA 4.0); Doorway to Nowhere at Aramu Muru, Peru (Jerrywills/ CCA BY 3.0); Doorway to Nowhere of Khufuankh, western cemetery in Giza, Egypt (Mohammedani Ibrahim, June 26, 1914. Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition. Giza Archives. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Colorised using DeepAI); Doorway to Nowhere near Ishi-No-Hoden, Japan (Saigen Jiro/CC0)

Upper left: Staircase symbology - xicalcoliuhqui or "step-fret" motif - displayed at Mitla, Mexico (Bobak Ha'Eri/ CC BY 2.0); Upper right: Staircases of Chand Baori, India (Ajay Parikh/ CCA BY 3.0); Lower left: Staircases at the “Etruscan Pyramid”, Italy (Alessandra C84 - Shutterstock); Lower right: Staircases on a monolith at Sayhuite, near Abancay, Peru (IncaTrailMachu)

Left: Stepped pyramid at Chichen Itza, Mexico (courtesy of the author); Middle: Stepped pyramid at Koh Ker, Cambodia (Peaceofangkor/ Public Domain); Right: Stepped pyramid at Djoser, Egypt (Vincent Brown/ CCA BY 2.0)

Left: Henge at Thornborough, England (Tony Newbould/ CCA BY 2.0); Middle: Henge at Stonehenge, England (Ewin Newman/ Public Domain); Right: Henge at the Ring of Brodgar, Orkney Islands, Scotland (Chris/ CCA BY 2.0)

Immediately many will say: ambiguous features are designed for “sacred”, “ritual” and “ceremonial” purposes. Immediately I would say back: I am not disputing this. What I would then add is: whilst more “metaphorical” than strictly “physical”, as we have just seen, idealism and relational quantum mechanics suggest features of the very real seeming world around us can be more than one thing, neither thing, or two different things at the same time. Coming from this grey area between metaphor and physical reality it is no surprise that, once we factor into the equation the paradoxical role of the observer (e.g. in the idealist argument against strong-objectivity, or even in the 2nd-order cybernetic sense), ambiguous features at megalithic sites remain, concurrently, multiple, ontologically significant things depending on the individual cognitive light-cone.

I concluded that series by stating our doorways to nowhere led, well, nowhere. But that’s because trying to understand the absurd only leads right back to absurdity. It reminds me of what Frederick Nietzche once said: “...if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Call me melodramatic but, as a model for thinking about why, when we stare at the nonsensical and see just that, I think Nietzche’s quote captures the conundrum, and the illogical logic of it, quite succinctly.

But there was something else significant to the distribution of megalithic sites: they appear all over the planet, ambiguous features and all. In a sort of Jungian sense, the archetypes that sprung ambiguous features from the immaterial mind of the megalithic architect into the material reality of megalithic architecture still standing today could have spanned and stemmed from the collective unconscious, hence the similarities across space and time.⁷ But how would one go about measuring the collective unconscious? There is a clear measurement problem, stemming from, among other things, ambiguous boundary conditions. In a more measurable sense, one could hypothesise that an underlying causal structure sits behind the megalithic diaspora.⁸ Back to somewhere between empiricism and phenomenology, Rupert Sheldrake’s “Formative Causation” comes to mind, only it is as if a highly strange megalithic morphic resonance rung out instead, no doubt in the minds but also undeniably imprinted in the land, a morphic field nurturing certain planetary spaces.

More recently, another article series led me to explore the mechanisms and causal structures running through the coupling of “Life” and Earth’s electromagnetic systems, especially around fault zones. It was at this point I ran across another peculiar correlation: many megalithic sites are also constructed around fault zones. Whilst it is beyond the scope of this article to parse out a sturdy hypothesis explaining causative relations over mere correlation in this case, it should be noted that in that series I was exploring possible mechanisms behind a correlation between human “markers” and seismically active, electromagnetically and geomagnetically dense zones.⁹ Not megalithic, nor strictly quantum systems.¹⁰

Given emerging research into quantum electrodynamics, or its counterpart extended electrodynamics, and combining the significant role of bioelectric mechanisms on modulating cognition across biological systems (yes, us humans—meaning there is a through-line between external quantum fluctuations and goal orientation and independent action à la building massive megalithic structures) and then sprinkle the idea that “internal” quantum processes like quantum tunneling do indeed directly influence cognition, perhaps even fundamentally connected to the Big C via microtubules, there could be room for a lot of very interesting, albeit superficial, pattern-matching here, but alas, not now.¹¹

When I wrote the original “Use of Quantum Sensors at Megalithic Sites” I had just come back from a long research trip, fortunate enough to spend time at sites across Mexico, Costa Rica and Peru. Clearly my experiences were born from an idealistic, constructivist and ultimately intuitionist perspective. It was my intuition that led me to construct a scenario where, based on what I had personally experienced (as well as what I had corroborated with a number of other individuals), to surmise that, for lack of a better term, “something more” not only permeates these sacred sites, but is part of a larger, fundamental planetary-wide causal structure. Along the lines of the Gaia Hypothesis, but instead of a naturally intuitive set of nested systems, a completely unnaturally unintuitive set of systems are governing instead.

Not wanting to lose the little remaining credibility I have left, the important distinction I try to maintain is that this something–possibly quantum (and/or electromagnetically) derived processes–is not simply a by-product of the megalithic architecture and magic (although factors like organisation of massive masonry, specific material selection and deliberate alignment is undeniably part of the sum total of the something going on) but is even more so a product of the actual geographic, topographical, material, real spatial location of these sites, including whatever is going on at the unobservable quantum scale in these spaces. Everything else was so purposeful, can we not suppose the location was too?

