Scientists Believe They’ve Unlocked Consciousness—and It Connects to the Entire Universe
It’s just a simple quantum wave that can interact with everything that’s ever existed.
Susan Lahey
When people discuss consciousness or the mind, the context often feels unclear. Whether consciousness arises in our brains as a result of neuron firing or exists independently, there’s no universally accepted scientific explanation for its origin or location. However, recent research on the physics, anatomy, and geometry of this enigmatic concept is beginning to shed light on its potential form. In essence, we may soon be able to identify a true architecture of consciousness.
This new work builds upon a theory proposed by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose, PhD, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, MD, in the 1990s. This theory, known as the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory, or Orch OR, suggests that consciousness is a quantum process facilitated by microtubules within the brain’s nerve cells.
Let’s familiarize ourselves with the concept of microtubules. These are protein lattices that form part of the cell’s cytoskeleton, its structural network.
Penrose and Hameroff proposed that consciousness is a quantum wave that traverses these microtubules. Just as every quantum wave possesses properties such as superposition (the ability to exist in multiple states simultaneously) and entanglement (the potential for two particles separated by vast distances to become interconnected), consciousness exhibits these characteristics as well.
Despite numerous experts questioning the validity of the Orch OR theory, a group of scientists is dedicated to reviving and advancing this groundbreaking idea.
To explain quantum consciousness, Hameroff recently stated that it lacks a defined physical size. He drew a parallel to a fractal, a never-ending pattern that can be incredibly small or vast while retaining its properties at any scale. While ordinary states of consciousness, such as awareness of our existence, may seem commonplace, Hameroff explains that heightened states of consciousness arise from quantum-level consciousness capable of being present in multiple locations simultaneously. This means our consciousness can connect or entangle with quantum particles outside our brains, theoretically anywhere in the universe.
Until recently, scientists could easily dismiss this theory. Attempts to recreate quantum coherence, maintaining quantum particles as part of a wave instead of breaking them down into discrete and measurable particles, were only successful in extremely cold and controlled environments. However, when these particles were removed from these environments, the wave collapsed, leaving behind isolated particles. Since the brain is warm, wet, and mushy, it was believed that consciousness couldn’t remain in superposition within it, and therefore particles within the brain couldn’t connect with the universe.
However, recent discoveries in quantum biology have challenged this notion. Living organisms, despite not being cold and controlled, utilize quantum properties.
KNOW YOUR TERMS: QUANTUM BIOLOGY
Quantum biology is the study of quantum processes within living organisms, such as superposition and quantum entanglement, that actually facilitate biological processes beyond the subatomic level.
In photosynthesis, for example, plants use chlorophyll to capture the energy from a photon, or a quantum particle of light. When light hits the plant, it forms an exciton, which carries the energy to the plant’s reaction centre. However, the exciton must navigate the plant’s structures, similar to navigating an unfamiliar neighbourhood en route to a dentist appointment, before it burns all the energy it carries. Scientists now believe that the exciton simultaneously explores all possible paths, a phenomenon known as superposition, to find the optimal path.
New evidence suggests that microtubules within our brains may be even more adept at maintaining this quantum coherence than chlorophyll. Physicist and oncology professor Jack Tuszynski, PhD, who collaborated with the Orch OR team, recently conducted an experiment using a computational model of a microtubule. His team simulated shining light into a microtubule, similar to how a photon might send an exciton through a plant structure. If the light persisted for a fraction of a second, it indicated quantum coherence.
Specifically, Tuszynski’s team simulated sending tryptophan fluorescence, or ultraviolet light photons that are invisible to the human eye, into microtubules. After conducting 22 experiments, they observed that the excitations from tryptophan created quantum reactions that lasted up to five nanoseconds. This is significantly longer than what had been anticipated for coherence in a microtubule, spanning thousands of times. Moreover, it provides sufficient time to perform the biological functions required. Tuszynski expressed confidence in this process, stating, “We are actually quite certain that this process lasts longer in tubulin than in chlorophyll.” The team’s findings were published in the journal ACS Central Science earlier this year.
