BOT or NOT? This special series explores the evolving relationship between humans and machines, examining the ways that robots, artificial intelligence and automation are impacting our work and lives.

A decades-old and controversial theory suggesting that quantum effects in the brain could explain consciousness may hold more weight than scientists gave it credit for. The nature of consciousness has ...

One of the most important open questions in science is how our consciousness is established. In the 1990s, long before winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his prediction of black holes, ...

Quantum consciousness explores the potential connection between quantum mechanics and consciousness, questioning whether quantum mechanics is responsible for free will. Sir Roger Penrose examines ...

If physics explains all the phenomena in the universe, and if consciousness is part of the universe, then is seems that physics can explain consciousness. Other non-dualists don’t outright deny that ...

During the 20th century, researchers pushed the frontiers of science further than ever before with great strides made in two very distinct fields. While physicists discovered the strange ...

“This retroactive idea. It has to be that,” says Nobel Prize-winning mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, reflecting on a problem about the building blocks of reality that has dogged physics for ...

Death is often seen as the end—an absolute, irreversible cessation of consciousness and physical function. For centuries, every culture has developed rituals, religions, and philosophies to grapple ...

EARLY in his career, the University of Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose inspired the artist M. C. Escher to create Ascending and Descending, the visual illusion of a loop of staircase that seems to ...