Exploiting Quantum Mechanics

University of Chicago study finds that bacteria know how to exploit quantum mechanics...

Photosynthetic organisms harvest light from the sun to produce the energy they need to survive. A new paper published by University of Chicago researchers reveals their secret: exploiting quantum mechanics.

“Before this study, the scientific community saw quantum signatures generated in biological systems and asked the question: Were these results just a consequence of biology being built from molecules, or did they have a purpose?” said Greg Engel, Professor of Chemistry and senior author on the study. “This is the first time we are seeing biology actively exploiting quantum effects.”

The scientists studied a type of microorganism called green sulfur bacteria. These bacteria need light to survive, but even small amounts of oxygen can damage their delicate photosynthetic equipment. So they must develop ways to minimize the damage when the bacterium does encounter oxygen.

To study this process, researchers tracked the movement of energy through a photosynthetic protein under different conditions—with oxygen around, and without.

They found that the bacterium uses a quantum mechanical effect called vibronic mixing to move energy between two different pathways, depending on whether or not there’s oxygen around. Vibronic mixing involves vibrational and electronic characteristics in molecules coupling to one another. In essence, the vibrations mix so completely with the electronic states that their identities become inseparable. This bacterium uses this phenomenon to guide energy where it needs it to go.

If there’s no oxygen around and the bacterium is safe, the bacterium uses vibronic mixing by matching the energy difference between two electronic states in an assembly of molecules and proteins called the FMO complex, with the energy of the vibration of a bacteriochlorophyll molecule. This encourages the energy to flow through the “normal” pathway toward the photosynthetic reaction center, which is packed full of chlorophyll.

But if there is oxygen around, the organism has evolved to steer the energy through a less direct path where it can be quenched. (Quenching energy is similar to putting a palm on a vibrating guitar string to dissipate energy.) This way, the bacterium loses some energy but saves the entire system.

To achieve this effect, a pair of cysteine residues in the photosynthetic complex acts as a trigger: They each react with the oxygen in the environment by losing a proton, which disrupts the vibronic mixing. This means that energy now preferentially moves through the alternative pathway, where it can be safely quenched. This principle is a bit like blocking two lanes on a superhighway and diverting some traffic to local roads, where there are many more exits.  READ MORE

Quantum Interference

FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA

As Richard Feynman famously put it, “the double slit experiment is absolutely impossible to explain in any classical way and has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery.”

Indeed, in this experiment, a quantum particle behaves as if it was at two distinct locations at the same time, and exhibits paradigmatic wave-like phenomena such as interference. However, it was later noted that multi-slit experiments show that the degree of delocalization of quantum particles has its limits, and that in a certain sense, quantum particles cannot be simultaneously delocalized at more than two locations.

This limitation has created a puzzle that to this day has not yet been completely resolved. Researchers at the University of Vienna and IQOQI-Vienna (Austrian Academy of Sciences) have made a significant step towards understanding this problem by reformulating interference experiments in terms of information-theoretic games. Their analysis, which has recently appeared in the journal Quantum, provides an intuitive way of thinking about interference phenomena and its limitations, thereby paving the way towards solving the aforementioned puzzle.


One of the most striking features of quantum mechanics is the superposition principle. This principle can be most easily illustrated via the double-slit experiment, which involves a particle that is sent through a plate pierced with two slits. According to our common everyday intuitions, one might expect the particle to always pass either through one slit, or through the other.

However, quantum mechanics implies that the particle can in a certain sense pass through both slits at the same time, that is, it can be in a superposition of two locations at the same time. This possibility underlies the phenomenon of quantum interference, i.e. the striking wave-like behavior exhibited by quantum particles. Now, is there a way to quantify the degree to which quantum particles can be de-localized? Does quantum theory allow particles to traverse more than two paths at the same time? In order to understand these questions, physicists have analyzed “multi-slit experiments” (Sorkin, Rafael D. “Quantum mechanics as quantum measure theory.”  READ MORE

Panpsychism

The Marriage

 of 

Cosmic Consciousness 

and 

Quantum Mechanics

Cosmic Consciousness is a term often used to denote a higher or particularly spiritual level of awareness and consciousness.

This type of awareness may be associated with an experience of “knowing God," or of transcending the five senses and finding a hidden consciousness or reality which is beyond the perceivable world. For many, the journey to experiencing cosmic consciousness involves practices such as yoga, meditation, prayer and acts of faith.

It is said that in a state of Cosmic Consciousness, the human mind is elevated beyond the awareness of the self and the ego, and enters a place of oneness and unity with the universe. Finding this unity is one goal of yoga practice.

When Cosmic Consciousness is reached, the individual moves from believing in the oneness of the universe to having a direct knowledge of that fact. This level of consciousness requires letting go of the superficial ego.

Some claim that reaching this awareness may cause a person to retreat from the noise of the outside world and seek solitude. They will develop a heightened awareness of their own mental state and that of those around them.

In 1901, Richard Maurice Bucke -- a Canadian psychiatrist -- wrote a book about Cosmic Consciousness, in which he defined it as the highest of three levels of consciousness found in living beings:

• Simple consciousness  --   which both mankind and animals possess
• Self-consciousness  --  which includes thought, reason, and imagination and that mankind possesses
• Cosmic Consciousness  --  which is a higher and more spiritual consciousness than most ordinary people possess    SOURCE:  Yogapedia

A popular meditation and spirituality figure in the West, Deepak Chopra has postulated that the concept of Cosmic Consciousness may be related to the hidden dimensions of quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics explains how the universe works at a scale smaller than atoms. It is also called quantum physics or quantum theory. Mechanics is the part of physics that explains how things move and quantum is the Latin word for 'how much' .   Quantum mechanics describes how the particles that make up atoms work.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia


Panpsychism
is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. The view has a long and venerable history in philosophical traditions of both East and West, and has recently enjoyed a revival in analytic philosophy. For its proponents panpsychism offers an attractive middle way between physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other. The worry with dualism—the view that mind and matter are fundamentally different kinds of thing—is that it leaves us with a radically disunified picture of nature, and the deep difficulty of understanding how mind and brain interact. And whilst physicalism offers a simple and unified vision of the world, this is arguably at the cost of being unable to give a satisfactory account of the emergence of human and animal consciousness. Panpsychism, strange as it may sound on first hearing, promises a satisfying account of the human mind within a unified conception of nature.  SOURCE:  Standford.edu