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Water Remembers? Homeopathy Explained?

New research suggests water remembers what has been dissolved in it, even after dilution beyond the point where no molecule of the original substances could remain. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports.

For more than a century, practitioners of homeopathy have used highly diluted solutions of medicinal substances to treat diseases. Some substances are diluted way beyond the point at which no trace of the original substances could remain. It is as though the water has retained memory of the departed molecules. This has aroused a great deal of scepticism within the conventional medical and scientific community. To this day, ‘homeopathic’ is used as a term of derision, to indicate something imagined that has no reality.

But a series of recent discoveries in the conventional scientific community is making people think again.

First, there were the South Korean chemists who discovered two years ago that molecules dissolved in water clump together as they get more diluted (see SiS 15), which was totally unexpected; and further more, the size of the clumps depends on the history of dilution, making a mockery of the ‘laws of chemistry’.

Now, physicist Louis Rey in Lausanne, Switzerland, has published a paper in the mainstream journal, Physica A, describing experiments that suggest water does have a memory of molecules that have been diluted away, as can be demonstrated by a relatively new physical technique that measures thermoluminescence.

In this technique, the material is ‘activated’ by irradiation at low temperature, with UV, X-rays, electron beams, or other high-energy sub-atomic particles. This causes electrons to come loose from the atoms and molecules, creating ‘electron-hole pairs’ that become separated and trapped at different energy levels.

Then, when the irradiated material is warmed up, it releases the absorbed energy and the trapped electrons and holes come together and recombine. This causes the release of a characteristic glow of light, peaking at different temperatures depending on the magnitude of the separation between electron and hole.

As a general rule, the phenomenon is observed in crystals with an ordered arrangement of atoms and molecules, but it is also seen in disordered materials such as glasses. In this mechanism, imperfections in the atomic/molecular lattice are considered to be the sites at which luminescence appears.

Rey decided to use the technique to investigate water, starting with heavy water or deuterium oxide that’s been frozen into ice at a temperature of 77K. The absolute temperature scale (degree K, after Lord Kelvin) is used in science. (The zero degree K is equivalent to –273 C, and deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen which is twice as heavy as hydrogen). As the ice warms up, a first peak of luminescence appears near 120K, and a second peak near 166 K. Heavy water gives a much stronger signal than water. In both cases, samples that were not irradiated gave no signals at all.

For both water and heavy water, the relative intensity of the thermoluminescence depends on the irradiation dose. There has been a suggestion that peak 2 comes from the hydrogen-bonded network within ice, whereas peak 1 comes from the individual molecules. This was confirmed by looking at a totally different material that is known to present strong hydrogen bonds, which showed a similar glow in the peak 2 region, but nothing in peak 1.

Rey then investigated what would happen when he dissolved some chemicals in the water and diluted it in steps of one hundred fold with vigorous stirring (as in the preparation of homeopathic remedies), until he reached a concentration of 10 to the power -30 g per centilitre, and compare that to the control that has not had any chemical dissolved in it and diluted in the same way.

The samples were frozen and activated with irradiation as usual. Much to his surprise, when lithium chloride, LiCl, a chemical that would be expected to break hydrogen bonds between water molecules was added, and then diluted away, the thermoluminescent glow became reduced, but the reduction of peak 2 was greater relative to peak 1. Sodium chloride, NaCl, had the same effect albeit to a lesser degree. It appears, therefore, that substances like LiCl and NaCl can modify the hydrogen-bonded network of water, and that this modification remains even when the molecules have been diluted away. The fact that this ‘memory’ remains, in spite of, or because of vigorous stirring or shaking at successive dilutions, indicates that the ‘memory’ is by no means static, but depends on a dynamic process, perhaps a collective quantum excitation of water molecules that has a high degree of stability (see "The strangeness of water and homeopathic memory", SiS 15). Source

Rey L. Thermoluminescence of ultra-high dilutions of lithium chloride and sodium chloride. Physica A 2003, 323, 67-74.

Living with the Fluid Genome

By Mae-Wan Ho, ISIS-TWN, London & Penang, ISBN: 0-9544923-0-7, 2003.

Inside story from a scientist who has warned that genetic engineering is both dangerous and futile. Tells you why the whole biotech enterprise - from GM crops to gene drugs and human cloning – is a phenomenal waste of public finance and scientific imagination, and what it means to be living with the fluid genome.

Soon to be on sale in bookstores, and still available from ISIS’ on-line bookstore Details here.

Some words of mouth

"Probably the most disturbing book of recent times, on a par with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Opens the lid on the intellectual corruption of Western science." Noel Lynch, Green Member of the London Assembly, UK.

"This book serves a need to describe the obvious to literate and astute masses! As educators, we need to critically analyse our failure to convey the fundamental biological insight of life as a continuum to our students." R.H. Richardson, Professor of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, USA.

"A trenchant, lucid and thrilling account of how a multi-billion industry has been built on fraudulent concepts." Caroline Clarke, Concerned Citizens of Burnhams, UK "An excellent scientific summary; explains in layperson’s language the differences between GM and non-GM DNA, the problems of GM, and how GM has come from a flawed, narrow, reductionist concept of a static genetic structure. It brings to life the reality of the fluid genome as part of the dynamic, integrated whole." Margaret Stronach, Friends of the Earth, Wokingham, UK "Mae-Wan Ho is the tenacious champion of a heretical science that is fast-becoming the mainstream." Dr. Finn Bowring, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK "An exposé of the risks of genetic engineering and a warning to developing countries that new technologies are not necessarily beneficial, appropriate or needed." Martin Khor, Director, Third World Network.

"This enlightening book takes you through the theoretical and empirical evidence on why we must totally reject the creation of Frankenstein foods." Edward Goldsmith, Founding Editor of The Ecologist.

The Importance of Cell Water

Prof. Martin Chaplin presents a new theory on the structure of water in the cell that switches between low-density and high-density clusters.

References for this article are posted on ISIS members’ website. Details here. The figures will only appear with the printed article in the next issue of Science in Society.

Although we understand much of what goes on inside cells at a molecular level, we don’t know how all the molecules can work together as a whole. Much useful biochemistry has been discovered using dilute preparations from homogenised dead cells, but living cells are very different, and contain more concentrated solutes and more organised proteins. Indeed, test tube experiments may mislead us, and it should come as no surprise to find that living cells possess characteristics that are very much more than the sum of their parts.

The study of the live cell is fraught with difficulty, as most procedures change it from its native state. The key to understanding the cell comes from acknowledging the one constituent that has often been ignored: water. The significance of water for the cell becomes clear when we seek to solve big puzzles, such as ‘How are potassium ions able to maintain a high concentration inside cells whereas sodium ions are found mainly outside?’ and ‘How do cells remain functional even when large holes are made in their surface membranes?’

There are at least four views as to how the water inside the cell affects its function:

1. The water mostly acts as an uncomplicated environment for the cellular processes, which are determined by the structure of the macromolecules only. Although this view seems the one most promoted in current textbooks by default, it is rapidly losing favour due to its inability to explain natural processes.
2. The water forms polarised multi-layers over extended protein surfaces, as proposed for many years by Gilbert Ling [1]. There is much experimental support for the foundations of this theory but little experimental support for the required structural changes in the proteins or the involvement of extended protein surfaces, as proposed.
3. The water is involved in intracellular changes between ‘sol’ and ‘gel’ states as more recently promoted by Gerald Pollack [2]. This is an interesting and useful idea but without a clear molecular mechanism.
4. The water actively changes the density of its hydrogen bonded structuring to enable diverse intracellular processes, in a manner compatible with the basic ideas of both Gilbert Ling and Gerald Pollack.

