Organisms are quantum machines?

9 Replies to “Organisms are quantum machines?”

1. 1
   bornagain77 says:

   July 19, 2016 at 6:37 am

   Of note:

   Molecular Biology – 19th Century Materialism meets 21st Century Quantum Mechanics – video
   https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1141908409155424/?type=2&theater

   Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff – video
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIyEjh6ef_8
2. 2
   Otangelo Grasso says:

   July 19, 2016 at 7:34 am

   The amazing role of quantum mechanics inside living cells

   http://reasonandscience.heaven.....ving-cells
3. 3
   bornagain77 says:

   July 19, 2016 at 8:10 am

   Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011
   Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way.
   Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from.
   To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,,
   Today, Luo and Lo say these curves can be easily explained if the process of folding is a quantum affair. By conventional thinking, a chain of amino acids can only change from one shape to another by mechanically passing though various shapes in between.
   But Luo and Lo say that if this process were a quantum one, the shape could change by quantum transition, meaning that the protein could ‘jump’ from one shape to another without necessarily forming the shapes in between.,,,
   Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins.
   That’s a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo’s equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics.
   https://www.technologyreview.com/s/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein-folding/

   Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules
   Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say.
   That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.”
   The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
   “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?”
   https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552

   Symphony of Life, Revealed: New Imaging Technique Captures Vibrations of Proteins, Tiny Motions Critical to Human Life – Jan. 16, 2014
   Excerpt: To observe the protein vibrations, Markelz’ team relied on an interesting characteristic of proteins: The fact that they vibrate at the same frequency as the light they absorb.
   This is analogous to the way wine glasses tremble and shatter when a singer hits exactly the right note. Markelz explained: Wine glasses vibrate because they are absorbing the energy of sound waves, and the shape of a glass determines what pitches of sound it can absorb. Similarly, proteins with different structures will absorb and vibrate in response to light of different frequencies.
   So, to study vibrations in lysozyme, Markelz and her colleagues exposed a sample to light of different frequencies and polarizations, and measured the types of light the protein absorbed.
   This technique, , allowed the team to identify which sections of the protein vibrated under normal biological conditions. The researchers were also able to see that the vibrations endured over time, challenging existing assumptions.
   “If you tap on a bell, it rings for some time, and with a sound that is specific to the bell. This is how the proteins behave,” Markelz said. “Many scientists have previously thought a protein is more like a wet sponge than a bell: If you tap on a wet sponge, you don’t get any sustained sound.”
   http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....084838.htm

   Phonon
   Excerpt: In physics, a phonon,, represents an excited state in the quantum mechanical quantization of the modes of vibrations,,
   The name phonon,, translates as sound or voice because long-wavelength phonons give rise to sound.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon

   Photons and Phonons
   Excerpt: You see, the primary Planck-Law (E=hf) is metaphysical and independent on the inertia distribution of the solid states.,,,
   Both, photon and phonon carry massequivalent energy m=E/c2=hf/c2.
   The matter-light interaction so is rendered electromagnetically noninertial for the photon and becomes acoustically inertial for the phonons; both however subject to Bose-Einstein stochastic wave mechanics incorporative the Planck-Law.,,
   Where, how and why does E=hf correctly and experimentally verifiably describe the quantum mechanics of energy propagation?,,,
   http://www.tonyb.freeyellow.com/id135.html

   The Real Bioinformatics Revolution – Proteins and Nucleic Acids ‘Singing’ to One Another?
   Excerpt: the molecules send out specific frequencies of electromagnetic waves which not only enable them to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ each other, as both photon and phonon modes exist for electromagnetic waves, but also to influence each other at a distance and become ineluctably drawn to each other if vibrating out of phase (in a complementary way).,,, More than 1 000 proteins from over 30 functional groups have been analysed. Remarkably, the results showed that proteins with the same biological function share a single frequency peak while there is no significant peak in common for proteins with different functions; furthermore the characteristic peak frequency differs for different biological functions. ,,, The same results were obtained when regulatory DNA sequences were analysed.
   http://www.i-sis.org.uk/TheRea.....lution.php
4. 4
   jimmontg says:

   July 19, 2016 at 2:00 pm

   BA@3
   I have been reading about the quantum folding effects of proteins and it is fascinating. For the materialist it seems that there is a ghost in the machine after all.LOL
5. 5
   bornagain77 says:

   July 19, 2016 at 4:25 pm

   Yes jimmontg,

   Protein folding, and DNA repair, both give evidence for ‘a ghost in the machine’, i.e. a soul, in that they both provide fairly strong evidence that highly advanced ‘quantum computation’ is occurring in the cell.

