Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sense of Smell Tied To Quantum Physics?

Posted by kdawson on from the sniffing-out-a-theory dept.

SpaceAdmiral writes "A controversial theory that proposes that our sense of smell is based not on the shape of the molecules that enter our nose but on their vibrations was given a boost recently when University College London researchers determined that the quantum physics involved makes sense. The theory, proposed in the mid-1990s by biophysicist Luca Turin, suggests that electron tunneling initiates the smell signal being sent to the brain. It could explain why similarly shaped molecules can have very different smells, and molecules with very different structures can smell similar." Turin has now formed a company to design odorants using his theory, and claims an advantage over the competition of two orders of magnitude in rate of discovery. The article concludes, "At the very least, he is putting his money where his nose is."

36 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Raised eyebrows... by BWJones · · Score: 4, Informative

    I am going to be very skeptical of this and would not be tossing any money into a private company to study this just yet. The olfactory system is well capable of distinguishing many small molecules, even those that are very similar using a variety of well known and well understood processes just as in the immune system. Look, a Nobel prize was awarded back in the 30's for the discovery that IGGs can recognize even racemic molecules such as L and D forms of glycine even and the olfactory literature is just as rich. The biggest problem however, with the UCL approach is that it completely ignores years of cortical, subcortical and psychophysics data. Furthermore, there is no effort or model in their work that might explain how the signals would be transduced into cortical/subcortical signals or how they account for potential noise in the system. Their claim that signals can be translated through tunneling in a biological system which likely swamps those potential signals with noise is what really troubles me.

    I am not saying that they should not do it, or that they are absolutely wrong, as it is possibly interesting. Rather all I am saying is my eyebrows are raised at their claims.

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    1. Re:Raised eyebrows... by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      On the other hand, if it turns out to be true, it has far-reaching implications. A lot of people have been saying for a long time that quantum effects simply cannot be a factor in the brain, or causing neurons to fire or not, because their effect is too weak. This would be a counterexample and might cause us to look more seriously at quantum activity in the brain. One theory of the mechanism of memory is that it is stored as a series of quantum oscillations creating a sort of holographic pattern...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Raised eyebrows... by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Funny
      On the other hand, if it turns out to be true, it has far-reaching implications


      Sure! It means that the smeller has an effect on the smelled! It also explains why Schroedinger never took into account the SMELL of that both dead and alive cat...

      --
      My blog
    3. Re:Raised eyebrows... by Vreejack · · Score: 2, Informative

      The article is about olfactory receptors, not neurons. All the interactions described here are taking place where the external part of the olfactory receptor meets passing molecules. The actual news here is that the olfactory receptors might actually be capable of detecting quantum-level effects, unlike brain neurons which lack anything near the sensitivity required for that.

      --
      "Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
    4. Re:Raised eyebrows... by kebes · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I share your general skepticism, but the theory is not unreasonable. To suggest that electrons tunnel when an odorant molecule docks in a receptor site seems reasonable enough. Of course the question is whether the signal from such an event is sufficiently above the noise. TFA is specifically about some calculations that suggest that the tunnelling rate should be reasonably high (and, crucially, should be quite different with vs. without the odorant molecule).

      You are right about the established body of literature that already explains much of the sense of smell. However I think it's worth keeping in mind that the two explanations are not mutually exclusive. It sounds like even the scientists in question are treating it like this is an either/or situation, but there's nothing impossible about smell involving a combination of shape-specific molecular recognition and electron-tunneling-specific molecular recognition. Perhaps some shape is the general measurement and then electronic effects provide secondary information.

      In any case, it sounds like it is worth some further investigation. There are still many unanswered questions. However, like you, I won't be investing just yet!

    5. Re:Raised eyebrows... by whathappenedtomonday · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Their claim that signals can be translated through tunneling in a biological system which likely swamps those potential signals with noise is what really troubles me.

      Actually, there seems to be quite a lot of noise in our brain.

      --
      I hope I didn't brain my damage.
    6. Re:Raised eyebrows... by ywl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am a neuroscientist who used to work on olfaction.

