Twitter to test psychic powers
Updated on 01 June 2009
Thousands of people will this week test their psychic powers on Twitter.
In the first scientific experiment to be conducted via the social messaging service, experts will investigate "remote viewing" - the psychic ability to identify distant locations.
Members of the public will be asked to "Tweet" their impressions of a randomly chosen spot in the UK visited by one of the researchers.
Then they will vote for which of five photographs on a website shows where the visitor was standing.
The trial will be repeated with visually different locations four times.
If at the end of the experiment the votes correctly identify at least three targets, it will support the existence of extra-sensory perception.
Study leader psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire, who specialises in investigating psychic phenomena, said: "Personally, I'm sceptical, but three hits would be against odds of one in 125, which would be quite impressive."
He hopes as many as 10,000 people will take part in the research, being conducted in collaboration with New Scientist magazine.
Prof Wiseman will travel to each target location and send a message to thousands of participants to "Tweet" their thoughts about his surroundings.
Twenty minutes after sending this message he will transmit another containing a website address on which participants can view photographs of the actual location and four decoys. They will then cast their votes. Anyone can take part in the experiment by visiting the site.
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