Optical Tachyons and Consciousness

Posted 8 Apr 2004 at 16:44 UTC by steve

Long time readers of robots.net will remember that we occasionally cover odd theories about consciousness, what causes it, and how we can create it in robots. The strangest theory I've read in a while has turned up in a recently released paper by Danko Dimchev Georgiev, a Bulgarian doctor. The paper is titled, "Bose-Einstein condensation of tunnelling photons in the brain cortex as a mechanism of conscious action" (PDF format). If you don't feel up to the math involved, even the abstract gives a you an idea of the buzzword density of the theory. While his description of tunnelling photons as "optical tachyons" is a bit weird, his conclusion that "consciousness is a complex quantum wave operating in Hilber space outside the 4D Minkowski space-time continuum" isn't too far off from Roger Penrose's claims of consciousness being a quantum effect.

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I always thought it was a...., posted 9 Apr 2004 at 13:32 UTC by earlwb » (Master)

I always thought it was a virus or bacteria or parasite that gave us intelligence or consciousness. One of these days we'll develop a vaccine for it and we will all turn back into big chimpanzees.