If we can get LEGO interferometers, surely we can assemble a team and, at certain times of the year,¹² strap something like a boot-legged quantum interferometer to our backs and go take measurements of quantum processes happening at ancient sites. Okay, fine, it doesn’t exactly work like that. The issue with interferometry at quantum scales is that the time needed to be measured can range from a femtosecond–one quadrillionth of a second–to Planck's time–the smallest conceivable measurement of time. The metrological accuracy is mind-blowing, thus requiring a significant experimental set-up. And sure, it would cost an arm and leg. Yet, aside from possibly scaring a few tourists away by looking like a motley crew of ghostbusters, if we started with classically known physical quantities at these sites we could experimentally work our way “down” and see what we can find.

Crossing back to the domain of megalithic architecture, technology not initially designed to measure ancient sites is already being used to do just that. From muon detectors and SAR doppler tomography utilised to “scan” the pyramids of Giza, whilst it may take some time for experts to agree on the right interpretation of the data, the results are, somewhat unsurprisingly, ambiguous, but hold profound potentials.

For quantum-scale processes specific to physical sites, interferometrical potential can be derived from quantum gravimeters based on atom interferometry, designed to measure minute variations in gravitational fields to detect underground structures, density variations, or other gravitational anomalies. Superconducting quantum interference devices (yes–SQUIDs) could measure subtle changes in magnetic fields that might correlate with geological features like fault lines or mineral deposits around these sites. Given the correlation mentioned earlier, tab that for later. Emerging theories detailing how certain biological systems might exploit quantum coherence suggest specialised bio-interferometers could potentially measure any effects certain geographic locations have on quantum coherent states in different biological systems, including us humans. If there is empirically anything weird going on, which I and many others truly believe, we have a chance at recording evidence for it.

And, if analytical idealism, or any form of idealism for that matter holds true, and the world is constituted of overlapping mental states, and these experiences at sacred sites have (and still do) alter human perception in some way–if sites themselves can be sacred in any semblance of truth, if they can truly alter cognition through unique and fundamental mechanisms–then it is possible that one way to measure this absurd, highly strange phenomena is to measure the coherence between the biological–quantum components at specific locations. Interferometers, perhaps not now, but I can’t imagine too far into the future either, may be able to do just that.

What else is waiting to be uncovered by measuring quantum spaces at ancient sites? Will it vindicate mine and many others' anecdotal, weakly-objective experience of something at these sacred places? What could we find out about underlying causal structures that have helped shape our history for millennia, probably much, much longer, if we were to start taking seriously the use of quantum sensors at megalithic sites?

1. Even writing an article outlining my views on “Spatial-Realism”.

2. Some argue that to believe something truly exists outside of observation (as is necessary for “strong-objectivity”) is an ontological fallacy. Idealism–which states everything is essentially mental in the constructivist and moreover, intuitionist sense that truths are derived from mental models and intuitions built up to become, as Kastrup puts it “our collective world instantiation”–gains ontological value under this argument. That collective world instantiation, despite how many people believe it, cannot be 100% ontologically real in a realist sense, because it is a mental construct, and thus needs idealism, at least in part, to explain it.

3. Cretu, 2020, P. 2.

4. Because if we went of seismology graphing or human experience alone it presupposes a level of biological organisation (like humans) at a complexity level capable of a) understanding existence of abstract forces like earthquakes and b) understanding how to measure earthquakes in an abstract manner. It is another anthropocentric means of observation, following: multiple observers → relational overlap (seismometer) → emergent objectivity (earthquake) and not: observer ← seismometer ← earthquake.

5. As much as I like a hug, the “squeezing” has to do with the relationship between quantum “amplitude” and “phase”–essentially how large and powerful a wave is vs its alignment and timing–and how in such states measuring one tends to lead to not being able to measure the other.

6. Including “doorways to nowhere”, “staircases to nowhere”, “upside down staircases”, “groove/scoop marks” and “protuberances/nubs”.

7. “Sort of” in this sense because Jung may not have necessarily believed the collective unconsciousness was interconnected globally, across all human populations, instead some interpretations of his work sees the idea more like pockets of collective unconscious emerging in groups of people, later societies and cultures, although others do view his “archipelago of consciousness” as interconnected, so depends who you ask.

8. I joked that such a structure might look like a mix of a London Underground map and a Micah Offstedhal painting. That is to say: I joked because my limited pattern-matching left me no choice.

9. One less speculative and more “standard” explanation for causation over correlation is the idea that fault zones have acted as forcing functions for a sort of iterative-design-based geographic determinism.

10. But there is plenty of evidence that quantum processes directly effect biolectric mechanisms, which in turn directly effect our cognitive processes. Again, an interesitng link for another article.

11. Fine…just a little: “Unobserved” processes, perhaps occurring at the sub atomic scale or within the classical, even non-classical electromagnetic spectrum, can become densely packed (over evolutionary, geologic and even planetary< time scales) in certain geographic locations, perhaps (given the more conductive nature of the geosphere and the denser interrelation of atmospheric, geomagnetic, electromagnetic and other planetary systems at these locations) around fault zones (or at least more conductive regions of Earth). Getting really speculative, perhaps these processes, through some form of induction, “couple” both the anatomical/cognitive organisation that is humans to underlying causal structures, influencing idealistic ideation and physical production alike in highly significant ways. This argument might suggest such an “energetic-coupling” could account for the collective, widespread assembly of ambiguous features, including the megalithic sites themselves, around the world. In doing so, such processes are intricately “causally connected”, from the ritualistic, ceremonial, material, belief systems, to what is ultimately the sacred nature of sites across space and time. I told you it is high speculation, but it leaves interesting points to unpick at down the line.

12. Because clearly the cosmological alignments at megalithic and sacred sites relate to certain seasons and times of the year (e.g. Solstice and Equinox) and was extremely central to the purpose of the site and location in the first place.