By Bill Murphy © 2015

Bizarre aliens and invisible force fields have been depicted in countless science fiction movies. It‘s one thing for a person to take in a fun film in a theater, but it‘s quite another to have an immersive encounter in a vivid dream. And when the dreamer becomes lucid, those strange powers are in the dreamer‘s control.

 

In an effort to understand how the environment can contribute to a person‘s dream ‘bizarreness’, psychologist Darren Lipnicki, formally with the Center for Space Medicine in Berlin, Germany, documented 2,387 of his own dreams and rated them with a five point system to determine the bizarre factor. Admittedly what is considered bizarre for one person may not be so strange for another, so he included the believability of the dream encounter. With the scoring system in place, he began to look for the factors that could be influencing his dreams. His hypothesis is interesting, and it is related to planetary science.

 

According to his published study, which was supported by a Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Doctor Lipnicki proposes that an increase in the naturally fluctuating geomagnetic field generated by the earth decreases the amount of melatonin produced by the brain. Anecdotal evidence suggests that an increase in melatonin results in more vivid dreams. So if Dr. Lipnicki‘s theory is correct, a person would have a more vivid dream when immersed in a lower geomagnetic field.

 

Other studies that suggest exposure to specific electromagnetic frequencies can trigger lucidity, but Dr. Lipnicki‘s work is of interest as it incorporates the earth‘s geomagnetic field. Humans are bioelectric organisms living on a planet generating its own magnetic field and technology has added many more frequencies to the mix. Although alarmists often cite high energy power lines and cell phone radiation as potentially dangerous to human tissue, we can now ponder how all of these energy fields are affecting our dreams. May the force be with you.

 

Bill Murphy

LDE Science Correspondent

 

The full text of Dr. Lipicki‘s paper is available here for a fee that supports medical science inquiry: http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(09)00138-8/abstract