Translator: Viki Poórová Reviewer: Zuzana Šplhová
I am a scientist and researcher
at the Institute of Photonics and Electronics
of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Our research group focuses on studying our own electromagnetic fields
and living organisms' own radiation.
So, my story has begun, and now it maybe will begin even luckier.
When I was a student of biomedical engineering
at the Univesity of Žilina,
once I read somewhere that everything alive shines with some weak light,
and it can be measured.
Until then, I was just not a motivated student.
I passed all the exams quite easily,
but my studies had not had any kind of a challenge or a purpose for me.
When I read about this fact, I was so fascinated and enthused about it
that I wanted to find out whether it was true,
whether it was a fact and how it works.
That is the reason why I decided to be a scientist,
so that I can study this phenomenon.
I also understood that having some aim, some concept,
is something terribly important
because this aroused some inner motivation in me,
and I found out that when I have some aim, any study can be a pleasure for me,
not any kind of trouble, and that was a turning point in my life.
And now a current photo.
Before, the lab looked like that,
and you can see on the right how it looks now in the laboratory.
How weak is an organism's radiation - electromagnetic radiation of organisms?
For comparison, let's talk about the light of a candle or a lighter.
It seems quite weak at first sight.
But despite that, there is still a huge number of photons,
elementary particles of light, which are produced from this small flame.
It is 6x10 to the power of 17 photons per second per cm2.
So it is 17 zeros after the six.
What is the relationship,
so we can compare it to that weak, even weaker radiation of living organisms?
Imagine a distance of around 1300 km, which is roughly from London to Bratislava
or from Bratislava to London in an airplane.
And imagine that I will take this weak light,
and I will stand on some high tower, let's say here on the Heineken Tower,
with no clouds or obstacles between Bratislava and London.
So out of that light,
out of 6x10 to the power of 17 photons which get to London,
only 60 photons remain.
That small number is the electromagnetic optical radiation of living organisms.
You can imagine how difficult it is to measure this -
to measure the light of a candle or a lighter from a distance of 1300 km.
That's how difficult our job is.
But it's still fascinating.
In the '50s, there were some machines, detectors invented
which can detect this radiation.
One type of them is, for example, photomultipliers.
Basically they work on the photoelectric effect,
for which Albert Einstein received a Nobel Prize in 1921.
It works as follows:
when a particle of light, a photon, strikes the entry of the photomultiplier,
an electron is ejected,
which is accelerated in the inner field of a photomultiplier
and multiplied by the other collisions, and basically what we measure
is for every stroke of photon, simplified, we measure one current of electric pulse.
It helps us multiply photon energy, and it helps us to detect this energy.
There are other techniques as well
which allow us to detect ultra-weak radiation of organisms.
These can also allow us to create pictures and show the radiation.
These include, for example, techniques based on CCD cameras,
which are similar to what you have in digital cameras,
but there is much less noise and better sensitivity.
The picture on the left shows a basic black and white photo of hands.
The picture on the right shows spontaneous radiation of the same hands
of the same person.
These photos are from Netherlands colleagues
from Leiden University and Meluna Research Company.
These detection techniques helped us to understand,
or partially understand, what are the mechanisms,
what are the processes that generate the weak light in living organisms.
It was discovered that this light of organisms is not of heat origin.
It is not connected to the fact
that an object has a macroscopic temperature.
So it is not thermal radiation we are talking about.
Yet what we know is that the source of this weak radiation
is so-called chemical luminescence or chemiluminescence.
Chemiluminescence works as follows:
Let's have two molecules, A and B,
which react together and create a so-called product
which is in a so-called excited state.
Excited state means that an electron has a higher energetic level.
This electron will later go down to the lower energetic level
and produce a photon.
And basically this is the mechanism
which produces the weak light in living organisms.
Here I should say
that these reactions are linked mainly to metabolism
and stress in organisms,
and it is mainly reactions of so-called free radicals,
which you have probably heard of, and reactive oxygen forms.
But light, as we know,
is a very small part of a whole electromagnetic radiation spectrum.
