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As nature’s own solar cells, plants convert sunlight into energy via photosynthesis. New details are emerging about how the process is able to exploit the strange behavior of quantum systems, which could lead to entirely novel approaches to capturing usable light from the sun.
All photosynthetic organisms use protein-based “antennas” in their cells to capture incoming light, convert it to energy and direct that energy to reaction centers—critical trigger molecules that release electrons and get the chemical conversion rolling. These antennas must strike a difficult balance: they must be broad enough to absorb as much sunlight as possible yet not grow so large that they impair their own ability to shuttle the energy on to the reaction centers.
This is where quantum mechanics becomes useful. Quantum systems can exist in a superposition, or mixture, of many different states at once. What’s more, these states can interfere with one another—adding constructively at some points, subtracting at others. If the energy going into the antennas could be broken into an elaborate superposition and made to interfere constructively with itself, it could be transported to the reaction center with nearly 100 percent efficiency.
A new study by Mohan Sarovar, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, shows that some antennas—namely, those found on a certain type of green photosynthetic bacteria—do just that. Moreover, nearby antennas split incoming energy between them, which leads not just to mixed states but to states that are entangled over a broad (in quantum terms) distance. Gregory Scholes, a chemist at the University of Toronto, shows in a soon to be published study that a species of marine algae utilizes a similar trick. Interestingly, the fuzzy quantum states in these systems are relatively long-lived, even though they exist at room temperature and in complicated biological systems. In quantum experiments in the physics lab, the slightest intrusion will destroy a quantum superposition (or state).
These studies mark the first evidence of biological organisms that exploit strange quantum behaviors. A better understanding of this intersection of microbiology and quantum information, researchers say, could lead to “bioquantum” solar cells that are more efficient than today’s photovoltaics.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Chlorophyll Power."
This article was originally published with the title Photosynthesis.
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10 Comments
Add CommentInteresting to see quantum entanglement happening in nature. This guy says he's solved the mystery of entanglement - http://waynewirs.com/hdi/ - it's actually pretty thought provoking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBiodiversity: Kinda Important.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo the author: At least go read about quantum mechanics on Wikipedia before writing this garbage. Your statements don't even make sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If the energy going into the antennas could be broken into an elaborate superposition and made to interfere constructively with itself, it could be transported to the reaction center with nearly 100 percent efficiency."
You can't break a photon into an 'elaborate superposition.' A photon is a wave function, which is already a superposition of infinite states, comprised of an electric field perpendicular to a magnetic field.
Wave functions can't constructively interfere with themselves. Interference is defined as the result of two or more wave functions interacting.
The ATP cycle is not 100% efficient, and this has NOTHING to do with quantum mechanics. All it has to do with is the chemical reactions involved in the cycle. Particles always 'absorb' 100% of the energy of a photon when the photon is absorbed. It might re-emit a new photon at a different wavelength (thereby retaining some of the energy of the photon) or at the same wavelength.
Explain to me how a photon that is split and entangled with its partner can maintain its entanglement after being absorbed by a particle (ala photosynthesis) and thereby ceases to exist?
Mr. Moyer, please post your credentials from the University of California, Berkeley. If they don't involve a hard science, you have no business writing these types of articles.
This article is proof of ignorance The chlorofyll molecule is a little radio receiver,containting coils, transmission lines,detectors, flipflops,transducers,combinations of molecules to form a variable conformation system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe whole is designed to collect small quantities of light energy and accumulate them until a potential of 2Volts to load enzymes. Energy is transformed several times. It comes in as electromagnetic energy is transformed to mechanical energy and finally in chemical energy .
G.Machiels
Biologist
Diepenbeek
Belgium
To bernsted69,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot to defend the article, but if you are going to be so blatant about proclaiming someone's ignorance you should try and not be so stupid yourself. You say:
"Wave functions can't constructively interfere with themselves. Interference is defined as the result of two or more wave functions interacting."
That is 100% false. Why don't YOU go look up Young's double slit experiment with single photons or single electrons on Wikipedia. That is an example of a wavefunction interfering with itself. As a matter of fact that is the whole point! The fact that a particle interferes with itself is why it is so interesting.
I suggest you make sure what you are saying is correct before calling someone else out. Moron.
