Quantum Entanglement and Photosynthesis 129
medcalf writes "Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have experimentally shown that plants use quantum entanglement in photosynthesis. Researcher Mohan Sarovar said, 'The lessons we’re learning about the quantum aspects of light harvesting in natural systems can be applied to the design of artificial photosynthetic systems that are even better. The organic structures in light harvesting complexes and their synthetic mimics could also serve as useful components of quantum computers or other quantum-enhanced devices, such as wires for the transfer of information.' According to the article, 'What may prove to be this study's most significant revelation is that contrary to the popular scientific notion that entanglement is a fragile and exotic property, difficult to engineer and maintain, the Berkeley researchers have demonstrated that entanglement can exist and persist in the chaotic chemical complexity of a biological system.'"
No offense (Score:1, Insightful)
And here's the link (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.physorg.com/news184423418.html [physorg.com]
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No details but interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
TFA is very sparse on details, but has interesting implications.
The difficulty in achieving entanglement comes from the system being perturbed at random from thermal vibrations. It's not clear in the articlehow this is achieved in photosynthesis, but if quantum entanglement can be preserved at ambient temperatures this could have awesome implications for quantum computers.
Not needing cryogenic conditions would be a huge step towards a desktop quantum computer.
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The difficulty in achieving entanglement comes from the system being perturbed at random from thermal vibrations.
That's not quite accurate. The difficulty in achieving entanglement comes from the inherent difficulty in isolating a quantum system from its environment. In the case of ion trap quantum computing, for example, this isolation is achieved through an ultra high vacuum. Ultra high vacuum has its own difficulties, but does not require cryogenics.
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Actually, depending on how you achieve ultrahigh vacuum, it might. Cryopumps [wikipedia.org] are pretty standard for maintaining ultrahigh vacuum, and can be used to get there from the milliTorr regime.
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/overview.html (Score:1, Offtopic)
http://cogprints.org/4581/ [cogprints.org]
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/overview.html [quantumconsciousness.org]
The ubiquity of lab phenomena (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that this discovery is the first in a long series to show that quantum entanglement has common uses by life, and that life can use it to its advantage.
Biodiversity Is Priceless (Score:3, Insightful)
This research shows a broader point we should learn: every species that we extinct takes with it to oblivion some mechanisms for coping with the world that we could use ourselves. Not enough coping mechanisms to keep it fit to survive in the world we've made, but many mechanisms that go down with it.
Of course many species go extinct independent of human action (though with human action so pervasive, what species is entirely untouched by it?), but there's little we can do about them. The ones we make extinct through carelessness, wrong priorities and other waste are lost to us in our efforts to remain fit ourselves in the environment we're making.
Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless (Score:4, Insightful)
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Of course many species go extinct independent of human action (though with human action so pervasive, what species is entirely untouched by it?), but there's little we can do about them.
Finding quantum entanglement in photosynthetic systems demonstrates that we can learn quite a lot of what we're seeking when we look at existing features of living species. Making them extinct is a significant opportunity cost we must consider when accounting for the benefits of what we do that makes them extinct.
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And given that it's the only source of biological power (except for some exotic life forms in the deep sea), if it goes before we do, it will not be long before we go, too.
Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless (Score:4, Funny)
If Shrodinger's cat were the last cat then cats would be in a superposed state of extinct and not extinct so long as no additional biodiversity research was done.
I think he's trying to say we shouldn't do the research, but maybe I've misunderstood.
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Who's Shrodinger? I mean, I can understand dropping the dots of the ö, but I don't see a reason to drop the c.
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[citation needed]
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[1] Common fucking sense.
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Is that the same common sense[1] that creationists use as an argument?
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[citation needed]
Indeed, that number seems far too low. I suspect it needs several more nines!
Of course, the exact number is irrelevant to the GPP's point, but since this is slashdot, I assume you knew that and were simply quibbling about an irrelevant detail in the hopes of collecting enough geek-cred points that Natalie Portman would want to pour hot grits in your pants, or something? :)
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Nope, it just didn't seem obvious, or "common sense" as the AC put it. Led to some interesting reading about Mass Extinction Events. You've got to love how a simple question on slashdot is seems as some kind of esoteric play for points :)
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[citation needed]
Biology and the riddle of life. - Charles Birch (1999).
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I appreciate the idea, but it really doesn't apply to this particular case. Photosynthesis is not at all diverse. It is one of the many "designs" nature evolved that is used by countless species. I also find it hard to equate the development of quantum computers as a requisite for humanity's biological fitness.
