{"id":243478,"date":"2026-09-01T13:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T18:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/penroses-theory-of-consciousness-supported-by-new-quantum-evidence"},"modified":"2026-09-01T13:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T18:04:09","slug":"penroses-theory-of-consciousness-supported-by-new-quantum-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/penroses-theory-of-consciousness-supported-by-new-quantum-evidence","title":{"rendered":"Penrose\u2019s theory of consciousness supported by new quantum evidence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/penroses-theory-of-consciousness-supported-by-new-quantum-evidence.webp\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Roger Penrose argued that human thought does things no computer can, so the mind must make use of non-computable quantum mechanics. The idea remains fringe. Most scientists think that in warm, wet environments like the brain, quantum states collapse into classical states far faster than neurons fire, and so cognition must be governed by classical physics. But neuroscientist Mike Wiest argues that new evidence challenges this assumption: stable quantum states are now being observed at far higher temperatures than previously thought possible. And consciousness, he suggests, has structural features that make quantum mechanics a natural place to look for an explanation, so critics should stop accusing Penrose of simply piling one mystery on top of another. The time has come to give this neglected proposal another look. I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roger Penrose argued that human thought does things no computer can, so the mind must make use of non-computable quantum mechanics. The idea remains fringe. Most scientists think that in warm, wet environments like the brain, quantum states collapse into classical states far faster than neurons fire, and so cognition must be governed by classical [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,47,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-neuroscience","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}