The theory that I shall describe in this article (which I presented at the Gordon Research Conference on Interfacial Water and Cell Biology in June 2004) belongs to the fourth, new category. I propose that changes in the density and clustering of intracellular water are modulated by the mobility of key proteins, which in turn are controlled by the energy status and ionic content of the cell. The nature of water

Water possesses many properties that seem strange, or anomalous [3]. Some of these, such as its high melting and boiling points can be simply explained as due to water’s hydrogen bonded clustering. Over the last 10 years, a broad range of evidence has accumulated concerning a two-state structuring within liquid water, which can explain many of the remaining anomalies [4, 5]. This theory involves the presence in liquid water, of clusters with a lower density comparable with that of ice. The water molecules in such clusters flicker between partners as their hydrogen bonds are constantly making and breaking. Over a long time scale, they appear as favoured arrangements. These low-density water clusters do not consist of ice-like crystals, due to their lack of long-range order, but they do contain water molecules linked by hydrogen bonds in an expanded, 4-coordinated tetrahedral arrangement. At the smallest scale, the water may be thought of as an equilibrium between two water tetramers (see Fig. 1): structure A, held closely by non-bonded interactions, forming a more dense structure, and structure B, with molecules held further away and linked by hydrogen bonds to form a less dense structure There is little difference in energy between the structures A and B, so the equilibrium is easily affected by the presence of solutes and surfaces. An increase in temperature or pressure will shift the equilibrium to the left.

Figure 1. Equilibrium between two water tetramers.

Although the natural structuring in water at ordinary temperatures tends towards the ‘collapsed’ structure A, the low density structure B can grow to form larger non-crystalline clusters based on dodecahedral (12-sided) water cluster cores, similar to those found in the crystalline ‘clathrate hydrates’; as for example, the extensive icosahedral (H2O)280 aggregate built up from tetrahedrally hydrogen-bonded water molecules surrounding a dodecahedron made up of 20 water molecules, the basic clathrate cage (Fig. 2). Figure 2. Extensive icosahedral (H2O)280 structure of water built up from tetrahedrally hydrogen-bonded water molecules. Intracellular water contains lower density water with more potassium ions.

The differences in intracellular and extracellular environments of cells is primarily due to the extensive surface area and high intracellular concentration of solutes that promote the low-density clustering of water and restricted diffusion inside cells. The extensive surface of cellular membranes (e.g., each liver cell contain ~100 000 ?m2 membrane surface area) favours the formation of low-density water inside cells, as the membrane lipids contain hydrophilic head groups that encourage this organization of the associated interfacial water. Other surfaces attract the water, so stretching the hydrogen-bonded water contained by the confined spaces within the cells.

The difference in ionic concentrations is particularly evident in sodium (Na+; intracellular, 10 mM; extracellular, 150 mM) and potassium (K+; intracellular, 159 mM; extracellular, 4 mM). Na+ ions create more broken hydrogen bonding and prefer a high aqueous density, whereas K+ ions prefer a low-density aqueous environment, as proven by Philippa Wiggins [6]. The differences in intracellular and extracellular distributions of potassium and sodium are due to differences in the affinity of these ions for water. The interactions between water and Na+ are stronger than those between water molecules, which are in turn stronger than those between water and K+ ions, all due to the differences in surface charge density of the ions - that of the smaller Na+ ion being nearly twice that of K+ ions. Ca2+, with an intracellular concentration 0.1 ?M and an extracellular concentration of 2.5 mM, has a surface charge density more than twice that of Na+, and has even stronger destructive effects on low-density hydrogen-bonding than Na+ ions.

Other studies confirm the preference of K+ ions for low-density water over Na+ ions. The ions partition according to their preferred aqueous environment; in particular, the K+ ions are preferred within the intracellular environment and naturally accumulate inside the cells at the expense of Na+ ions. This process occurs simply as a result of the water structuring without the help of putative ion-pumps in the cell membrane.

Besides, membrane ion-pumps cannot produce these large differences in ionic composition, simply because the (ATP) energy required far exceeds the energy available to the cell. Also, many studies, as for example, the extensive series carried out by Gilbert Ling, have shown that cells do not need an intact membrane or active energy (ATP) production to maintain the ionic concentration gradients. The effect of intracellular protein on water structuring The degree to which the density of cell water is lowered is determined by the solutes and the state of motion of protein. Water has conflicting effects in the mixed environments around proteins due to the variety of amino acids making up their surfaces. Weak interactions between the protein and surface water molecules allow greater protein flexibility. Strong interactions endow the protein with greater stability and solubility.

There is generally an ordered structure in the layer of water molecules immediately surrounding the protein, with both hydrophobic clathrate-like and hydrogen bonded water molecules each helping the other to optimize water’s hydrogen bonding network. Protein carboxylate groups are generally surrounded by strongly hydrogen-bonded water whereas the water surrounding the basic groups arginine, histidine and lysine tends towards a more-open clathrate structuring. The formation of partial clathrate cages over hydrophobic areas maximizes non-bonded interactions between the water and the protein without loss of hydrogen bonds between the water molecules whereas carboxylate groups usually only fit a collapsed water structure (see below) creating a reactive fluid zone.

The rotation of the proteins will cause changes in the water structuring outside this closest hydration shell. At the breaking surface, hydrogen bonds are ruptured, creating a zone of higher density water. Protein rotation thus creates a surrounding high-density water zone with many broken hydrogen bonds.

The importance of protein carboxylate groups Protein has two acidic amino acids, aspartate and glutamate, with carboxylate (-CO2-) side chains. Normally, aqueous hydrogen bonding to these carboxylate oxygen atoms both attracts water molecules causing a localised high density water clustering and reduces the acidity of the carboxylic acids. Otherwise, when the surrounding water molecules prefer to hydrogen bond to themselves as with the formation of a clathrate cage, the acidity of the carboxylate groups is increased. It is found that Na+ ions prefer binding to the weaker carboxylic acids whereas K+ ions prefer the stronger acids [1].

Na+ and K+ ions also behave differently when close to the carboxylate groups; K+ ions have a preference for forming ion pairs, where there is direct contact between the K+ and carboxylate ions, whereas Na+ ions form solvent separated pairings where water molecules lie between the Na+ and carboxylate ions, forming strengthened hydrogen bonds to the carboxylate groups [7]. This is due to the Na+ ions holding on to their water more strongly. The K+ ions prefer to be within a clathrate water cage and this preference both reinforces its direct ion pairing to the carboxylate group and discourages aqueous hydrogen bonding to the associated carboxylate groups. The direct association of K+ ions with the aspartate and glutamate groups in proteins is the central theme of Ling’s fixed charge hypothesis where evidence for the molecular mechanism for the association includes (1) the low intracellular electrical conductance, (2) the strongly reduced mobility of intracellular K+ ions, (3) the one to one stoichiometric absorption of K+ ions to the carboxylate groups and (4) identification of the K+ ion absorption sites as the aspartate and glutamate side chains of the intracellular proteins. The importance of protein mobility.

Actin is a highly conserved and widespread eukaryotic protein (42-43 kDa) responsible for many functions in cells. Non-muscle cells contain actin in amounts 5-10% of all protein, whereas muscle cells contain about 20%. Actin is converted between a freely rotating monomer molecule (G-actin; about 4 - 6 nm diameter) and a static right-handed double helical polymer protein filament (F-actin; up to several microns in length) by ATP; a process involving the conversion of an ?-helix to a ?-turn in one of its structural domains. Each molecule of the freely rotating G-actin can stir a large volume of water, whereas F-actin has a much more ordered structure so creating more order in its surrounding water. The protein fibres trap water, reducing its movement and compensated by greater hydrogen bonding. Also, capillary action stretches the confined water, so ensuring that it is of lower density and hence more highly structured than the bulk water.

All actin molecules contain a conserved negatively charged N-terminus, for example the N-acetyl-aspartyl-glutamyl-aspartyl-glutamyl sequence in rabbit muscle ?-actin. When G-actin polymerises in the cell under the action of ATP to form F-actin, this highly carboxylated antenna is placed on the exposed outer edge of the helix, where it may be additionally used as a binding site for other proteins, such as myosin. Tubulin, another intracellular structural protein that forms immobile structures within cells, possesses an even more extensive negatively charged acidic C-terminal conserved antenna of about eight carboxylate groups that serves similar functions.

