Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“woke” is the new caravan.

White supremacy is terrorism.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

In after Baud. Damn.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

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Reader Interactions

85Comments

  1. 1.

    TenguPhule

    Major respect goes to to the first reader who can clearly explain what this is all about.

    My whack on it is that they’ve found a way to convert supplied energy into a vibration motion with extreme efficiency at a very very small level.

  3. 3.

    Dave C

    Roger Penrose is wrong about his quantum theory of mind. Exactly why that’s the case, I’m not sure.

  7. 7.

    Nutella

    I think this sentence from the article sums it up pretty well: "However, despite intense research, no unambiguous example has been documented. "

  9. 9.

    Dave C

    It’s also worth mentioning that this was a PNAS direction submission, which I believe means that it hasn’t gone through the same level of rigorous peer review that standard submissions that journal have to go through.

  11. 11.

    TR

    It’s pretty simple.

    I had a small house of brokerage on Wall Street, many days no business come to my hut, but Jimmy has fear? A thousand times no. I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey strong bowels were girded with strength like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung. Glorious sunset of my heart was fading. Soon the super karate monkey death car would park in my space. But Jimmy has fancy plans … and pants to match. The monkey clown horrible karate round and yummy like cute small baby chick would beat the donkey.

  12. 12.

    themis

    I can’t read it – I’m not allowed.

    but as a first scifi/fantasy novel writer… nope, still can’t read. Damn.

  13. 13.

    Warren Terra

    Dave C, you have that precisely backwards. From PNAS’s Information for Authors

    The standard mode of transmitting manuscripts is for authors to submit them directly to PNAS. Authors must recommend three appropriate Editorial Board members, three NAS members who are expert in the paper’s scientific area, and five qualified referees. The Board may choose someone who is or is not on that list or may reject the paper without further review. A directory of PNAS member editors and their research interests is available at nrc88.nas.edu/pnas_search. The editor may obtain reviews of the paper from at least two qualified referees, each from a different institution and not from the authors’ institutions. For direct submission papers, the PNAS Office will invite the referees, secure the reviews, and forward them to the editor. The PNAS Office will also secure any revisions and subsequent reviews. The name of the editor, who may remain anonymous to the author until the paper is accepted, will be published in PNAS as editor of the article. Papers submitted directly are published as “Edited by” the responsible editor and have an additional identifying footnote.

    What you are thinking of is this:

    An Academy member may “communicate” for others up to two manuscripts per year that are within the member’s area of expertise.

    or maybe this

    An Academy member may submit up to four of his or her own manuscripts for publication per year.

    Both of those are entirely different things, with the peer review occurring entirely under the control of the communicating PNAS member, who can therefore basically shove any paper in that they want to (iirc, that last class used to be called "Track 2 manuscripts" when published by PNAS).
    .
    Whatever the merits of this paper (and it’s way outside of my areas of knowledge), it was sent to the editorial offices and assigned for peer review.

  16. 16.

    jwb2005

    I’m no expert in the area, but I’m pretty sure it has to do with identifying the strange frequencies at which magical Burkean bells chime.

  17. 17.

    JGabriel

    Tim F.:

    Major respect goes to to the first reader who can clearly explain what this is all about.

    I’m with Dave C on this being about Penrose, but I think Dave’s conclusion is wrong. Penrose has a theory that consiousness is a quantum level interaction, and that quantum uncertainty provides an explanation of consciousness that prevents our individual selves from being the mere sum of bodily chemical reactions.

    This paper appears to believe that the states of consciousness would be based on Frohlich condensates. It also postulates 3 forms of the condensates – weak, strong, and coherent – and purports to show that the coherent form would be a good model for consciousness, but that there might be some value in pursuing the weak form as mechanism for how consciousness works.

    That’s the best I can do. I’m not sure what, exactly, Frohlich condensates are. Sounds like the kind of thing that might turn up as a plot point in Lost, though.

    .

  19. 19.

    MikeJ

    I’ll take a crack at it: Bose-Einstein condensates are a form of matter where the atoms just ain’t moving. Really, really difficult to make, but they have some neat experimental properties.

