kirlian photography

description
In 1961, Semyon Davidovitch Kirlian and Valentina Kirliana published a paper in the Russian Journal of Scientific and Applied Photography in which they described for the first time the process now known as Kirlian Photography. The method consists of placing an object or body part directly onto a piece of photographic paper and then passing a high voltage across the object (part of what makes the apparatus complicated, especially when using a human subject, is ensuring a high voltage with a low current). What the Kirlians discovered is that the photographic paper will become exposed and will show a glowing aura around the object. Experimenters with Kirlian photography have created many colorful and beautiful images. The images are often associated with the objects aura, which is supposed to be a product of bioenergy or bioplasma. Kirlian photographers cl aim that different moods and levels of psychic power will show up in these photos. There are several examples of leaves from which a piece has been removed showing the aura of the full leaf in a Kirlian photograph (the so -called phantom leaf effect). A great deal of research has been done by Dr. Thelma Moss of UCLAs Neuropsychiatric Institute, and her former student, Kendall Johnson. Their conclusions are that Kirlian photography is a window onto the world of bioenergy, and they and others have linked Kirlian Photography to telepathy, orgone energy, N-rays, acupuncture, ancient eastern religions, and other paranormal phenomena. They also tout the possibility that Kirlian photography can provide early medical diagnoses of a variety of ailments. Moss and Johnson believe that the Kirlian photography actually depicts a heretofore invisible astral body, while others believe that it is a merely an electrical effect that is somehow sensitive to psychic states.

history
Bio-Electrography, or Kirlian photography, has its roots in observations on star-like patterns produced in resin dust by electrical discharges made by the German physicist and philosopher Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) in 1777. Lichtenberg was also the first to observe a corona discharge from a human hand. After the introduction of photography, the Czech physicist Batholomew Navratil (1848-1927) and the Polish-Russian electrotherapist, engineer and physician Yakov Narkiewicz-Yodko (1848-1904) were the first to use the new medium to record electric discharges from animate and inanimate objects and to systematically investigate the effect. The term "electrography" was coined by Navratil in 1888. Other early observations of the effect around the turn of the century were by by Nikola Tesla. In 1939 the Armenian electrician Semyon Davidovich Kirlian (1900-1980) in the NorthCaucasian town of Krasnodar by chance rediscovered the effect which now bears his name. Together with his wife Valentina he improved on the basic apparatus and developed the new method for a number of applications, mainly for plant research. The physicist Viktor G.Adamenko who as a student conducted numerous experiments together with the Kirlians, defended the first doctoral thesis on the subject at the Minsk Polytechnic (Belorussia), about the physical mechanism of image formation by the corona discharge process. While he considers the basic mechanism to be the cold emission of electrons from the specimen provoked by the high-voltage pulse, another prominent one of the many Russian researchers who took up research in this field, Victor M. Inyushin, Professor of Biophysics at Kazakh State University, Alma Ata, Kazakhstan, together with Polish physicist Wlodzimierz Sedlak developed the "bioplasma hypothesis" to explain the Kirlian effect in bioelectrography. With the publication of Ostrander and Schroeders "Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Curtain" (1970) and Krippner and Rubins "The Kirlian Aura" (1974), Bio -Electrography came to the West and stimulated a flurry of activities. After a visit with Adamenko at

