The human brain, consisting of three pounds of neural tissue, seems far from quantum mechanics, since quantum effects are most noticeable at microscopic levels. However, new experiments promise to overcome this gap and offer answers to the secret of consciousness.
Quantum mechanics explains many phenomena that cannot be understood based on everyday experience. For example, in a well-known Schrödinger’s mental experiment, the cat is simultaneously in a state of living and dead. In real life, the cat is either alive or dead, but the equations of quantum mechanics claim that the world consists of many such coexisting states.
In 1989, the cosmologist Roger Penrose proposed a radical idea that the conscious moment occurs when the quantum state is collapsed. This hypothesis aroused great interest, as it connected two fundamental scientific secrets – the origin of consciousness and collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics.
According to Penrose, this process occurs in microtubules – elongated structural proteins that form the cytoskels of cells of the central nervous system. However, the scientific community did not support this idea, since the brain, being warm and wet, does not contribute to the formation of superpositions compared to quantum computers operating at ultra-low temperatures.
Another problem of Penrose theory is associated with confusing cubes. When measuring one of the confusing cubes, the condition of the other is instantly determined, regardless of the distance between them. However, according to standard quantum mechanics, this cannot be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light. Nevertheless, according to Penrose theory, confusing cubes can share conscious experience.