      His theory is unconventional but it didn't break any known biological principles. Odors are detected by olfactory receptor *neurons* located on the olfactory epithelium inside the nose (for vetebrates). There are some olfactory receptor *molecules* on the membrane of these neurons - to the confusion of most people, both the neurons and molecules are sometimes called "olfactory receptors". The consenses for the last decade is that these molecules recognize the shape of odor molecules through chemcial interactions. The binding of the odor molecules to the receptors changes the membrane potential of the olfactory receptor neurons which then transmit the information to the brain.

      What he is proposing is instead of, or in additional to, the chemical interactions, the olfactory receptor molecules can recognize the odorant molecules through quantal properties. It's unconventional but it is not totally implausible. The interactions between receptor molecules and agonist (the molecules that bind and activate the receptors) are molecular level events. I'm not a quantal physicist but weird things could perceivably happen at those levels. And after the olfactory receptor molecules being activated, the signal goes to the brain in the same way as the conventional theory.

      The weakness of the theory is more since it's an unconventional claim, it needs more than usual proof. The experiment is not hard to do and after ten years, I haven't heard of a single high profile experimental paper to support it (I could have missed it). So, it probably should be classified as a neat but unproven theory.

    7. Re:Raised eyebrows... by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 2, Informative

      The notion that things with similar structures having different smells - well, things with different structures often have different chemistries. Often a slight change in structure has significant effect on shape, size, polarity, electronegativity, etc, and these things can have enormous impacts on the ability of an odorant to fit correctly with a G-coupled protein receptor, which are the proteins responsible for olfaction.

      The notion that things with different structures smelling the same is irrelevant - it's been shown that a similar *perception* can be caused by a very different combination of actual receptor activations. The conclusion there, not surprisingly, is that perception owes more to the backend processing done in the nasal epithelium and the brain *after* the signals are sent downstream from the receptors.

      I'm not saying it plays no role at all, but it's danged questionable. The only evidence at all is the isotopic effect, but there may be other alternative effects going on, including something as mundane as the difference in vapor pressure. The olfactory sensors I worked on could distinguish H20 fromD20, and they most certainly did NOT work on a principle of electronic tunnelling. Sometimes when people hear hoofbeats, they assume camels and zebras.

    8. Re:Raised eyebrows... by alkaloids · · Score: 5, Informative

      IGGs can recognize even racemic molecules such as L and D forms of glycine Ah, glycine is um, not chiral. Therefore you can't have an L or a D form, nor can you have a racemate... Close though! You were really unlucky, as glycine is the only AA that's not chiral.

      As to the rest of the comment, I'll raise my eyebrows at it. I'm thoroughly skeptical that tunneling would be involved in smell though, but it would be amazing if it were. We'll find out soon enough I'm sure.
    9. Re:Raised eyebrows... by BWJones · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Dammit! Mad props to you as I was thinking alanine. That of course is exactly why Slashdot gets you in trouble. You type stuff in off the top of your head to get your entry in and sometimes you get it wrong. The cool thing is that there are folks on Slashdot that will catch you.

      --
      Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    10. Re:Raised eyebrows... by blank+axolotl · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I disagree. My (non-expert) impression is that this research is really about the physics of receptor (detector) proteins. The neural system is irrelevant because what we are worried about here is whether the receptor triggers a reaction or not. Once the receptor is triggered, the psychology is the same: a signal passing down the nerve into the brain.

      The idea seems plausible to me, at least it is worth investigating. What it proposes is a new way a receptor could be triggered by a molecule. Here, once the molecule has 'docked' into the receptor, if its electronic vibrations are matched to the receptor it will allow a charge to tunnel from one part of the receptor protein to another, triggering a larger reaction (like in photosynthesis). So, this receptor can detect electronic vibrations.

      Actually, I think that how receptors and other membrane proteins work is fairly poorly understood (compared to other areas of physics), and there is a lot of research time going into it. Even the protein for photosynthesis isn't totally understood (though we know a lot). Last summer I was considering doing some modelling of a potassium channel, a homolog of the one essential to our nervous system. "The" potassium channel. Actually, we don't really know how it works! Previous models have suggested that some charged cylinders slide through the protein, pulled by the potential across the membrane and causing it to open, however the new theory (based on the recent crystallography data) is that it is actually a charged lever that gets pulled by the potential, opening the channel as it tilts. In other words, we still in the educated guessing stage, even for this essential protein.

