Quantum experiment: Scientists to find out if human consciousness is material or immaterial

New Delhi: Scientists will conduct an experiment to find out whether human consciousness is truly material or immaterial.

Lucien Hardy, a theoretical physicist from the Perimeter Institute in Canada, has deviced an experiment involving quantum entanglement that could finally prove whether our minds are controlled by something that may be potentially separate from the material world.

Quantum entanglement, referred to as a "spooky action at a distance" by Albert Einstein, remains to be one of the most intriguing and interesting phenomena in quantum physics.

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that involves two particles that are mysteriously and instantaneously linked. In other words, if two particles are entangled, then measuring the state of one particle seems to immediately influence the state of the other, even if they are light-years apart.

Decades of quantum experiments have verified that entanglement is a real phenomenon, but it remains 'spooky'.

In 1964, physicist John Bell devised a very famous test called the 'Bell test' to determine whether particles do, in fact, influence one another as for entanglement itself.

The Bell test involves creating a pair of entangled particles and sending one towards location A and the other to location B, reports New Scientist. And at each point, there is a device that measures, say, the spin of the particle.

The settings in the measuring devices are set at random, so that it's impossible for A to know the setting of B (and vice versa) at the time of measurement. The Bell test has supported the spooky theory in the past.

For the new experiment, Hardy has proposed a version of the Bell test involving 100 humans, each hooked up to EEG headsets that would read their brain activity.

These devices - EEG signals would be used to influence the particles at each location ( A and B, set at 100 kilometres apart).

"The radical possibility we wish to investigate is that, when humans are used to decide the settings (rather than various types of random number generators), we might then expect to see a violation of quantum theory in agreement with the relevant Bell inequality," Hardy wrote in a paper published online earlier this month.

Hardy asserts that if the correlation between the measurements don't match previous Bell tests that study entanglement, then it could be a violation of quantum theory, suggesting the entangled measurements A and B are being controlled by factors outside the realm of standard physics.

"[If] you only saw a violation of quantum theory when you had systems that might be regarded as conscious, humans or other animals, that would certainly be exciting. I can't imagine a more striking experimental result in physics than that," Hardy said.

"We'd want to debate as to what that meant."

“Even if physics controls the material world, if the human mind is not made of that same matter, we could overcome physics with free will, Dr Hardy told New Scientist.

"It wouldn't settle the question, but it would certainly have a strong bearing on the issue of free will," added Hardy.

While the finding could be controversial as it would question the existence of free will, this could potentially be the first time scientists gain a firm grasp on the problem of consciousness.