“If there is magic on this planet,
it is contained in water”
– American educator and natural science writer, Loren Eiseley
Walking out of the theater after watching Frozen 2, all my questions stemmed from the major plot device revealed by Olaf himself: water has memory. Initially having passed it off as fiction, a quick Google search revealed that there may be some truth to the myth. But exactly how much?
Water memory is the idea that water maintains a recollection of all the substances it comes into contact with (Alive Water). The concept was introduced by French immunologist Jacques Benveniste in the late 1980s. He showed that water molecules can retain the memory of antibodies they have been in contact with; even when those antibodies are no longer present, their biological effect remains in the water (Alive Water). The water retains the antibodies’ ability to fight toxins. This logic is the justification behind modern homeopathy, in which a natural substance is diluted to the point where the molecule itself no longer exists, but its effect remains (Alive Water). However, research teams, including Benveniste’s own team on further experiments, were unable to duplicate Benveniste’s results (Ball).
The existence of water memory was “proved” by Nobel prize winner, Prof. Montagnier, who co-discovered HIV in 1983. He was able to use the polymerase chain reaction, a method to amplify DNA strands, to synthesize the DNA sequences of more than 100 base pairs of HIV, without the target strands present as a template (Ball). Instead, water was first subjected to low-frequency electromagnetic waves of the DNA encoding the target sequence and then, when the PCR ingredients were added, it was able to copy the DNA strands (Ball). In other words, the water was able to remember and then emit the electromagnetic waves without the target DNA present, allowing the DNA to be reproduced despite its absence (Alive Water).
More recently, German scientists, Prof. Bernd-Helmut Kröplin and Regine C. Henschel observed individual water droplets under high magnification and found that each drop had its own distinguishable microscopic pattern (Brown). Sampling and magnifying droplets found on a Petunia and Sweet William flower found that the drops from different flowers looked completely different whereas all the droplets from the same flower looked identical (Brown). They concluded from this experiment that the water stores information from each type of flower, serving as a kind of memory. Kröplin and Henschel went on to examine water droplets from different places around the world and noted the distinct images, or “faces,” that each droplet presented from its own unique experiences in each place (Brown). These faces are “living” and change depending on what new experiences the water has memorized (Brown).
More than only location can affect water’s memory. The scientists reasoned that since the human body is 70% water, human tears could hold the unique memory of individual beings (Brown). In other words, our feelings and thoughts can change the structure of the water. Could we all unknowingly possess X-men like abilities to change the physical world with just our thoughts? In one instance, an experimenter was creating droplets of water when he heard about a disaster in his family (Brown). All the drops he created after hearing the news had a different face from those previous, supporting the fact that the change in the experimenter’s emotions caused a change in the water in his syringe (Brown). Feelings influenced the water. Despite the visual evidence presented, the tales about water memory are false. Water molecules are constantly moving, forming and breaking their hydrogen bonds in only about a picosecond (10-12 sec) (Ball). The pattern of bonds could change with the introduction of an ion, but the further from the ion a water molecule is, the more its effect is muted or ignored (Stein). Putting it simply, water’s structure is not permanent enough to make any long term memory. Thus, water memory remains a myth, joining Elsa’s ice powers in the realm of Disney magic.
