As most of the readers at TSZ already know, quantum mechanics, but especially a fairly new branch of it – quantum biology, are some of my favorite subjects and a part of the many hobbies I have. Quantum biology is not only fascinating but it is clear that it is going to be, and it already is in many cases, the science of the not so distant future.
Why?
Let’s just quote one article:
” …by applying quantum mechanics to biology, we’re beginning to unravel some of science’s biggest and longest running mysteries. The burgeoning field of quantum biology is today, helping us to understand bird migration, photosynthesis, and maybe even our sense of smell…”
The use of quantum mechanics in bird migration, photosynthesis, and even our sense of smell have already been confirmed by scientists. Other areas of interest of biological systems possibly using quantum mechanics are: embryo development (use of quantum information in cell differentiation), mutations, self-assembly processes, such as the bacterial flagellum and so on…
One of the most fascinating implications of quantum mechanics in biological systems is the use of quantum mechanics in human consciousness proposed by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff over 20 years ago. More and more experiments seem to confirm their theory.
However, what is quite mind-boggling is not the fact that evolutionists can no longer deny the many quantum effects on life systems. They begin to insert quantum mechanics in their evolutionary speculations as if quantum mechanics use by birds to navigate, by photosynthesis to harvest sunlight for energy, and humans in the sense of smell, are not only a normal part of evolutionary theory. They begin to pretend as if quantum mechanics had always been predicted by evolutionary theory… Evolutionists begin to pretend that life systems use quantum mechanics to gain evolutionary advantages…
How did the life systems evolve to use quantum mechanics? It is another of the many mysteries that don’t fit and can’t be explained by evolutionary theory…
But I propose the mechanism of directed, non-random mutations via quantum entanglement and random, quantum selection, since quantum mechanics with the spooky actions of sub-particles being in two places at the same time…
The evolutionary circus continues to roll as if nothing has ever been wrong and can ever be wrong about the theory that is not even wrong…
Who can argue with that?
Don’t be silly, that’s not for evolution to predict. That’s an obvious inference from the fact that organisms are physical.
Congratulations. You have discovered a mystery that does not exist.
Biological systems are physical. Everything physical can be said to use quantum mechanics.
Nothing to see here.
No? No evolutionary prediction? How do you suppose quantum entanglement navigation in birds evolved? Was it already built in the first original cell, perhaps?
I can ask you 100 questions like that and you will have no answers…None.
Do you know why?
Maybe John Harshman has an inside scoop? He is versatile in quantum mechanics especially in the bone disappearance evolution in flightless birdies… 🙂
After your clear embarrassment with the category theory related to embryo development and cell diferrentiation, which is a mathematical foundation my kids took in high school, I’m not only doubting you are a mathematician… I think you have serious issues…
I hope mung bans you.
Good bye!!!
Can’t I just take him out back for a good spanking?
[Don’t worry Neil, I don’t know how to ban anyone.]
hahaha
We say versátil just in case you forgot your own language. We, however didn’t forget your embarrassment with the okapi … I hope you understand why… 😉
Are you sure you didn’t mean “versed”?
Are you sure you know your own language?
Whom am I asking? The okapi failure…
hahahaha
the okapi failure, you mean?
We are talking about quantum mechanics, carbon! Something you have no knowledge of, tronco. Capish?
LMAO. Dude, you’re having a nervous breakdown, breathe into a paper bag or something
You cannot read, can you? It’s obvious that life forms would use quantum phenomena because they’re physical. Got it now or do you need a puppet show to understand something this simple?
Quantum entanglement navigation? If such a thing exists, the answer is simple: variation and natural selection.
Quantum phenomena are part and parcel with physical and chemical phenomena Joe. They occur in everything.
Interesting. It doesn’t look like there’s any challenge in your “questions.”
Yep. You’re too confused to understand that quantum phenomena are part and parcel with physical and chemical phenomena.
I think it’s really fascinating that some biological systems work by exploiting quantum “weirdness”, and quantum biology has finally crossed over from science fiction to science. Personally I’m more interested in systems theory grounded in far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, but it’s surely fascinating that some biological systems can massage the decoherence and exploit quantum phenomena.
It seems that evolution didn’t need to predict the quantum use of the biological systems. They had already been there but Darwin just forgot to mention them… lol
Insanity/philosophy can explain/accept anything. Oxymoron first…
I think it’s time to google the fundamentals, don’t you think? But, why bother if nothing ever changes no matter what’s the evidence? The Jerry Coyne syndrome persists…
I think an okapi is evolving into an elephant… Somebody stop the insanity, please!!!
