• Ground-breaking theory holds that quantum substances form the soul
  
• They are part of the fundamental structure of the universe
  

A near-death experience happens when quantum substances which form the soul leave the nervous system and enter the universe at large, according to a remarkable theory proposed by two eminent scientists.

According to this idea, consciousness is a program for a quantum computer in the brain which can persist in the universe even after death, explaining the perceptions of those who have near-death experiences.

Dr Stuart Hameroff, Professor Emeritus at the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology and the Director of the Centre of Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, has advanced the quasi-religious theory.

It is based on a quantum theory of consciousness he and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose have developed which holds that the essence of our soul is contained inside structures called microtubules within brain cells.

They have argued that our experience of consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in these microtubules, a theory which they dubbed orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR).

Thus it is held that our souls are more than the interaction of neurons in the brain. They are in fact constructed from the very fabric of the universe - and may have existed since the beginning of time.

Read more: http://www.dailymail...l#ixzz2AmujKgfZ

To go into this a little more fully :-

Penrose and Hameroff have argued that consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in microtubules, which they dubbed Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction). Max Tegmark, in a paper in Physical Review E,^[18] calculated that the time scale of neuron firing and excitations in microtubules is slower than the decoherence time by a factor of at least 10,000,000,000. The reception of the paper is summed up by this statement in Tegmark's support: "Physicists outside the fray, such as IBM's John A. Smolin, say the calculations confirm what they had suspected all along. 'We're not working with a brain that's near absolute zero. It's reasonably unlikely that the brain evolved quantum behavior'".^[19] Tegmark's paper has been widely cited by critics of the Penrose–Hameroff position.

In their reply to Tegmark's paper, also published in Physical Review E, the physicists Scott Hagan, Jack Tuszynski and Hameroff^[20][21] claimed that Tegmark did not address the Orch-OR model, but instead a model of his own construction. This involved superpositions of quanta separated by 24 nm rather than the much smaller separations stipulated for Orch-OR. As a result, Hameroff's group claimed a decoherence time seven orders of magnitude greater than Tegmark's, but still well short of the 25 ms required if the quantum processing in the theory was to be linked to the 40 Hz gamma synchrony, as Orch-OR suggested. To bridge this gap, the group made a series of proposals. It was supposed that the interiors of neurons could alternate between liquid and gel states. In the gel state, it was further hypothesized that the water electrical dipoles are oriented in the same direction, along the outer edge of the microtubule tubulin subunits. Hameroff et al. proposed that this ordered water could screen any quantum coherence within the tubulin of the microtubules from the environment of the rest of the brain. Each tubulin also has a tail extending out from the microtubules, which is negatively charged, and therefore attracts positively charged ions. It is suggested that this could provide further screening. Further to this, there was a suggestion that the microtubules could be pumped into a coherent state by biochemical energy.

Finally, it is suggested that the configuration of the microtubule lattice might be suitable for quantum error correction, a means of holding together quantum coherence in the face of environmental interaction. In the last decade, some researchers who are sympathetic to Penrose's ideas have proposed an alternative scheme for quantum processing in microtubules based on the interaction of tubulin tails with microtubule-associated proteins, motor proteins and presynaptic scaffold proteins. These proposed alternative processes have the advantage of taking place within Tegmark's time to decoherence.

And so it all depends upon which theorist is closer to one's already-educated thoughts on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose

You people have entirely too much time on your hands.

I'll have a read after my coffee I think.

You know you have a near-death experience when time is going really, really slow

In the "afterlife", what happens when the soul of a modern person meets the soul of some caveman who died 20,000 years ago?

Are they - these "quantum computers in the brain" somehow equal out in the universe?

Does everything we learn and experience here just disappear?

Will our souls recognize loved family members?

Will they be able to even find them in the expanses of the universe?

Will they even care about anything that happened or anyone we knew/loved/hated during our lifetime on Earth?

Or will all souls meld into one overall being that absorbs and correlates all the knowledge of all the individual souls, thus becoming omipotent.

(Or was this being already existing and already omnipotent?)

Or will all souls meld into one overall being that absorbs and correlates all the knowledge of all the individual souls, thus becoming omipotent.

What happens when these individual souls can't agree on which knowledge is correct?

Or will all souls meld into one overall being that absorbs and correlates all the knowledge of all the individual souls, thus becoming omipotent.

What happens when these individual souls can't agree on which knowledge is correct?

I'm getting a headache.

In the "afterlife", what happens when the soul of a modern person meets the soul of some caveman who died 20,000 years ago?

Are they - these "quantum computers in the brain" somehow equal out in the universe?

Does everything we learn and experience here just disappear?

Will our souls recognize loved family members?

Will they be able to even find them in the expanses of the universe?

Will they even care about anything that happened or anyone we knew/loved/hated during our lifetime on Earth?

It's human to speculate.... but sometimes it's better to admit you don't know.

In the "afterlife", what happens when the soul of a modern person meets the soul of some caveman who died 20,000 years ago?

Are they - these "quantum computers in the brain" somehow equal out in the universe?

Does everything we learn and experience here just disappear?

Will our souls recognize loved family members?

Will they be able to even find them in the expanses of the universe?

Will they even care about anything that happened or anyone we knew/loved/hated during our lifetime on Earth?

It's human to speculate.... but sometimes it's better to admit you don't know.

Where's the fun in that?