LUNAR-CORRELATED VARIATIONS IN WATER UPTAKE BY BEAN SEEDS

¹ Department of Biological Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201
² The Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543

1. Rate of water uptake by bean seeds during the initial four hours displays a significant quarterly lunar variation.

2. Under what appear to be minimally distrubed environmental conditions relative to environmental electromagnetic fields, maximum rates tend to occur close to new and full moon and the moon's quarters.

3. One or more of the quarterly cycles may undergo periods of inversion either apparently "spontaneously" or in response to such experimentally altered environmental conditions as those found within a walk-in constant-temperature chamber, or effected by very slow uniform rotation.

4. The character of an interaction between vessels of beans located close to one another displays a synodic monthly variation. A maximum in interaction-induced negative correlation between two samples occurs 4 to 5 days after full moon, and in positive, 4 to 5 days after new moon.

5. These results give further support for the hypothesis that living systems can exist in either of two states, + and - with respect to their correlation with fluctuating biologically effective and normally uncontrolled, pervasive geophysical parameters, and that this sign is experimentally alterable.