    People had thought that Fröhlich condensation ( a related phenomenon) was just like BEC, but they appear to have some unique properties.

  21. 21.

    Dr. Rockso

    This is describing the ability of a molecule to absorb frequencies with differing results.

    1) Weak Frequency adsorption = Chemical change (ie enzyme activity increase)

    2) Strong Frequency adsorption = Thermal Change

    3) Coherent Frequency adsorption = Information storage through vibrational conservation

    Did i win?

  23. 23.

    Aqualad08

    Basically, if you step into the quantum leap accelerator, you’ll vanish. You’ll awake to find yourself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that are not your own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. Your only guide on this journey will be Howard Dean, an "observer" from your own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only you can see and hear. And so you’ll find yourself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that the next leap will be the leap into George W. Bush circa October 2000 so you can get drunk and kill a hooker on live TV and spare us all 8 years of pain…

  24. 24.

    JGabriel

    It also postulates 3 forms of the condensates – weak, strong, and coherent – and purports to show that the coherent form would be a good model for consciousness…

    OOPS. That should be "the coherent form would NOT be a good model…", but there might be some value in researching the weak form.

    .

  25. 25.

    Comrade Stuck

    @Aqualad08:

    Basically, if you step into the quantum leap accelerator, you’ll vanish.

    I think your talking about Peabody’s Quantum Way-Back Machine

  26. 26.

    Mazacote Yorquest

    Ben Stein found a typo in the fourth sentence, therefore the Bible explains consciousness and this is faulty.

  29. 29.

    NutellaonToast

    I’m a graduate student in Jeffery Reimer’s lab. I haven’t read this paper yet (he just sent it to me today and I had no idea he was working on it) but I’ll let you know a bit about it when I’m done.

    Honestly, it’s likely over my head, too.

  30. 30.

    Dr. Rockso

    Huh, talking about microtubules as a form of information transfer.

    Very interesting. I had always inherently assumed the coherent model would be the most viable. But that whole "biologically untenable" thing kinda rules it out.

    How can i get the whole article besides going to the library?

    Edit: Without paying the $10 access fee, obviously.

  31. 31.

    James Dix

    Considering the paucity of worthy comments, until someone who actually understands this actually tells us what’s going on, I thought I’d put in my two cents. Roger Penrose, a well-known and esteemed physicist, decided to tackle the issue of consciousness, something which has been theorized to have a connection with quantum theory. In quantum theory there is reason to believe that a conscious observation (not trying to be stupidly redundant here) somehow "decides" which of the possible quantum states a quantized object gets to be realized — by something called a collapse of a wave function. Such a collapse is irreversible and gives rise to a great deal of speculation about materiality, time, space and consciousness itself. In simple terms, the observation interferes with what is presumably actually taking place up to that moment, and making it seemingly impossible to comprehend what that inner reality is like.

    Googling Penrose and consciousness will retrieve 10s of thousands of references on the subject, and one finds the subject matter one having a lively and on-going debate. I’ve read his "The Emperor’s New Mind", but not his more recent "Shadows of the mind", in which he apparently discusses how it might be possible to describe consciousness using an interesting sub-field of quantum theory which permits a large ensemble of quantum-sized particles acting as if it is itself a quantum-size object. Apparently there are several kinds of quantum fields, as they are called, which are produceable, some more stable than others. My guess is that Penrose conjectured that a certain kind of field of this sort could have the desired characteristics he was looking for in consciousness. The experiments carried out by these researchers seemed to suggest Penrose’s conjecture wouldn’t work since the field wouldn’t satisfy the stability requirement. The researchers went on to suggest that a weaker field might be a better fit.

    James

  33. 33.

    NutellaonToast

    Oh my god. I’m retarded. That is a different J Reimer….

    Sigh, my labmates are laughing at me.

  34. 34.

    TheHatOnMyCat

    It’s an explanation of why Teri Schiavo was just one more fortune cookie away from being able to calculate the next prime number.

  36. 36.

    Prof. K&G

    OK, here goes:

    They’re investigating a special kind of behavior, Frolich oscillations, where you might be able to have quantum mechanical effects over large distances. It’s like Bose-Einstein condensation and superconductivity only in the sense that you get quantum weirdness manifesting in the collective behavior of a large chunk of matter.

