Posted on 02/03/2010 4:47:15 PM PST by neverdem
WHILE physicists struggle to get quantum computers to function at cryogenic temperatures, other researchers are saying that humble algae and bacteria may have been performing quantum calculations at life-friendly temperatures for billions of years.
The evidence comes from a study of how energy travels across the light-harvesting molecules involved in photosynthesis. The work has culminated this week in the extraordinary announcement that these molecules in a marine alga may exploit quantum processes at room temperature to transfer energy without loss. Physicists had previously ruled out quantum processes, arguing that they could not persist for long enough at such temperatures to achieve anything useful.
Photosynthesis starts when large light-harvesting structures called antennas capture photons. In the alga called Chroomonas CCMP270, these antennas have eight pigment molecules woven into a larger protein structure, with different pigments absorbing light from different parts of the spectrum. The energy of the photons then travels across the antenna to a part of the cell where it is used to make chemical fuel.
The route the energy takes as it jumps across these large molecules is important because longer journeys could lead to losses. In classical physics, the energy can only work its way across the molecules randomly. "Normal energy transfer theory tells us that energy hops from molecule to molecule in a random walk, like the path taken home from the bar by a drunken sailor," says Gregory Scholes at the University of Toronto, Canada, one of the co-authors of the paper published in Nature this week (DOI: 10.1038/nature08811).
But Scholes and his colleagues have found that the energy-routeing mechanism may actually be highly efficient. The evidence comes from the behaviour of pigment molecules at the centre of the Chroomonas antenna. The team first excited two of these molecules with a brief laser pulse, causing electrons...
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Actually, the teeny-tiny little quantum computers are not exactly unexpected. They had to be inserted to make it possible for life to sustain itself in the very hostile Earth environment.
Probably a lot more things utilize this.
From the Article: “The hope is that quantum coherence could be used to make solar cells more efficient.”
That may indeed work, I’ve estimated that solar cells would have to be 85 to 90+% efficient to be viable for mass-solar electric. Considering we recently broke 20%, IIRC, then this may be a good, and possibly big, leap toward that level of efficiency.
Hope he’s right. But the last time chemists encroached into the world of physics, it didn’t turn out very well. That was called cold fusion.
God is a friggin Genius...
Thanks for reminding me about the solar cells.
Translation?
>God is a friggin Genius...
Yep!
That's in the realm of theoretical physics and states of matter found in around the temperature near absolute zero and particles sought in experimental particle colliders.
Taking it a step further, would such a coherency necessarily require matter?
No, you’re right. I don’t know anything about it. As I say, I hope he’s on to something. Perhaps cold fusion and other premature eureka moments have made me too suspicious in my old age.
Love the discussion of quantum consciousness, btw. I had heard of that before and your comment prompted me to Google it to learn more. Fascinating stuff.
Well don’t be too humbled, it’s one of the most demanding disciplines in the hard sciences. The old methods of chemistry treating atoms as hard spheres with valence charges and so forth is so 19’th century. Now they build up molecules from first principles using techniques called generically ab-initio methods which includes such techniques as the Hartree-Fock method which builds up the quantum wavefunction first of atoms then molecules from discrete elementary quantum wavefunctions representing electrons and protons. As the molecule is built up its electrical and chemical properies such as bond lengths and energies, symmetry, vibrational modes, etc become apparent not through experimentation and wet analytical methods but through brute computation. Such methods are not trivial and generally require a lot of computing power, but there are software packages that can do it on a PC. GAMESS (General Atomic and Molecular Electronic Structure System) is a popular package with a big following. Chemists who use these techniques are really physicists specializing in chemistry. Fascinating stuff really.
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