Moscow and Inyushin at Alma-Ata in 1970, medical psychologist Thelma Moss of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles became the first Western scientist using to work in the field. Important Western contributions were made by Gary K.Poock, Professor of Operations Research and Man-Machine Systems at the U.S.Navy Postgraduate School at Monterey, California. In 1975, he developed the first bioelectrographic motion picture method outside the Soviet Union. It included the use of a light intensifier for improving brightness, and was able to reveal the dramatic dynamics of the discharge process which are invisible at the long exposure times of still photography. In 1976, Pook made a first step to the quantification of the electrographic picture by introducing an image-analytic technique. A paradigmatic investigation of electrography, published in 1976 and 1978 and partly sponsored by the U.S.Department of Defense, was conducted for 6 years by a multidisciplinary team headed by William Eidson, Professor of Physics at Drexel University, Philadelphia (Pehek et al., 1976; Eidson et al., 1978). It considerably raised the quality of the debate which at that time was quite lively. Among other things, the study points to the typical instability of the equipment used in most investigations and and the wide range of parameters that have to be controlled for the successful operation of the method. It also gives recommendations for optimum discharge technology and recordings systems, such as transparent electrodes and image-intensified film or video recording systems which allow for contactless image recording without interference between the specimen/electrode circuit and the recording medium, and the use of image analysis and the spectral analysis of the discharge process. The study concluded that electrography was able to image electrical parameters of a specimen in real time, making it a possible field mapping tool for the energy fields surrounding living organisms which possibly were able to modulate space impedance". The important task of carefully analysing all the parameters influencing the bioelectrographic image which the Drexel team had started and many since then have called for, was undertaken by Mark de Payrebrune, then graduate student of Electrical Engineering at McGill University at Montreal, Canada, for his masters thesis in 1984 (de Payrebrune, 1984). Much work in bio -electrography research has been done in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union, but is less accessible because of language and communication problems. A more intuitive, but very successful and now widely used method of interpreting the bioelectrographic image for medical diagnosis, based on the analysis of the corona of fingertips in relation to their function as endpoints of the meridians of Traditional Chinese Medicine and German neo-acupuncture according to Voll, has been developed by German naturopathic doctor Peter Mandel (Mandel, 1986). However, seen in retrospect, the unhelpful association with unfounded speculations on the aura and with parapsychology has very much dominated the image of Bio-electrography and made it difficult for the field to be scrutinized objectively. While about every New Age fair displays Kirlian pictures as a "proof" for the existence of the "aura", the scientific study of the field, after some initial activities in the 1970s, has been rather stagnating in the last two decades, in spite of the ongoing work of a number of researchers in different countries.

the skeptical viewpoint

There is no doubt that Kirlian photographs themselves are not fakes; they are photographing something, the question is exactly what are they capturing. The most likely explanation, one that is accepted even by many psychic believers, is that the effect is a kind of Corona Discharge. Corona discharge is responsible for regular lightning, the sparks that come off your fingers after you walk on a carpet, and St. Elmos fire, among other effects. Nikola Tesla used to introduce new discoveries at presentations at which his body would glow and sparks would fly from his fingertips, using a similar technique. A team of physicists and psychologists at Drexel University has spent some years studying the Kirlian effect, and has concluded that the major determinant in a Kirlian photograph is the amount of moisture present on the object or skin. It is certainly plausible that different moods and stresses might create different amounts of moisture on the fingertips (for instance). This is the basis of the lie detector. Phantom leaf effects, on the other hand, are very rare the Drexel team has

never produced one, but they theorize a number of possibilities, including residue on the photographic plate and coincidence, not to mention the possibility of outright fraud in some cases. Overall, although Kirlian photography is not perfectly understood, there is no evidence that variations in Kirlian photographs are due to any paranormal effects. The Drexel team has created a list of 25 factors that can effect a Kirlian photograph, including attributes of the skin, recent physical activity, and, yes, mental stress. All of them effect the amount of moisture on the skin. As for the medical possibilities of Kirlian photography, they are often overestimated. Variations have many causes, but it is very difficult to determine those causes from looking at a photograph many of the known causes create exactly the same Kirlian variations.
References: Davis, Mikol, and Lane, Earle, Rainbows of Life (Harper Colophon, 1978) Moss, Dr. Thelma, The Probability of the Impossible (Plume, 1974) Science and the Paranormal, edited by Barry Singer and George O. Abell, (Charles Scribners Sons, 1981) The Skeptic Dictionary

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