BTW: On the other note, a 5 pound land walking dog like looking animal has evolved into a 50 ton whale… Nobody needs to stop the insanity… It’s already built into the commitment of the believers of whatever it takes to believe in insanity…
Congrats gazz! Your proscription is ready for pick up…;-) Please don’t overdose!!!
Are you sure you didn’t mean to say “prescription”?
What fundamentals my illiterate friend? Things like quantum phenomena being physics?
What should change if biology is discovered to use the very same phenomena everything else uses?
I didn’t know that Jerry had already told you that quantum phenomena are part and parcel with physical/chemical phenomena. Why then is it so hard for you to grasp? Some quantum woo-woo misfiring in your brain?
You’re ridiculing yourself much further. How could Darwin talk about quantum phenomena when that was not discovered yet? Are you truly that dumb or you’re just pretending?
J-Mac, you seem to be under the impression that quantum phenomena are some sort of special thing that’s only unlocked under certain circumstances, or something like that. As several people have said, this is completely wrong; I’ll take a stab at a more complete explanation of why it’s wrong.
The basic problem is that (at least as far as we can tell) every physical phenomenon is a quantum phenomenon. When a pool ball hits another pool ball, that’s a quantum phenomenon. When a river flows downhill to the ocean, that’s a quantum phenomenon. When sunlight refracts&reflects through raindrops to form a rainbow, that’s a quantum phenomenon. When several atoms bond together to form a molecule, that’s a quantum phenomenon. When you sit on your sofa, that’s a quantum phenomenon.
Everything that exists physically is quantum.
Evolution didn’t have to do anything special to unlock quantum effects, any more than hydrogen and oxygen have to do something special to unlock the quantum effects that allow them to bond together and make water.
When people talk about the quantum/classical divide, what they’re really talking about is the division between phenomena that are unmistakably quantum vs. those that can be mistaken for classical. Classical physics is an approximation to what’s really going on. For some phenomena it’s a close enough approximation that we can get away with pretending it’s correct (provided we don’t look too closely), and we call those phenomena “classical” even though they really aren’t. The phenomena we call “quantum” are those where the classical approximation isn’t close enough (and/or we’re looking really closely) and we have to deal with the fact that they’re actually quantum.
Usually, things are unmistakably quantum only at the very small scale. Atoms are unmistakably quantum. Molecular bonds are unmistakably quantum (except maybe purely ionic bonds, provided you don’t ask why the atoms don’t get closer). But above that level, you can generally pretend that things are classical. Even at the molecular level, if you don’t look too closely at what the atoms and bonds are (just pretend they’re like little balls and sticks), you can usually get away with pretending classical physics applies.
All of the “quantum phenomena” in biology you’re pointing out are some combination of scientists looking really closely at what’s going on, or quantum effects (i.e. deviations from classical physics) being significant at larger-than-usual scales. Scientists looking closely at what’s going on should not be surprising, and isn’t the sort of thing you need evolution to predict. Significant QM effects at larger-than-usual scales are less trivial, but I don’t see why they’d be particularly surprising as a result of evolution. Especially since they’re not happening at much larger than usual scales.
(Ok, there’s one exception to that: quantum information in cell differentiation. But I haven’t seen any credible evidence that this one is actually real. And if it were real, it’d be much more of a problem for the physics of cells than for evolution.)
I’m going to guess PCP. Anyone else?
Natural Selection is a quantum phenomenon!
My guess is DUH.
Here ya go J-Mac:
And who is Thorsten Ritz?
I’m putting my stack on excessively subnormal encephalization.
Hmmm. is quantum biology proven? is QM proven? is it just more speculation, like evolution, without actual evidence. bird migration is unlikely qunatrum.
human smell is no more complicated then any human sense. going quantum is going to kick away from better reductionist ideas on the physical world.
They haven’t figured out non quantum biology much less more intimate.
maybe its true.
it would be typical though for evolutionists to have hyjacked it already or typical to have hyjacked a wrong idea.
Yeah! ***claps gleefully***
Darwin didn’t predict everything, ever? I’m beginning to think he wasn’t all he was cracked up to be.
J-Mac… Dude…
Take a freshman chemistry class.
Every chemical reaction that happens in your body is dependent upon the quantum nature of electron orbitals.
Asking whether evolution predicted this is like asking if evolution predicted chemistry. Nonsensical question.
That would explain a lot.
