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The Star Larvae Hypothesis
Nature's Plan for Humankind
Part 2. Star Larvae

Quantum Gravity and the Ontology of Consciousness

Science continues to map correlations between neurochemical and mental events. But subjectivity per se seems to reside at another interface—between quantum and gravitational events.

Consciousness remains a scientific mystery. Normal science has no coherent causal theory to account for the existence of subjectivity. Insofar as science attempts to say something coherent about it, it proposes that conscious experience somehow emerges from neurological systems when those systems cross a threshold of complexity. But such an assertion essentially concedes that consciousness is a miracle—it just happens. It should be no surprise then that a scientific fringe is turning from cell biology and neurochemistry to quantum physics in an attempt to better understand the essence of consciousness.

The world of the quantum as revealed by contemporary physics is a place where the unexpected eclipses normal expectations. Quantum mechanics poses a challenge to the philosophy of science, because it seems to allow metaphysical phenomena, such as human intent, to influence the outcome of physical experiments. The new physics seems to imply that mind has a role to play in translating possible or potential events into actual events.The route to this understanding follows a counterintuitive ontological path.

In the world of everyday objects, things populate a physical space. The objects that populate space have dimensions that can be measured. An object actually exists physically if it has height, length, and depth. It actually is if it has weight and age—or frequency and wavelength. If its dimensions are quantifiable, then it physically is.

But outside the physical dimensions of space and time, in what might be called eternity, forms are metaphysical. They have no dimensions. No height. No weight. No age. Nonetheless, they can express themselves in space and time—they can influence the processes that shape matter and energy. This is Platonic metaphysics.

Platonic forms, or potentials, include the laws of mathematics, which govern quantitative relationships. The laws of trigonometry, for example, define quantitative relationships among the sides and angles of triangles, and the relationships operate independently of any particular triangle or set of triangles that one could draw or otherwise pinpoint in the physical world. Metaphysical potentials also include qualitative forms, such as the concepts of "redness" and "opposite," which exist independently of any particular red object or pair of opposites. Such a qualitative potential is called a quale. Investigators have begun to account for the emergence of actual existence from the Platonic dimension of potential existence by watching it happen—that is, by the scientific study of the processes of quantum mechanics.

Science understands the universe to be one of potential. The universe harbors the potential to manifest the physical dimensions of space and time. According to the physicists, these two dimensions are inextricable. Neither has any existence independently of the other. This understanding has inspired physicists to integrate the two dimensions into the more fundamental concept of "spacetime," a term meant to capture the indivisibility of nature’s spatial and temporal dimensions.

Nature has the capacity to wring matter and energy from spacetime apparently spontaneously. Nature accomplishes this feat through its capacity to fluctuate at the quantum level, as in the proposed phenomenon of Hawking radiation. The quantum understanding of physical reality undercuts the "billiard ball" model of particles derived from the mechanics of Isaac Newton. The model of atoms as solid particles bouncing off each other in the void has its utility, up to a point. It is subordinate beyond that point to a model based on the science of what goes on inside the billiard balls. And that science, quantum mechanics, describes subatomic particles in ways that reveal them to be very unbilliard-ball-like.

In the quantum world of subatomic physics a thing can be here now and there then without ever passing through the intervening space. Quantum mechanics describes, for example, the "tunneling" of particles through spacetime—their ability to leap over thermodynamic barriers and land upstream relative to the flow of entropy, without ever existing in the intervening space. This spontaneous quantum jumping occurs, for example, in certain nucleosynthetic reactions inside stars.

A thing's location in the quantum world isn't specified until the thing, or quantum, interacts with its environment in a way that pins it down. Before that, it's smeared out, occupying an indeterminate spacetime location, or what is called a superposition. The indeterminacy is constrained by a summing of the thing's several potential positions in spacetime. Each location it might have carries a certain probability of the thing being found there. But where it is determined to be—where it appears as a measurable event in the determinate universe—depends on its context, the interactions that is has with its environment. Spacetime quanta are in this sense "organisms," as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead used the term. Their state at any given time is dependent on their relationships with their environment, on their subjective prehensions of everything that is not them, including other organisms and metaphysical forms.

