Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Tue 26 Jun 2007 11:42 PM PDT
The Big Wow theory is the colloquial name for a paper by Italian astrophysicist Paola Zizzi entitled “Emergent Consciousness; From the Early Universe to Our Mind†gr-qc/0007006 which proposes the possibility that the early universe comprised a giant quantum computer with a complexity comparable to that of the human brain. Specifically; she states that the universe reached a level of quantum computational complexity, during the period of cosmic inflation, to undergo what Penrose and Hameroff have called Orchestrated Objective Reduction, or Orch-OR, allowing the emergence of consciousness. Zizzi’s paper builds on the work of Whitehead, Chalmers, and others, as well as Penrose and Hameroff, but it is fundamentally a theory of Loop quantum gravity which derives some of its power from the Holographic Principle. It suggests that the universe’s conscious moment, or ‘occasion of experience’ came at the end of the inflationary period in physical cosmology, and was the event that allowed the universe’s quantum state vector to reduce, thus selecting the conditions for our specific universe, out of a superposed multitude of possibilities.
The words 'Big Wow' refer to the idea put forth by the theory that it was possible for the early universe to become conscious, and accordingly it is Stuart Hameroff's term for the moment at which this happens. While considered a 'fringe science' theory by some, and not altogether rigorous as a complete theory of gravitation or of consciousness, it does show the feasibility of sophisticated computation and even the emergence of consciousness, in the early universe. Therefore; it has sparked the imagination of researchers studying consciousness and computation, especially quantum computers, and received some attention from the Physics community, as well. Although the 'Big Wow' theory is perhaps not so notable in its own right, Zizzi has developed its important concepts further in later papers, and it has been a catalytic idea for many other thinkers, especially those exploring the possibility of the quantum mechanical nature of consciousness (see Quantum mind). While not all researchers acknowledge the possibility that conscious phenomena could be rooted in Quantum Mechanics, this possibility has not been totally ruled out either, and many wonder if this branch of Science could explain how consciousness first arises.
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| Zizzi's Papers | The Big Wow Theory | Logical Truth | Entropy |
Additional External Links
Some readers may find these sources helpful, as they offer a variety of opinions about this theory, or related information.
On-going Discussion on The Big Wow Theory at: Telic Thoughts: Designer Centrism "The Big Wow"
And these are Some of Zizzi's later papers that explore this idea in greater depth.
- Spacetime at the Planck Scale: The Quantum Computer View which develops the idea of the universe as a quantum computer, and
- A Minimal Model for Quantum Gravity which develops the quantum gravity theory outlined in the Big Wow paper with greater rigor.
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