      My Point: How these proteins work really isn't understood. The idea seems plausible on surface glance. Maybe this guy is on to something big!

    11. Re:Raised eyebrows... by CapsaicinBoy · · Score: 3, Informative

      I am a chemosensory psychophysicist, but I work in taste/chemesthesis, not smell. That having been said, I was in the room when Keller and Vosshall presented the following at the Association for Chemoreception Sciences meeting in 2004.

      A PSYCHOPHYSICAL TEST OF THE VIBRATION THEORY OF OLFACTION
      Keller A., Vosshall L.B. Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior,
      Rockefeller University, New York, NY

      At present no satisfactory theory exists to explain why a given
      molecule has a particular smell. A recent book about the physiologist
      Luca Turin has generated new interest in the theory that the smell of a
      molecule is determined by its intramolecular vibrations rather than by
      its shape. We present the first psychophysical experiments in humans
      that test key predictions of this theory. The results suggest that
      molecular vibrations alone cannot explain the perceived smell of a
      chemical. Specifically, we have found that: (i) in a component
      identification task no vanilla odor character was detected in the mixture
      of benzaldehyde and guaiacol (ii) odor similarity ratings did not reveal
      that even and odd numbered aldehydes form two odor classes and (iii)
      naive subjects who could easily discriminate the smell of two molecules
      that differ in shape but not in molecular vibration failed to discriminate
      two molecules with similar shape but different molecular vibrations in
      three different experimental paradigms (similarity rating, duo-trio test,
      triangle test). Taken together our findings are consistent with the idea
      that the smell of a molecule is determined by its shape but we found no
      evidence that the smell of a molecule is influenced by its vibrational
      properties.

      They subsequently published their findings in Nature Neuroscience.

      Keller A, Vosshall LB. A psychophysical test of the vibration theory of olfaction. Nat Neurosci. 2004 Apr;7(4):337-8.

      At present, no satisfactory theory exists to explain how a given molecule results in the perception of a particular smell. One theory is that olfactory sensory neurons detect intramolecular vibrations of the odorous molecule. We used psychophysical methods in humans to test this vibration theory of olfaction and found no evidence to support it.

      The short version is that the data do not support Luca Turin's speculation.

    12. Re:Raised eyebrows... by cnettel · · Score: 3, Insightful
      All chemical bonds are quantum-level effects. You're absolutely right that this is just about the receptors, and it would have been a great surprise if those did NOT show great specificity, with far more than simple sterical relationships. On the other hand, this also applies to just about every neuron junction, where you have specific receptors for neuropeptides. Those are just as much, or as little, quantum physics as this. In addition, just about every enzymatic system with some movement going on is naturally quite dependent on effects like these (and hence a pain to model, it's hard enough to get a static structure right).

      You're basically right, though: Major oscillations between groups of neurons or anything like that is something radically different than this, and this theory doesn't make that any more likely. Even in that case, there is no reason to scream "quantum" (as in: impossible to handle with good old Newtonian physics/statistical chemistry/thermodynamics), as the main effects should be the varying electrical field, which we can easily measure with EEG electrodes. Some degree of leakage/overhearing is known, but I've no idea if anyone has found that as crucial to proper function, rather than a noise effect that's generally filtered out.

    13. Re:Raised eyebrows... by cnettel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I wouldn't even call it that unconventional. There are lots of examples of ligand-protein interactions where you can't get the experimental affinity right, unless you make the energy-minimization time-dependent and compute the mean. This is not only a matter of the fact that the protein will adapt slightly when binding the ligand, but really that we have a continuous movement going on. A conformation where one vibration would suddenly be totally fixed, although it looks fine if you look at the static average, might be quite disastrous. This will be important if we ever want to be really good at engineering new enzyme specificities, or new ligands. Creating perfumes is of course a rather useless special case of the latter, and while it might be news to the odor industry, it shouldn't raise any eyebrows in the pharmeceutical industry. (At least if TFA is anywhere close to describing the actual theory...)

