Quantum Biology

Download the BBC podcast Discovery: Quantum Biology.

Below are excerpts from the BBC News introduction to the highly interesting subject.

Disappearing in one place and reappearing in another. Being in two places at once. Communicating information seemingly faster than the speed of light.

This kind of weird behaviour is commonplace in dark, still laboratories studying the branch of physics called quantum mechanics, but what might it have to do with fresh flowers, migrating birds, and the smell of rotten eggs?

Welcome to the frontier of what is called quantum biology.

It is still a tentative, even speculative discipline, but what scientists are learning from it might just spark revolutions in the development of new drugs, computers and perfumes - or even help in the fight against cancer.
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A paper published in Plos One this week shows that people can tell the difference between two molecules of identical shape but with different vibrations, suggesting that shape is not the only thing at work.
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Jim Al-Khalili of the University of Surrey is investigating whether tunnelling occurs during mutations to our DNA - a question that may be relevant to the evolution of life itself, or cancer research.

He told the BBC: "If quantum tunnelling is an important mechanism in mutations, is quantum mechanics going to somehow answer some of the questions about how a cell becomes cancerous?

"And suddenly you think, 'Wow!' Quantum mechanics is not just a crazy side issue or a fringe field where some people are looking at some cranky ideas. If it really might help answer some of the very big questions in science, then it's hugely important."

Jason Palmer and Alex Mansfield BBC News and BBC Radio Science units

Read the entire article BBC 28 January 2013

No human understands Quantum Theory

Bookmark Philip Hall BBC Future January 25, 2013

Quantum mechanics must be one of the most successful theories in science. Developed at the start of the twentieth century, it has been used to calculate with incredible precision how light and matter behave – how electrical currents pass through silicon transistors in computer circuits, say, or the shapes of molecules and how they absorb light. Much of today’s information technology relies on quantum theory, as do some aspects of chemical processing, molecular biology, the discovery of new materials, and much more.

Yet the weird thing is that no one actually understands quantum theory. The quote popularly attributed to physicist Richard Feynman is probably apocryphal, but still true: if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t.

BBC 

Reporter Philip Hall writes about quantum uncertainty so clearly that I copy the two theologically crucial paragraphs also here to highlight them.

One of the most controversial issues concerns the role of measurements. We’re used to thinking that the world exists in a definite state, and that we can discover what that state is by making measurements and observations. But quantum theory (“quantum mechanics” is often regarded as a synonym, although strictly that refers to the mathematical methods developed to study quantum objects) suggests that, at least for tiny objects such as atoms and electrons, there may be no unique state before an observation is made: the object exists simultaneously in several states, called a superposition. Before measurement, all we can say is that there is a certain probability that the object is in state A, or B, or so on. Only during the measurement is a “choice” made about which of these possible states the object will possess: in quantum-speak, the superposition is “collapsed by measurement”. It’s not that, before measuring, we don’t know which of these options is true – the fact is that the choice has not yet been made.

This is probably the most unsettling of all the conundrums posed by quantum theory. It disturbed Albert Einstein so much that he refused to accept it all his life. Einstein was one of the first scientists to embrace the quantum world: in 1905 he proposed that light is not a continuous wave but comes in “packets”, or quanta, of energy, called photons, which are in effect “particles of light”. Yet as his contemporaries, such as Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger, devised a mathematical description of the quantum world in which certainties were replaced by probabilities, Einstein protested that the world could not really be so fuzzy. As he famously put it, “God does not play dice.” (Bohr’s response is less famous, but deserves to be better known: “Einstein, stop telling God what to do.”)
Philip Hall

Read the entire article from the BBC   site