Indy100 Staff
Feb 27, 2023
KatarzynaBialasiewicz / iStock
Science may have bestowed us with gifts of medicines, air travel and the internet - but it is also the bearer of bad news.
One scientist thinks we should accept that there is no afterlife and move on with our lives on this earthly plane.
Sean Carroll, a cosmologist and physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, said according to the Express:
"The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood."
Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter
Dr Carroll explained that for there to be an afterlife, consciousness would need to be entirely separated from our physical body.
But instead of an ever-lasting soul, consciousness appears to essentially composed of a series of atoms and electrons.
Dr Carroll added:
Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle. The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood. And there's no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die.
It is not like scientists haven't tested for an afterlife either:
Dr Carroll points to The Quantum Field Theory (QFT).
Simply put, QFT dictates that there is one field in the universe for each type of particle - one for all the photons, another for electrons, and every other type of particle.
If there was some sort of afterlife, quantum tests would reveal 'spirit particles' and 'spirit forces'. Spoiler: they have not.
Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
Top 100
The Conversation (0)