    14. Re:Raised eyebrows... by mrogers · · Score: 3, Funny
      I've been saying this all along! Whoever smelt it dealt it.

      Unfortunately the Uncertainty Principle states that you can't simultaneously know what a fart smells like and where it came from. That explains why your own farts never smell as bad.

  2. Been rooting for this guy! by RobertB-DC · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I remember reading about this guy (probably on the Slashdots) years ago, and I hoped that this would be one of those rare cases of someone who is rejected by the "scientific community" and then goes on to success. There are so many scientists out there that end up on dead-end roads (I'm looking at you, Cold Fusion), that it's nice to have a reminder that there's still reason to explore.

    For proof that success is the best revenge, just check out the company's product list. They're making a killing by creating replacements for aromatic allergens.

    I guess one thing that made me think he was on to something was his reaction to the scientific community's snub -- one response I recall likened a quantum-mechanical sense of smell to "food being processed in the stomach by nuclear reactions". He did NOT go around telling the world that the scientist cabal was out to get him, or that the perfume cartel was conspiring to suppress his work. He simply went about building a successful business by *using* his hypothesis to create and license useful, concrete products.

    You know, I think this is why we have patents in the first place. Not so megacorporations can trademark "business practices" -- if I hear another insurance company or bank describe their latest gimmick with a "patent pending" disclaimer I'm gonna puke. It's so some little guy on the right track can take a risk and come out on top.

    --
    Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
    1. Re:Been rooting for this guy! by Vellmont · · Score: 2, Insightful


      He did NOT go around telling the world that the scientist cabal was out to get him, or that the perfume cartel was conspiring to suppress his work. He simply went about building a successful business by *using* his hypothesis to create and license useful, concrete products.

      I guess I'd be impressed if he actually did science and came up with an experiment or series of experiments that showed that his theory was correct, and the old theory is incorrect.

      Since we presumably don't have any idea how his scent creation process works, it doesn't really lend any credence to his theory. Maybe his theory has nearly the same predictions as the current theory does, and his sucess is just because he's got a better process, better business model, etc? You can make a LOT of money while still completely misunderstanding how something works.

      --
      AccountKiller
    2. Re:Been rooting for this guy! by Otter · · Score: 3, Informative

      Here's a good discussion of Turin's work as it stood a few months ago. I agree with Lowe that Nature Neuroscience's trashing of him was excessive and obnoxious, particularly because, as you say, there's no question that he behaves like a responsible scientist pushing a wildly controversial idea should.

      --
      What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    3. Re:Been rooting for this guy! by linuxscrub · · Score: 2, Informative

      There was a book written on this guy, about 4 years ago:

      The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession by Chandler Burr

      While not a technical book, it does cover the mass-spectrometer-in-your-nose thing at some level. It's a good read, as it covers the guy, his idea, the fairly radical nature of the idea, and it's fairly small effect thus far (up to the point the book was written).

      ls

  3. Hmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does that mean that Schroedinger's cat may or may not smell like a corpse if it's dead?

  4. So... Umm... by vertinox · · Score: 2, Funny

    If I haven't gotten a whiff of my cat's litter yet, it is in neither state of smelling fresh or stinky?

    Or if it does smell stinky, I can be certain in another universe it smells like roses?

    --
    "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
    -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
  5. sometimes I feel like I was born too late by Adult+film+producer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have this feeling we're just on the edge of a scientific revolution in understanding the human body. How many stories in the last few years have we read about using various types of stem cells that give birth to new retinal and nerve endings in the eye, that will give the blind the ability of sight.. or the giving birth to a new pancreas... doctors learning how to harness stem cells for regrowing teeth, understanding how cancer cells operate... It brings me back to that goofy star trek movie where they kidnap the whale from the 20th century, the Doctor Bones is horrified at the procedures they use to resucitate a victim of cardiac arrest or whatever, he views the whole procedure as barbaric medicine... I feel the same way about what's happening now, if only I could live to see through the revolution in medical science that's happening now. I'm probably too old though, being in my 30's, but one day I wouldn't be surprised if limbs and eyes could be regrown, cancer is understood and easily treated, a great number of ills to be cured... sigh, if only time were not an issue.