F-actin’s multiply negatively charged N-terminus attracts positively charged cations. Under conditions when the carboxylic acids are weaker, both K+ and Na+ ions may form solvent separated species. This competition results in a preference for Na+ ions and high-density water. However, the natural rotation of the protein will tend to sweep such ions, and their associated water, away. If the protein is prevented from rotating, Na+ ions tend to destroy any low density structuring around carboxylate groups of the protein. However, the intracellular Na+ ion concentration is generally far lower than that of K+ ions, which allows K+ ions to compete successfully for these sites, forming ion pairs and encouraging clathrate formation.

Cooperative conversion of the water structuring

Binding of K+ ions by the carboxylate groups lowers the ionic strength of the intracellular solution. As this ionic strength decreases, the acidity of phosphate groups decreases, resulting in the conversion of the intracellular doubly charged HPO42- ions to the singly charged H2PO4- ions, more favourable to low density water clustering. All intracellular phosphate entities will behave similarly. The cooperative effects of the change between static filament formation and freely diffusional protein are summarized in Fig. 3. Figure 3. A summary of the cooperative effects when mobile proteins such as actin are polymerised.

Formation of K+-carboxylate ion pairs leads to the formation of a surrounding clathrate water structuring that further guides icosahedral water structuring (so ensuring maximal hydrogen-bond formation) and informing neighbouring carboxylate groups. This signalling cooperatively reinforces the tetrahedrality of the water structuring found between these groups. The clathrate cage allows rotational mobility (like a ball-and-socket joint), enabling the hydrogen bonding to search out cooperative partners (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. This diagram shows the clustering around two K+-carboxylate ion pairs (about 4 nm apart) as may be attached to part of two protein’s structures. There are 7-8 shells of water around each surface as is typically found between intracellular proteins. The K+ ions are shown as violet and the water network is shown as linked (i.e. hydrogen bonded) oxygen atoms (shown red) without showing their associated hydrogen atoms. The hydrogen bonding initially forms clathrate cages around the ion pairs, followed by a more extensive icosahedral arrangement. This is then followed by extension of the hydrogen bonding along ‘rays’ connecting the neighbouring sites. Once these ‘rays’ link, the hydrogen bonding of each reinforces the other in a cooperative manner, so strengthening the linkage and reinforcing the overall low density aqueous environment. As the aqueous clathrate cage possesses a more negative charge on its interior and a more positive charge on the outside, there is a marked polarization in the water molecules that reinforces the hydrogen bonding interactions. Although the clustering involves a major drop in aqueous mobility, the stronger 4-coordinated bonding compensates this. This theory offers a molecular explanation for Ling’s association-induction polarized multilayer model (see "Strong medicine needed in cell biology", this issue). The initial icosahedral size (3 nm diameter), surrounding each ion pair, also equals the water domain size proposed by John Watterson. The tetrahedral structuring possesses five-fold symmetry, which prevents easy freezing in line with the pronounced supercooling found for intracellular water.

Extension of the clathrate network and its associated low density water enables K+ ion binding to all aspartic and glutamic acid groups, not just the key ones within the crucial N-terminal acidic centres. Thus, the sol-gel transition of Pollack (see "Biology of least action", SiS 18) may be interpreted as due to the formation of low density water clustering (the gel state) due to clathrate clustering around K+-carboxylate ion pairs.

In the presence of raised levels of Na+ and/or Ca2+ ions, as occasionally occurs during some cell functions, these ions will replace some of the bound K+ ions. These newly formed solvent separated Na+ and/or Ca2+ ion pairings destroy the low-density clathrate structures and initiate a cooperative conversion of the associated water towards a denser structuring.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the aqueous information transfer within the cell involves the following:

• Intracellular water favours K+ ions over Na+ ions.
• Freely rotating proteins create zones of higher density water, which tend towards a lower density clustering if the rotation is prevented.
• Static charge-dense intracellular macromolecular structures prefer K+ ion pairs to freely soluble K+ ions.
• Ion paired K+-carboxylate groupings prefer local clathrate water structuring.
• Clathrate water prefers local low density water structuring.
• Low density water structuring can reinforce the low-density character of neighbouring site water structuring.
• Na+ and Ca2+ ions can destroy the low density structuring in a cooperative manner.

  Martin Chaplin is Professor of Applied Science, London South Bank University, UK, with special interests in the interactions between water and biological molecules.

  New age of water

  Water has come of age. It is cool on everyone’s lips. Decades of research on water is giving us remarkable insights into its dynamic collective structure, and changing our big picture of life and living process.

  Organisms are seventy to eighty percent water. Is this water necessary to life? What vital functions does it serve? Entire biochemistry and cell biology textbooks are still being written without ever mentioning the role of water. It is simply treated as the inert medium in which all the specific biochemical reactions are being played out.

  Instead, recent findings are raising the possibility that it is water that’s stage-managing the biochemical drama of life. Water is life, it is the key to every living activity. Some people will even say it is the seat of consciousness.

  ISIS brings you the latest revelations on water in this extended series that starts from the basics. The articles will not be circulated consecutively, so do watch out for them.

  • Is Water Special?
  • The ‘Wholiness’ of Water
  • Water Forms Massive Exclusion Zones

  ISIS Press Release 30/06/04

  Water Forms Massive Exclusion Zones Water, the most abundant constituent of living organisms, is associated with an enormous amount of surfaces inside cells and in the extracellular matrix. Is all of this biological water different from water in bulk? The answer is definitely yes, if the incredible new findings are to be taken on board. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports A fully illustrated version of this article with sources is posted on ISIS Members’ website. Details here.
  What is biological water?

  "Biological" water includes practically all the water in living organisms, inside the cell as well as in the extra-cellular matrix, except, possibly, for large reservoirs or conduits such as the bladder, gut, stomach and vacuoles inside some cells. Biological water is rarely far from the surface of a membrane or a macromolecule such as proteins, nucleic acids and polysaccharides like starch and glycogen. Inside the cell, the concentration of proteins in cytoplasm is between 170 to 300 mg/ml, which suggests that 7 to 9 shells of water (hydration shells) coat the available surfaces, corresponding to a distance of 4 to 5nm (nanometre, 10-9m) between the surfaces. A substantial fraction of the water is quite closely associated (at a distance of less than 0.5nm) with the proteins, nucleic acids, polysaccharides and assemblies of smaller molecules that make up an organism, and is essential for their functioning.

  The idea that cell water is distinct from bulk liquid water goes back a long way to pioneers like Gilbert Ling and Albert Szent-Györgyi in the 1960s and 70s; to many physicists and chemists in the latter half of the 19th century fascinated by the distinctive properties of ‘protoplasm’ inside living cells.

  Since the 1970s, many physical and physiological techniques have demonstrated that cell water behaves very differently from bulk water. It is dynamically ordered or oriented, and exhibit restricted motion compared to water in the bulk.

  More recently, ordered interfacial water have been found to be associated with pure protein or DNA crystals obtained at cryogenic (very low freezing) temperatures. These ordered water molecules do not form the typical ice structure, but are involved in many different forms of hydrogen bonding networks with the macromolecule and with each other.

  A major uncertainty is what fraction of the water in living organisms and cells is distinct from bulk water, and to what extent water is essential for different living functions.

  Using sophisticated techniques with big machines, such as NMR and more recently, neutron diffraction, no more than one or two layers can be detected to have altered properties, which would imply that a substantial part of the water inside cells and in the extracellular matrix is still bulk water.

  But other scientists, notably, Gilbert Ling, who emigrated to the United States on a Boxer Fellowship from China, has been insisting since the 1960s that practically all the water in the cell is in an ‘altered’ state different from bulk water (see SiS review). Interfacial water as model of biological water Water generally forms ordered layers over solid surfaces, and this ordered ‘interfacial water’ can tell us a great deal about water in living organisms.

  Interfacial water has different properties from bulk water; for example, certain solutes that dissolve in bulk water are excluded from interfacial water, or fail to dissolve in it.

  Interfacial water is generally thought to be no more than one or at most several layers of water molecules thick. But several reports published in the 1990s suggested that hydrophilic (water-loving) surfaces could extend their influence over much larger distances from the interface.

  Small experiments that tell a big tale

  Gerald Pollack and Zheng Jian-ming in the Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle in the United States decided to do some simple elegant experiments to find out exactly how far such hydrophilic surfaces can extend their influence; and came up with some startling results.

