Life on the edge

Schrodinger's Cat, forever residing in the nether world of being either alive or dead, is the glamor puss of quantum mechanics, the star participient in a theory most mystifying when it comes to trying to learn how reality works, is now being applied to the innermost sanction of life, the process that may operate at the edge of the quantum/classical realm, thanks to entanglement, the possible prime driver of reality itself.

When the team shone the laser at the system, (Photosynthesis) they observed a very peculiar light echo that came in beat-like waves. These ‘quantum beats’ were a sign that, instead of taking a single route through the system, the photon energy was using quantum coherence to travel by all possible routes simultaneously. Imagine if, when confronted by the stream, the famous cat somehow divided itself into lots of identical quantum-coherent cats that hop across the chlorophyll boulders by every available route to find the quickest one. Quantum beats have now been detected in many different photosystems, including those of regular plants such as spinach. It appears that the most important reaction in the biosphere is exploiting the quantum world to put our food on our table.

How does life maintain its molecular order long enough to perform its quantum tricks in warm and wet cells?

And if that’s not enough for you, we come at last to the very mechanisms of evolution itself. Schrödinger suggested that mutations could involve a kind of quantum jump. In their classic DNA paper, Watson and Crick proposed that they might involve nucleotide bases switching between alternative structures, a process called ‘tautomerisation’ thought to involve quantum tunnelling. In 1999, the physicist Jim Al-Khalili and I suggested that proton tunnelling might account for one very peculiar kind of mutation – so-called adaptive mutation – which appears to occur more frequently when it provides an advantage. Our paper was entirely theoretical, but we are currently attempting to find experimental evidence for proton tunnelling in DNA. So, watch this space.

Beneath all these quantum solutions to puzzling vital phenomena, we find ourselves with a deeper mystery. Quantum coherence is an immensely delicate phenomenon, depending on those in-tune particle waves. To maintain it, physicists usually have to enclose their systems within near-perfect vacuums and cool them down to very close to absolute zero temperature to freeze out any heat-driven molecular motion. Molecular vibrations are the mortal enemy of quantum coherence. How, then, does life manage to maintain its molecular order for long enough to perform its quantum tricks in warm and wet cells? That remains a profound riddle. Recent research offers a tantalising hint that, instead of avoiding molecular storms, life embraces them, rather like the captain of a ship who harnesses turbulent gusts and squalls to maintain his ship upright and on-course. As Schrödinger predicted, life navigates a narrow stream between the classical and quantum worlds: the quantum edge.

And here's a short piece from Scientific American showing how wormholes and entanglement are intrinsically connected.

Maldacena and Susskind go so far as to equate the two in the relation ER = EPR, where ER refers to an Einstein–Rosen bridge (or wormhole) and EPR, short for Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen, is another term for entanglement. "Ours is a weaker statement, but it's easier to demonstrate to be true," Karch says. In his version wormholes aren't equivalent to entanglement; rather, 4-D wormholes are mathematically analogous to 3-D entanglement. Karch and his collaborator, Kristan Jensen of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, published their findings November 20 in Physical Review Letters. Building on their work, Julian Sonner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology strengthened the argument in a paper published in the same journal issue.

J. B. S. Haldane: 
"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; but stranger than we CAN imagine." :)

Addendum: Check out Aeon Magazine and Decrypted Matrix, you won't be disappointed.