   Firstly, both protein folding and DNA repair are examples of the infamous ‘traveling salesman problem’:

   Confronting Science’s Logical Limits – John L. Casti – 1996
   Excerpt: It has been estimated that a supercomputer applying plausible rules for protein folding would need 10^127 years to find the final folded form for even a very short sequence consisting of just 100 amino acids. (The universe is 13.7 x 10^9 years old). In fact, in 1993 Aviezri S. Fraenkel of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the mathematical formulation of the protein-folding problem is computationally “hard” in the same way that the traveling-salesman problem is hard.
   http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~ro.....Limits.pdf

   DNA computer helps traveling salesman – Philip Ball – 2000
   Excerpt: Just about the meanest problems you can set a computer belong to the class called ‘NP-complete’. The number of possible answers to these conundrums, and so the time required to find the correct solution, increases exponentially as the problem is scaled up in size. A famous example is the ‘travelling salesman’ puzzle, which involves finding the shortest route connecting all of a certain number of cities.,,,
   Solving the traveling-salesman problem is a little like finding the most stable folded shape of a protein’s chain-like molecular structure — in which the number of ‘cities’ can run to hundreds or even thousands.
   http://www.nature.com/news/200.....13-10.html

   Quantum Dots Spotlight DNA-Repair Proteins in Motion – March 2010
   Excerpt: “How this system works is an important unanswered question in this field,” he said. “It has to be able to identify very small mistakes in a 3-dimensional morass of gene strands. It’s akin to spotting potholes on every street all over the country and getting them fixed before the next rush hour.” Dr. Bennett Van Houten – of note: A bacterium has about 40 team members on its pothole crew. That allows its entire genome to be scanned for errors in 20 minutes, the typical doubling time.,, These smart machines can apparently also interact with other damage control teams if they cannot fix the problem on the spot.
   http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....123522.htm

   Yet it is exactly this type of ‘traveling salesman problem’, (that lies at the heart of the protein folding problem and the unanswered question of DNA repair), that quantum computers excel at:

   Speed Test of Quantum Versus Conventional Computing: Quantum Computer Wins – May 8, 2013
   Excerpt: quantum computing is, “in some cases, really, really fast.”
   McGeoch says the calculations the D-Wave excels at involve a specific combinatorial optimization problem, comparable in difficulty to the more famous “travelling salesperson” problem that’s been a foundation of theoretical computing for decades.,,,
   “This type of computer is not intended for surfing the internet, but it does solve this narrow but important type of problem really, really fast,” McGeoch says. “There are degrees of what it can do. If you want it to solve the exact problem it’s built to solve, at the problem sizes I tested, it’s thousands of times faster than anything I’m aware of. If you want it to solve more general problems of that size, I would say it competes — it does as well as some of the best things I’ve looked at. At this point it’s merely above average but shows a promising scaling trajectory.”
   http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....122828.htm

   Moreover, Quantum Computation simply is not reducible to any materialistic explanation. It is not even reducible to a materialistic ‘many worlds’ explanation

   Is Shor’s algorithm a demonstration of the many worlds interpretation?
   Excerpt: David Deutsch is very fond of pointing out Shor’s integer factorization algorithm is a demonstration of the many worlds interpretation. As he often asked, where else did all the exponentially many combinations happen?
   Are there any other alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics which can explain Shor’s algorithm, and the Deutsch-Jozsa and Simon’s algorithm?
   ,,, this argument is totally wrong for a simple reason: the real Universe – our Universe – is a quantum system, not a classical system. So it is normal for quantum systems in a single Universe to behave just like the quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm. On the contrary, if we only use the classical computers, we exponentially slow down the computer relatively to what it could do. In this sense, Deutsch’s “argument” shows that the many-worlds interpretation is just another psychological aid for the people who can’t resist to incorrectly think about our world as being a classical world of a sort.,,,
   There is one more lethal conceptual problem with the “many worlds” explanation of the Shor’s algorithm’s speed: the whole quantum computer’s calculation has to proceed in a completely coherent way and you’re not allowed to imagine that the world splits into “many worlds” as long as things are coherent i.e. before the qubits are measured. Only when the measurement is completed – e.g. at the end of the Shor’s algorithm calculation – you’re allowed to imagine that the worlds split. But it’s too late because by that moment, the whole calculation has already been done in a single (quantum) world, without any help from the parallel worlds.
   (Many more excellent answers are on the site)
   http://physics.stackexchange.c.....rpretation

   As to this quote from the protein folding paper:

   “But Luo and Lo say that if this process were a quantum one, the shape could change by quantum transition, meaning that the protein could ‘jump’ from one shape to another without necessarily forming the shapes in between.,,,”

   As to that quote, it is interesting to note that the answer in quantum computation does not even ‘materialize’ into a definite 3-Dimensional state until it is measured at the end of the computation

   The final answer in quantum computation is read off by the state of the particles at the end of the computation. i.e. the computation determines the final state of the particles. If the computation did not affect the final state of the particles, and the particles remained unaffected by the quantum computation, there would be no way for us to read off the answer.

