Hello, everybody.
It's great to be here. Thank you very much.
I'm going to talk about how quantum biology can save the world
and the threats to the world - in the immediate future,
not worrying about the Omega Point like Frank
but in the next 100 to 1,000 years -
overcrowding, hatred, wars, terrorism - all basically due to overpopulation -
disease, lack of food and energy, pollution and warming,
lack of purpose and meaning -
kind of an existential crisis: who are we and why are we here?
The world under threat appears to be divided into two realms
described by two different sets of physical laws.
The quantum - which is cut off a little bit, oh no, it's not -
which is immaterial, coexisting possibilities,
non-local, unified, connected,
has some ultimate truth - although we don't know what it is yet -
deeper levels of reality,
and in many senses: spirit-like.
The classical world,
the billiard-ball universe that we live in right now -
appear to, entirely, but not so -
is material, Newtonian, definite, macroscopic, local, predictable,
disconnected, postmodern, and somewhat boring, actually.
(Laughter)
Now, what is life?
If you approach life from classical physics,
you see that biology is a set of self-organizing functions.
There's no secret to life.
Brain activities are equivalent to computers.
Consciousness is epiphenomenal illusion with no causal power.
That's the party line in standard neuroscience and philosophy.
Accordingly, Thomas Huxley said years ago,
"We're merely conscious automata, helpless spectators," like Pac-Man.
That's the story we get
from classical physics' approach to the brain.
Now, applying quantum physics to biology,
first by Erwin Schrödinger, who came up with Schrödinger's equation,
Schrödinger's cat, Schrödinger's book "What Is Life?" -
where he suggested that quantum effects play key roles in living systems -
and Schrödinger's protein, which was proven in 2007,
showing that protein can be in quantum superposition
of two or more different states at the same time.
He suggested, and many of us have followed to suggest,
that quantum features, non-local entanglement,
superposition, unity,
quantum coherence, quantum information, a kind of quantum vitalism,
may play key roles in biological functions,
such as cell division, mitosis,
how the centrioles guide the chromosomes' separations,
which has to be perfect or else can lead to cancer.
Healing - maybe have some kind of non-local component.
And also, consciousness.
As Walters mentioned,
Roger Penrose and I have developed a theory of consciousness called Orch OR -
I don't have time to go into it now.
It basically proposes quantum computation
in brain neuron microtubules inside neurons.
So rather than neuron-to-neuron communication,
we're looking at a deeper level inside neurons
to give a global sense of consciousness through quantum mechanics,
which results in real-time causality
and free will.
We avoid the problem of epiphenomenal;
it gives consciousness real-time control
and a potential connection to fundamental space-time geometry,
quantum space-time geometry, through Roger's objective reduction.
This is consistent with Eastern spiritual traditions.
Although Roger doesn't like to talk about it,
I've taken the liberty of observing the implications of what he said
and what we've said for consciousness,
for Eastern philosophy and other spiritual traditions.
But the skeptics said, "Living systems are too warm, wet and noisy.
Quantum coherence is destroyed by decoherence."
Decoherence.
But in the last five years,
multiple lines of evidence starting with photosynthesis
have shown that quantum coherence occurs in warm biological systems, routinely.
The plants, the food we eat, all depend on quantum coherence.
Plants absorbing photons, converting to chemical energy,
utilizing quantum coherence.
Also, recently, honored Bandyopadhyay
at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Japan
has shown that there is megahertz coherence,
quantum conductance, and topological qubits
in microtubules at room temperature.
Very exciting work.
Quantum biology papers, conferences are popping up like flowers in the spring.
Sessions at the American Physical Society,
recently at Google - the Google Workshop on Quantum Biology, and elsewhere.
How is this going to save the world?
Let's go back to our threats to the world and consider the first one:
overcrowding, hatred, wars and terrorism.
That's a tough one. We'll save that for last.
We'll come back to that.
Okay, disease. Jeff mentioned a little bit about this.
But if life is a quantum system,
we can ask, "How is quantum coherence optimized in a healthy state?"
We have a different endpoint to shoot for.
We can consider disease as decoherence,
disease as a process that tends to destroy quantum coherence,
which is the optimal form of living systems.