    1. Re:sometimes I feel like I was born too late by Tyger · · Score: 4, Funny

      Besides if you are 30, by the time you are 70 it will be 2076 and if you consider all the progress made from 1906 to 1946 it will be at least interesting.

      Wow, a post from the future! What's it like in 2036?

  6. tied to quantum physics by eobanb · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Isn't, uhm, everything tied to quantum physics?

    --

    Take off every sig. For great justice.

    1. Re:tied to quantum physics by Oriumpor · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will
      probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to
      be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely
      enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the
      twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the
      reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is
      a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the
      secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange
      array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the
      ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is
      found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can
      discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the
      cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into
      the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some
      convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts --
      physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that
      nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting
      ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it
      and forget it all!

              - Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, v. 1, p. 3-10
                  (This lecture is also one of the six lectures featured in a book &
                  audio edition entitled "Six Easy Pieces")

  7. Smelloscope by Khammurabi · · Score: 2, Funny
    The whole idea of quantum smelling immediately brought Futurama to mind:

    Cubert: I didn't realize you were the inventor of the junk heap!

    Prof.: That's my price-winning Smelloscope. If a dog craps anywhere in the universe, you can bet I won't be out of the loop. And this is my Universal Translator. Unfortunately, it only translates into an incomprehensible dead language.

    Cubert: Hello.

    Translator: Bonjour.

    Prof.: Crazy gibberish!
  8. Re:Quantum Chemistry by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Electrons, photons, and protons are all merely models to explain in tangible terms what the **** is going on down there, so I become skeptical when these terms are utilized to explain/demonstrate quantum mechanics.

    Um, okay, we don't know everything about these particles, but all of those things are real things very much like we describe them -- we can count electrons, photons, and protons, and in the latter case we know they are comprised of smaller things called "quarks" that when combined correctly behave very much like the little ball we call the "proton". That's as real as anything. Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of electrons, so I'm confused as to why you would be skeptical that electrons are used to explain quantum mechanics. The topics are rather intricately linked.

    I'm quite certain that there are layers upon layers beyond what we know, but at this time we don't know of any way to go deeper than the electron. Hence you're basically asking for something to be described in terms of knowledge that doesn't exist yet, which is impossible.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  9. Re:Quantum Chemistry by diqrtvpe · · Score: 2, Informative

    Now, IANAQP, but I am a Physics student, and I have had reasonable experience with quantum tunneling. From what I've learned, quantum tunneling is most easily described in terms of electons hopping across barriers. The electron has a non-zero probability of being found outside the potential well created by its parent atom/molecule, and (skipping over most of the science and math) this means that there will be a non-zero rate of tunneling from that well to the other wells nearby. Now, in many cases that rate is infinitessimally small, but in a case like this it would be conceivable that the rate could go up to something non-trivial. The molecules would have to get pretty darn close, but if they're bound then that solves the problem. If this were the actual paper, instead of a popular article, you would certainly expect to see a whole lot of nigh-incomprehensible gibberish that explained what exactly they thought was going on. As this was written for a less specialized audience, they simplified it using, as far as I know, one of the standard ways of describing what we think is actually going on.

  10. Re:Penrose and Quantum Consciousness by chreekat · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sure, I'll take a swing at it (my credentials are shaky -- a BS in computational physics). This theory says that tunneling, a quantum mechanical process, lets an electron jump into the nervous system. That's equivalent to saying that a quantum mechanical process causes an electric current... something the nervous system uses extensively. I don't know if a single electron would be enough to trigger a signal, but two possibilities for the theory are (1) it *is* enough, (2) more than one electron tunnels.

    Please excuse my undergraduate hand-waving. ;)

  11. Re:Quantum Chemistry by me_mi_mo · · Score: 2, Informative

    You keep repeating that things like photons, electrons and the like are "merely models". I have to take issue with this, as they happen to be effective models.

    I would *love* to see how you would *begin* to explain how light and matter interact at a *fundamental* level, without using the concept of electrons and photons.

    These guys are not cranks - the (free, as in beer) preprint seems to be a pretty typical quantum transport paper, albeit with a slightly "sexed up" angle.

    Models are good, if they work.