But the process by which environmental influences reduce the indeterminate quantum state of potential to an actual event, the so-called collapse of the state vector, is a mysterious one. Its outcome is noncomputable. It cannot be predicted with certainty, but only in terms of probabilities. So the question arises as to how nature translates its potentials—the set of possible events—into that subset of events that actually occurs. How does the range of possibilities become translated (or transduced or instantiated) by influential interactions into the more limited set of measurable phenomena that occurs in the physical world?

In at least some instances, the answer might involve that other modern revolution in physics, relativity theory. Einstein’s breakthrough contributes its own brand of weirdness to the undermining of the billiard-ball model. The faster a thing moves, in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the heavier it gets and the slower it ages; achieving the speed of light, an object has infinite mass and experiences no duration of time whatsoever (which is why it never happens—the only things that travel that fast are photons, "objects" that have no mass). In one model of Einstein’s theory, the masses of objects distort spacetime, the magnitude of the distortion being a measure of an object's mass, which determines its gravity. In this way of visualizing the theory, the gravity of a black hole is so concentrated that it punctures spacetime, opening a door to somewhere outside of spacetime.

As profoundly as quantum mechanics and relativity theory have expanded our understanding of the natural world, these twin triumphs of twentieth-century science have yet to be stitched together into a comprehensive theory.

Theoretical physicists cannot yet articulate a complete theory of quantum gravity, sometimes called a GUT, or "Grand Unified Theory." Such a theory would reconcile nature's quantum and gravitational characters. The pursuit has taken a strange turn lately, as the eminent British mathematician Roger Penrose has proposed a model of conscious experience that accounts for the existence of subjectivity in terms of quantum-gravitational events. And the mechanism he proposes might be as applicable to the inner workings of stars as it is to the inner workings of brains.

In contrast to those who advocate "emergent" models of consciousness, Penrose proposes that consciousness is a fundamental constituent of the physical world. He contributes to the theorizing about consciousness by locating subjectivity at the interface of quantum and gravitational physics. Like the philosopher Whitehead, Penrose rejects the idea that consciousness per se is reducible to deterministic events of biochemistry.

In Penrose's physics of subjectivity, consciousness emerges from the complexity of brain activity only in the same sense at that in which water emerges from the complexity of a well-digger's activity. Water doesn't manifest spontaneously from rock because of well diggers. The diggers tap the water and figure out how to bring it to the surface. Biological evolution has figured out how to tap consciousness and bring it to the surface.

The so-called Penrose-Hameroff model of consciousness, developed by Penrose in collaboration with University of Arizona anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, grew out of Penrose's foray into the artificial intelligence (AI) debate. Proponents of "strong AI" propose that an arrangement of computer circuits sufficiently complex would acquire consciousness for the same reason that the complex circuitry of the human brain acquires consciousness. The strong AI argument regards consciousness as an emergent property of complex, high-speed computation.

Penrose dismisses in principle the argument that consciousness is reducible to computation, no matter how fast or complex. His argument hinges on the ability of human minds to discern the truth or falsity of certain mathematical propositions that cannot be proven true or false within the formal rules of mathematics. Presumably, a programmed computer, its program moving in lockstep with formalized rules of logic and mathematics, could not calculate, or apperceive, the truth or falsity of these types of mathematical statements. Their verification is noncomputable. Therefore, if brains are complex computers, which is the model that currently dominates cognitive science, then mind must be more than brain. Or at least, mind must be more than the purely chemical activity of the brain, which constitutes the signal-processing circuitry that underlies the brain-as-computer model. Penrose concludes that quantum events, with their indeterminate character, rather than potentially computable chemical events, are the more likely source of consciousness per se.

