this is news that I certainly didn't see coming do you remember Roger Pen's idea that the human brain uses Quantum effects in microtubers and that those are the origin of Consciousness yeah that sounds pretty crazy but well it seems that he was right at least about the microtubes what the heck are microtubes microtubes are big molecules basically there are essential parts of all cells in the human body and play a big role for Signal transport in the human brain they're polymers that combine two tubes and are made of smaller components called tubulin so the tubes
are made of tubules that are made of tubulin it's tubes all the way down people Roger penos now has this idea that Consciousness can't be explained by a computable process so there needs to be an uncomputable element in what the brain does and that he says can only be the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics the collapse is when a Quantum distribution of possibilities collapses to one actuality his hypothesis is that this happens in the human brain and that's what creates conscious thought why the collapse of the wave function because we know that
all the rest is computable so that's the only place you can hide something non-computable the problem with with this idea as many physicists have pointed out is that the human brain is a warm and noisy place and those are generally not very welcoming to quantum physics there the reason that current day quantum computers are suspended from three levels of shock absorbers and cool to a few millikelvin it's not just because it looks impressive though there that it's because otherwise the quantum effects just go away too quickly to do any Computing with them for Pen's idea
to make any sense you'd have to have Quantum effects survive in the human brain at least until the neuron has managed to Fire and the human brain is ridiculously slow in its firing even the most basic estimates say that it wouldn't work out Penrose originally didn't say anything about specifically how these Quantum effect should come about in the human brain but he later teamed up with steuart hammer a neurobiologist who had this idea that it would be the microtubes the microtubes hammer off convinced pen can basically synchronize due to Quantum effects and that helps the
quantum effect survive for long enough to play a role in conscious thought that still doesn't explain what any of this has to do with Consciousness but at least that would make it plausible that the collapse of the wave function plays any role in the human brain I've heard more than one person say what a Pity that Panos fell for this crazy Hammer off person but well I've met both Penrose and Hammer off and they're both crazy of course but neither of them is stupid so what are we to make of this microt tual business now
comes this new paper from a group that doesn't seem to have anything to do with either penos or Hammer off and they say that they've clear evidence that these microtubers actually do display real Quantum effects more specifically it's a process called super Radiance it basically requires the molecules to have Quantum links to each other to achieve a larger emission of light they first built a computer model for how the tubulin molecules combined to microtubes and how they would absorb light then they also tested this in the laboratory and they found good agreement both theoretically and
experimentally they say that yes these tubes can display Quantum effects they didn't actually test it in a Cell just in a solution but it's at room temperature and they say the super radiant effect basically doesn't care about the environmental noise this is very interesting just because it's an example for Quantum enhanced effect that seems to be unexpectedly robust bust I'd be surprised if not the quantum Computing people would try to use it another interesting part of the paper is that they say that the quantum effects in these microt tubos can do something else which is
that they become much more efficient at absorbing ultraviolet light and redistributing it to lower energies that is they basically protect cells from the potential harm of ultraviolet light in the press release the researchers say if these quantum effects fail that might play a role for degenerative brain diseases I'm somewhat skeptical about this but then this isn't my research area what does any of this have to do with Consciousness nothing really they last time I looked we did need brain cells for Consciousness there seems to be a big logical gap between there are quantum effects in
human brains and Quantum effects create consciousness they come to think of it maybe the time has come for a Quantum Consciousness startup I recently read a paper saying that large language models are currently totally dominated by English language text it bothers me because I believe that speaking in a different language with different words and different grammar does give you a somewhat different view of the world I've recently been brushing up my French with bab and no Babble is one of the most widely used language learning apps in the world and that's for a good reason
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