Fun fact: J-Mac was trying to call me nasty names in spanish during his spelling debacle here:
He actually meant “cabrón” which is not something you would want to call anyone unless you’re “versatile” in “martian” arts
ROTFLMFAO!
J-Mac: Gordon Davisson spent some time laying it out for you. Far more time & energy than you deserve, could you just freaking read it ?
And Mung may be ‘on the team’ but his contributions above are pretty puerile.
dazz,
Trying to embarrass you, J-Mac blew his original mistake out of proportion.
Hi Glen,
My kids have mentioned it to me that your comment is one that might be worth reading…
You seem to be the only one that actually took time to Google QM (Mung found a video but I don’t know if he has put any thought into this) and come up with something worth discussing… The rest of the comments can be summed up by Robert Byers comment:
They are “unlikely qunatrum “ lol
BTW: My kids suspect Bob is a kid from their school they talk to a lot about origins that is just fooling around… It could be… 🙂
Anyways, there is no doubt that birds use the earth’s magnetic field not only for migration purpose, but also, quite possibly, for navigation that doesn’t include long-range distances…Quite a few experiments have proven this fact beyond any doubt. Scientists have been able disrupt the birds ability “to see” the quantum entanglement of electrons of the earth’s magnetic field. Or, they disrupted the quantum entanglement of the birds either eye retina or the brain with the earth’s magnetic field…If the latter is true, then it would be quite remarkable and, in my view, unexplainable by any known natural processes… Actually, both abilities just could not have evolved by the Darwinian or any other known mechanisms…
And this is why I quoted your comment above where you seem to trivialize any significance of quantum phenomenon in life systems… Anything we know and have tested in QM is anything but order or predictable, except when life systems use quantum mechanics or operate thanks to the unexpected order of it…
I’m glad you didn’t trivialize the cell differentiation in embryo development. If you had, I probably wouldn’t have responded…
It is quite easy to test the requirement of quantum information in cell differentiation… You can use fruit fly eggs, and the same way scientist disrupt the navigation abilities of birds, you can disrupt the quantum states of embryos… The embryos that get their quantum information disrupted will either not develop, or they will develop defects…
A citation to the primary literature would be appropriate, and in fact necessary, here.
How exactly would that be done? What is that way?
Sure, because the only way someone could talk about QM would be by googling QM. No wonder J-Mac’s claims are so spectacularly misinformed and self-contradictory. It’s all left to whatever J-Mac finds using google, illiteracy, and very poor thinking.
If you have difficulty using keywords to google, I can have my kids help you out…They found both papers and popular science articles for laymen like you to get an idea…
Alternatively, you can watch the video Mung linked above. I’m pretty sure it mentions more than one experiment how quantum states can be disrupted or even directed, though I watched it quite a while ago and only bits of it… In some cases an ordinary magnet attached the the bird’s head will disrupt its navigation ability… (Entropy, don’t try it on your head!!! There is a possibility of quantum overload!!!)
The same “principles” can be applied to disrupt embryo development…
If you hadn’t disregarded J. Wells’ paper on the theme you would have had an idea long time ago…
A magnet disrupting the birds ability to navigate wouldn’t mean that the navigation is due to quantum entanglement(s). It’d just mean that it’s due to magnetism. Even if magnetism had something to do with quantum entanglement, which I doubt, talking about it in those terms would be no more than “woo-wooing” the issue.
You don’t have kids. C’mon.
Can you disrupt the quantum state of your odd use of ellipses and punctuation?
Wells has a paper on quantum biology? Haha, I doubt that.
If mere magnetism is what you’re talking about, those “difficulties” you see for any of it to be exploited by ordinary evolutionary phenomena disappear instantaneously in a puff of obvious macroscopic, everyday observable, phenomena.
Your confusions about what biology can do, evolutionarily speaking, are due simply to your problems understanding that the quantum phenomena have a concomitant effect at the everyday level of phenomena. Yet you claim mere magnetism as the tool to test quantum phenomena. Given that, how you could so blindly mistake excessively microscopical interpretation with the availability of everyday phenomena for life forms to exploit, is beyond baffling.
If you have difficulty not being an asshole, try harder. Perhaps your kids can help you with that.
Do you think that might have something to do with the magnetite in the bird’s compass, rather than with quantum superposition or tunneling or whatever you think?
Your delusions that any bone has disappeared in flightless birdies and that you have had some kind of past triumph in connection with that subject are not attractive.
Can we just ignore anything from J-Mac. He is either a Poe or just nuts, either way not worth the time.