    Bose-Einstein condensation and superconductivity, though, only happen at really cold temperatures (i.e. as you approach absolute 0). As things get warmer, quantum effects get destroyed. In real life, we never encounter things that cold (and thus never encounter these quantum mechanical behaviors). The interesting thing about Frölich oscillations is that they could possibly happen at finite temperatures – maybe even at room temperature.

    As others have said, Penrose’s "quantum consciousness" is the idea that consciousness arises out of some large, collective quantum mechanical behavior in the brain – specifically, one that happens on a macroscopic scale, at 98.6 degrees. So, people have speculated that maybe there’s a connection between Frolich Oscillations and quantum consciousness.

    This paper is an investigation into how Frolich oscillations might behave, since we’ve never seen them experimentally*. They conclude that there may some connection between the ideas of Frolich oscillations and consciousness, but it’s all pretty tenuous at this point.

    *The fact that we haven’t observed something like this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Bose-Einstein condensates were first observed only a few years ago, but their existence had been predicted almost a century ago.

  38. 38.

    Phoenician in a time of Romans

    "We think this thingy – a driven set of oscillators can condense with nearly all of the supplied energy activating the vibrational mode of lowest frequency. – can happen, and if it does it will look like this. One form of this thingy – coherent condensates – is really fascinating, but ain’t gonna happen outside the lab. If you’re relying on it in your theory of consciousness, you’re shit out of luck. We think, however, this other form might show up in people’s brains, possibly if we zap them hard enough."

  39. 39.

    NutellaonToast

    Actually, I think they’re theorizing that this ALREADY happens in our brains and is, in fact, how our brains work.

    They theorize that your brain is a quantum computer – I think. Still haven’t finished it yet…

  40. 40.

    Comrade Stuck

    a driven set of oscillators can condense with nearly all of the supplied energy activating the vibrational mode of lowest frequency.

    Electric Dildo

  43. 43.

    Ben

    Over my head. In order to salvage my ego I am going to assume we’re getting Sokal’d and leave it at that.

  47. 47.

    Jon H

    "Roger Penrose, a well-known and esteemed physicist, decided to tackle the issue of consciousness, something which has been theorized to have a connection with quantum theory. "

    Everything which isn’t understood has been theorized to have a connection with quantum theory by somebody.

    Sleestak crystals? They’re, you know, quantum.

  48. 48.

    NutellaonToast

    Quantum theory applies to everything. That’s like saying math applies to everything.

    It DOES!

  51. 51.

    jamie

    I’m almost positive this is a hoax paper written by the Postmodern Essay Generator. It just takes a big hopper of words from a bunch of critical theory papers, mixes in a bunch of interdisciplinary science papers, and uses the corpus to build a Markoff chain of words (a random walk of words where the plainly wrong steps, like putting two verbs together, have been filtered out)

  52. 52.

    jamie

    I should add, there was a huge controversy a few years ago where a bunch of physicists actually built an entire paper with the program, submitted it to a bunch of Postmodern journals, and it was accepted and published. This went to prove their basic point that postmodernism was a sham and most of the people that practice it just stick long words together without trying to make a point. Most of the literary theorists who were told this then went on to remark about how transgressive of the seer-seen relation and challenging to the intrinsic otherness of the automata it was.

  54. 54.

    Beej

    Well obviously it’s about the frafilap frimframming the grigormort which leads to the chimibratz mandilibbing the cranamatz. Any fool can see that.

  55. 55.

    John

    This is a form of matter. A Bose-Eisteinian condensate is a new state of matter, like solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. This is investigating another strange form, Froelich.

    Bose-Einsteinian condensates form at billionths of a degree Kelvin.

    This is from reading Discover magazine. But I’d need considerable brushing up ( like everyone but a few hundred physicists worldwide ) to really understand the information.

  58. 58.

    Jack Roy

    It’s about certain extrinsic properties of supermassive objects associated with higher than ordinary gravitational phenomena, such as black holes, or ya moms.

    Oooooh yes he did!

