Consider utilizing your smartphone to regulate your own
cells’ activity to treat illnesses and injuries. It sounds like something out
of a sci-fi author’s excessively hopeful imagination. But thanks to the
developing study of quantum biology, this might be a reality in the future.
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Looking at life at the atomic scale offers a more |
The knowledge and control of biological processes at
ever-smaller dimensions, from protein folding to genetic engineering, have
advanced tremendously during the past few decades. However, little is known
about how much quantum effects affect living systems.
It is impossible for classical physics to explain the
processes that take place between atoms and molecules, known as quantum
effects. The Newtonian laws of motion and other principles of classical mechanics
are known to fail at atomic scales for more than a century. Quantum mechanics
is a separate set of laws that governs how tiny objects act.
Quantum mechanics might appear illogical and even magical to
humans since they can only view the macroscopic, or visible to the unaided eye,
world. In the quantum world, things that you might not expect happen, such as
superposition—the state of being in two locations at once—or electrons
“tunnelling” past minute energy barriers and emerging undamaged on the
other side.
I have a background in quantum engineering. The focus of
quantum mechanics research is typically technology. Nevertheless, and perhaps
surprisingly, there is mounting proof that nature, an engineer with billions of
years of experience, has mastered the use of quantum physics. If this is
accurate, it shows how drastically inadequate our knowledge of biology is. It
also implies that using the quantum characteristics of biological matter, we
could be able to influence physiological processes.
Quantumness in biology is probably real
Quantum phenomena can be manipulated by researchers to
create more advanced technology. You already live in a quantum-powered world
because of technology like laser pointers, GPS, magnetic resonance imaging, and
the transistors in your computer.
Generally speaking, quantum effects only become visible at
incredibly short length and mass scales or when temperatures are getting close
to zero. This is due to the fact that when quantum things, such as atoms and
molecules, interact with one another and their surroundings erratically, they
lose their “quantumness”. In other words, the principles of classical
mechanics are more appropriate for describing a macroscopic grouping of quantum
particles. Anything that begins as quantum ends up as classical. An electron, for
instance, can be made to appear in two places at once, but after a brief period
of time, it will only be in one, as is expected conventionally.
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