It is basically electromagnetic radiation which we are able to see as colors
if it has sufficient intensity and strength.
But in fact, the electromagnetic spectrum is much broader.
It has an unbelievable number of colors we cannot perceive or interpret,
we can only describe them mathematically by a numeric value as a frequency.
There are some experiments which have shown that living organisms
are not only sources of weak light, a perceptible form of radiation,
but also electromagnetic radiation in the other spectral fields.
But in those it is harder to detect,
and it is one of the subjects of our research activity at the Institute.
In biology, it is broadly accepted that living organisms
interact by exchanging their molecules,
chemically, in principle, and that is something we know very well.
In higher organisms, there is an electric interaction as well,
in the nervous system, as was mentioned, for instance, in the muscles.
But there are also experiments which show
that also chemically isolated organisms, isolated cell cultures,
or for example, two organisms,
are able to interact without any need of molecular exchange.
How did researchers come to this fact?
I have it pictured on this slide as well.
Imagine you have two organisms,
usually some simple culture cells are used,
which are in two different containers,
and those containers are chemically isolated,
so there won't be exchange of molecules between them
to avoid any chemical contact,
and those containers transmit only a specific color in a specific frequency.
We may find out when we stimulate one culture,
and there are some processes which produce electric fields
in this culture or organism,
that the other culture, the other organism, is able to detect it.
And this is how scientists have found out,
as they were monitoring the reaction of the second isolated culture,
that there are some interactions which are of another origin than chemical.
There are experiments by several authors
where different types of organisms have been examined
from yeasts, bacteria, red blood cells,
endothelial cells, semen, embryos and others,
which show that a broad spectrum of all kinds of organisms
are able to really interact not only chemically,
but electromagnetically as well.
And it was also observed
that if one culture was stimulated to grow faster,
the second organism reacted to this growth of the first stimulated culture
even though they were isolated.
It is of course very fascinating,
and if those phenomena are real,
because there are dozens of them and still they are not broadly accepted,
we ask what is the possible electromagnetic 'mouth',
the source in the cells and organisms, and what are the 'ears',
receptors which can detect that electromagnetic field,
electromagnetic radiation - receive and detect.
If there is some specific interaction,
specific electromagnetic communication between organisms,
and it is not only some kind of uncertain pokes,
but it really carries some specific information,
is there something like an electromagnetic alphabet?
What are then those 'letters' which make words?
How can organisms mutually communicate?
If it is proven
that there is specific electromagnetic interaction between organisms,
it will lead to completely new forms of diagnostics and therapy.
Imagine now what I can see as a real aim for the next five years.
We will be able, I assume, to develop more sensitive detectors
so we can measure and evaluate this biological radiation
so we can understand, uncover, the first 'letters', 'words'
of an electromagnetic alphabet of cells and organisms.
It would lead, of course, to the new forms of diagnostics
because we would 'hear' what the cell tells us
about its physiological processes.
We would be able to noninvasively listen to the signals it sends.
I dare to speculate a little bit about what can we expect
in the old age of our generation,
or, I hope, what our children would be able to expect.
Imagine that we could completely understand
this electromagnetic communication and interaction between organisms -
and it is for real, as the experiments show, that this phenomenon exists -
we would be able to selectively, noninvasively and gently
start some specific biological processes,
for example, in human therapy, in human medicine,
to start processes of healing and regeneration
which are sometimes more difficult to make happen chemically.
And so we would be able
to make it happen by more gentle and noninvasive means.
Similar to Star Trek.
To come back to Earth at the end,
because I have shown you some speculations but which have scientific justification,
I would like to conclude with what the current state is
so you can catch onto something reliable.
It is claimed, but still not very well known,
that all organisms which are metabolically active
are the source of some measurable, ultra-weak
electromagnetic radiation in the optical field.
Even though biologists are little bit skeptical,
there are dozens of articles and books in the modern literature
which confirm by experiment
that really, chemically isolated organisms are able to electromagnetically interact.
And what follows will be the subject of our further research.
Thank you.
(Applause)