  59. 59.

    cgt

    Frolich’s original paper is listed as reference at the link below:
    abrupt.org/LOGOS/consc.html

    His work has been used mostly by others who want to find a quantum mechanical basis for consciousness using his idea of condensates of vibrational modes of dipolar molecules in biological systems. The idea is still kicking around, but the abstract of the article posted here appears to rule out the favored one of the 3 Frolich condensates mentioned.

  60. 60.

    geemoney

    Allright, here’s my stab at it, and it’s an honest one.

    These condensates are a different form of matter, separate from the four commonly known (gas, liquid, solid, and plasma). Even though one of those, plasma, is still only around in fairly exotic conditions, it is fairly well known and observable.

    These other states of matter are much less well known, and much more difficult to produce. The interesting thing about them is that they fall into a regime where, in terms of the size or number of constituents, we would tend to classify them as macro (ie. not quantum) behaving objects. The thing is, they don’t behave that way. In spite of having some of the characteristics which we tend to think of as "macro", they behave like "quantum", which is to say – weird.

    Thus, you can get these organizations of matter that, on their own, will vibrate at a single frequency, or spontaneously condense into a single quantum state.

    As a comparison, you can think of lasers. To get that nice little red beam to shoot out and bring down airplanes, you have to do work on the system for that light to be emitted. These condensates have those kind of weird characteristics, but do that stuff on their own.

    Then there is some gobledygook about how this may be observable or applicable to everyday things. I take this as the typical stuff that is included to try and get funding (they may be right, for what it’s worth, but it’s unlikely and probably not going to happen as a result of this particular research).

  63. 63.

    DBrown

    I understand quantum mechanics to a fair level and I can tell you that attempting to make sense of that article is like trying to get G. F. Will of the WP to understand climate science. The article is total nonsense. First, to compare a Bose-Einstein Condensate to a series of oscillators in the lowest ‘frequency’ is totally wrong (frequency!? Oscillator states are generally defined by energy level! That is sloppy and incorrect usage but besides the point.) However, the two systems are not in any way comparable. A Bose-Einstein condensate is when the quantum wave functions overlap forming a new, single super particle. Series of oscillators acting in a common fashion is not and never will be a single, quantum state. Also, what oscillator is this person referencing? Atoms, springs, or more likely, dildo’s?

    I fail to see what system the oscillators are based on but that is not critical. However, as for these effects being weak, that is an understatement (hence the real systems only occur very, very close to absolute zero) but to then claim that they occur at room temperature in biological systems is utter, complete bullshit unless, and until an experimental system is shown to exhibit such a state (fat fucking chance these morons have done this.) As far as I can make out from this mess of an abstract, they do not claim to have done any such thing; only that they think such examples exist in the systems they site which is just stating a conclusion without any real proof.

    This paper is complete fucking pile of shit on a George Will hand job of bushwhack. Any attempt to understand this crap is a complete waste of brainpower but a good idea for people who don’t understand science but like big words to sound smart … or at least my take on it without seeing the whole paper (which is more likely, just a bigger pile of shit.)

  65. 65.

    sal

    This paper was written by researchers at the Institute for Inter-Spatial studies looking into the mechanism whereby Jon Osterman was able to recreate a version of himself after accidentally being separated from his intrinsic fields in a freak lab accident.
    The full paper describes their experiments with Frohlich oscillations on test subjects, notably squids.
    It should be noted for anyone trying to reproduce their results that proper safety precautions need to be taken. These include the ability to override the locking mechanism on time-lock vaults, as well as wearing proper safety gear (e.g., custom fitted Reynolds Wrap headgear).

  66. 66.

    grendelkhan

    @Jon H: Well, yes. He is. The same people who would have, in the past, ascribed mysterious things to radiation, and before that, to electricity, now ascribe them to quantum events, because quantum events are profoundly weird.

    I faintly remember reading a summary of Penrose’s assertions about quantum mechanics and consciousness; they seemed to consist of "quantum mechanics is mysterious", "consciousness is mysterious", and a great big "and then a miracle happened" handwave between.