The question is why blue and red light and not the more abundant green light. Is the quantum antennas broad band reception more efficient with a band gap in the middle of the broadband design.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr is there some form of mixing between the two frequencies (red and blue) which aid in the electro-chemical reaction of chlorophyll
I'm admittedly ignorant, but this seems to be a failure to communicate. The author seems to have borrowed the concept of entanglement popularized by quantum mechanics and applied it to describe an interaction between molecular scale photonic processes. Apparently this was not very successfully done. The idea of optimization through interaction may be valid here but this is not quantum mechanics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArtificial Photosynthesis and Quantum Entanglement .(1)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNotes by: Paolo Manzelli - pmanzelli.lre@gmail.com ; www.edscuola.it/lre.html ; www.wbabin.net
At the Quantum Bionet workshop (2) we will explore e quantum entanglement as a system that permits to understand some contemporarily challenges as for instance the working function of the chlorophyll molecules in light-harvesting photosynthesis in green plants.
It is weel known that through photosynthesis green plants and cyanobacteria (also called blue-green-algae)
are able to capture energy from sunlight and convert it into bio-chemical energy.
To day the entanglement studies are advanced in exploiting quantum mechanical effects during the plants transfer energy from sunlight . In fact it is well established that green plants and certain bacteria are able to transfer the energy harvested from sunlight through pigment-protein complexes; the last are working as energy information antennas for improving simultaneity on exchange of information energy as it is made the chlorophyll complex that acts as reaction catalytic centre giving as result nearly 100-percent efficiency to energy conversion.
Entanglement (3) is a quantum interconnection based on the overposition of two or more objects like photons, electrons, or atoms that before are separated in physical space. So that entanglement quantum effect can be seen as the responsible to obtain also the photosynthetic phenomena in plants, particularly through the pigment molecules, or chromophores that works as Antenna Pigments .
One of the most recent scientific observation characterizes the Entanglement as a generalized critical quantum physical phenomenon till now hidden in the photosynthetic effect as some recent experimental contributions demonstrates with a confirmed reproducibility (4) .
Light and Mirror Entanglement : http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/24285
As a matter of facts when two quantum-sized particles, for example a pair of electrons, are entangled, any change to one will be instantly reflected in the other, in the field dimension of Information Energy .
Therefore the future of Green Economy can be based on a clean green solar power production organizing an artificial photosynthesis mimicing the process by which green plants convert sunlight into electrochemical energy.
So that at the 3� Quantimbionet Workshop we will stimulate the undersyanding contemporary challenges as the the development of advanced study of photosynthetic energy transfer, that consists on the understanding of the working function of ANTENNA PIGMENTS, in order to get the ability to fully comprehend how the energy-transfer system in artificial photosynthesis can works for improving future Green Economy .
BIBLIO ON LINE
(1)- P.Manzelli: http://www.wbabin.net/science/manzelli8.pdf
(2)- Workshop : http://www.edscuola.it/archivio/lre/3rd_Quantumbionet_Workshop.pdf
(3) Visible entanglement : http://www.edscuola.it/archivio/lre/sole.pdf
(4)http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2010/05/10/untangling-quantum-entanglement/ ;
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/every-tree-quantum-mechanic ;
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=16025
PS. INVITATION to help to Undersyanding contemporary challenges.
Change the world will become possible only by changing the mechanicistic ideas that are the intellectual cause to do so high devastation of the natural world during the industrial epoch.
Developments on cognitive change and implementation of no mechanic ideas, as are necessary in order to promote the conceptual framework for renewal of Green Economy, will be discussed during the workshop that will be held in the ancient A. Volta classroom at the University of Pavia on 24 SETT/10.
You are invited to attend.See : http://www.edscuola.it/archivio/lre/3rd_Quantumbionet_Workshop.pdf
see also the explanatory memorandum in: http://www.wbabin.net/science/manzelli85.pdf
GREEN -ECONOMY
Artificial Photosynthesis and Quantum Entanglement .(1)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNotes by: Paolo Manzelli - pmanzelli.lre@gmail.com ; www.edscuola.it/lre.html ; www.wbabin.net
At the Quantum Bionet workshop (2) we will explore e quantum entanglement as a system that permits to understand some contemporarily challenges as for instance the working function of the chlorophyll molecules in light-harvesting photosynthesis in green plants.
It is weel known that through photosynthesis green plants and cyanobacteria (also called blue-green-algae)
are able to capture energy from sunlight and convert it into bio-chemical energy.
