Question: Besides the Thomas Alva Edison quote at the film's beginning, what could be the scientific explanation for the fact that electronic equipment 'from this side' it's able of capturing sounds and sights from people 'at the other side'?
Carlos Sicilia
9th May 2005
White Noise (2005)
Answer: The scientific explanation is that our brains were evolved to sift signal from noise and, like some optical illusions, when confronted with 'pure' or white noise at the limits of perception, we can impose a signal where there is none. Our mind fills in information or imposes pattern where none is inherent. Think of seeing faces and shapes in clouds and apply the idea behind these visual phenomena to hearing. We hear voices/words at the boundaries of our perception for the same reason that we see faces in clouds. It is worthwhile noting that while people will agree that a given recording sounds like a person or persons talking, they almost never agree on what is being said. Oftentimes different people hearing a given recording don't agree on how many people are talking, who it sounds like, or what gender they might be. The messages are always at the boundary of what we can perceive because this is where our brains fill in the most data to make what we perceive coherent.
Chosen answer: I think it is quoted in the movie, but the first Law of Thermodynamics is that energy can be neither created, nor destroyed, it can only change form. We, as humans create energy, so it must go somewhere when we die. Since it cannot be destroyed it is entirely probable that it could change into radio waves, one of the most common forms of energy. So it obviously would be transmitted through a radio, where it gets mixed up with static, creating EVP.
troy fox
Changing into radio waves likely represents a decrease in the state of entropy and would violate the second law of thermodynamics. Generally, energy changes from one ordered form to a less ordered form, like heat. It is unclear if there is a conservation of information law, and certainly none has broad scientific acceptance as yet. A more scientifically grounded explanation might be based on these phenomena occurring at the boundary of what we can perceive; we impose patterns where they aren't.