When people talk about consciousness, or the mind, it’s always a little vague. Whether we create consciousness as a function of neurons firing in our brains, or whether consciousness exists independently of us, there is no universally accepted scientific explanation for where it comes from or where it resides. . However, new research on the physics, anatomy, and geometry of consciousness has begun to reveal its possible nature.
In other words, we may soon be able to identify the true architecture of consciousness.
The new work is by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose, Ph.D. and is based on a theory first presented in the 1990s by anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, MD: Orchestrated Objective Reduction Theory (ork or). Broadly speaking, it has been claimed that consciousness is a quantum process facilitated by microtubules in nerve cells of the brain.
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Know Your Terms: Microtubules
These are tubes made of protein lattices, and they form part of the cell’s cytoskeleton, its structural network.
Penrose and Hameroff suggested that consciousness is a quantum wave that travels through these microtubules. And that, like every quantum wave, it has properties such as superposition (the ability to be in multiple places at the same time) and entanglement (the ability for two very distant particles to join).
Many experts have questioned the validity of the arch OR theory. This is the story of scientists engaged in reviving it.
across the Universe
Hameroff recently appeared on a TV program to explain quantum consciousness. closer to the truth It should be scale invariant like a fractal. A fractal is a never-ending pattern that can be very small or very large, and still maintain the same properties at any scale. Ordinary states of consciousness may be those that we consider absolutely normal – for example, knowing that you exist. But when you have heightened states of consciousness, it’s because you’re dealing with quantum-level consciousness that is able to be in all places at the same time, he explains. This means that your consciousness could connect to quantum particles outside your brain or theoretically anywhere in the universe.
An illustration of the network of nerve axons in the brain that transmit electrical action potentials. ,getty images,
Other scientists had an easier way to discard this theory. Attempts to recreate quantum coherence – keeping quantum particles as part of a wave rather than breaking them up into separate and measurable particles – only worked in very cold, controlled environments. Take quantum particles out of that environment and the wave breaks up, leaving behind isolated particles. The brain is not cool and controlled; It’s quite hot, wet and mushy. Therefore, it was thought that consciousness could not exist in superposition in the brain. The particles of the brain could not connect with the universe.
But then there were discoveries in quantum biology. Turns out, living things use quantum properties, even if they aren’t cooled and controlled.
Know Your Terms: Quantum Biology
It is the study of quantum processes such as superposition and quantum entanglement in living organisms, which actually facilitate biological processes beyond the sub-atomic level.
Photosynthesis, for example, allows a plant to store energy from photons, or quantum particles of light. Light striking the plant causes the creation of something called excitons, which carry energy to be stored in the plant’s reaction center. But to reach the reaction center, it must navigate structures in the plant – like navigating an unfamiliar neighborhood on the way to a dentist appointment. Ultimately, the exciton must arrive before it burns up all the energy it carries. To find the right path before the particle runs out of energy, scientists now say the exciton uses the quantum property of superposition to try all possible paths simultaneously.
Exercise your brain 🧠
New evidence suggests that microtubules in our brains may be even better at protecting this quantum coherence than chlorophyll. One of the scientists most recently working with the Orch OR team is physicist and oncology professor Jack Tuszynski, Ph.D. did an experiment With a computational model of a microtubule. His team simulated shining light into a microtube, much like a photon sending an exciton through the plant structure. They were testing whether energy transfer from light could remain consistent across the microtubule structure as it does in plant cells. The idea was that if the light lasted long enough before being emitted – a fraction of a second was enough – then it indicated quantum coherence.
Specifically, Tuszynski’s team simulated the transmission of tryptophan fluorescence, or ultraviolet light photons, which are not visible to the human eye, into microtubules. In a recent interview, Tuszynski reports that, in 22 independent experiments, stimulation with tryptophan created quantum responses that lasted up to five nanoseconds. This is thousands of times longer than would be expected for coherence in a microtubule. This is long enough to perform essential biological functions. “So we’re really confident that this process goes on longer in tubulin than in chlorophyll,” he says. The team published its findings in the journal ACS Central Science earlier this year.
Simply put, the brain is not hot or wet enough for consciousness to exist as a wave that connects to the universe.
Tuszynski notes that his team is not the only team to send light into microtubules. A team of professors at the University of Central Florida is illuminating microtubules with visible light. In those experiments, they observed re-emission of this light over periods ranging from hundreds of milliseconds to seconds, Tuszynski says. “This is the normal human response time to any type of stimulus, visual or audible,” he explains. Shining light into microtubules and measuring how long it takes for the microtubules to emit that light is “a proxy for the stability of certain quantum states,” he says, “which is key to the theory that these microtubules are coherent. There may be quantum superpositions that may be associated with the mind or consciousness. Simply put, the brain is not hot or wet enough for consciousness to exist as a wave that connects to the universe.