  They used as solutes, microspheres 0.5 to 2 ?m in diameter, which can be seen with the ordinary light microscope. For the hydrophilic surfaces, they employed several common hydrogels known to interact strongly with water.

  In the first experiment they put a small gel sample between two large glass cover slips, and filled the space to either side with a suspension of the microspheres, then sealed the chamber. The whole assembly was placed on the stage of a microscope fitted with a camera to follow what happens.

  In the second experiment, the gel was formed around a glass cylinder, which was withdraw after the gel was formed, leaving a channel, l mm in diameter, which is then filled with the suspension of microspheres and placed under the microscope.

  To their amazement, they found that the microspheres were excluded from the gel surfaces in both experiments over distances of tens of ?m, and in extreme cases, up to 250?m or more. Such massive exclusion zones are totally unexpected, and have never been reported before (see Fig. 1).

  Microspheres were almost completely absent from the exclusion zone, and the boundary between exclusion and non-exclusion rather sharp, of the order of 10% of the width of the exclusion zone. The zone forms rather quickly, and appears 80% complete after 60s. Migration velocity was about 1.5?m per second, and microspheres near the boundary migrated at the same speed as those far away from it. Once formed, the exclusion zones remained stable for days.

  Figure 1. Exclusion zone formed next to the surface of polyacrylic acid gel.

  Could this be an artefact? For example, could there be some invisible threads sticking out from the gel surface to push the microspheres away? They tested this by using the atomic force microscope and other sensitive probes to detect such strands, but no protruding strands were detectable, not even after they fixed and cross-linked the gel and washed it extensively, so no lose strands could ever leak out.

  Could it be that the gel was in fact shrinking away from the surface and extruding water, and therefore squirting the microspheres away? But no such shrinkage was detectable; the boundary did not shift appreciably as the microspheres migrated away from it. Over a period of 120 minutes, the diameter of the cylindrical hollow in the gel changed by less than 2?m. Thus, in the 2 min period during which the exclusion zone was formed, shrinkage was insignificant.

  Could it be that polymers were leaking out into the exclusion zone, and pushing away the microspheres? They added a polymer to the microsphere suspension, but this only narrowed the exclusion zone. Yet another test was to continuously infuse microsphere suspension into the cylindrical hollow in the gel under pressure at a speed of about 100mm/s, so that any suspended invisible solutes ought to be washed out. But the exclusion zones persisted, virtually unchanged even at the highest speeds.

  The exclusion zones were not a quirk due to the particular gel used. Polyvinyl alcohol gel, polyacrylamide gels, polyacrylic acid gels, and even a bundle of rabbit muscle all gave similar results (Fig. 2); and microspheres of different dimensions, coated with chemicals of opposite charge nevertheless resulted in exclusion zones. Thus, exclusion zones are a general feature of hydrophilic surfaces. One gel that did not show exclusion was when polyacrylamide was copolymerised with a vinyl derivative of malachite green.

  Figure 2. Exclusion zone next to surface of rabbit muscle.

  Exclusion was most profound when the microspheres were most highly charged, so negatively charged microspheres gave maximum exclusion at high pH, whereas positively charged microspheres gave maximum exclusion at low pH. The presence of salt tended to decrease the size of the exclusion zone somewhat. The size of the exclusion zone also went up with the diameter of the microsphere.

  What could be the explanation for this strange phenomenon that has never been observed; that apparently goes against all expectations based on data from the latest big machines?

  After ruling out several trivial explanations, Zheng and Pollack considered whether it could be due to layers of water molecules growing in an organized manner from the gel surface and extending outwards, pushing the microspheres out at the same time. That would seem consistent with the observation that the speed of migration of the microspheres is constant regardless of distance from the boundary. It is also consistent with the finding that larger microspheres give bigger exclusion zones.

  The increase in exclusion zone with charge, too, is consistent with their water-structuring hypothesis, as higher surface charge is known to be associated with larger extent of water structuring. But, as they remark, "While these several observations fit the water-structure mechanism, no reports we know of confirm any more than several hundred layers of water structure at the extreme, and not the 106 solvent layers implied here.

  ISIS Press Release 28/06/04

  New age of water

  Water has come of age. It is cool on everyone’s lips. Decades of research on water is giving us remarkable insights into its dynamic collective structure, and changing our big picture of life and living process.

  Organisms are seventy to eighty percent water. Is this water necessary to life? What vital functions does it serve? Entire biochemistry and cell biology textbooks are still being written without ever mentioning the role of water. It is simply treated as the inert medium in which all the specific biochemical reactions are being played out.

  Instead, recent findings are raising the possibility that it is water that’s stage-managing the biochemical drama of life. Water is life, it is the key to every living activity. Some people will even say it is the seat of consciousness.

  ISIS brings you the latest revelations on water in this extended series that starts from the basics. The articles will not be circulated consecutively, so do watch out for them.

  • Is Water Special?
  • The ‘Wholiness’ of Water
  • Water Forms Massive Exclusion Zones
  Water has a collective structure that’s extremely flexible and dynamic, which may explain some of its ‘anomalies’. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho explains Sources for this report are available in the ISIS members site. Full details here.

  Water is simple, isn’t it?

  There is nothing simpler than water as a molecule. Its chemical formula, H2O, is almost the first thing in chemistry that one learns in school. However, its structure in the bulk is multifarious and changeable. There are 13 known crystalline structures of ice that appear under different temperatures and pressures. As a liquid, water forms dynamic ‘flickering clusters’ or networks of joined up molecules, with intermolecular bonds that flicker on and off at random. The basis for all this complexity lies in the ability of a water molecule to join up with its neighbours through a special kind of chemical bond, the hydrogen bond.

  The hydrogen-bond

  To understand how the hydrogen bond comes about, picture the water molecule consisting of an oxygen atom bonded to two hydrogen atoms. The water molecule has a shape approximating a tetrahedron, a three-dimensional triangle with four corners. The oxygen atom sits in the heart of the tetrahedron, the hydrogen atoms point towards two of the four corners and two ‘electron clouds’ belonging to the oxygen molecule point towards the remaining corners of the tetrahedron. The ‘electron clouds’ are negatively charged, and result from the atomic structures of oxygen and hydrogen and how they combine in the water molecule.

  Oxygen has eight (negatively charged) electrons disposed around its positively charged nucleus, rather like the layer of the onion, two in an inner shell and six in the outer shell. The inner shell can only accommodate two electrons, so its capacity is filled. The outer shell, however, can hold as many as eight electrons. The hydrogen atom happens to have only one electron, so oxygen, by combining with two hydrogen atoms, completes its outer shell, while the hydrogen atoms each completes its first electron shell with two electrons, which it shares with the oxygen atom. That is how the usual ‘covalent bond’ of chemistry arises.

  The oxygen nucleus has more positive charges than the hydrogen, so the shared electrons are slightly more attracted to the oxygen nucleus than to the hydrogen nucleus, which makes the water molecule polar, with two ‘electron clouds’ of negative charge at the opposite poles to the two hydrogen atoms, which are each left with a slight positive charge. (Though quantum mechanical calculations have shown that the two electron clouds are not really separate from each other.) The positively charged hydrogen of one water molecule can thus attract the negatively charged oxygen of a neighbouring water molecule to form a hydrogen-bond (H-bond) between them. Each molecule of water can potentially form four H-bonds. Two in which it ‘donates’ its hydrogen atoms to the oxygen atoms of two other water molecules, and two in which its oxygen atom ‘accepts’ one hydrogen atom from each of two other water molecules. In other words, each molecule is capable of acting as hydrogen ‘donors’ and ‘acceptors’ for two other water molecules, so it has four bonded neighbours, or a ‘4-coordination’.

  Ice structures

  Water molecules in ordinary hexagonal ice crystals are close to the ideal tetrahedral structure described above. The hydrogen-bonded O-O distances are almost identical, varying between 2.759 Å and 2.761 Å (an angstrom is 10-10m), while the O-O-O angles also vary only slightly between 109.36o and 109.58o, which is close to the H-O-H angle of 104.52o of the individual water molecule.

