Ivar Giaever, the only Norwegian-born Nobel Prize winner in Physics, was awarded the prize for measuring the energy gap of superconductors using tunnel junctions*. In an interesting twist, attention is now attracted to another, recently published paper, in which the energy gap was measured in a very unusual superconductor, which seems to be an integral part of the brain and responsible for quantum processing of information.
In this paper, to extract information from a quantum object (brain slice) by a classical measurement system, a mediator was used that behaves quantum-mechanically at room temperature (graphene). The critical temperature of the superconductor, estimated from the measurements, is about 2000 K, which can provide reliable quantum processing at modest stabilization of temperature in the system.
The superconductivity is claimed to be of quasi one-dimensional origin and to reside in microtubules of the neurons. Microtubules are microscopic hollow tubes, about 24 nanometers thick, made of the proteins alpha and beta tubulin that are part of a cell’s cytoskeleton, a network of protein filaments that extends throughout the cell, gives the cell shape, and keeps its organelles in place.
The estimated value of critical temperature is close to that predicted in a model proposed by Little in the 1960s for quasi one-dimensional organic chains linked to certain molecular complexes (2200 K). As is suggested in the present paper, superconductivity in microtubules, which are quasi one-dimensional objects and present not only in the brain, but in every cell of the body, could form the physical basis of consciousness.
As can be expected with such a bold claim, the paper has spurred quite some attention: It was published on December 18, 2018. According to twitter Attention Score statistics by Altmetric (springeropen.altmetric.com), within a day it reached the highest score among the papers in the Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism, in which it was published, and is currently in the 99th percentile of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
As of 2nd January 2018, it has 408 downloads from the journal.
*tunnel junction: a barrier, such as a thin insulating layer or electric potential, between two electrically conducting materials. Electrons pass through the barrier by the process of quantum tunneling.
The paper, written by Associate Professor in Condensed Matter Physics Pavlo Mikheenko, may be downloaded here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10948-018-4965-4