And for some of us, it's a fuzzy, surreal place at every level.
Coffee anyone?
Posted on 03/31/2016 7:58:33 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Photosynthesis and other vital biological reactions depend on the interplay between electrically polarized molecules. For the first time, scientists have imaged these interactions at the atomic level. The insights from these images could help lead to better solar power cells, researchers added.
Atoms in molecules often do not equally share their electrons. This can lead to electric dipoles, in which one side of a molecule is positively charged while the other side is negatively charged. Interactions between dipoles are critical to biology -- for instance, the way large protein molecules fold -- often depend on how the electric charges of dipoles attract or repel each other.
One process where dipole coupling is key is photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, dipole coupling helps chromophores – molecules that can absorb and release light – transfer the energy that they capture from sunlight to other molecules that convert it to chemical energy.
Intriguingly, a consequence of dipole coupling is that chromophores may experience a strange phenomenon known as quantum entanglement. Quantum physics suggests that the world is a fuzzy, surreal place at its very smallest levels. Objects experiencing quantum entanglement are better thought of as a single collective than as standalone objects, even when separated in space. Quantum entanglement means that chromophore properties can strongly depend on the number, orientations and positions of their neighbors.
Understanding the effects that dipole coupling might have on chromophores might help shed light on photosynthesis and light-harvesting applications such as solar energy. However, probing these interactions requires imaging chromophore activity with atomic levels of precision. Such a task is well beyond the capabilities of light-based microscopes, which are currently limited to a resolution slightly below 10 nanometers or billionths of a meter at best, said Guillaume Schull, a physicist at the University of Strasbourg in France. In comparison, a hydrogen atom is roughly one-tenth of a nanometer in diameter.
Interesting article. Much more at link.
I’ve been long waiting for science to crack the secret to photosynthesis. Gonna be awesome when they do. Sounds close.
I’m dipolar and so am I.
So this is a long held goal in your life?
And for some of us, it's a fuzzy, surreal place at every level.
Coffee anyone?
For some reason I feel it will be more like handing a loaded pistol to a two year old.
Yup.
Don’t be alarmed! This all just happened to come together by random action over billions of years! Sort of like finding a working iPhone on the beach and realizing it just assembled itself spontaneously. No Creator required. ;-)
Or like handing nuclear physics to apes. They don’t live much longer.
President Washington warned us about this.
Anyway, to your point, in case you haven't heard: rocks really can turn into people if you leave them alone long enough. That is an axiom. They don't even bother to try to teach the details of it, haven't for decades. That is all.
Oh deer . . .
The photosynthetic biome will end being the quantum supercomputer that actually weaves the virtual reality that composes our existence...
Got it?
Heck, yeah! The implications of being able to create and control photosynthesis are enormous.
What are the implications.
The potential to create starches and sugars from sunlight without plants in an entirely controlled environment. Possibly without sunlight once the process is understood. That could produce a lot of food and energy. That could take care of a couple of issues needed for long term space travel.
The implications of our idiot scientwists screwing with photosynthysis using recombinatant dna getting loose like Monsanto wheat modifications is enormous.
I would prefer someone not to tinker with what makes the planet tick until they stop screwing up in the small stuff.
What about Monsanto’s aluminum- resistant seeds that they are forcing farmers to buy? Just why do you suppose that is?? (Hint: Have you looked up into the sky lately? aircrap.org )
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