    @DBrown: Write a letter to the editor. (Replace "bullshit" with "unsupportable claims" or whatnot, of course.) If the summary given in comment #36 (Frölich condensates are hypothesized to exhibit funky quantum behavior at middle-world temperatures and scales, and the paper’s authors are investigating the possibility that it runs the human brain) is accurate, then it is a heap of handwavery unworthy fo the topic.

    Damn it, people, until someone can explain to me how anyone would be able to tell if they were instantaneously vaporized and replaced by an exact duplicate of themselves which didn’t have "consciousness" but acted like it did, the concept doesn’t belong in the scientific literature. It’s a confusion of terms that belongs in a philosophy department, not a physics department.

  67. 67.

    Dr Dave

    As I just pointed out (in a different context) on a chemistry education listserv, it’s really easy for non-specialists outside the field to take on the mantle of Proxmire and cast aspersions on legitimate scientific research. Think about the scorn recently heaped on studies of bear DNA and volcano monitoring by certain anti-intellectual politicians.

    I’d bet that most of the commenters here wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a technically accurate description of the inner workings of the integrated circuit chips inside their computer (which relies on the properties of "holes" where electrons aren’t) and a complete b.s. description of same. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s junk, and PNAS is one of the most reputable peer-reviewed journals in the world.

    In the mid 1980s physicists "knew" that superconductivity could only happen at temperatures below 30 K until two physicists at IBM Zurich demonstrated superconductivity in a new class of materials at temperatures close to (and now above) 100 K. Good science has to balance respect for conventional wisdom with pushing the boundaries and questioning basic assumptions, and nature always has the final say. You’re all entitled to your opinions, but understand that not all opinions are equally valid–if you believe the Earth is flat I’m not going to hire you at NASA.

    @DBrown: If you really understand QM "at a fair level" you should know that energy and frequency of an oscillator are directly proportional with Planck’s constant as the proportionality constant–the two are interchangeable for most purposes.

  68. 68.

    Prof K&G

    DBrown, as we say in my department, "there’s nothing more dangerous than an undergraduate degree in physics." You’re a object example of this. This is a journal article, not a magazine article; don’t expect to be familiar with the jargon, even if you think you have a "fair understanding" of quantum mechanics. The article is written for other people in the condensed matter theory sub-field; I wouldn’t even expect, say, PhD astrophysicists to understand it well enough to criticize it. Especially not on the heuristic, fuzzy-logic level that you’re doing it.

    The theory behind Frolich oscillations is solid; but macroscopic quantum states are notoriously hard to measure. Bose-Einstein condensates weren’t observed until a few years ago; would you call Bose and Einstein "fucking morons" for predicting them 70 years ago, before there was any experimental evidence? Also, the authors agree with you that most realizations of a Frolich oscillation in a Biological system probably aren’t realistic.

    Sorry for the rant, but it bugs me when Random Internet Guy calls actual experts "fucking morons" because he doesn’t understand what they’re doing. This is the exact root of all the global warming denialism going around these days.

  69. 69.

    DBrown

    @Dr Dave: I do understand such a simple concept and you do not understand what I was saying about it. So I will repeat: quantum energy levels are not defined by frequency but energy (note: the correct formula is E= hv NOT v (freq.) You need to also read what you write – however, while it is true that both terms mean very much the same thing (in this usage) that is not the terminology that is ever used to define an atomic oscillator’s energy state. Relative to a Bose-Einstein state, it is totally wrong and shows the authors don’t know the first thing about that subject – end of that point.

    Relative to my exact education on the subject of quantum mechanics, I have pasted a number of graduate level quantum courses. This does not make me an expert in any sense but I can understand what this abstract was getting at and it is not only wrong but complete nonsense. Do not tell me what I need to understand until you can point out if what I said about the paper’s fundamental error is or is not correct.

  71. 71.

    Prof K&G

    @grendelkhan: Look, if you want to poke holes in the theory of Frolich Oscillations, be my guest. Here’s the paper. But, as I said before, it really irks me when random internet people say well-established science is a "heap of handwavery" because they don’t understand it.

    Remember, superconductivity is also theorized to happen at high temperatures; it’s not like these guys are out on some radical limb by investigating this theoretical system.

