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Origin of life: Quantum mechanics provided the … ooomph!! ?

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In “The Quantum Life” (Physcisworld.com, July 1, 2009), Paul Davies, astrobiologist and director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University, examines the case for quantum mechanics kickstarting the origin of life (Q-life):

But why should quantum mechanics be relevant to life, beyond explaining the basic structure and interaction of molecules? One general argument is that quantum effects can serve to facilitate processes that are either slow or impossible according to classical physics. Physicists are familiar with the fact that discreteness, quantum tunnelling, superposition and entanglement produce novel and unexpected phenomena. Life has had three and a half billion years to solve problems and optimize efficiency. If quantum mechanics can enhance its performance, or open up new possibilities, it is likely that life will have discovered the fact and exploited the opportunities. Given that the basic processes of biology take place at a molecular level, harnessing quantum effects does not seem a priori implausible.

It’s intriguing, the way he attributes to “life” and, elsewhere, “evolution” the attributes of a planning and thinking intelligent agent.

He almost persuades himself but

Although at least some of these examples add up to a prima facie case for quantum mechanics playing a role in biology, they all confront a serious and fundamental problem. Effects like coherence, entanglement and superposition can be maintained only if the quantum system avoids decoherence caused by interactions with its environment. In the presence of environmental noise, the delicate phase relationships that characterize quantum effects get scrambled, turning pure quantum states into mixtures and in effect marking a transition from quantum to classical behaviour. Only so long as decoherence can be kept at bay will explicitly quantum effects persist. The claims of quantum biology therefore stand or fall on the precise decoherence timescale. If a system decoheres too fast, then it will classicalize before anything of biochemical or biological interest happens.

.So we are now into the business of persuading ourselves that, based on a few studies, that would not be the normal fate of Q-life. And in the end,

How would Q-life evolve into familiar chemical life? A possible scenario is that organic molecules were commandeered by Q-life as more robust back-up information storage. A good analogy is a computer. The processor is incredibly small and fast, but delicate: switch off the computer and the data are lost. Hence computers use hard disks to back up and store the digital information. Hard disks are relatively enormous and extremely slow, but they are robust and reliable, and they retain their information under a wide range of environmental insults. Organic life could have started as the slow-but-reliable “hard-disk” of Q-life. Because of its greater versatility and toughness, it was eventually able to literally “take on a life of its own”, disconnect from its Q-life progenitor and spread to less-specialized and restrictive environments — such as Earth. Our planet accretes a continual rain of interstellar grains and cometary dust, so delivery is no problem. As to the fate of Q-life, it would unfortunately be completely destroyed by entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

All this reminds me of a beautiful Edith Wharton short story, “Fern Seed”, [Update: A reader, 2nd comment below, has pointed out that it is actually called “Pomegranate Seed” and it is here, simply redacted and not wrecked by some clueless ethnicity/class/gender-driven analysis.] The point of the story is that it looks as though a ghost drove a story character to suicide – but there is no actual evidence. (If you ever think of writing a ghost story, take Wharton as your guide. What make her stories work is: No one can prove anything happened, apart from catastrophic emotional impacts, and yet everyone is sure that something happened.)

Comments
Quantum Mechanics is not going to lead us to the Final Theory of Everything. We are a group that is challenging the current paradigm in physics which is Quantum Mechanics and String Theory. There is a new Theory of Everything Breakthrough. It exposes the flaws in both Quantum Theory and String Theory. Please Help us set the physics community back on the right course and prove that Einstein was right! Visit our site The Theory of Super Relativity: www.superrelativity.orgmmfiore
July 20, 2009
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Turn of the Screw, by Henry James shares the device.Nakashima
July 19, 2009
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Thanks, dbthomas. For some reason "fern seed" stuck in my mind, because of course ferns have no seeds, and it is not clear that anything actually happened other than the probable suicide. I am glad you have never seen a story wrecked by clueless ethnicity/class/gender-driven analysis, and can but hope you never do.O'Leary
July 19, 2009
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Denyse: It's called "Pomegranate Seed". Also, it's here: http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/pomeseed.htm As best I can tell, sans any "clueless ethnicity/class/gender-driven analysis", but since I have no idea what the hell that's supposed to mean, I cannot be sure.dbthomas
July 19, 2009
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This reminds me of Koonin's paper: The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution - Eugene V Koonin - Background: "Major transitions in biological evolution show the same pattern of sudden emergence of diverse forms at a new level of complexity. The relationships between major groups within an emergent new class of biological entities are hard to decipher and do not seem to fit the tree pattern that, following Darwin's original proposal, remains the dominant description of biological evolution. The cases in point include the origin of complex RNA molecules and protein folds; major groups of viruses; archaea and bacteria, and the principal lineages within each of these prokaryotic domains; eukaryotic supergroups; and animal phyla. In each of these pivotal nexuses in life's history, the principal "types" seem to appear rapidly and fully equipped with the signature features of the respective new level of biological organization. No intermediate "grades" or intermediate forms between different types are detectable; http://www.biology-direct.com/content/2/1/21 It should be noted that Koonin goes on to try to account for the origination of the massive amounts of functional information, required for the Cambrian Explosion, by trying to access an "undirected and unelucidated" mechanism of Quantum Mechanics called 'Many Worlds'. Besides Koonin ignoring the fact that Quantum Events, on a whole, are strictly restricted to the transcendent universal laws/constants of the universe, it is also fair to note, in criticism to Koonin's scenario, that appealing to the undirected infinite probabilistic resource, of the quantum mechanics of the Many Worlds scenario, actually greatly increases the amount of totally chaotic information one would expect to see generated in the fossil record. i.e. One would expect to see far, far, less order (symbiotic and sequential) than what we see in the fossil record, if his scenario of unfettered access to infinite probabilistic resources were actually true. Though Koonin is correct to recognize that quantum mechanics does not absolutely preclude the sudden appearance of massive amounts of functional information in the fossil record, he is incorrect to disregard the "Logos" of John 1:1 needed to correctly specify the "controlled mechanism of implementation" for those massive amounts of complex functional information witnessed abruptly appearing in the fossil record. Quantum Mechanics - The Limited Role Of The Observer - Michael Strauss - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elg83xUZZBsbornagain77
July 19, 2009
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