Most young scholars study photosynthesis, the process by which plants and some microorganisms convert sunlight into fuel.
Those middle school biology lessons generally steer clear of the topic of quantum mechanics, the physics of the subatomic world.
But it turns out the same rules that govern subatomic particles are at work in sun-gobbling plants, according to research at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Washington University in St. Louis.
According to a recent article in Discover magazine, electrons moving through a plant use quantum tunneling, the phenomenon of hopping spontaneously from one location to another, to make the process of photosynthesis more efficient than any energy-converting process created by man.
According to the article:
On the face of things, quantum mechanics and the biological sciences do not mix. Biology focuses on larger-scale processes, from molecular interactions between proteins and DNA up to the behavior of organisms as a whole; quantum mechanics describes the often-strange nature of electrons, protons, muons and quarks--the smallest of the small...
Yet new experiments keep finding quantum processes at play in biological systems... With the advent of powerful new tools like femtosecond (10-15 second) lasers and nanoscale-precision positioning, life's quantum dance is finally coming into view.
As new scientific tools are developed, the prospect of understanding processes like photosynthesis at a much deeper level is becoming stronger. For example, the Linac Coherent Light Source, due for first light this year at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is an X-ray laser driven by a particle accelerator that will allow physicists to watch chemical reactions that previously occurred too quickly to observe.
The Discover article points out that new studies of photosynthesis may lend some credibility to past hypotheses involving quantum mechanics.
In 1996, biophysicist Luca Turin controversially suggested human smell receptors performed quantum tunneling to distinguish between odors. In 2007, biochemists from the Autonomous University of Barcelona said that green tea acted as an anti-oxidant through a similar process.
And Sir Roger Penrose, Oxford University physicist, and Stuart Hameroff, an anesthesiologist and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, have argued that our very consciousness is governed by the laws of quantum gravity. These arguments are also very controversial, with Max Tegmark, MIT cosmologist, publishing some forceful rebuttals.
But with new results and new tools that can explore the quantum domain of biological systems, perhaps some day quantum physics will make it into the biology classroom after all.
