A few years ago, in the depths of the Apennine Mountains in Italy, a team of physicists looked for flashes of light that might suggest that human consciousness is the product of gravitational forces.
The fact that they came out empty-handed does not mean that we are all flesh-and-blood computers without free will; However, finding a suitable model that explains consciousness is much more of a challenge.
If the idea of not having free will is uncomfortable, you are not alone. In the 1990s, Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose and an anesthesiologist named Stuart Hameroff argued that the quantum properties of cellular structures called microtubules could introduce enough room for movement for the brain to free itself from the constraints of “a entrance, an exit “from classical mechanics.
Although its hypothesis, called the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR), lies outside the realm of physics and biology, it is nevertheless comprehensive enough to provide researchers with predictions that can be scientifically investigated.
“What I liked about this theory was that it can be verified in principle, and I decided to look for evidence that could help confirm or falsify it,” says physicist Catalina Curceanu of the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati in Italy.
The concept of Penrose and Hameroff can be verified, but it is still based on a mountain of assumptions about the functioning of physics and neurology at a fundamental level.
Fundamental to quantum mechanics is the notion that all particles exist as a range of possibilities unless they are somehow quantified by a measure.
What exactly this means is unclear, which leads some to interpret the difference as a “collapse” of the wavy fog of perhaps into a concrete concrete of harsh reality.
Equally seductive is the question of why a swarm of possible values should be settled in any measure.
An idea advocated by Penrose and his colleague Lajos Diósi in the late 20th century suggested that the curvature of space-time might favor some possibilities over others.
In other words, mass and its gravitational pull could somehow crush quantum waves.
Applying this hypothesis to competitive quantum states of cellular material, that is, the tubulin that stirred chemicals inside neurons, Penrose and Hameroff calculated how long it would take for quantum effects to translate into mechanisms. which would affect consciousness.
While its model is far from explaining why you made a conscious choice to read this article, it does show how neurochemistry can deviate from classical computational operations to something less restrictive.
The idea of the gravitational collapse of Penrose and Diósi has been tested before, no more and no less than Diósi himself. His experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory examined the simplest collapse scenarios, finding no indication that the hypothesis was accurate.
In light of these findings, the team is now wondering how their previous results might affect Penrose and Hameroff’s Orch OR hypothesis.
His critical analysis of the model suggests that at least one interpretation of the hypothesis can now be ruled out. Given what we know about quantum physics, the distribution of tubulin within our neurons, and the limitations imposed by Diosi’s previous experiments, gravity is very unlikely to pull the strings of consciousness.
At least not in a concrete way.
“This is the first experimental investigation of the quantum collapse pillar related to the gravity of the Orch OR consciousness model, which we hope will be followed by many others,” says Curceanu.
It is difficult to say exactly what it would mean if any research found evidence for Orch OR. Non-computational descriptions of consciousness are not only difficult to study; they are difficult to define. Even the indisputable programs that echo human thought challenge our efforts to detect examples of sensitivity, self-awareness, and free will.
However, the idea that biological systems are too chaotic for delicate quantum behaviors to emerge has been weakened in light of the evidence that entanglement plays a role in functions such as bird navigation.
Maybe just a flash of inspiration is all we need to get on the path to understanding the physics of our very soul.
This research was published in Physics of Life Reviews.