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.
What they mean is (certain) quantum entities, once they've interacted at the sub-atomic level, somehow, and very mysteriously, remain connected (instantaneously!), no matter how far apart they may later end up, apparently in order to maintain Heisenberg's quantum uncertainty.
Interesting, eh? I once asked the following question to Roger Penrose, mentor of physicist Stephen Hawking, at a Columbia University lecture:
"If the entire universe was once contained within the pre-big bang singularity, might it be in some sort of instantaneous connection today?"
That is, all parts of the universe acting as a single, instantaneously connected entity.
He didn't quite have an answer (surprise surprise) but he clearly loved the question and went on a bit to explain the "spooky action at a distance" phenomenon to the audience.
You should have addressed your question to Plato.
I'll bet he would have had a snappy, one-word response.
"Aether."
The more I learn from real science, the more I am convinced life didn’t “just happen.”
I know. I feel the same way.
No thanks. I never eat or drink from things with more hair than I have.
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