  However, there are many more forms of ice crystals (at least 12 others known) under different temperatures and pressures, where the bond lengths and angles vary much more widely. For ice II, which forms under moderate pressure of about 5 kbar (1kbar is equivalent to a pressure of ~ 1 000 atmospheres), the basic four-coordinated motif is maintained. But the bond length varies between 2.74 Å and 2.83 Å, while the bond angle varies between 80 o and 129 o.

  In liquid water, there is much less constraint compared to a solid crystal lattice, and so the variations in bond length and bond angles take on a much wider continuous range. Instead of the regular hexagonal (6-member) ring structure of ordinary ice, a snapshot of the hydrogen-bonded network shows five, six and seven-member rings, and even smaller or larger rings. Instead of the 4-coordination motif, 2-, 3- and even 5-coordinations are possible, with the H of some water molecules in a ‘bifurcated’ schizophrenic state, seemingly bonded to two different neighbours.

  Why is water special?

  Why is water so special that life cannot exist without it? According to John L Finney of University College, London, the basic tetrahedral structure of the water molecule is central to the structural versatility of water in the condensed state (solid and liquid). It enables water to form extended, flexible networks of H-bonded molecules in liquid, allowing rapid coordinated molecular motions to take place. This same extended network also supports proton conduction, a flow of positive electricity that occurs much faster than the diffusion of ions.

  Other substances might have some of those special characteristics, says Finney, but only water has them all, and that might be enough to make water especially ‘fit’ for life.

  New insights into water structure

  The picture of the structure of water just described has been obtained with powerful measurements techniques such as x-ray and neutron diffraction, which involve firing x-rays or neutron beams at water, and looking at the way the beams are deflected or scattered to make a diffraction pattern, which gives information about the structure of the atoms. These experimental techniques are combined with computer simulations (molecular dynamics) to give a consistent picture, which is supposed to form a firm molecular basis for all other investigations. But in April 2004, an international team of scientists from universities and research institutes in the United States, The Netherlands, Sweden and Germany, have challenged this picture with the next generation of an even more powerful measurement technique. They reported the behaviour of liquid water on a timescale of less than one femtosecond (one femtosecond is 10-15s) using a new x-ray absorption spectroscopy technique. This involves firing x-rays of different frequencies at water, and from the spectrum of frequencies absorbed – which is characteristic of each atom - making inferences concerning the structure of the water molecules.

  They found that most molecules in bulk liquid water at room temperature are like those at the ice surface, with only two strong hydrogen bonds. The proportion of molecules with 4-coordination similar to bulk ice is very small. The contributions of the two different species - molecules with two H-bonds and those with 4 H-bonds - are 80% and 20% at room temperature, and increases to 85% and 15% at 90C with uncertainties of +15% and +20% in both cases.

  As consistent with earlier results, the bond lengths and bond angles are found to vary widely from those in tetrahedral ice, attesting to the flexibility of the water structure in liquid.

  They concluded:

  "Water is a dynamic liquid where H-bonds are continuously broken and reformed. The present result that water, probed subfemtosecond time scale, consists mainly of structure with two strong H-bonds, one donating and one accepting, nonetheless implies that most molecules are arranged in strongly H-bonded chains or rings embedded in a disordered cluster network connected mainly by weak H-bonds."

  So, in a sense, it doesn’t really alter the picture too much. But are these methods focussing too much on the individual molecules to reveal anything interesting? A growing number of water scientists are beginning to think so, and for good reasons.

  New age of water

  Water has come of age. It is cool on everyone’s lips. Decades of research on water is giving us remarkable insights into its dynamic collective structure, and changing our big picture of life and living process.

  Organisms are seventy to eighty percent water. Is this water necessary to life? What vital functions does it serve? Entire biochemistry and cell biology textbooks are still being written without ever mentioning the role of water. It is simply treated as the inert medium in which all the specific biochemical reactions are being played out.

  Instead, recent findings are raising the possibility that it is water that’s stage-managing the biochemical drama of life. Water is life, it is the key to every living activity. Some people will even say it is the seat of consciousness. ISIS brings you the latest revelations on water in this extended series that starts from the basics. The articles will not be circulated consecutively, so do watch out for them. • Is Water Special? • The ‘Wholiness’ of Water • Water Forms Massive Exclusion Zones ISIS Press Release 29/06/04

  The ‘Wholiness’ of Water

  Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports on how a body of water appears to change as a whole and wonders if oceans do it too. A version of this paper with diagrams and sources is posted on ISIS members’ website. Details here.

  Decades of bombarding water with X-rays and neutron beams have convinced most scientists that there is no long-range order in water. And although extended networks of hydrogen-bonded molecules are present, these networks are simply the result of local interactions between molecules at close range.

  However, other measurement techniques are beginning to yield results suggesting that bodies of water behave as coherent wholes, in other words, their collective structure extends globally to all the molecules. One such technique, NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), measures chemical shifts of the nuclei of certain atoms by their response to radio waves when placed in a strong magnetic field (see Box 1).

  The atomic nucleus in a molecule is influenced by other particles that are charged and in motion. NMR spectroscopy can therefore distinguish one nucleus from another and reveal the chemical surroundings of a nucleus. The NMR chemical shift is known to be very sensitive to intra- and intermolecular factors, and hence capable of give information concerning collective phases of molecules.

  Chemists S.R. Dillon and R.C. Dougherty in Florida State University, Tallahassee, in the United States, looked at the changes in NMR chemical shifts of salts dissolved in water, and came up with some interesting results, which led them to conclude that, "the entire solution is a single electronic whole".

  Box 1 NMR and NMR chemical shift

  Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is the absorption of electromagnetic radiation of a specific (resonant) frequency by an atomic nucleus placed in a strong static magnetic field, used especially in spectroscopic studies of molecular structure, and in medicine to measure rates of metabolism.

  Only atomic nuclei with an odd number of neutrons, such as 1H and 13C can be detected with NMR. These have spins of +1/2 and –1/2 in the presence of a static magnetic field. The nuclei can take up one of the two orientations, a low-energy, +1/2, orientation aligned with the magnetic field, or a high-energy orientation, –1/2, opposed to the magnetic field. When the sample is now exposed to electromagnetic radiation of a certain frequency corresponding to the difference in energy between these two orientations, a few of the low-energy +1/2 nuclei absorb enough energy to rise to the high-energy –1/2 state. This absorption is called resonance, and is detected by an NMR spectrophotometer as a peak.

  The atomic nucleus in a molecule is influenced by other particles that are charged and in motion. The NMR chemical shift, ?, is expressed in parts per million (ppm) with respect to a standard compound which is defined to be at 0 ppm, as follows:

  NMR spectroscopy can distinguish one nucleus from another and reveal the chemical surroundings of a nucleus. The NMR chemical shift is known to be very sensitive to intra- and intermolecular factors, and hence capable of give information concerning collective phases of molecules. The NMR chemical shift of a salt goes up as its concentration increases. However, when the chemical shift is plotted against the concentration, there is typically a sharp change in the slope of the curve at certain critical concentrations. For a solution of KF (potassium fluoride), the chemical shifts for both 19F and 39K (the number in superscript identify the particular isotope of the element) increases linearly from 1.9 to 2.4 mol per litre, then changed abruptly to a different slope thereafter (see Fig. 1).

  Figure 1. Change in chemical shift with concentration.

  Similarly, the chemical shift of 39K in KCL (potassium chloride) solution showed a break in slope around 1.7 mol per litre, while the chemical shift of 7Li in LiOH (lithium hydroxide) solution changed in slope at 3.0 mol per litre.

  These changes in the slope of chemical shifts with concentration are correlated with corresponding changes in the specific heat of the electrolyte (salt) solutions. The specific heat of pure water changes with temperature, starting at high levels below 280K and drops to a minimum at around 305K before increasing again at higher temperatures. When salts are dissolved in the water, the curve changes, and in particular, the minimum appears at a different temperature, the position of the minimum depending on the concentration of the salt in solution.