    I agre 100% agree with your characterization of Penrose’s ideas, though. His connections between the two concepts is "hey, both these quantum mechanics and consciousness are both spooky and scare me; they must be the same thing!"

  72. 72.

    DBrown

    @Prof K&G: Again, I have every right to point out a specific error whether I have an advanced degree or not. The author has made a serious mistake that shows they do not understand what they are saying and I await your proving what I said in my first post is incorrect – the part about B-E condensets not being measured using ‘freq.’ (besides my miss typing past for pass in my second post – I do not claim to be an not an expert on typing.) However, before you assume I only have an undergraduate degree in the field, ask first rather then sound off about what you do not know anything about.

  73. 73.

    Prof K&G

    Mr. Brown, you just called experts who published in one of the most highly regarded journals in the country "fucking morons." And because of some semantic argument over jargon. Your statement "ask first rather then sound off about what you have no clue too" is more than a little ironic, friend.

  74. 74.

    Hyperion

    Slightly OT: an interesting 39 part series on Cosmos, Consciousness, God called "Closer To Truth" is being broadcast on many PBS stations. Most choose the ever popular 3 am time slot (?) but here in Seattle the minor league franchise shows it on Tuesdays at 7pm. Penrose has weighed in. Lots of discussions of quantum effects, possible worlds, multiverses, time paradoxes.

    But ever after watching about a dozen episodes I still can’t explain the passage.

  75. 75.

    DBrown

    @Prof K&G: If you think SC is occuring at high temperature when we are still using LN2 for most of them and only a few reach the 150K range, your idea of warm makes the artic look hot. As for reading their paper to ‘poke holes’ in it, why? Their abstract is full of shit. I prefer to spend time reading science that has a little more proof behind it. As for meta-physical ideas like consciousness, please, grow up. That can not be addressed using any current physics that anyone would take serious except nutcases. To pull out of their ass that they have an example that connects consciousness to real biological systems using a system at currently works at 150K for SC and near ‘0’ K for B-E, get real.

  76. 76.

    Prof. K&G

    @DBrown: OK, now you’re just stringing me along, right? A) Did you read my comment where I said that connections of quantum mechanics to consciousness are bullshit? B) Did you read their abstract? It specifically says that they have concluded that Frolich oscillations "are inaccessible in a biological environment."

    But yeah, sure. I’m sure you know a lot more about physics than these guys. Despite the fact that you apparently can’t read. Bug off, troll. Anyway, I’m done here. This has been an interesting lesson in vs. behavioral explanations.

  77. 77.

    Mazacote Yorquest

    Some of this discussion reminds of an NPR segment I heard a few years ago, which profiled amateurs who were obsessed with proving the Theory of Relativity wrong. They weren’t academically trained, but they were convinced they knew exactly where Einstein’s math went astray, and seized upon any detail to dismiss the whole theory as "bunk" and, of course, be recognized as a great genius. They took the work of one of these guys to a physicist, and the guy just gently pointed out a basic mistake involving units. Would-be Einstein was crushed, but he still was convinced someday he would be vindicated.

  78. 78.

    NutellaonToast

    Brown, you’re a ‘tard. Scientists talk about energy as frequency ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Have you heard of NMR? We talk about our magnets in terms of megahertz which is a unit of…….. that’s right! FREQUENCY! Now I guess you’re going to tell me that NMR isn’t quantum. Maybe we just say it is because it’s weird!

    Seriously, just cause you’ve "passed some grad classes" doesn’t mean you know shit from shat. You imply you’ve only read THE ABSTRACT and you think you know what you’re talking about? I read the whole paper last night and, while I don’t claim to be able to understand it, it isn’t obviously bullshit.

    "the part about B-E condensets not being measured using ‘freq.’ "

    The authors DON’T talk about the frequency of BECs. They talk about the freq of the oscillations in FCs (which makes sense as they’re a condensed state of OSCILLATION), so, yea, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

    Now if you’ll excuse me gentlemen, I must DO SOME SCIENCE!

    Er, I mean, curse at my equipment.

  79. 79.

    comrade thalarctos

    OK, for starters, it’s an abstract of an article–so it will be dense, and leave a lot to the knowledge of the reader. As I’m unwilling to buy the article, I’m taking some things for granted here, and I’m doing a lot of simplification.

