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THE ELECTRO MAGNETIC SPECTRUM day just by illuminating the cell with Wavelength the same wavelength at a much (metres) weaker intensity. To this day, scientists don't understand this i - R . Radio Microwave Infrared _—Visible Ultraviolet X-Ray Gamma Ray photorepair phenomenon, but no t t t t ——+— | one has disputed it. 103 10°? 10°5 106 108 19°10 1o"l2 Popp also knew that patients with xeroderma pigmentosum eventually die of skin cancer because their photorepair system can't repair solar damage. He was also struck by the act that photorepair worked most efficiently at 380 nm—the same requency that the cancer-causing compounds react to and scramble. This was where Popp made his ogical leap. If the carcinogens only reacted to this frequency, it must somehow be linked to photorepair. If so, this would mean that there must All vibrations of energy are part of the electromagnetic spectrum. These . : : include electrical energy, heat, sound, light, radio waves and radioactive waves. D& SOME Kind of light in the body Ultraviolet light is merely a small portion of the spectrum of EM energy witha respons! ble for photorepair. A very short wavelength. compound must cause cancer because it permanently blocks this roots if the two adjacent plants were in quartz glass pots _ light and scrambles it, so photorepair can't work any but not if they were in silicon glass pots—the only more. It seemed logical, but was it true? AMCiene ae bate that eh atlinan Cleaned ry ene nlan th infrared Visible Ultraviolet Microwave roots if the two adjacent plants were in quartz glass pots but not if they were in silicon glass pots—the only difference being that the silicon filtered UV wavelengths of light while the quartz did not. Gurwitsch theorised that onion roots could communicate with each other by ultraviolet light. Popp discovered that benzo[a]pyrene (the cancer- producing molecule) absorbed the UV light, then re- emitted it at a completely different frequency. It was a light "scrambler". The benzo[e|pyrene (harmless to humans) allowed the UV light to pass through it unaltered. He was puzzled by this difference, and continued to experiment with UV light and other compounds. He performed his test on 37 different chemicals, some cancer-causing, some not. After a while, he was able to predict which substances could cause cancer. In every instance, the compounds that were carcinogenic took the UV light, absorbed it and changed or scrambled the frequency. There was another odd property of these compounds: each of the carcinogens reacted only to light at a specific frequency—380 nanometres (nm) in the ultraviolet range. Popp kept wondering why a cancer- causing substance would be a light scrambler. He began reading the scientific literature, specifically about human biological reactions, and came across information about a phenomenon called "photorepair". Light Inside the Body Popp was freaked out by this. He wrote about it in a paper, and a prestigious medical journal agreed to publish it. Not long after that, Popp was approached by a student named Bernhard Ruth, who asked Popp to supervise his work for his doctoral dissertation. Popp old Ruth he was prepared to do so if the student could show that light was emanating from the human body. This meeting was fortuitous for Popp because Ruth appened to be an excellent experimental physicist. Ruth thought the idea was ridiculous, and immediately set to work building equipment to prove Popp's ypothesis wrong. Within two years, Ruth had constructed a machine resembling a big X-ray detector which used a photomultiplier to count light, photon by photon. Even oday, it is still one of the best pieces of equipment in he field. The machine had to be highly sensitive because it had to measure what Popp assumed would be extremely weak emissions. In an old documentary film taken in the laboratory at he International Institute of Biophysics, Dr Popp opens a chamber about the size of a bread box. He places a resh cutting from a plant and a wooden match in a plastic container inside the dark chamber and closes the ightproof door. Immediately he switches on the photomultiplier and the image shows up on a computer screen. The matchstick is black while the green, glowing silhouette of the leaves is clearly visible. Understanding Photorepair It is well known from biological laboratory experiments that if you blast a cell with UV light so that 99 per cent of the cell, including its DNA, is destroyed, you can almost entirely repair the damage in a single 46 * NEXUS JUNE - JULY 2012 www.nexusmagazine.com