Quantum biology

Bacteria operating like a quantum supercomputer?! Interesting stuff. BTW, this is part Stuart Hameroff's website which focuses on the theory that consciousness is a quantum computational process of cells. Explore it for more exciting ideas..

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/spooky.htm

Quantum Consciousness . Stuart Hameroff
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/

 

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The Myth of Quantum Consciousness

 

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So why do you think this is a "myth"?

 

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Biological computers are as advanced as 16 bit systems. They can't be called quantum biology though because compared to quantum processes biological processes are huge. They are accurate, but slow..very slow. Basically input chemical 1 and 2 into a matrix and get a logical output. Process the output and you get usable data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocomputers

 

According to that article bacteria are performing quantum-like computations already thru photosynthesis. What's to prevent a brain from doing these same things at the microtubal level in the process of being conscious? Are microtubules too big and slow?

 

The brain is too hot.

 

That DOES seem to be a major problem with this theory. And yet check out this article from Wired Magazine:


"European robins may maintain quantum entanglement in their eyes a full 20 microseconds longer than the best laboratory systems, say physicists investigating how birds may use quantum effects to "see" Earth's magnetic field.


Quantum entanglement is a state where electrons are spatially separated, but able to affect one another. It's been proposed that birds' eyes contain entanglement-based compasses.


Conclusive proof doesn't yet exist, but multiple lines of evidence suggest it. Findings like this one underscore just how sophisticated those compasses may be.


"How can a living system have evolved to protect a quantum state as well — no, better — than we can do in the lab with these exotic molecules?" asked quantum physicist Simon Benjamin of Oxford University and the National University of Singapore, a co-author of the new study. "That really is an amazing thing."


Many animals — including not only birds, but some mammals, fish, reptiles, even crustaceans and insects — navigate by sensing the direction of Earth's magnetic field. Physicist Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign proposed in the late 1970s that bird navigation relied on some geomagnetically sensitive, as-yet-unknown biochemical reaction taking place in their eyes.


Research since then has revealed the existence of a*special optical cells containing a protein called cryptochrome. When a photon enters the eye, it hits cryptochrome, giving a boost of energy to electrons that exist in a state of quantum entanglement.
One of the electrons migrates a few nanometers away, where it feels a slightly different magnetic field than its partner. Depending on how the magnetic field alters the electron's spin, different chemical reactions are produced. In theory, the products of many such reactions across a bird's eye could create a picture of Earth's*magnetic field as a varying pattern of light and dark.


'NC60 is quite a sexy, interesting, promising molecule.'


However, these quantum states are notoriously fragile. Even in laboratory systems, atoms are cooled to near absolute-zero temperatures to maintain entanglement for more than a few thousandths of a second. Biological systems would seem too warm and too wet to hold quantum states for long, yet that's exactly what they appear to do.


Researchers led by University of California, Irvine physicist Thorsten Ritz (.pdf) showed in 2004 that, although robins had no trouble pointing their beaks toward Africa under the influence of Earth's magnetic field alone, adding a second, shifting field destroyed their inner compasses. That second field was so weak — less than one-third of 1 percent of Earth's field — that it could only have influenced a quantum-sensitive system.


"It shouldn't be the case that the birds would even know that this had happened," Benjamin said. "If someone changed the brightness of the scene that you're seeing by a-third of 1 percent, you would struggle to know that it even happened. It certainly wouldn't muck up your vision."


In a new paper in Physical Review Letters, Benjamin and colleagues built a mathematical model of Ritz's experiment, including the Earth's magnetic field, the slight secondary field, and the quantum systems that might make up the birds' magnetic sense.
They calculated that, in order to be sensitive to such weak fields, entangled states in the birds' eyes must last for at least 100 microseconds, or 0.0001 seconds.


To put this in perspective, Benjamin introduced an exotic molecule called NC60, a geometric cage of carbon with a nitrogen atom inside. This molecule is one of the best-known laboratory systems for maintaining entanglement. "The cage acts to shield the atom, which is storing the information, from the rest of the world," Benjamin said. "It's considered to be quite a sexy, interesting, promising molecule."


But at room temperature, even NC60 only holds entanglement for 80 microseconds, or four-fifths of what birds appear to be doing.


"I think this is a very nice paper that attacks the problem from an interesting angle," said Schulten, who was not involved in the work. "They use a hugely simplified model, but they make an interesting point. Entanglement could stay protected for tens of microseconds longer than we thought before."
"The bird, however it works, whatever it's got in there, it's somehow doing better than our specially designed, very beautiful molecule," Benjamin said. "That's just staggering."

In the Blink of Bird's Eye, a Model for Quantum Navigation | Wired Science | Wired.com
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...m quantum entanglement&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&strip=1

 

All cause and effect biological interactions can be used to compute things. The trick is that they've created particular molecules similar to DNA that give specifis results according to various precursor chemicals. Of course, the bacteria aren't doing anything we want them to and we don't bother to read any data they might produce.

Using nanotubules as conductors for electrical signals or as a skeleton for a molecule? Theoretically they can do both at the same time, though I can't see an application for that just now.

If conciousness is a result of computational data, the brain would be like a 100,000bit computer or something like that. Who knows what computers will be capable of when they get that powerful. There is still a lot to discover.

 

Good points. I just read that the total CPU power of all the PC computers on the planet equals about the CPU power of one human brain! Amazing!


World's total CPU power: one human brain
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...onal power human brain&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&strip=1

 

Quantum Entanglement Holds DNA Together, Say Physicists

"A new theoretical model suggests that quantum entanglement helps prevent the molecules of life from breaking apart.


