Can consciousness be quantum? We may now have an answer

Check your subscription status, update your details and more. The controversial idea that consciousness has a quantum origin is facing a new challenge, after a mathematical analysis appears to show that a long-known law of physics makes it impossible. What physical process makes us conscious, and whether we could observe and analyse it, is one of the great open questions of modern science. In the 1990s, mathematician Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff proposed that classical physics can't explain consciousness alone and so it must arise in the quantum realm. The idea was received with scepticism and remains controversial, but attempts to bring quantumness into explanations of consciousness have persisted since.