Your comment only seems appropriate for the case when a drug is discovered in some plant or venom.
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There will be variations in how photosynthesis is encoded in different species, and some species will be better models for mimicking with artificial devices. When we make those species extinct, we're losing the benefit they would bring if we had them to study.
Drugs are a good example, but they're just the most obvious ones. Humans have been using plants and animals as sources for medicine since time immemorial, probably since before we were even human, so more advanced techniques for exploiting them are sec
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"Not enough coping mechanisms to keep it fit to survive in the world we've made, but many mechanisms that go down with it."
We've made?
We made water? Oxygen? Carbon? We made the Earth, or the Sun? We 'made' amino acids? DNA?
If we you mean humans, we've 'made' precious little. We've changed systems and processes to some extent, but 'made'?
Once again, blame the humans, they've made a wreck of everything. Pathetic.
Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans haven't yet made as big a mess as photosynthetic plants did 2.4 billion years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event [wikipedia.org]
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We like the mess photosynthetic plants made, into which we evolved.
We won't like the mess we're making, because evolution will see us less fit to inhabit the world we've changed.
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And another species will like the mess we made, into which it will evolve.
Call me a misanthrope, but: So what? ;))
The only reason we now start to care about nature, is because we start to indirectly wipe ourselves out.
I say: Let us. It’s proven to be better for the planet, in the long run.
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We've made big changes to the world we evolved into. The number of species going extinct during the last few generations of humans is now among the biggest dieoffs the planet has ever seen.
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We've made big changes to the world we evolved into. The number of species going extinct during the last few generations of humans is now among the biggest dieoffs the planet has ever seen.
And that couldn't possibly be because of our advancing ability to perceive new and exotic species and thus to also perceive them dying off too? Or do you have a citation to back up your stat? :3
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Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless (Score:4, Insightful)
Please, please. I hate to see people one would suppose have a better understanding of mathematics that the average Joe Sixpack make stupid statements.
Saying X percentage of species have died because of human action assumes that we know how many total species there were at a given point in time, which is false. Even today we don’t know. Very frequently new species are found and some thought extinct are rediscovered.
What do we know of the big extinction events? Only what we can find on the fossil record. Given the constant churning of the Earth’s surface, that most of the crust is under water, that most of the crust is not conducive to fossilizing plant or animal remains, we can’t even begin to know how many species there were or how many went extinct.
Yeah, we may guess. But that’s all it is: a guess. Remember how many stars we thought there were one hundred years ago? Well, there you go, off by several orders of magnitude.
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Please, please. I hate to see people one would suppose have a better understanding of mathematics that the average Joe Sixpack make stupid statements.
Saying X percentage of species have died because of human action assumes that we know how many total species there were at a given point in time
I wouldn't bother to answer this if it weren't for the fact that you were being such an ass about knowing mathematics while being dead wrong, and even got modded insightful for it.
No, determining the percentage of something certainly does not require knowing the total. In fact, you usually don't.
Or do you think they counted the number of molecules in the atmosphere to find out it is 21% oxygen?
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Thanks for replying.
Yes, I know that you can extrapolate from known data points; but it doesn’t mean that you’ll get the correct answer. That is why I mentioned the number of stars; they were extrapolated from what could be seen at the time and the number was very, very low.
I was replying to the comment,
which means nothing; it’s just a sound bite.
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You seem to be confusing sampling with extrapolation. For a number of reasons, your parallel with the number of stars is entirely inappropriate; most importantly, the total number is not relevant.
If you had made an estimate about the fraction of stars that are currently burnt out, and later discovered that there are ten times as many stars as you though, the estimate would still be correct!
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Sorry, pal. 80% of a unknown quantity is an unknown quantity
I agree entirely, biodiversity is fundamental to a healthy ecosystem; I object to meaningless numbers because they lead to bad science and bad decisions.
They do make for great headlines for the sensationalist media but aren't of any use in rational discussions.
SAVE THE PANDA BEARS (Score:1)
Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess if you were living your entire life inside the Library of Alexandria, you would be burning books for fuel. Especially the "useless" ones written in a foreign language that you don't understand.
I think humans are blinded by the extraordinary diversity around us to the degree that we fail to realize how unique it is. And our life spans are too short for us to grasp what we are doing. We destroy things that have taken hundreds of millions of years to form in a generation without even reflecting on it. From a geological perspective, we are likely at par with some of the large impact events.
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>>We destroy things that have taken hundreds of millions of years to form in a generation without even reflecting on it.
To the contrary, we worry about extinction a lot more than it's probably happening.