    To begin with, think of a molecule as a bunch of weights connected by springs (the usual freshman chem analogy). This will have characteristic vibrational frequencies, dependent on the mass of the weights (atoms) and the strength of the springs (bonds). Froelich’s theory, apparently, is that under the right circumstances, the energy added to such a system can all wind up in one particular mode (that is to say, one frequency), which would be a "Froelich condensate". This could have big implications, and thus is interesting (and draws the comparisons to lasing and BE condensates)–but no one has ever observed it.

    The authors appear to be trying to determine what a Froelich condensate would look like if it existed. In particular, they conclude that Froelich condensates will most likely not be the wild’n’crazy things some have predicted. They take the relevant theories, run the numbers, and come up with three classes of condensates. They conclude for a number of reasons that the class with the most outrageous consequences, quantum condensates, will not occur in a biological environment, thus making its application to Penrose’s ideas of quantum consciousness a bunch of rubbish. By contrast, they think that a different class of this phenomenon could occur and may have already been observed (microtubule resonance).

    To conclude, contra DBrown, it’s a bit abstruse, but not BS.

  80. 80.

    NutellaonToast

    OMG, I didn’t read dumbass-brown’s most recent shit pile! Yes, 150K is cold! You’re so obviously an expert! That’s how ALL physicists think! I mean, these are the guys whose experiments are often carried out at fractions of a single Kelvin! Obviously 150K, which is 3 orders of magnitude different from 100mK, is cold. GOD YOU’RE SO FUCKING SMART! Can I leave my lab and join your research group?

  81. 81.

    Prof. K&G

    @NutellaonToast: I’m trying to teach myself how to argue politely, even when I don’t have much respect for the person I’m arguing with. However:

    I’m Professor Kum’n’go, I and endorse NutellaonToast’s message.

  83. 83.

    LB

    I looked at the paper and while it’s not my field at all, it definitely looks legit. Also, Mark Ratner (the assigned editor) is not the kind of guy that would let some junk go through. My understanding is that Frohlich condensates is a hypothetical construct where all the energy supplied to the system is channeled to a single vibration (e.g. FTIR on steroids). They do modeling of possible energies and other parameters of the system and identify 3 possible types of these condensates. Then they consider Penrose’s proposal about quantum consciousness and find that their model doesn’t see formation of this kind of condensate in any biological-like conditions. "Because of the high input powers and system temperatures required, in general it will not be possible to generate coherent Frohlich condensates in biochemically powered systems…" They find some possible evidence for another type of condensates, the ones that don’t do a good job converting all energy into a single frequency vibration but rather convert some of it into a broad range of vibrational frequencies. They say terahertz radiation may do it.

  84. 84.

    grendelkhan

    Prof K&G: Look, if you want to poke holes in the theory of Frolich Oscillations, be my guest. Here’s the paper. But, as I said before, it really irks me when random internet people say well-established science is a "heap of handwavery" because they don’t understand it.

    Whoa, whoa. I don’t have the chops to understand high-level QM. I do have the chops to say that leaping from "this phenomenon allows QM effects at human-observable temperatures and scales" (something which I’m taking for granted) to "this phenomemon has something to do with consciousness" is unsupportable.

    … which is what you were agreeing with. Yeah. I just wanted to clear up that I’m not casting aspersions on their work in physics, because, as you pointed out, I haven’t done the necessary legwork.

  85. 85.

    Crusty Dem

    I’m an engineer and a neuroscientist and my first thought was that the abstract sounded like complete bullshit. So I downloaded the paper (anybody need it?), read it and some of the references, and realized I was probably wrong (and that I was, frankly, far, far too ignorant to know either way). It looked to me like they were just arguing against Penrose, although why that would be worthy of PNAS is completely beyond me.

    That said, add me to the chorus calling any connection between quantum mechanics and consciousness a joke. In my day, I’ve heard plenty of crazy talks, but the nuttiest was one by a physicist arguing that the brain is a giant optical computer with microtubules acting as internally reflective tubes, so maybe we all need to stay out of fields of which we’re blatantly ignorant…

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