  Dillon and Dougherty found that the concentration at which the temperature minimum of specific heat is 298K - the temperature at which the NMR experiment was carried out - closely matches that at which the change in slope of the chemical shifts occurred. This was 2.4 mol per litre for KF (see Fig. 2), 1.6 mol per litre for KCL and 2.95 mol per litre for LiOH.

  Figure 2. Change in specific heat of KF solution at 2.4 mol/l with temperature compared with pure water.

  The specific heat capacity of the solution is its capacity to absorb heat energy, measured in energy units per gram per degree K increase in temperature. Plots of the specific heat capacity of electrolyte as a function of temperature are similar to the corresponding plot for pure water, but the perturbation of water structure by the electrolyte results in a shift in the location of the minimum (compared with pure water) as well as subtle changes in the shape of the curve. A correlation of the changes in slope of chemical shifts to minima in specific heat capacity suggests that there is a weak continuous phase transition (see Box 2) in the structure of the solution at the critical concentration corresponding to the specific heat capacity minimum. A phase-transition is a global phenomenon involving the entire solution.

  Box 2 Phase transitions

  Phase transitions refer to abrupt changes in the collective properties of all the molecules (phases), with a small change in a variable such as temperature; for example, when ice changes into water or water changes into gas and vice versa.

  Phase transitions are classified into two broad categories. First order phase transitions are discontinuous, involving the absorption or release of a ‘latent heat’, a fixed amount of energy, as in the changes of water between the liquid and gas phases. Second order phase transitions are continuous phase transitions that have no associated latent heat. Examples are ferromagnetic transition and transition into superfluid state.

  This global phase transition, involving the entire solution, can be explained by changes in water structure occurring as a result of changes in the hydrogen bond strength, due to changes in electrolyte concentration, and "electron delocalisation throughout the liquid". In other words, dissolving salts in water changes the structure of water globally as a whole.

  Could that interpretation apply to entire lakes and oceans? That’s enough to send shivers up and down my spine. These and other exciting results (see articles following) are likely to fuel the wide-ranging debates on water, from its dynamic structure at one extreme to the scientific basis of homeopathy and consciousness at the other.

  The Strangeness of Water & Homeopathic ‘Memory’

  Is there any reason for homeopathic remedies to work? Does the strangeness of water hold the key? Dr. Mae-Wan Ho describes recent ideas on how the quantum electrodynamic properties of water could provide the basis of homeopathic ‘memory’ and how one might investigate them. If you wish to see the complete document with references, please consider becoming a member or friend of ISIS. Full details here Water is the most abundant substance on the surface of the earth and is the main constituent of all living organisms. The human body is about 65 percent water by weight, with some tissues such as the brain and the lung containing nearly 80 percent. The water in our body is almost completely tied up with proteins, DNA and other macromolecules in a liquid crystalline matrix that enables our body to work in a remarkably coherent and co-ordinated way (see "To science with love", this issue). Although water is the most familiar of liquids, it is also the most mysterious. Water is densest at 4 C and expands on freezing at 0 C, which is why ice floats, fortunately for fish and other aquatic creatures. The water molecule consists of an oxygen atom bonded to two hydrogen atoms (H2O). The water molecule has the shape of a tetrahedron, a three-dimensional triangle. The oxygen atom sits in the heart of the tetrahedron, the hydrogen atoms point at two of the four corners and two electron clouds point to the remaining opposite corners. The clouds of negative charge result from the atomic structures of oxygen and hydrogen and the way they combine in the water molecule. Oxygen has eight negatively charged electrons disposed around its positively charged nucleus rather like layers of the onion, two in the inner shell and six in an outer shell. The inner shell’s capacity is filled, but the outer shell can hold as many as eight. Hydrogen has only one electron, so oxygen, by combining with two hydrogen atoms, completes its outer electron shell. The hydrogen’s electron is slightly more attracted to the oxygen nucleus than its own nucleus, which makes the water molecule polar, and it ends up with two clouds of slightly negative charge around the oxygen atom, and its two hydrogen atoms are left with slightly positive charges. The positively charged hydrogen of each water molecule can attract the negatively charged oxygen of another, giving rise to a hydrogen-bond (H-bond) between molecules. Each molecule of water can form four H-bonds, two between the hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atoms of two other molecules, and two between its oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms of other molecules. Ice is usually composed of a lattice of water molecules arranged with perfect tetrahedral geometry. In liquid water, however, the structure can be quite random and irregular. The actual number of H-bonds per liquid water molecule ranges from three to six, with an average of about 4.5. At ordinary temperatures, liquid water consists of dynamic clusters of 50 to 100 water molecules, in which the H-bonds are constantly making and breaking (or flickering). The tetrahedral H-bonded molecule also gives water a loosely packed structure compared with that of most other liquids, such as oils or liquid nitrogen. Water offers eternal fascination for physicists and physical chemists, not the least of the reasons being that it enables DNA and all proteins to function properly in the living organism (see Box). Water is the real medium of life The importance of water to living processes derives not only from its ability to form hydrogen bonds with other water molecules, but especially from its capacity to interact with various types of biological molecules. Because of its polar nature, water readily interacts with other polar and charged molecules such as acids, salts, sugars and various regions of proteins and DNA. As a result of these interactions, water can dissolve those substances, which are consequently described as hydrophilic (water loving). In contrast water does not interact well with nonpolar molecules such as fats, oil and water don’t mix. Nonpolar molecules are hydrophobic (water-fearing). Hydrophobic interactions in water are very important for protein folding, because the chain folds so as to keep the hydrophobic parts inside, and expose the hydrophilic parts on the surfaces next to water. Proteins only work when they are folded properly and when there is water around, when they become ‘plasticised’ or flexible. The properties of water and its interactions with proteins and DNA have been extensively studied using molecular dynamic simulations. These computer simulations follow the motions of populations of molecules according to interactions between atoms within the molecules and between molecules. Molecular dynamic simulations show that while polar molecules such as urea form hydrogen bonds with water and dissolve in it, water molecules either don’t mix at all with nonpolar substances such as fat and oil, or tend to form a cage around the molecules. These simulations also show that water is integral to the structure and function of all macromolecules. Early attempts to create molecular dynamics of models of DNA failed because repulsive forces between the negatively charged phosphate groups in the DNA backbone cause the molecule to break up after only 50 picoseconds. (The 50 picoseconds are in terms of real time as experienced by the DNA, and would have taken hours, if not days of computer time.) In the late 1980s, Levitt and Miriam Hirshberg showed that when water molecules were included, the DNA double-helical structure was stabilised by the water molecules forming hydrogen bonds with the phosphate groups. Subsequent simulations showed that water interacts with nearly every part of the DNA’s double helix, including the base pairs. In contrast, water does not penetrate deeply into the structures of proteins, whose hydrophobic regions are tucked within. So, protein-water simulations have focused on the protein surface, which is much less tightly packed than the protein interior. From experiments, we know that heat causes the alpha-helices (a predominant structural feature of proteins) to uncurl, but in early simulations without water, the helix remained intact. Only by adding water were Levitt and Valerie Daggett able to mimic an alpha helix’s actual behaviour. Recent investigations in our own Institute are showing that water is integral to the liquid crystalline structure of living organisms. The liquid crystalline structure of organisms holds the key to rapid intercommunication within the organism and the perfect co-ordination of living processes. While most physicists and biochemists are still trying to understand the interactions of water molecules in terms of classical mechanics, a number of physicists have begun to think of the quantum properties of water. Conventionally, quantum properties are thought to belong to elementary particles of less than 10-10m, while the macroscopic world of our everyday life is ‘classical’, in that things in it behave according to Newton’s laws of motion. Between the macroscopic classical world and the microscopic quantum world is the mesoscopic domain, where the distinction is getting increasingly blurred. Indeed, physicists are discovering quantum properties in large collections of atoms and molecules in the nano-metre to micro-metre range, particularly when the molecules are packed closely together in the liquid phase. Recently, chemists have made the surprising discovery that molecules form clusters that increase in size with dilution. These clusters measure several micro-metres in diameter. The increase in size occurs nonlinearly with dilution and it depends on history, flying in the face of classical chemistry (see "Molecules clump on dilution", this issue). Indeed, there is as yet no explanation for the phenomenon. It may well be another reflection of the strangeness of water that depends on its quantum properties. In the mid-1990s, quantum physicists Del Giudice and Preparata and other colleagues in University of Milan, in Italy, argued that quantum coherent domains measuring 100nm in diameter could arise in pure water. They show how the collective vibrations of the water molecules in the coherent domain eventually become phase-locked to the fluctuations of the global electromagnetic field. In this way, long-lasting, stable oscillations could be maintained in the water. One way in which ‘memory’ might be stored in water is through the excitation of long-lasting coherent oscillations specific to the substances in the homeopathic remedy dissolved in water. Interaction of water molecules with other molecules changes the collective structure of water, which would in turn determine the specific coherent oscillations that will develop. If these become stabilised and maintained by phase coupling between the global field and the excited molecules, then, even when the dissolved substances are diluted away, the water may still carry the coherent oscillations that can ‘seed’ other volumes of water on dilution. The discovery that dissolved substances form increasingly large clusters is compatible with the existence of a coherent field in water that can transmit attractive resonance between the molecules when the oscillations are in phase, leading to clumping in dilute solutions. As the cluster of molecules increases in size, its electromagnetic signature is correspondingly amplified, reinforcing the coherent oscillations carried by the water. But then, one should expect changes in some physical properties in the water that could be detectable. Unfortunately, all attempts to detect such coherent oscillations by usual spectroscopic and nuclear magnetic resonance methods have yielded ambiguous results. This is not surprising, in view of the finding that cluster size of the dissolved molecules depends on the precise history of dilution rather than on concentration of the molecules (see "Molecules clump on dilution", this issue). It is possible that despite variations in the cluster-size of the dissolved molecules and detailed microscopic structure of the water, a specificity of coherent oscillations may nonetheless exist. The failure of the usual detection methods is because they depend on measuring the microscopic properties of individual molecules, or of small aggregates. Instead, what is needed is a method for detecting collective global properties over many, many molecules. Some obvious possibilities that suggest themselves are measurements of freezing points and boiling points, viscosity, density, diffusivity, and magnetic properties. One intriguing possibility for detecting changes in collective global properties of water that is not so obvious is by means of crystallisation. Crystals are formed from macroscopic collections of molecules. Like other measurements that depend on global properties, crystals amplify the subtle changes in individual molecules that would have been undetectable otherwise (see next article). If you wish to see the complete document with references, please consider becoming a member or friend of ISIS. Full details here "Water, Water, Everywhere" In 1992, the United Nations designated March 22 as "World Day for Water". Water is absolutely necessary for life, more so than food. But the world’s available fresh water supply is fast dwindling. Even though there is abundant water on the planet, less than half a percent of it is available for human uses. Meanwhile, global water consumption is rising faster than population growth. More than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water, 2.5 billion lack access to proper sanitation; and more than 5 million die annually from water-borne diseases. The United Nations projects that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will face water shortages or lack of clean water. The World Bank’s vice- president predicts that within this century, wars will be fought over water.