You know how many animals on the endangered species list have gone extinct after they were listed, since 1973? Two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_Species_Act#Delisting [wikipedia.org]
But when you read the WWF's statement on extinction (http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/) they hand
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The US endangered species list isn't representative for the world. The western countries have reached somewhat of a steady state in relation to our local (land) environment*, and our populations aren't growing very much. The situation is very different in tropical forest regions and in the oceans.
* That is not to say that we are in balance with nature, however. Our ecological footprint is much larger than our land area, but we defer much it to other countries by importing goods produced elsewhere. Luckily,
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I guess if you were living your entire life inside the Library of Alexandria, you would be burning books for fuel.
While I appreciate what you are trying to say, I watched "The Day After Tomorrow" where people trapped in the NYPL facing liquid nitrogen temps outside were left to do pretty much exactly that. My question is, what else would you have them do? Freeze to death specifically so that people not trapped in the library can later read that material?
As a species and as a collected civilization, our first priority is to survive. If we are given the choice to allow a specific other species to continue it's genetic he
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The thing is, we are not facing any extreme temperature-like metaphor. We are sacrificing them for our own comfort, not for our survival.
I don't perceive any true elements to that statement. Are middle Americans driving over exotic flora and fauna in their SUV's by shortcutting through the 'glades to get their groceries quicker? Or are acres of rain forest being burned and cut down every day by subsistence farmers in financial straits where they have no other options?
Only a small portion of the world can really argue from the position of having comfort to sacrifice things over, and those are in virtually all cases not the portions of the pop
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You miss the point that they are largely deforesting to supply demand in other parts of the world -- whether its for "cheap" agriculture, wood, etc.
No, U. I asked "what comfort you could conceivably give up that would give Brazilian farmers an alternative to deforestation?" If you believe our luxurious choices of shopping at Wal-Mart instead of shopping at Mom n' Pawp (who wholesale with the same traders as Wal-Mart) will alter the old supply and demand curve until Brazillian Farmers can make money from practices aside from getting free cropland by mowing down the unclaimed forests, then I would like to hear your illustration to that point.
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Well, off the top of my head, "localism" or "regionalism" is desirable for a number reasons
I know a lot of people who feel this way. Hell, I even lent a hand for our local farmer's co-op [centralore...cavore.com] to get their website off the ground. But let's say that 90% of the world slowly changes to purchasing purely local food and raw materials. What impact does this have on the impoverished farmers in Brazil? If there is less demand for their product, do they just stop mowing down forest and somehow "win the game"? I would expect they would mow down the forest faster since cheaper product requires higher volume to st
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neuroquantology? (Score:2)
http://www.neuroquantology.com/journal/index.php/nq/search/authors/view?firstName=Huping&middleName=&lastName=Hu&affiliation= [neuroquantology.com]
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Don’t forget the other side: The species that profit from us. It’s just as bad.
Then again you could call it all, including our destructive behavior, just nature, and let it flow freely...
Interestingly though, that means that saving nature is not the "leave everything how it is" that we think it is, but instead is “acting in our own (best) interests”.
Earth as a planet couldn’t care less about we destroying ourselves and taking 99% of all life with us. A couple of millions of yea
Huh, entanglement? (Score:1)
I always heard that photosynthesis in plants relied on quantum tunneling, not quantum entanglement.
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Reminds me of a sort of "who's on first" style SNL bit with Christopher Walken:
He sings the song first pronouncing tomato and potato the same both times - he never alters the pronunciation. Someone comes on and tells him "No no, you need to switch the pronunciation", so he sings it again but pronounces them both the second way both times, still not alternating pronunciations. Then both of them get confused as the new guy tries to explain to Walken that he needs to alternate the pronunciation for tomato an
Newtons Cradle (Score:2, Informative)
Think of the light harvesting molecule as the first steel ball. Think of the molecule in the reaction center as the last ball.
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And where's the entanglement in Newton's cradle? ... :-)
OK, if we put it in a box and only release the first steel ball if a radioactive atom decays
Again? (Score:2)
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No
The article you cite describes how photosynthesis relies on quantum physics in general, not quantum entanglement which is a very specific type of quantum phenomenon.
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> The article you cite describes how photosynthesis relies on quantum physics
> in general...
In other words, chemistry.
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Yet another nail in the coffin of vegetarianism (Score:5, Funny)
Do cows use quantum entanglement? no. Do sheep? no. Plants do. Why would I eat the *smarter* lifeform?