To day the entanglement studies are advanced in exploiting quantum mechanical effects during the plants transfer energy from sunlight . In fact it is well established that green plants and certain bacteria are able to transfer the energy harvested from sunlight through pigment-protein complexes; the last are working as energy information antennas for improving simultaneity on exchange of information energy as it is made the chlorophyll complex that acts as reaction catalytic centre giving as result nearly 100-percent efficiency to energy conversion.
Entanglement (3) is a quantum interconnection based on the overposition of two or more objects like photons, electrons, or atoms that before are separated in physical space. So that entanglement quantum effect can be seen as the responsible to obtain also the photosynthetic phenomena in plants, particularly through the pigment molecules, or chromophores that works as “Antenna Pigments” .
One of the most recent scientific observation characterizes the Entanglement as a generalized critical quantum physical phenomenon till now hidden in the photosynthetic effect as some recent experimental contributions demonstrates with a confirmed reproducibility (4) .
Light and Mirror Entanglement : http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/24285
As a matter of facts when two quantum-sized particles, for example a pair of electrons, are “entangled,” any change to one will be instantly reflected in the other, in the field dimension of Information Energy .
Therefore the future of Green Economy can be based on a clean green solar power production organizing an artificial photosynthesis mimicing the process by which green plants convert sunlight into electrochemical energy.
So that at the 3° Quantimbionet Workshop we will stimulate the undersyanding contemporary challenges as the the development of advanced study of photosynthetic energy transfer, that consists on the understanding of the working function of ANTENNA PIGMENTS, in order to get the ability to fully comprehend how the energy-transfer system in artificial photosynthesis can works for improving future Green Economy .
BIBLIO ON LINE
(1)- P.Manzelli: http://www.wbabin.net/science/manzelli8.pdf
(2)- Workshop : http://www.edscuola.it/archivio/lre/3rd_Quantumbionet_Workshop.pdf
(3)– Visible entanglement : http://www.edscuola.it/archivio/lre/sole.pdf
(4)http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2010/05/10/untangling-quantum-entanglement/ ;
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/every-tree-quantum-mechanic ;
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=16025
PS. INVITATION to help to Undersyanding contemporary challenges.
Change the world will become possible only by changing the mechanicistic ideas that are the intellectual cause to do so high devastation of the natural world during the industrial epoch.
Developments on cognitive change and implementation of no mechanic ideas, as are necessary in order to promote the conceptual framework for renewal of Green Economy, will be discussed during the workshop that will be held in the ancient A. Volta classroom at the University of Pavia on 24 SETT/10.
You are invited to attend.See : http://www.edscuola.it/archivio/lre/3rd_Quantumbionet_Workshop.pdf
see also the explanatory memorandum in: http://www.wbabin.net/science/manzelli85.pdf
GREEN -ECONOMY
Re Quantum Mechanics And Entanglement
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA.
Essence Of Quantum Mechanics
The universe, and life within it, are not just conglomerations of mechanisms. The universe, and life within it, have come into being by the nature of energy-mass dualism, and their fate, their final outcome, is governed by this dualism. The genesis and, most probable cyclic, existence of the universe are governed by the energy-mass relationship.
Energy-mass relationship governs also the routes, the mechanisms, of cosmic and life evolutions.
Mechanisms do not set/determine the classical physics fate states. They are routes of evolution between classical physics fate states. Quantum mechanics are mechanisms, probable, possible and actual mechanisms of getting from one to other classical physics states WITHIN the expanse from cosmic singularity to the maximum expanded universe and back to singularity states.
B.
Entanglement loophole closed
A long-distance experiment rejects a challenge to quantum physics.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/64935/title/Entanglement_loophole_closed
An old USSR joke:
Question: Is it true that the USSR-made car "Volga" makes a 90-degree turn at 100 km/hr?
Answer: Yes.... but only once.
- Is entanglement a "yes, but only once" affair for each entangled objects pair/group?
and, if so indeed,
- Are the states-of-systems of entangled objects decided upon separation of the objects, not upon their measurment?
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
Evolution, Natural Selection, Derive From Cosmic Expansion
http://darwiniana.com/2010/09/05/the-question-reductionists-fear/
Cosmic Evolution Simplified
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/240/122.page#4427