The Global Consciousness Project

A GLOBAL NETWORK of electronic devices produces continuous random data sequences. Subtle patterns in the data are linked with events that cause shared thoughts and emotions in millions of people. The results challenge common ideas about the world, but independent analyses confirm the unexpected patterns, and also indicate that they cannot be attributed to ordinary physical forces or electromagnetic fields. The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is an international collaboration created in 1998 to study the subtle reach of human consciousness in the physical world. We maintain a network of random event generators (REGs) with nodes in more than 50 locations, from Alaska to Fiji, on all continents, and in nearly every time zone. The world map on the right has a bright spot for each of the host sites.

The REGs generate a sequence of bits of information. They take samples from quantum-level electronic noise like static hiss, and convert it to an unpredictable sequence of ones and zeroes. A program on each host computer reads data from the REG, stores it locally, and at 5-minute intervals sends new data over the Internet for archiving on a server in Princeton. We call the program and REG at each host site an EGG.

GATHERING DATA   Every second, each REG produces a "trial" that is the sum of 200 bits, essentially equivalent to flipping 200 coins and counting the heads.

VISUALIZING DATA The figures below show plots of the raw data and various stages of processing that may allow us to see structure or deviations from expectation. 1) The per-second trial values, with expected mean of 100. Data from one egg. 2) All data for 48 eggs during a full day, 15-min averages. This must be processed further. 3) A cumulative deviation trace of the data for each egg begins to reveal possible trends.

PLOTTING RESULTS   The continuous datastreams from these instruments tend to depart from expectation when major "Global Events" stimulate a wide-spread coherence of thoughts and emotions. Three samples below show the composite or average of the cumulative deviation traces from data collected during such events. Random data generally wanders around the horizontal line at zero, while a consistent deviation resulting in a sloping trend indicates that something changed the output of our instruments.

THE BOTTOM LINE   The table on the right gives a sampling of results from the database of 122 events for which formal predictions were made over the past four years. The overall odds are about one in a million that we are seeing just chance fluctuations. For a slightly longer, up to date introduction, click here. The figure below shows the history of test outcomes over the four years. Event Description, Date N of REGs Resolution Chisquare DF Probability 1. Embassy Bombings, 7 August 1998 3 15-min 69.5 36 0.001 ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ 80. Terrorist Attacks, 11 September 2001 37 1-sec 667.587 600 0.028 ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ 120. EarthDance 2002, 12 October 2002 50 1-sec 592.809 600 0.575 121. Wellstone Crash, 25 October 2002 51 1-sec 625.338 600 0.229 122. Chechen Hostages, 26 October 2002 51 1-sec 604.693 600 0.439 The trend (red line) should be horizontal for random data, but the positive slope indicates that something has affected the EGG network. The effect is small but reliable, so the outcome is highly significant. We don't yet know how to explain the subtle correlations between events of importance to humans and the GCP data, but they are quite clear. The results are evidence that the physical world and our mental world of information and meaning are linked in ways that we don't yet understand.