How to sum up the spirit of Braemar?

By Roger Highfield, Director of Science at the Science Museum

How to sum up the spirit of the Braemar summit? It could be its stunning Highland location in the Cairngorms National Park, the lavish hospitality of the Fife Arms, bracing dips in local rivers, or the recitals of Ian Bostridge.

But for me, it could be most vividly felt in my conversation with Nobelist and Science Museum Fellow Sir Roger Penrose, which took us from the biggest question of all, the origin and fate of the universe, through to the inner worlds of consciousness, linking many of the themes flowing through our meeting.

In the intimate setting of the village hall, generously supported by the University of Aberdeen, we heard a remarkable range of delegates-cum-speakers, from former prime minister David Cameron (who discussed dementia), historian Sir Antony Beevor, filmmaker Anthony Geffen, former Secretary General of NATO Lord Robertson and geostrategist  Viktorija Starych-Samuolienė to the head of the new high risk research agency ARIA, Matt Clifford, sustainable nutritionist Jennie Macdiarmid, digital transformation consultant Dara Latinwo and Jeremy Hunt MP, all brilliantly MCed by Sarah Smith, the BBC’s North America Editor.

To address the future focus of Braemar, Sir Roger and I started by discussing the ultimate fate of the universe, which he believes is boring if you accept the conventional view of cosmologists  -  their prediction of our universe at the end of time is dull, he says, even though it will be dominated by photons (particles of light): Sir Roger’s radical alternative, known as “conformal cyclic cosmology,” sets out the idea of a daisy chain of universes, where the cosmos cycles from one aeon to the next.

These cosmic cycles would intersect with other thinking at Braemar. Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, famous for discovering pulsars (which she initially called LGM, ‘little green men’), argued for more diversity in science to help make new discoveries, backing her conviction by donating a £2.3 million prize to do just that, in a discussion with the Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees.

Lord Rees called cosmology 'the grandest environmental science,' and talked about his new book, If Science is to Save Us. He argues that space exploration should be the province not of space tourists but space adventurers because of the risks of human spaceflight. And, indeed, a vision of a future where many more of us will reach low earth orbit was outlined in the village hall by Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic.

Sir Roger and I also turned to whether we can understand consciousness and, indeed, recapitulate it in a digital computer. Although many assume that all the workings of the world can be captured by algorithms and computer programs, the work in the 1930s of Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel on the limits of mathematics show this is not true, argues Sir Roger, who believes the answer to the conundrum of consciousness lies in quantum mechanics, the theory that applies to the subatomic world, notably in a mysterious quantum phenomenon called wavefunction collapse.

The bestselling neuroscientist Anil Seth said he is not convinced by Sir Roger’s quantum consciousness but said he enjoyed his provocation and added: ‘there is quite a lot we agree on, including the idea that the brain is not a computer.” More remarkable insights into the brain and consciousness came from the neuroscientists Richard Frackowiack and Giovanna Mallucci, along with Noor Ul Owase Jeelani, the neurosurgeon who has made headlines around the world with his operations to separate conjoined twins with fused brains.

Other rivers of thought intermingled in Braemar. While Sir Roger explored the inner worlds of consciousness and future universes, we head from two terrestrial explorers, Patrick Bergel, a tech entrepreneur who became the first person to cross the Antarctic by car, and Lucy Shepherd, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society who entranced the audience with her story of being hunted by whistling venomous bushmaster snakes during an ambitious Amazon jungle expedition.

Various streams of discussion swirled around the extraordinary efforts by molecular biologists to redesign life, which were touched on by Lord Rees when he speculated that Mars bases would spur the redesign of humans to suit the rigours of space, using cyborg technology and gene editing. Many are familiar with one editing technology called CRISPR but less so with an older and more mature approach based on zinc finger proteins discovered in 1985 by Sir Aaron Klug, a Nobel laureate working at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Today "zinc finger” treatments are fast approaching the clinic, for instance for treating haemophilia, according to Sandy Macrae, CEO of Sangamo Therapeutics. Meanwhile, once again at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, a yet more radical way of reengineering organisms has been developed by Jason Chin, who is expanding the lexicon of life, using novel amino acids.

Many of our sessions were touched by the conjoined challenges of climate change and ecosystem destruction, discussed by Anabel Kindersley of Neals’s Yard, Conservative peer Zac Goldsmith, and the director of the Natural History Museum, Doug Gurr. In a related talk, the quest for net zero aviation, and the role of King Charles III in this endeavour, was recounted at the summit by Rob Miller of the Whittle Laboratory in Cambridge.

One of the more memorable moments came when we trooped out of the village hall to the Braemar Highland Games Centre to watch Sam Rogers take off in his 3D printed jet suit. He landed safely a minute or two later, in a cloud of diesel smoke, but told us how his company, Gravity Industries, had already started to work on a clean, electric version. As ecosystems decline and weather becomes more extreme, here’s to the fastest energy global energy transition – to net zero – in history.

Finally, in a dazzling presentation, the designer Thomas Heatherwick told the summit why the planet needs buildings to be radically more human, and why we need to end the epidemic of soulless edifices found in so many cities with sustainable structures that people can cherish and adapt, not hate and demolish.

This provided another fascinating convergence of thinking, taking us back to the research of Sir Roger Penrose, who told us how he visualised the unity between mathematics and the cosmos through his artistic drawings and geometrical thinking, having hailed from a family that includes the artists J. Doyle Penrose and Roland Penrose.

This truly evokes the spirit of Braemar, where art can unite with science to explore and tackle the great challenges of our time.

Roger Highfield is the Science Director of the Science Museum Group. His next book, with Peter Coveney, is Virtual You: How Building Your Digital Twin Will Revolutionize Medicine and Change Your Life.