The Pope is near death -- or, possibly, already dead while the Catholic world awaits a formal declaration. Imminent or otherwise, the Pope's death is an ideal opportunity to put the Global Consciousness Project's hypothesis to the test; if major celebrity deaths and history-shaking disasters can influence random number generators before they occur, the death of a pope is likely no exception, and I'm extremely interested in whether or not John Paul II's final exit will be (or already has been) registered by the GCP's worldwide detection system.

Here's a potentially illuminating chance to see what, exactly, the GCP detects when it produces apparently nonrandom correlations to major news events. Personally, I think the GCP's instruments spike in tandem with our collective emotional response, in which case we might expect a relatively lukewarm "spike" corresponding to the Pope's death. After all, devout Catholics the world over already know the Pope is in danger of dying; it's feasible that foreknowledge of a probable outcome acts as a kind of psychical buffer.

On the other hand, it's possible (although in my opinion unlikely) the GCP detects events themselves and not the world community's reaction to them. In that case, if the Vatican is delaying a formal press release, GCP researchers may be able to determine the moment of the Pope's death before it becomes official by taking a careful look at the time of the implicating spike.

True, the GCP's findings indicate our communal psyche responds to events that have yet to occur. Even so, the moment and duration of the spike might allow researchers to discern whether it's generated by a flurry of public interest after the fact, or if it overlaps the moment of the actual occurrence.