orchestrated objective reduction

12 articles
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SC ai consciousness

Can Machines Be Conscious? The Substrate Problem

The question of whether machines can be conscious is not a parlor trick for philosophers. It is the most consequential engineering question of the 21st century.

14 min · 6 researchers · 11 concepts
SC consciousness physics

Penrose, Gravity, and Consciousness: Why the Mind Is Not a Computer

Roger Penrose is one of the most decorated scientists alive. He shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for proving that black holes are a necessary consequence of general relativity.

15 min · 2 researchers · 9 concepts
SC consciousness

Brain Biophotons Detected: The Human Brain Emits Light

In May 2025, researchers at the University of Calgary published a landmark paper in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters reporting the first detection of biophotons emitted by the living human brain from outside the skull. Using ultra-sensitive single-photon detectors cooled to near...

17 min · 2 researchers · 24 concepts
SC consciousness

Consciousness Science at the Crossroads: From the Hard Problem to the Engineering Era

In 1994, David Chalmers stood before an audience at the first Tucson conference on consciousness and articulated what he called the "hard problem" — why does subjective experience exist at all? Why is there something it is like to see red, feel pain, taste coffee?

17 min · 10 researchers · 20 concepts
SC consciousness

Orchestrated Objective Reduction Gets Its Strongest Experimental Backing

For three decades, the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) theory of consciousness has occupied a peculiar position in science: simultaneously the most ambitious and most ridiculed theory in the field. Proposed by Nobel laureate physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff...

17 min · 2 researchers · 18 concepts
SC consciousness

Ten Mind-Blowing Brain Discoveries of 2025: A Synthesis

The year 2025 may be remembered as the year consciousness science crossed from philosophical speculation into engineering-grade empirical investigation. Inspired by Scientific American's tradition of year-end discovery roundups, this synthesis examines the ten most consequential brain and...

13 min · 2 researchers · 24 concepts
SC consciousness

Transcranial Focused Ultrasound: The New Scalpel for Consciousness Research

For decades, consciousness researchers faced an engineering bottleneck that no amount of theoretical brilliance could solve: they could not precisely stimulate deep brain structures without cutting open the skull. Surface-level tools like transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial...

18 min · 2 researchers · 18 concepts
SC consciousness

Consciousness and Physics: Nassim Haramein's Framework for Understanding Awareness as Fundamental

The greatest unsolved problem in science is not the unification of forces, the nature of dark matter, or the origin of the universe. It is consciousness.

11 min · 6 researchers · 11 concepts
SC consciousness

Quantum Effects in DNA and Consciousness: The Deepest Layer

We have traced quantum biology from photosynthesis to bird navigation, from enzyme tunneling to the theory of smell. Each of these discoveries is remarkable on its own.

13 min · 2 researchers · 6 concepts
SC consciousness

Quantum Consciousness Heart Fields Vagal Tone

Welcome to the Deep Dive, the place where we don't just scratch the surface, we take your sources, we go deep, and we give you that essential shortcut to being, well, profoundly well-informed. And today, wow, we are plunging right into the biggest question of them all.

33 min · 2 researchers · 29 concepts
SC consciousness

Water and the Human Body: The Liquid Architecture of Consciousness

The most radical truth about your body is also the most obvious one: you are mostly water. Approximately 60-70% of your body weight is water.

15 min · 1 researchers · 19 concepts
SC electromagnetic theories consciousness

McFadden's CEMI Field Theory: Consciousness IS the Brain's Electromagnetic Field

In 2002, Johnjoe McFadden — a Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, a specialist in quantum biology and tuberculosis, and decidedly not a New Age mystic — published a paper in the Journal of Consciousness Studies that proposed one of the most radical and testable theories...

13 min · 3 researchers · 11 concepts