The Penrose-Hameroff model of consciousness, abbreviated OrchOR for Orchestrated Objective Reduction, is predicated on the existence of indeterminate quantum states in the brain that endure through long periods of time (relative to typical quantum phenomena) and spread through large volumes of space before they collapse into—are reduced to—specific, determinate, states. This peculiarity, the large, sustained "coherence" of the indeterminate quantum state, which in the Penrose-Hameroff model generates consciousness, is made possible, according to the model, by special conditions inside cellular structures called microtubules. Biological cells apply these structures to a variety of tasks. Unicellular organisms use microtubules to form their flagella and cilia, the whip- and hairlike structures that allow the organisms to move about. Microtubules also play a key role in cell division. In brain cells, or neurons, however, microtubules perform neither of these functions, freeing them for other uses.

Penrose and Hameroff argue that these tubular structures insulate their hollow interiors from outside influences, such as heat, adequately enough to allow highly sensitive states of quantum indeterminacy to grow within them until they self-collapse under the influence of their own gravity. This process, which Penrose and Hameroff call "objective reduction," is distinct from the reduction of quantum indeterminate states that occurs under the influence of environmental factors.

Gravitational self-collapse of a quantum indeterminacy that spans neurons—the decohering of a coherent quantum state that is common to a group of neurons—produces a determinate physical event which is a particular neural state. The collapse itself corresponds to a particular instance of subjectivity. In other words, in this model consciousness is quantized. It occurs as a sequence of discrete events in rapid succession. Instances of subjectivity can, in this model, vary by magnitude in proportion to the size of the superpositions to whose collapses they correspond.

This is a rough summary of the model proposed by Penrose and Hameroff. Their model is controversial and by no means universally accepted. Nonetheless, it is a promising candidate for a description of the interface between the physical and mental worlds. The model implies a scale of consciousness, from rudimentary forms of sensation that define the worlds of the simplest organisms to the apprehensions of the sublime of which human minds are capable, the qualitative and quantitative differences between the extremes of mind being attributable to differences in the numbers of microtubules available to participate in the process of objective reduction. In the Penrose-Hameroff model, the magnitude of potential consciousness is proportional to brain size.

In the model, the particles that are given determinate existence by the collapse of the state vector are electrons associated with the molecular constituents of microtubules. But if particles more massive than electrons could be held in superposition long enough to undergo objective reduction, then the corresponding conscious experience would be proportionately further up along the scale of magnitude. Implicit also in the Penrose-Hameroff model is the possibility of structures other than biological cells managing the process of objective reduction.

Applied to the quantum tunneling of protons inside stars, the Penrose-Hameroff model provides a theoretical foundation for a theory of stellar consciousness. Considering the mass of a proton relative to that of an electron, a difference of more than 1000 to 1, and the number of protons that could participate in objective reduction inside stars, a (highly speculative) foundation exists to suggest not only that stars might be conscious, but that they are superconscious. If it exists, stellar consciousness might be a candidate for the sentience that conventionally has been ascribed to the various grades of angels and other astral entities of religious tradition.

There are many theoretical roadblocks to be overcome in developing a theory of stellar consciousness based on the Penrose-Hameroff model. One of them has to do with the need to control the conditions of the space in which the quantum superposition is maintained during the objective-reduction process. The superposed quantum state must be insulated from outside influences long enough for it to attain its objective-reduction threshold. The process requires an active mechanism to pump entropy away from the site of the growing quantum superposition. In the brain, biological metabolism provides the infrastructure for such a mechanism, as proposed by Penrose and Hameroff. Recently, an active pumping mechanism has been identified in stars, or at least mechanisms have been proposed to explain what seems to be an active transport of energy from inside a star to its surface. In "The Paradox of the Sun’s Hot Corona" (Scientific American, June, 2001) authors Bhola Dwivedi and Kenneth J. H. Phillips describe research into the possible mechanisms behind an observed reversal of the sun’s heat gradient at the chromosphere. Moving outward from the chromosphere to the corona, increasingly far from the core, temperatures steadily rise, a paradox that suggests that the sun's metabolism actively pumps heat from its inner to its outer layers. Uncovering the responsible mechanisms would be a small step toward proving the existence of objective-reduction processes inside stars. But the paradox at least establishes that stellar metabolisms can support active pumping of energy from one place to another—that heat in stars is not transmitted only by the passive modes of conduction, convection, and radiation, as previously had been believed, but also by active transport. As the authors conclude, "Even as one mystery begins to yield to our concerted efforts, others appear. The sun and other stars, with their complex layering, magnetic fields, and effervescent dynamism, still manage to defy our understanding."