Although this is a long way from proving the theory or research, this is important and promising data. Penrose and Hameroff have continued to push the boundaries, partnering with people like spiritual leader Deepak Chopra to explore manifestations of consciousness in the universe that they might be able to detect in the laboratory in their microtubule experiments. This kind of thing makes many scientists very uncomfortable.
Still, there are researchers who are exploring what the architecture of such a universal consciousness might look like. One of these ideas comes from the study of weather.
Architecture of Universal Consciousness
Timothy Palmer, Ph.D., is a mathematical physicist at Oxford who specializes in chaos and climate. (He is also a big fan of Roger Penrose.) Palmer believes that the laws of physics must be fundamentally geometric. His invariant set theory is an explanation of how the quantum world works. Among other things, it suggests that quantum consciousness is the result of a universe operating in a special fractal geometry “state space”.
That’s a mouthful, but it roughly means that we are stuck in a lane or passage of cosmic fractal shapes that is shared by other realities that are also stuck in their trajectories. This notion appears in the final chapter of Palmer’s book, The primacy of doubt, how the science of uncertainty can help understand our chaotic world, In it, he suggests the possibility that our experience of free will – having the option to choose our lives as well as our perception that there is a consciousness outside of us – is the result of an awareness of other universes that exist within our state space. Let’s share. The idea starts with a special geometry called a strange attractor.
You may have heard of the butterfly effect, the idea that the flapping of a butterfly’s wing in one part of the world can affect a hurricane in another part of the world. The term actually refers to a more complex concept developed by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz in 1963. Lorenz was trying to simplify the equations used to predict how a particular climate condition might develop. He narrowed it down to three differential equations that can be used to identify the “state space” of a particular weather system. For example, if you have a particular temperature, wind direction, and humidity level, what happens next? He began planning the trajectories of weather systems by combining various initial conditions into equations.
They found that if the initial conditions were different by even one hundredth of a percent, if the humidity were just a fraction higher, or the temperature was a hair lower, the trajectory – what happens next – could vary wildly. In the graph, one trajectory may move in one direction, creating loops and spins that appear to be at random, while another in the opposite direction creates a completely different shape. But once Lorenz started plotting them, he found that many trajectories ended up rotating within the boundaries of a particular geometric shape, known as a strange attractor. It was as if they were cars running on a track: the cars could go in any direction, as long as they didn’t drive it the same way twice and stay on the track. The track was a butterfly-shaped Lorenz attraction.
Artifact of the Lorenz attractor, named after Edward Lorenz, who developed a system of ordinary differential equations. Specifically, the Lorenz attractor is a set of chaotic solutions of the Lorenz system, which when plotted resemble a butterfly or figure eight. Subtle differences in the initial values of variables will lead to vastly different results. For this phenomenon of sensitivity to initial conditions, he coined the term butterfly effect. This effect is the underlying mechanism of deterministic chaos.
getty images
Palmer believes that our universe may be just a trajectory, a car, on a cosmological state space, like a Lorenz attractor. when we imagine “what if …?” In the scenarios, we are actually receiving information about versions of ourselves in other universes who are also navigating the same strange attraction—other people’s “cars” on the track. It also accounts for our consciousness, free will, and sense of being connected to a larger universe.
“I would at least speculate that it might be the case that this state is evolving on a very special fractal subset of all conceivable states in the field,” explains Palmer. popular mechanics, He says, “If their ideas are right, then we need to look at the structure of the universe at its largest scales, because these attractors are really telling us about a kind of overall geometry for the universe.”
Tudzinski’s experiment and Palmer’s theory still don’t tell us what consciousness is. IsBut maybe they tell us where consciousness is lives– What type of structure is it located in? This means that it is not just a supernatural, disjointed concept. If consciousness is located somewhere, even if it is a complex state space, we can find it. And this is a start.
Contributor
Susan Lahey is a journalist and author whose work has been published in many places in the US and Europe. He has covered ocean wave energy and digital transformation; sustainable construction and disaster recovery; health care in Burkina Faso and antibody design in Austin; The spirit of AI and the inspiration of a Tewa sculptor working in Hogan near the foothills of the Taos Mountains. She lives in Porto, Portugal overlooking the sea.
