R. A. Watters

R. A. Watters was a physicist and director of the William Bernard Johnston Foundation for Biophysical Research in Reno, Nevada who is most well known for his experiments in the 1930s which claimed to have proven the existence of the soul for animals and insects.
==Experiments==
Watters was a physicist and X-ray technician who developed an atomic hypothesis of the soul. He proposed that souls (human or animal) existed in a limbonic state within the "intra-atomic" space between the atoms of cells. For his experiments to test his hypothesis of the soul, he used a Wilson cloud chamber (a particle detector used normally by physicists for detecting ionizing radiation). Watters believed the chamber system would show the observation of a soul departing a living organism at the moment of its death.
 
His experiments consisted of an airtight glass container surrounding a test chamber, inside of which he placed animals that could be guillotined or gassed. He killed the animals and immediately took a picture of the hermetically sealed enclosure. He claimed that in the photographs there appeared a nebulous cloud around the animals in the container. Watters asserted that the image did not appear until the animal died. He wrote that he had successfully photographed "souls" of insects and mice etc. at the moment of death. However, tests by other scientists to verify his research were unproductive.
Watter carried out hundreds of experiments and sometimes used different methods, so some reports of his experiments differ in detail.
According to a description of his experiment:
Watters wrote regarding his experiments with the Wilson cloud chamber, "New experimental evidence that identifies a form of energy which is lost to the physical body at the moment of actual death; not only a form of energy which we have been able to predict because of physical evidences, but an 'immaterial body' which at the moment of death, makes its escape from the physical body, and is made visible by the medium of water vapour."The Shroud of Turin: An Imprint of the Soul, Apparition Or Quantum Bio-Hologram By Chidambaram Ramesh
==Reception==
Those interested in evidence for life after death supported the work of Watters and have written it as evidence to support the vitalistic school of thought against the materialist one by proving that something leaves the physical body at death.Psypioneer Founded by Leslie Price
The skeptic Milbourne Christopher has discussed the history of the experiments in detail and has written that the cloud-like formations observed have naturalistic explanations.Milbourne Christopher Mediums, Mystics, & the Occult Crowell, 1975. Richard Wiseman in his book Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there (2011) has written that the results of Watters were based on a combination of dust and wishful-thinking:
Wiseman also wrote:
Despite the criticism of Wiseman and others, some new agers and parapsychologists still continue to claim the experiments have proven the existence of the soul.Scientists photograph, weigh soul…document a trip to Hell
==See also==
*Harry La Verne Twining
==Further reading==
*R. A. Watters The Intra Atomic Quantity
*B. H. Hopper Enquiry into the Cloud Chamber Method of Studying the Intra Atomic Quantity
*Search for the Soul
*Man's Quest for Immortality From Ancient Times to Present
==References==
Category:Physicists
Category:paranormal