There was a time, not so long ago, when biologists swore black and blue that quantum mechanics could play no role in the hot, wet systems of life.


Since then, the discipline of quantum biology has emerged as one of the most exciting new fields in science. It's beginning to look as if quantum effects are crucial in a number of biological processes, such as photosynthesis and avian navigation which we've looked at here and here.


Now a group of physicists say that the weird laws of quantum mechanics may be more important for life than biologists could ever have imagined. Their new idea is that DNA is held together by quantum entanglement.


That's worth picking apart in more detail. Entanglement is the weird quantum process in which a single wavefunction describes two separate objects. When this happens, these objects effectively share the same existence, no matter how far apart they might be.


The question that Elisabeth Rieper at the National University of Singapore and a couple of buddies have asked is what role might entanglement play in DNA.
To find out, they've constructed a simplified theoretical model of DNA in which each nucleotide consists of a cloud of electrons around a central positive nucleus. This negative cloud can move relative to the nucleus, creating a dipole. And the movement of the cloud back and forth is a harmonic oscillator.


When the nucleotides bond to form a base, these clouds must oscillate in opposite directions to ensure the stability of the structure.


Rieper and co ask what happens to these oscillations, or phonons as physicists call them, when the base pairs are stacked in a double helix.


Phonons are quantum objects, meaning they can exist in a superposition of states and become entangled, just like other quantum objects.


To start with, Rieper and co imagine the helix without any effect from outside heat. "Clearly the chain of coupled harmonic oscillators is entangled at zero temperature," they say. They then go on to show that the entanglement can also exist at room temperature.


That's possible because phonons have a wavelength which is similar in size to a DNA helix and this allows standing waves to form, a phenomenon known as phonon trapping. When this happens, the phonons cannot easily escape. A similar kind of phonon trapping is known to cause problems in silicon structures of the same size.


That would be of little significance if it had no overall effect on the helix. But the model developed by Rieper and co suggests that the effect is profound.


Although each nucleotide in a base pair is oscillating in opposite directions, this occurs as a superposition of states, so that the overall movement of the helix is zero. In a purely classical model, however, this cannot happen, in which case the helix would vibrate and shake itself apart.


So in this sense, these quantum effects are responsible for holding DNA together.
The question of course is how to prove this. They say that one line of evidence is that a purely classical analysis of the energy required to hold DNA together does not add up. However, their quantum model plugs the gap. That's interesting but they'll need to come up with something experimentally convincing to persuade biologists of these ideas.


One tantalising suggestion at the end of their paper is that the entanglement may have an influence on the way that information is read off a strand of DNA and that it may be possible to exploit this experimentally. Just how, they don't say.
Speculative but potentially explosive work.


Quantum Entanglement Holds DNA Together, Say Physicists - Technology Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25375/

 

It's worth considering, I think, that a nerve cell axion (the brain is basically neurons) works deadly slow compared to an electronic circuit. But it's quick enough to keep us from harming ourselves in the main, but it's the sheer number of connections and processes that completely outperform our best silicon chips. The most powerful supercomputers (one recently "played" the game Jepordy inn the US) still do not compare to the human mind. We have created the silicon answer to chimpanzees perhaps but the mind of a person, even just a moderately intelligent one is still a far-off goal. I have little doubt we will eventually crack the mould and produce something utterly astounding, but we'll need to be running massively more powerful processors, and those in tandem. Work on neural networks combined with superconductor tech would be my guess, but really who knows? My computer is only a couple of years old and runs at 2,600 mhz and is already slow compared to the intel i series. Build a multi-layered i7 core and you could easily add another couple of zero's to that. It's still just a 64bit system though compared to the brain. Even if each neuron takes 30ms to react, times that by the square of about a hundred thousand or so, and you start to see what you're up against.

Edit..I don't know how many bits the brain is equivalent to, I just took a modest guess, but it could be far higher than my estimate. I'm not even sure how it could be measured in an equivalent way.

Oh and another thing, each neuron has 5 or 6 IO channels making a single one capable of complex operations. They also work not just on an impulse, but an infinately variable intensity of impulse too.

 

Something like this?

(Emphasis mine)

Personally, I think we will get there - just a matter of time...

 

Heh! Cool. I wonder what the power consumption for that would be..more than a donut and a coffee, I'll bet!

 

Actually, the brain has at least as many glial cells (mostly astrocytes) as it does neurons. Traditionally it has been said that there are 10-20 times as many glia as there are neurons, although some recent analysis suggests that it might be more like a 1:1 ratio(*). In any case, the importance of glial cells to brain functioning has become increasingly apparent over the last decade. They don't merely act as "brain glue" as previously thought; they directly influence neuronal function by regulating ion concentrations and clearance of neurotransmitters from synapses (among other important functions like promoting synaptogenesis).


(*)J Comp Neurol. 2009 Apr 10;513(5):532-41.
Equal numbers of neuronal and nonneuronal cells make the human brain an isometrically scaled-up primate brain.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19226510

 

Ok, thanx Herc. I haven't read much on neurology recently.. So much reading, so little time..

 

OK, they crafted a model of this alternative explanation, it could be true or false.

 

but what starts , what begins , this quantum biology ?

what starts the intanglement ?

can this intanglement be interferred with ?

 

I wish I was a quantum computer.

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The mechanical underpinnings of things like photosynthesis and neural synapse behavior do not explain consciousness - whether or not they are "quantum" mechanical underpinnings.

The substrate is not the pattern. It can of course supply much information about possibilities, constraints, etc, - but the pattern itself has other explanations.