Also, a real-time molecular code for memory, cognition, and consciousness
can be co-opted for therapy.
So, in the microtubules that I mentioned
there's an information code that tells motor proteins where to deliver proteins,
precursors for synapses, tile proteins.
And when this goes bad, we have Alzheimer's disease.
A molecule called CaMKII seems to take synaptic information
and deposit it in microtubules in a memory code.
I think this is going to be the equivalent in real-time coding of the DNA code
that was discovered by Watson and Crick.
When we can take advantage of it, we'll be able to treat diseases
by interfacing and connecting to the real-time molecular code
inside the cells.
Okay, the next question: how can quantum biology save the world?
Lack of food and energy.
Highly efficient quantum conductance converting sunlight to chemical energy
used in photosynthesis, which has been proven,
should be able to be emulated in substances
like graphenes and fullerenes
to revolutionize molecular agriculture and solar power.
Mohan Sarovar, UC Berkeley, is working in this direction;
he's one of the people working in photosynthesis.
Okay, pollution and warming.
The same answer:
extremely efficient, clean solar energy with quantum conductance
can potentially help us a lot in terms of pollution and warming.
OK, what about lack of purpose and meaning?
Who are we and why are we here?
Well, if quantum consciousness is correct,
for example, if Penrose's idea is correct,
we are literally ripples
in the fine structure of space-time geometry,
which can resonate -
levels of consciousness can resonate from the Planck scale,
the bottom level of the Universe, multiple hierarchical levels to the brain.
This is consistent with Eastern philosophy
and also indicates that afterlife, reincarnation, and out-of-body experiences
that we've heard about are plausible.
The quantum soul.
This may be scientifically feasible.
Here's a picture of an out-of-body experience.
I work in medicine, in anesthesiology; we hear stories about this all the time.
Statistical examinations of people having cardiac arrest
show it's a real effect,
and the near-death experience
is something that really needs to be studied.
Okay, let's go to the tough one: overcrowding, hatred, wars, and terrorism.
I would suggest these are caused largely by internal drives for conscious feelings:
sexual pleasure, fear, anger, salvation.
It's a bit simplified,
but what if conscious quantum coherence in the brain could be optimally tuned?
For example, by ultrasound at resonant frequencies
for brain microtubules.
What if, instead of needing to have aggression or sexual attitudes,
that somebody could have pleasure without going to all the trouble?
For example, a recent -
(Laughter) (Applause)
Thank you.
A recent approach is using transcranial ultrasound
which vibrates microtubules at resonant frequencies.
Jamie Tyler, Arizona State University, just got a big grant from the military
to study ultrasound brain machine interfaces for military applications
with the promise for many application in medicine and psychiatry.
We at the University of Arizona are applying this
to chronic pain and memory and some other problems.
I would mention that many of these issues -
the near-death and out-of-body experiences,
the backward time effects that can rescue consciousness from epiphenomenalism,
and transcranial therapies:
transcranial magnetic, transcranial electrical,
and transcranial ultrasound therapies -
will be discussed at this conference in Stockholm next May,
Toward a Science of Consciousness.
Roger Penrose and Deepak Chopra on the same program.
Another possibility for this last problem is:
What if consciousness could be uploaded
or quantum teleported even to artificial media,
made of graphene, fullerene, or microtubule arrays?
With near infinite possibilities
for enhanced, enlightened states of consciousness and pleasure.
This could be - and it would have to be to be able to work -
to be better than sex.
Now, is that possible?
Well, this kind of goes back to an idea of Descartes,
who said, "Perhaps, as far as we know, we are merely a brain in a vat,
fed information by an evil genius."
For example, this brain who thinks he or she is walking outside in the sun.
So maybe in the future we'll have some kind of graphene arrays
with some kind of conscious experience -
maybe something like this, maybe you can come up with own;
it's just a suggestion -
where perhaps, when our bodies give out,
we can upload or download our consciousness
to some alternative medium
and exist independently
or just do it for fun.
So, to conclude I want to say that I believe
that quantum biology is literally the secret of life,
and its understanding may save the world.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)