   “Finally, upon termination of the algorithm, the result needs to be read off. In the case of a classical computer, we sample from the probability distribution on the three-bit register to obtain one definite three-bit string, say 000. Quantum mechanically, we measure the three-qubit state, which is equivalent to collapsing the quantum state down to a classical distribution,,,”
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing#Operation

   Moreover, due to, among other things, the extremely fragile nature of quantum coherent states, man has yet to build a quantum computer of any significant size,,,

   Quantum Computation problems 2010
   Excerpt:
   Interference – During the computation phase of a quantum calculation, the slightest disturbance in a quantum system (say a stray photon or wave of EM radiation) causes the quantum computation to collapse, a process known as de-coherence. A quantum computer must be totally isolated from all external interference during the computation phase. Some success has been achieved with the use of qubits in intense magnetic fields, with the use of ions.
   http://whatis.techtarget.com/d.....-computing

   Scientists achieve critical steps to building first practical quantum computer – April 30, 2015
   Excerpt: If a quantum computer could be built with just 50 quantum bits (qubits), no combination of today’s TOP500 supercomputers could successfully outperform it (for certain tasks such as the travelling saleman problem).
   http://phys.org/news/2015-04-s.....antum.html
6. 6
   bornagain77 says:

   July 19, 2016 at 4:26 pm

   And yet whereas the slightest environmental noise presents extreme difficulties for man in his quest to build quantum computers of any significant size, on the other hand, life is apparently designed in such an ingenuous way that “Environmental noise drives a persistent and cyclic generation of new entanglement”

   Quantum entanglement in hot systems – 2011
   Excerpt: The authors remark that this reverses the previous orthodoxy, which held that quantum effects could not exist in biological systems because of the amount of noise in these systems.,,, Environmental noise here drives a persistent and cyclic generation of new entanglement.,,, In summary, the authors say that they have demonstrated that entanglement can recur even in a hot noisy environment. In biological systems this can be related to changes in the conformation of macromolecules.
   http://quantum-mind.co.uk/quan.....t-systems/

   Moreover, for quantum computation to even be possible, ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, quantum entanglement must first be present.

   More specifically, ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, quantum entanglement (A. Aspect, A. Zeilinger, etc..) is used as a ‘quantum information channel’ in which to perform quantum computations,,,

   Quantum Entanglement and Information
   Quantum entanglement is a physical resource, like energy, associated with the peculiar nonclassical correlations that are possible between separated quantum systems. Entanglement can be measured, transformed, and purified. A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems. The general study of the information-processing capabilities of quantum systems is the subject of quantum information theory.
   http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/

   And indeed, we now have evidence for ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement/information in both Protein and DNA chains.

   Classical and Quantum Information Channels in Protein Chain –  Dj. Koruga, A. Tomi?, Z. Ratkaj, L. Matija – 2006
   Abstract: Investigation of the properties of peptide plane in protein chain from both classical and quantum approach is presented. We calculated interatomic force constants for peptide plane and hydrogen bonds between peptide planes in protein chain. On the basis of force constants, displacements of each atom in peptide plane, and time of action we found that the value of the peptide plane action is close to the Planck constant. This indicates that peptide plane from the energy viewpoint possesses synergetic classical/quantum properties. Consideration of peptide planes in protein chain from information viewpoint also shows that protein chain possesses classical and quantum properties. So, it appears that protein chain behaves as a triple dual system: (1) structural – amino acids and peptide planes, (2) energy – classical and quantum state, and (3) information – classical and quantum coding. Based on experimental facts of protein chain, we proposed from the structure-energy-information viewpoint its synergetic code system.
   http://www.scientific.net/MSF.518.491

   Quantum coherent-like state observed in a biological protein for the first time – October 13, 2015
   Excerpt: If you take certain atoms and make them almost as cold as they possibly can be, the atoms will fuse into a collective low-energy quantum state called a Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1968 physicist Herbert Fröhlich predicted that a similar process at a much higher temperature could concentrate all of the vibrational energy in a biological protein into its lowest-frequency vibrational mode. Now scientists in Sweden and Germany have the first experimental evidence of such so-called Fröhlich condensation (in proteins).,,,
   The real-world support for Fröhlich’s theory (for proteins) took so long to obtain because of the technical challenges of the experiment, Katona said.
   http://phys.org/news/2015-10-q.....otein.html

   “What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state.”
   Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it)
   https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176

   And as is fairly well known by now, Quantum Entanglement, due to quantum non-locality, simply refuses to be reduced to any within space-time matter-energy cause.

   Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012
   Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
   http://www.quantumlah.org/high.....uences.php

   Closing the last Bell-test loophole for photons – Jun 11, 2013
   Excerpt:– requiring no assumptions or correction of count rates – that confirmed quantum entanglement to nearly 70 standard deviations.,,,
   http://phys.org/news/2013-06-b.....otons.html

   In fact, in the following paper, the physicists showed that the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, the more strongly it violates local realism,

   Physicists find extreme violation of local realism in quantum hypergraph states – Lisa Zyga – March 4, 2016
   Excerpt: Many quantum technologies rely on quantum states that violate local realism, which means that they either violate locality (such as when entangled particles influence each other from far away) or realism (the assumption that quantum states have well-defined properties, independent of measurement), or possibly both. Violation of local realism is one of the many counterintuitive, yet experimentally supported, characteristics of the quantum world.
   Determining whether or not multiparticle quantum states violate local realism can be challenging. Now in a new paper, physicists have shown that a large family of multiparticle quantum states called hypergraph states violates local realism in many ways. The results suggest that these states may serve as useful resources for quantum technologies, such as quantum computers and detecting gravitational waves.,,,
   The physicists also showed that the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, the more strongly it violates local realism, with the strength increasing exponentially with the number of particles. In addition, even if a quantum hypergraph state loses one of its particles, it continues to violate local realism. This robustness to particle loss is in stark contrast to other types of quantum states, which no longer violate local realism if they lose a particle. This property is particularly appealing for applications, since it might allow for more noise in experiments.
   http://phys.org/news/2016-03-p.....alism.html

   Moreover, quantum information is conserved, i.e. cannot be created or destroyed:

   Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time
   Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment.
   http://www.physorg.com/news/20.....tally.html

   Besides providing direct empirical falsification of neo-Darwinian claims that say information is emergent from a material basis, the implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’ quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every DNA and protein molecule, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
   That pleasant implication, or course, being the fact that we now have physical evidence strongly suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that lives beyond the death of our material bodies.

   Verse:

   Mark 8:37
   “Is anything worth more than your soul?”
7. 7
   bornagain77 says:

   July 19, 2016 at 8:31 pm

   New IP video:

   An Interaction-Free Quantum Experiment
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOv8zYla1wY
8. 8
   DillyGill says:

   July 19, 2016 at 11:49 pm

   bornagain77 @7
   Allow me to supply the music

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT2Bjwm8LUA&list=RDOT2Bjwm8LUA#t=30

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3HbjbfI6jg
9. 9
   bornagain77 says:

   July 20, 2016 at 8:58 am

   IBM Just Put A Quantum Computer On The Cloud For Anyone To Use – May 2016
   Excerpt: As IBM’s research division pursues a multi-year quest to build a universal quantum computer more powerful than any supercomputer in the world, it’s sharing its latest progress with smaller quantum processors on the cloud for the world to join in.
   Tucked off a nondescript hallway in IBM’s sprawling and hard-to-find T.J. Watson Research Center an hour north of New York City you’ll find a room with several hanging white cylinders, each surrounded by racks of servers. They’re about the size of fridges—which is exactly what they are. But these fridges cool their insides down to just 0.015 degrees above 0 kelvin, or about -459 degrees Fahrenheit. “We like to say it’s colder than space,” says Jerry Chow, manager of the experimental quantum computing team at IBM Research. They’re so cold because inside, IBM’s latest breakthroughs in quantum computing are hard at work.
   At 50 qubits, a quantum computer will be able to run experiments that no traditional computer will be able to emulate, no matter how big or how fast. IBM Research’s fridges today house quantum processors of just five. That’s not nearly enough to replicate many of the tasks we expect of computers today. But each processor can run a complex algorithm or experiment in just a second or two, and churn out results for eight hours before the system needs a refresher. Most importantly, they consistently work.
   http://www.forbes.com/sites/al.....707463f7f6