Thread by @newscientist

During his long career @UniofOxford mathematician Roger Penrose has collaborated with Stephen Hawking to uncover the secrets of the big bang, developed a quantum theory of consciousness with @StuartHameroff and won the Nobel prize in physics

For Roger Penrose, the idea of consciousness is "much more outrageous than 'it’s quantum mechanics in the brain'. It’s where our current theories of quantum mechanics go wrong," he says.

"It’s to do with a theory that we don’t know yet."
newscientist.com/article/mg2563…

Penrose is currently working on a paper about “Conformal cyclic cosmology” (CCC) - the view that the big bang was not actually the origin of our universe, but the continuation of the remote future of a previous aeon.

"The reluctance to consider a new idea in the face of strong evidence is one reason why I think people worry about science."

The controversial idea in collaboration with @StuartHameroff that consciousness involves quantum effects has evolved into the idea of ‘orchestrated objective reduction’.
newscientist.com/article/228822…

"We got together and did things - though we didn’t quite know what we were doing."

“Consciousness is beyond what current science can discern. It’s not that consciousness depends on quantum mechanics, it’s that it depends on where our current theories of quantum mechanics go wrong.”

Having spent decades thinking about the structure of the universe and consciousness, Penrose is still no closer to understanding whether there is inherent meaning in the universe.

"I think the presence of consciousness, if I can put it like that, is not an accident.”

Could fundamentals of physics look different from one aeon to the next?

“I’m not all that optimistic we’re going to go on for a huge length of time – in fact, I think we’re pretty lucky to be around now,” says Roger Penrose “But maybe other civilisations will be more sensible and settle down.”

"Physics is far from finished"

Watch @DrMichaelBrooks's full conversation with Sir Roger Penrose as part of New Scientists' #consciousness week!