  To deepen our appreciation of water, we present the latest findings on the strangeness of water, how it supports life and health, and how it might enable homeopathic remedies to work, even when diluted beyond the point where any molecules of the dissolved substances are present. More remarkably, how ice crystals may give us messages.

  1. Molecules Clump on Dilution A surprising discovery that molecules dissolved in water clump together when the solution is diluted is said to explain homeopathy. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho explains why the result flies in the face of conventional chemistry.
  2. Homeopathy Enters the Mainstream Homeopathy is entering the mainstream in the UK. Sam Burcher reports on some recent findings that bear on a centuries-old controversy that still baffles mainstream science.
  3. The Strangeness of Water & Homeopathic ‘Memory’ Is there any reason for homeopathic remedies to work? Does the strangeness of water hold the key? Dr. Mae-Wan Ho describes recent ideas on how the quantum electrodynamic properties of water could provide the basis of homeopathic ‘memory’ and how one might investigate them.
  4. Crystal Clear – Messages from Water
  Could crystals of water be the answer to all our problems? Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reviews the amazing work of Japanese water scientist. 1. Molecules Clump on Dilution A surprising discovery that molecules dissolved in water clump together when the solution is diluted is said to explain homeopathy. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho explains why the result flies in the face of conventional chemistry. If you wish to see the complete document with references, please consider becoming a member or friend of ISIS. Full details here Two chemists from the Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea made news last year. Their surprising discovery that molecules dissolved in water clump together was reported in the New Scientist and the popular media as a possible explanation of why homeopathy works. The obvious ‘explanation’ is that some dilute solutions may have more molecules in it than expected, perhaps even at dilutions beyond the point at which any molecule could be left in solution. But if some parts of a solution contain more molecules than expected, other parts would contain less, so most of the time, homeopathy should not work at all. And that, indeed, is the conventional wisdom of the medical establishment. The researchers themselves were surprised by the suggestion that their work had any relevance to homeopathy. However, the finding itself has significance far beyond its applicability to homeopathy. The investigations started on a class of chemical substances known as cyclodextrins (DC), which, when combined with non-polar molecules (molecules without electrical charge, see "The strangeness of water", this series), enable the latter to dissolve in water. They make a complex of ?-cyclodextrin with [60]fullerene, more popularly known as Buckyball, or Buckminster fullerene, in honour of architect/polymath Buckminster Fuller, who invented the shape as a geodesic dome. These complexes were found to form clusters in water. But then scientists found that a wide range of other substances such as salts and polymers also form clusters in solution. The new discovery made by the South Korean researchers is that cluster size increased steadily with increasing dilution in water. In contrast, no clustering of the molecules occurs in organic solvents. They found the same behaviour for cyclodextrin-fullerene complex, ?-cyclodextrin by itself, sodium chloride, disodium guanosine monophosphate and a DNA oligonucleotide. Using the technique of laser light scattering, it was possible to estimate the size of ?-cyclodextrin clusters. The diameter of the clusters increased from 0.55 ?m at a starting concentration of 0.216 mM to 3.255 ?m at 0.01mM. The clusters were confirmed by scanning electron microscopy after the solutions were dried. Interestingly, when the starting concentration was 14.27mM and diluted down to 0.3524mM, cluster size increased from 0.393 ?m to 3.12 ?m. Thus, the size of the clusters varied depending on the starting concentration. In other words, "the solution history is an important factor in the growth dynamics of the aggregates". That was the really unexpected finding, and flies in the face of conventional linear chemistry. For sodium chloride, a starting solution of 5.5M diluted down to 0.785M gave an increase in aggregate size from 1.491 to 4.95??m. The results were similar in all the other substances investigated. The increase in cluster size was non-linear, slow at first, and rapid at higher dilutions. The increase in cluster size was "almost instantaneous", and remained stable at least over the next three days. Why do these clusters form? No one knows for sure, and certainly the importance of solution history is impossible to accommodate within conventional, classical chemistry. Could it be yet another manifestation of the "Strangeness of water"? (this series). If you wish to see the complete document with references, please consider becoming a member or friend of ISIS. Full details here 4. Crystal Clear – Messages from Water Could crystals of water be the answer to all our problems? Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reviews the amazing work of Japanese water scientist. If you wish to see the complete document with references, please consider becoming a member or friend of ISIS. Full details here What if water, the medium of all life, were sensitive to our thoughts? Does that mean human consciousness has shaped evolution, and can still do so? Masaru Emoto first started studying water in the 1990s, when he met Dr. Lee Lorenzen, a biochemist in University of California Berkeley, who has since become a water researcher, developing ‘micro-cluster water’. Lorenzen introduced Emoto to a Magnetic Resonance Analyzer, which was developed to study homeopathy. In the course of his studies, Emoto began to wonder about the quality of the water he was working with, and how it could affect health. While he was thinking about the problem, he came across a book entitled, "The day the lightning chased the housewife", which contained about 50 questions. One question stood out: "Are there any snow crystals of the same shape?" The answer was no. Snow has been falling on earth for possibly hundreds of millions of years, and yet each snowflake is distinct. "And that was when it hit me", he wrote, "That’s it!" From then on, he began to make water crystals and to photograph them under the microscope. And he was richly rewarded, as attested by the publication of a book, Messages from Water (HADO Kyoikusha Co., Ltd., Tokyo, 1999, 2001. ISBN 4-939098-00-1). This book contains hundreds of photographs of water crystals, all different, from the most sublimely beautiful to the most mundane, or even ‘ugly’, each with a legend that captures quite precisely the feeling evoked by the crystal. As I followed the pictures from one to another, I began to try to decipher the meaning of the crystals. They were indeed like faces, expressing emotions that reflect the history and the character of the landscapes the water flowed through, and the creatures that live on those lands or in the water. Tap water in cities subjected to chlorine treatment or heavily polluted failed to form crystals at all, with no sign of the characteristic hexagonal (6-fold) symmetry of snowflakes. Partial crystals sometimes appeared, as if "trying desperately hard to be a clean water". Whenever the quality of water was good, complete crystals formed, each distinctive in detailed pattern and colour. Some of the loveliest, most perfect crystals were from natural, unpolluted water sources, such as the Sanbu-ichi Spring in Nagasaka, and the spring water of Saijo, a town located in the highlands 500 to 700 metres above the sea, famous for its sake. A stunningly beautiful, asymmetric crystal came from the fountain of Lourdes in France A stunningly beautiful, asymmetric crystal came from the fountain of Lourdes in France. It was described as, "A mysterious crystal that gives off the feeling of mystical glory." In certain rivers, such as the Shinano in the Niigata and Nagano prefectures, perfect crystals were formed from the water upstream, but not from the contaminated downstream waters. The effects of acid rain were abundantly clear in the poor crystallisation of most rain water. The crystals do carry