Because the quantum processes identified in the OrchOR model would proceed more readily in a cold environment, it is tempting to speculate that stars, like a refrigerators, are heat pumps that cool their interiors. One physical mechanism that could account for cold stellar cores is called the Ranque effect, in which a rotating gas heats up at its periphery but cools down in its interior, at the axis of rotation. Researcher Renzo Boscoli describes this effect and applies it to stellar metabolism. It's a highly speculative application of the Ranque effect, but intriguing for its relevance to the prospect of stellar consciousness. Says Boscoli, ". . . due to a constant Ranque effect I see no reason why the centre [of a star] would not continue to cool towards absolute zero."

Like the Hawking process, the Penrose-Hameroff objective reduction process describes an interaction between quantum mechanics and gravity. The star larvae hypothesis leverages the Penrose-Hameroff model not only to suggest that stars might be conscious, but also to lay the theoretical foundation for a proposed industry of proton manufacturing. Objective reduction has the potential to use the Hawking process to manufacture protons by exploiting the quantum peculiarity sometimes called called the observer effect. The effect has to do with the ability of human observers to influence the outcome of the quantum reduction process.

An indeterminate quantum state potentially can collapse into an empirically determinate event by one of two means, either by the proposed objective reduction process of the Penrose-Hameroff model or because of external, environmental influences. A peculiarity of research in quantum physics is the discovery that human subjectivity seems capable of acting as such an environmental influence. It appears that, by selecting a particular mode or frequency of observation, a human mind can influence the result of the collapse of the quantum state vector.

In one example, physicist Wayne Itano and colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology placed a system of atoms in an irradiated environment that normally would have, after a given period of time, caused some of the atoms to move into an "excited" state by way of a quantum-mechanical process. However, by observing the system with sufficient frequency, they prevented any of the atoms from moving into the excited state. For any given observation, the probability was overwhelming that no atoms would have changed state, and by making observations frequently enough, the occurrence of at least some atoms transitioning was postponed potentially indefinitely. Each observation effectively set the clock back to zero. In "The Dreaming Universe", Physicist Fred Alan Wolf summarizes the implications of this and similar experiments: "Intent, through our powers of observation, actually modifies and alters the course of the physical world and causes things to occur that would not normally occur." This implies that conscious intent has some power to skew quantum events in desired directions. The observer effect seems to be the result of the focused concentration, or intent, or selective decision making of mind. And by such means, indeterminate, probabilistic, noncomputable quantum events, potentially including those involved in the production of Hawking radiation, can in theory be influenced toward desired outcomes, such as, in the case of Hawking radiation, the production of protons preferentially to other types of particles.

Late in his career the physicist Erwin Schroedinger turned his attention to issues of biology. In a small but influential book entitled "What is life?" he took a step toward a humanistic appropriation of the miraculous when he reasoned as follows:

"Let us see whether we cannot draw the correct non-contradictory conclusion from the following two premises:
(i) My body functions as a pure mechanism according to the Laws of Nature.
(ii) Yet I know, by incontrovertible direct experience, that I am directing my motions [. . .]
The only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I—I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt "I"—am the person, if any, that controls the 'motion of the atoms' according to the Laws of Nature."

So what developments await brains and minds in space that will enable them to direct the outcomes of quantum processes en masse toward preferred ends—according to the Laws of Nature?

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