There are in fact some plausible scientific hypotheses that try to isolate particular physical states associated with "qualia". Without giving references to those, obviously, as I'm sure you'll all agree, there is no reason to debate the truth of physicalism.

I was looking some things up after you mentioned this, and after reading a bit about it, qualia appears to be extremely similar to sensory memory.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_memory)

These quotes about them from Wikipedia(with the names removed) seem to do a good job describing the similarity:

'The information represented in ### is the "raw data" which provides a snapshot of a person's overall sensory experience.' 'Another way of defining ### is as "raw feels." A raw feel is a perception in and of itself, considered entirely in isolation from any effect it might have on behavior and behavioral disposition.'

If you think about this in P-zombie terms, and someone attempts to say "A P-zombie is a person who has sensory memory, but not qualia." I'm not sure what would even be the difference between that and a regular person. Either one can call on their sensory memory to say "I am experiencing redness right now, and now I am experiencing my experiences of redness" and it would seem to be correct if that is what is in their sensory memory. There doesn't appear to be anything left for qualia to explain, and it feels a lot like the question is dissolved at that point.

Is this approximately correct, or is there something else that qualia attempts to explain that sensory memory doesn't that I'm not perceiving?