Tuszynski draws inspiration from similar experiments conducted by scientists at the University of Central Florida. These researchers successfully illuminated microtubules with visible light. In these experiments, researchers observed the re-emission of this light over hundreds of milliseconds to seconds, which aligns with the typical human response time to a stimulus. By shining light into microtubules and measuring the time it takes for them to emit the light, Tuszynski suggests that this process serves as a proxy for the stability of certain postulated quantum states. This, in turn, supports the theory that these microtubules may possess coherent quantum superpositions, potentially associated with mind or consciousness. In essence, Tuszynski proposes that the brain’s temperature and wetness may not be the primary factors preventing consciousness from manifesting as a wave connecting with the universe.
While these experiments are far from conclusively proving the Orch OR theory, they do provide significant and promising data. In parallel, Penrose and Hameroff continue to push the boundaries of the theory, collaborating with individuals like renowned author and influencer Deepak Chopra to explore expressions of consciousness in the universe that they believe they can identify in the lab using their microtubule experiments. This approach often makes many scientists uneasy.
Nevertheless, other researchers are exploring the potential architecture of such a universal consciousness. One particularly compelling idea emerges from the study of weather patterns.
The Architecture of Universal Consciousness
Timothy Palmer, a PhD in mathematical physics specializing in chaos theory and climate, and a fan of Roger Penrose, presents a compelling perspective. Palmer posits that the fundamental laws of physics must be inherently geometric. He employs Invariant Set Theory to elucidate the workings of the quantum world, suggesting that quantum consciousness arises from the universe operating in a specific fractal geometry “state space.” State space essentially represents the diverse configurations within any system.
This concept implies that we are trapped in a specific path or trajectory within a cosmic fractal shape shared by other realities that are also stuck in their own patterns. This idea is explored in the final chapter of Palmer’s book, The Primacy of Doubt: How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World. In it, Palmer suggests that our experience of free will—the ability to make choices and the perception of an external consciousness—may be a result of our awareness of other universes that share our state space.
The idea begins with a unique type of geometry called a strange attractor. You may have heard of the butterfly effect, the concept that the flapping of a butterfly’s wing in one part of the world could cause a hurricane in another. The term actually refers to a more complex concept developed by the mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz in 1963. Lorenz was attempting to simplify the equations used to predict how a specific climate condition would evolve. He narrowed down the equations to three differential equations that could be used to identify the “state space” of a particular weather system. For instance, if you had a particular temperature, wind direction, and humidity level, what would happen next? Lorenz began plotting the trajectory of weather systems by plugging in different initial conditions into the equations.
The Lorenz attractor, a set of chaotic solutions to the Lorenz system, resembles a butterfly or figure eight when plotted. Often referred to as the butterfly effect, it serves as a visual representation of chaos.
Lorenz discovered that even slight variations in initial conditions, such as humidity, temperature, or a mere hundredth of a percent, could lead to vastly different trajectories. In a graph, one trajectory might spiral in one direction, forming loops and spins seemingly at random, while another creates entirely different shapes in the opposite direction. However, as Lorenz plotted these trajectories, he noticed that many of them circulated within the boundaries of a specific geometric shape known as a strange attractor. It was as if these trajectories were cars on a track, capable of going in any direction as long as they didn’t repeat the same path and stayed on the track. The resulting plot, now called the Lorenz attractor, actually resembles a pair of butterfly wings.
Palmer suggests that our universe might be akin to a single trajectory, a car, on a cosmological state space similar to the Lorenz attractor. When we contemplate “what if” scenarios, we are essentially gaining insights into versions of ourselves in other universes who are also navigating the same strange attractor—essentially, others’ “cars” on the track. This idea also explains our sense of consciousness, free will, and our connection to a larger universe.
Palmer proposes that our universe might be evolving on specialized fractal subsets of all conceivable states within the state space. If his ideas are correct, he emphasizes the need to examine the structure of the universe on its largest scales, as these attractors reveal a holistic geometry for the universe.
While Tuszynski’s experiment and Palmer’s theory still don’t provide a definitive explanation for consciousness, they offer a potential clue about its location—the kind of structure that houses it. This suggests that consciousness is not an ethereal, disembodied concept but rather a tangible entity. If consciousness exists somewhere, even if that somewhere is a complex state space, we can potentially find it. This is a significant step forward in understanding the nature of consciousness, a structure houses it. That means it’s not just an ethereal, disembodied concept. If consciousness is housed somewhere, even if that somewhere is a complicated state space, we can find it. And that’s a start.
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