In fact, I'd celebrate with a burger if it weren't for the fact that lettuces are a plant. Anybody know of a meat-based replacement for a plant-friendly person such as myself?
Re:Yet another nail in the coffin of vegetarianism (Score:4, Funny)
Anybody know of a meat-based replacement for a plant-friendly person such as myself?
Just follow the meatitarian's motto: When in doubt, add bacon.
The tricky bit here is the bread. That's plant based. Perhaps you could use large cut deep-fried pork or beef skin as a suitable substitute?
If you want to get philosophical, though, you run into a much bigger problem: All meat comes from dead plants first. Cow's are built on massive quantities of grass, pigs are built on oats and anything else edible (which all come from plants at some point). It's a losing proposition.
Your only real option is to live on honey and honeybees. Plants offer the bees nectar in exchange for assisting their reproduction, so no plant is ever harmed in the production of honey. Since bees are fed on honey, they are fair game too. There are some birds that have this type of symbiotic relationship with plants, which would make them ok to eat, but you can't farm raise them because they must be a part of the cycle to make them plant friendly!
You could also live on maggots and flies, which only consume meat (and indirectly plants) after that meat has died from natural processes. Honey, maggots, maybe a hummingbird every once in a while, supplemented with a lot of fungus - yeah, I think you could really make a go of it!
Re:Yet another nail in the coffin of vegetarianism (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually you can also eat fruits: While the fruits are from plants, they are explicitly produced by the plants to be eaten (because that way they spread). Just don't eat or destroy the seed. Throw them on earth, so they have a chance to grow.
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The tricky bit here is the bread. That's plant based.
As usual KFC already has the answer.
http://www.kfc.com/doubledown/ [kfc.com]
I'm a meat-eater, but. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Animals have brains, right?
If quantum entanglement doesn't turn out to be a vital component in neurological science, then I'll be a fish on a loaf.
-FL
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Neuroquantology? Consciousness? What is it? (Score:1)
Animals have brains, right?
If quantum entanglement doesn't turn out to be a vital component in neurological science, then I'll be a fish on a loaf.
-FL
http://www.neuroquantology.com/journal/index.php/nq/index [neuroquantology.com]
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Anybody know of a meat-based replacement for a plant-friendly person such as myself?
Hmm...
then I'll be a fish on a loaf.
How about fish on a loaf? ^^
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Do cows use quantum entanglement? no. Do sheep? no. Plants do. Why would I eat the *smarter* lifeform?
In fact, I'd celebrate with a burger if it weren't for the fact that lettuces are a plant. Anybody know of a meat-based replacement for a plant-friendly person such as myself?
Like I say to the vegetarians, we have incisors for a reason. I guess to you I'd say, we have molars for a reason.
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Yes, we have incisors to open twinkie packages.
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>>Do cows use quantum entanglement? no. Do sheep? no. Plants do. Why would I eat the *smarter* lifeform?
Depending on your theory of quantum mechanics, you might believe that all systems are entangled. So yeah, they all do.
Exactly... (Score:2)
Nothing new here. (Score:3, Informative)
Well, not to me. I've known about this action for a couple of years. It's highly linked to visible-wavelength irradiation at 420nm and 460nm, it's like an Emerson Effect for the blue wavelengths.
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I'm sure there's some real science in there somewhere, but The Fine Article seems to have been written by someone whose knowledge of quantum entanglement comes entirely from New Age mysticism. They're not describing anything more exotic than the photoelectric effect, which was always the way people thought photosynthesis worked, and the suggestion that quantum entanglement might occur in a photosynthetic system (duh - it occurs everywhere in nature).
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It's actually quantum reactions between different wavelengths of light to trigger certain things inside of the plants. The actual Emerson Effect happens when 660-670nm light is paired with 700-720nm light, however due to figuring out there is some entanglement involved, we've also found a new pair of wavelengths that do this as well, in the blue range. What we've noticed is with these specific pairings, certain photosynthetic and photomorphogenic processes increase DRAMATICALLY.
These guys are pretty much co
Gives new meaning to green computing. (Score:3, Funny)
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"Where are your results?" - "A rabbit ate my computer."
Hameroff/Penrose model of quantum consciousness (Score:4, Interesting)
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This finding seems to give support to the Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction) theory of quantum consciousness proposed by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. One of the main objections to the theory is that quantum coherence could not be sustained in the warm biological environment for sufficient duration. If quantum entaglement is a normal feature of photosynthesis, it's less of a stretch to believe that quantum coherence could be one of the mechanisms to give rise to consciousness in higher lifeforms
This might give support but only to a very tiny extent. The entanglement in the plant case we're talking here about quantum entanglement on a very small scale. Most versions of quantum consciousness hypothesis are positing entanglement on much larger scales. The Orch-OR theory requires entanglement occurring at the level of microtubules which are orders of magnitude larger objects.
