A phenomenon involving the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli. It refers to the effect he seems to have had on technical appliances and laboratory equipment in general. Whenever he was in a room where an experiment was running, it would invariably fail or produce irregular results. Pieces of machinery would inexplicably break down and furniture collapse, just because he was in the vicinity. It is said that he always felt a strange tension before such accidents, and was secretly relieved, when something did break down or go wrong.

In 1948 the Zürich C.G. Jung-Institute was founded and as a foundation member, Pauli was invited as Patron. When he entered the room, a chinese vase fell down, for no reason and without exterior influences. When he visited Princeton, a fire broke out in the cyclotron of the university, destroying it completely. The cause of the fire in this piece of lab-equipment remained unsolved.

This personal aura of his was widely known and feared amongst his collegues, especially experimental physicists. Otto Stern is said to have refused Pauli entry into his laboratory because he feared such an incident. Pauli himself took his "talent" seriously, but also humorously and often joked about it. He saw it as a case of synchronicity, i.e. a connection of results complementary to causality: two effects happen simultaneously, but not accidentally or as a result of causality, but because of contiguity, the spatial closeness of two objects (one of which could be Wolfgang Pauli, in this case). Synchronicity is thus referred to by Jung as Principle of non-causal relations.

Whether he was jinxed, sent out some kind of psycho-kinetic force, was a kind of quantum fluctuator (causing quantum particles to behave abnormally) or just was a victim of weird coincidences will never be known, but as the Pauli-effect is so well documented by his collegues and himself, it remains a mystery to ponder...

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