  12. Re:Penrose and Quantum Consciousness by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think the point of the criticisms of Penrose isn't over whether quantum-mechanical stuff is going on, but whether quantum-mechanical wierdness (such as entanglement) is involved in the brain's computations or whether they can be fully explained by the classical physics and chemistry approximations (and can thus be adequately modeled by algorithms run on ordinary computers rather than requiring a quantum computer).

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  13. Whole chemistry is based on quantum mechanics by poszi · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I'm not a neuroscientist but I work on molecular interactions and the idea is not that far fetched. In general all interactions involve quantum mechanics. Protein folding, DNA helix, it all requires dispersion which is a purely quantum-mechanical effect. I'd say the whole chemistry is immersed in quantum mechanics. Well, color can only be explained by quantum excitations, so why not smell?

    This theory is "revolutionary" because biochemists use classical simulations. Quantum mechanics is very difficult to apply to such large systems in practice but these molecules definitely are governed by quantum mechanics like all molecules.

    --

    Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!

  14. Maybe the sense of taste is as well? by Sperlock · · Score: 2, Funny

    If this is true for the sense of taste as well, it would explain why so many things taste like chicken.

    --
    http://informationthreshold.blogspot.com - Information Threshold
  15. What about Axel and Buck theory? by dockingman · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm a graduate student in Computer-Aided Drug Design, and as part of my degree I did a research proposal on prediction of smell with computers.

    Richard Axel and Linda Buck received their Nobel Prize in 2004 for Physiology or Medicine for "for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system". Note that this is not *only* for the discovery of the receptors, but also for the *way they work*. There are hundreds of receptors in mammals (almost 1,000 in mice, about 330 in humans) that have different selectivities for different odorant molecules and act combinatorially, that is, that the signal perceived by the brain is the result of the combination of receptors activated by the odorant. Given the large number of receptors, and that any number can be activated by an odorant, the variety of smells is huge, and on the other hand the promiscuity of the receptors allows for a chance of 2 dissimilar molecules having the same smell...

    Some literature I suggest for someone interested:
    - Nobel Prize illustrated presentation: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laurea tes/2004/illpres/
    (see also the Nobel Lectures therein)
    - Unpredictability of smell: Sell, C. S. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2006, 45, 6254-6261.

    I really think that the system of smell is already quite strongly explained by this theory, that also follows the classical binding+activation of receptors that drives traditional biochemistry and drug design.

    I'm still surprised that some theoretical chemist/physicist didn't do QM calculations to prove the tunneling, and publish it in a leading peer-reviewed journal, if the theory is so sound...

  16. Moo by Chacham · · Score: 2, Funny

    I both agree and disagree with this article, and although it looks good, it smells bad.

    I think i'll ask my cat what it's all about.

    --
    Have you read my journal today?
  17. Slow down there buddy by MarkusQ · · Score: 2, Insightful
    if it can be fully explained by the classical physics approximations, then by the laws of causal closure included there we cannot possibly have free will

    Hold on just a minute. You are making quite a leap there, while acting as if you were just stating the obvious.

    Unless you can do something along the lines of:

    1. Say exactly what free will actually is.
    2. Explain how to work out the consequences of applying the laws of classical physics in every possible physical system (possibly lumping systems together by the form of their consequences)
    3. Show that set of results from #2 does not contain #1

    ...you are just making an unsupported assumption there. You may think that free will doesn't sound like something that could come out of a system under the classical approximation, but that's nothing more than a hunch. There are undoubtedly countless logical consequences of classical physics that no one has worked out yet (and many times more that never will be worked out) so it is a bit premature to claim that something we can't even define isn't among them. (To put this in perspective, radio, quicksand, thunderstorms, slinkys, tubas, and static cling are all classical phenomena; do you really think you could fill in the rest of the list without missing many more than you capture?)

    You're way off base on several other points as well (e.g. "instantiation" vs. "simulation" and the long ago exposed "Chinese Room" straw man), but I suspect you are only clinging to them because of your (unfounded) principle worry--that without some sort of magic escape hatch you are at risk of losing your free will to physics. Since this fear is unfounded, I won't bother with the secondary issues here.

    --MarkusQ