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So they get over the minor inconvenience of their proposal not being possible. Now all that they need to do is jump the hurdle of it being completely unnecessary. There is no compelling reason why quantum phenomena are needed to describe conscienceness. Without a compelling reason then their theory has no use.
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There is no compelling reason why quantum phenomena are needed to describe conscienceness. Without a compelling reason then their theory has no use.
Uhmm, could you elaborate a bit? Try simulating consciousness on a computer e.g. a neural network model. As far as I know none of those simulations have come even close to creating an A.I., or we would have sure known about it.
Instead, many developed animals such as people are capable of many functions (like pattern recognition in vision or abstract reasoning), that are just extremely hard to program with the tools available in the normal linear computation model. As our brains are clearly able to run many
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So what you're saying is that when we try to implement A with B it doesn't work, therefore X is a necessary precondition of B? I'm afraid that logic (and science) don't work that way. Saying that because the things that we have tried have not worked is a reason to invoke X as the magic necessary ingredient is equally true for all X. And I don't think that a celestial teapot is the magic ingredient to AI, do you?
Although pattern recognition is hard that does not mean that it is impossible with classical tool
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This changes nothing. The numbers remain the same; the timescale for photosynthesis is not comparable to that for neural activity.
Hameroff/Penrose quantum consciousness remains impossible (as well as unscientific, unnecessary and useless).
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This changes nothing. The numbers remain the same; the timescale for photosynthesis is not comparable to that for neural activity.
Hameroff/Penrose quantum consciousness remains impossible (as well as unscientific, unnecessary and useless).
You have a right to your opinion on it being unnecessary, useless or impossible. You are simply wrong in saying it's unscientific. It's scientific in that they are following scientific method, their equations are there to be read and the calculations work, the only thing left to do is observe it in nature.
You can claim the timescale isn't accurate, or that the size isn't accurate or that the quantum entanglement in plants does not apply to animal brains, but you cannot say that it's unscientific. Thats just
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"If you think it's unscientific why don't you prove that by discussing the unscientific parts of the hypothesis."
Where are the experiments. Where are even the hypothetical experiments?
Without the experiments it's not science but maths at best, opinion at worst.
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Like (macro-)evolution and astrophysics? Or do you know of experiments in building universes that the rest of us don't?
In the broader context... (Score:2)
The most interesting aspect of this from my point of view is that it points towards such effects being taken advantage of by other biological systems, such as brains.
Umm, actually... (Score:2, Insightful)
Another Slashdot summary fail. The paper shows that entanglement can exist in photosystems of plants at high temperatures and a fundamentally noisy system, and is very exciting to note that.
It however, does not show that plants actually use the quantum entanglement in anyway. It may just be that the phenomenon is incidental and a result of the high-level organisation of the proteins in the photosystem without any implications for a plant or evolutionary pressure to select for it.
Green Priests (Score:1)
Chaotic complexity? (Score:2)
the Berkeley researchers have demonstrated that entanglement can exist and persist in the chaotic chemical complexity of a biological system.'"
There are those who argue that there is nothing inherently chaotic about such systems in the natural world - especially in plant life. I think they are called biologists. I think part of the stuff they do is, complexity aside (or lack thereof depending on what aspect of the biological system they are analyzing), they map out these repeatable, oft-times duplicatable (scientifically) processes to show that there actually isnt anything chaotic about it, but that instead they are rather "organized" chemical int
So you're saying ... (Score:2)
Actually, grass grows very fast (Score:4, Interesting)
News Flash (Score:2)
Our own cellular functions - synaptic functions all use quantum interactions / entanglement.
Just thought I'd put that out there.
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Boo! Who modded that down to Troll? I can understand a 0 if it wasn't funny, but a -1? Man, that's harsh. Like throwing tomatoes at a guy.
Seriously, what's the world coming to when people can't enjoy a little blue humour on a Sunday? Surely I'm not the only Slashdot reader who gets spam offering strange tech, herbs and drugs to make my 'member' bigger so I can "rock her all night long"? Quantum entanglement, I'm sure it's a interesting concept in physics, but it also sounds like a good name for a perf
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Simply put, when you make a joke, you take the risk that people won't find your joke to be all that funny. If you're afraid of rejection, comedy is not for you.
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Nor sex.