I think the only reason people are speculating about new physics is that awareness and consciousness are so mysterious. Physicists have made huge strides and their understanding of the nature of reality is mind-boggling and admirable, down to quantum weirdness and the particle zoo and spacetime and I don't know what all. The brain is a physical structure containing an unbelievable number of neurons and connections and chemical interplay and I don't know what all. Now, if we really understood completely how all those parts were arranged and how they interacted and how that unbelievably complex computer functioned - but still didn't have a handle on how consciousness was produced - maybe at that point we might start wondering if there were something else involved, maybe some new physics. But at this point it's like a third grader saying, I don't know how my iPad works - there must be some physical laws that haven't been discovered yet.