messages, and crystal reading is as much art as science. One question that came to my sceptical mind was how reproducible were the crystals? And to what extent is the single crystal photographed characteristic of the sample? Emoto’s method is to place the same small amount of a single sample of water in 100 petri-dishes, and then to allow them to crystallise in the freezer under well-controlled conditions. He then examines all the replicates. No two will show exactly the same crystals. Despite that, however, one can see that the replicates were crystals of the same kind, they were definitely variations on a specific theme. Now comes the part of the book that really begins to take one’s breath away. One can understand how pollutants in water can affect crystal structure, though it by no means explains the specific appearance of crystals from the different sources. But one can rationalise that in terms of minute quantities of unknown dissolved substances, perhaps. Bach’s Air for the G String gives the impression that the crystal is dancing merrily However, Emoto’s group showed that starting from distilled water, which failed to crystallise, it was possible to generate crystals specific to the music to which the water has been exposed. My favourite is Bach’s Air for the G String, which "gives the impression that the crystal is dancing merrily", and the Tibet Sutra, which "talks to people’s souls and has a strong positive energy that can heal people’s feelings". Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel, gave three kinds of crystals, one which looked like "a picture of a heart broken into two", the second which shows "the two parts trying to fuse together, and a third that shows "a newly formed heart that overcame the difficult period". Or do you think "this idea is too sentimental?" Well, perhaps it is not so strange that water should be sensitive to sound, which is a physical, energetic entity, and that the quality of the sound could generate some coherent vibrations in the water (see previous article) that influence the crystallisation process. But now, for the real stunner; Emoto’s group showed that water can even respond to words. The same distilled water to start with, one tube had the message, "Thank you" written on it, while the other one had, "You fool!" The one with "Thank you" gave nice crystals, whereas the one with "You fool!" gave no crystals at all, and was very similar to the results produced by exposing the water to heavy metal music. And it did not matter which language was used: Japanese, Korean or English. The results were very similar. "Love/Appreciation" gave a most elaborate, decorous crystal, so did "Soul". "Demon" (removing the left part from the Chinese character for soul) led to something that looks like a disintegration of the soul crystal. "Angel" made the crystal burst forth in a multitude of flowers, while "Devil" looked distinctly sinister. Even names were read by water. "Adolph Hitler" looked like "You make me sick" or "I will kill you". And pictures too were registered. When shown the photograph of an innocent child, the water came back with a crystal that looked to me like pure joy itself. So, what does it all mean? Emoto believes all that is based on HADO or Chi, a vital energy that comes ultimately from the circulation of electrons around the atomic nucleus. He believes that Chi changes according to the consciousness of the observer, "the way they see things". How can this HADO be measured? By means of a machine referred to as the MRA (Magnetic Resonance Analyzer), "which measures various states of HADO, encodes the unique energy pattern of each substance and checks whether it resonates or not". It was developed in the United States 12 years ago. Unfortunately, no further details are given. The same MRA machine is said to be able to "transcribe" information from substances onto water, but again, we are given no details on how it actually works, apart from the following. "The measurement first starts when the MRA puts out a faint resonance magnetic field, which is then transmitted to the subject and substances to be measured. Then the existence of resonance is checked. By amplifying the output of the measuring instrument HADO information can be transcribed." I have to admit this does not make sense to me, which is a pity, because this is where an explanation could have been provided for results that border on the incredible, especially to people who have been thoroughly schooled to the conventional mechanistic perspective. The same vague explanation is given for the ‘micro-cluster water’ of Dr. Lee H. Lorenzen. "Water normally is not composed of independent molecules, but rather they are hydrogen bonded to form small water particles called clusters. When you align these water molecules and make them smaller it is called clustering." Do you make the clusters smaller or the molecules smaller? "Clustered water can easily make sharp turns and subsequently can reach far into the corners of the body," we are told. This lack of explanatory detail and failure to connect with conventional research findings have severely hampered the development of what may be some of the most important advances in our understanding of nature. What follows is a remarkable series of crystals resulting from "information" transcribed, presumably with the MRA, into various waters. This includes a dam that stops natural flow, the essence of camomile and fennel onto distilled water, where the crystal appears to take on the form of the flowers themselves. Could water respond directly to people’s consciousness? Apparently yes. Crystals reflected the panic during an earthquake and also the recovery period three months later. Tap water of Tokyo, which was formless, responded to the transmission of "Chi, Soul and Spirit" of 500 people to give a distinctive crystal. And, certain specially gifted individuals could make the most polluted, formless water respond to the "Chi of love" or to prayer, to give remarkable symmetries of perfection. The Reverend Kato Hoki, chief priest of Jyuhouin Temple, Omiya city, was able to change the six-fold symmetry of the ice crystal to a previously unknown, seven-fold symmetry. "Water is the mirror of the mind". It is impossible to read this book and see the pictures of the endless variations of water crystals without being affected. One may come away incredulous, yet inspired to look for deeper understanding of the remarkable phenomenon. Particularly so, now that the more conventional physics and chemistry are homing in on the strangeness of water, and of the quantum world. Take the most incredible hypothesis suggested by Emoto’s crystals, that consciousness could influence the structure of water, is that so totally beyond the pale? Perhaps not. I first presented theoretical arguments and empirical observations to support the idea that organisms are quantum coherent in 1993. I was inspired by others who have made the same proposal, albeit in different forms. Since then, quantum coherence has been invoked in explaining how the brain might work. Quantum physicists Del Giudice and Preparata have argued that, in order to account for the anomalous behaviour of water, we need to consider its quantum properties, and especially how quantum coherence could arise in water resulting in long-lasting coherent oscillations (see previous article). Recently, there have been many experiments demonstrating quantum entanglement of coherent systems that may have applications in quantum computing. The experimental, ‘long-lived’ entanglement of two ‘macroscopic objects’ was reported last September in Nature. Admittedly, by long-lived, the physicists meant 0.5 milliseconds, and ‘macroscopic objects’ referred to two samples, each containing about 1012 caesium atoms, not quite the size of a human being. But until a few years ago, this would have been unimaginable. And so, it would not be beyond the pale to suggest that our ‘consciousness’- think of it as our coherent quantum field - could become entangled with that of water, thereby influencing the structure of the water. Some 99% of all the molecules in our body are water in any case. There is no doubt that these new approaches should be vigorously investigated. They have large implications for the health of human beings and the entire planet earth. If you wish to see the complete document with references, please consider becoming a member or friend of ISIS. Full details here

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