Photosynthesis May Rely On Quantum Effect

forgethistory sends us to PhysOrg for a summary of new research suggesting that the near instantaneous energy transfer achieved by photosynthesis may rely on quantum effects. From the article: "Through photosynthesis, green plants and cyanobacteria are able to transfer sunlight energy to molecular reaction centers for conversion into chemical energy with nearly 100-percent efficiency. Speed is the key — the transfer of the solar energy takes place almost instantaneously so little energy is wasted as heat. How photosynthesis achieves this near instantaneous energy transfer is a long-standing mystery that may have finally been solved."

Comments

Re:I'm sure a lot more things rely on quantum effe

[CRCulver]

I don't know about consciousness, but in his novel Blue Mars (last book of the Mars trilogy), published a decade ago already, Kim Stanley Robinson made use of research that suggests that memory relies on a quantum effect.

Re:I'm sure a lot more things rely on quantum effe

[meringuoid]

I don't know about consciousness, but in his novel Blue Mars (last book of the Mars trilogy), published a decade ago already, Kim Stanley Robinson made use of research that suggests that memory relies on a quantum effect.

Would that mean that attempts to upload human minds to computers would fall foul of the no-cloning theorem? Such constraints on the duplication of quantum information would have interesting effects on philosophical problems of identity.

Re:Even more amazing...

[JDevers]

Maybe a better summary would be that the energy transfer in photosynthesis is handled by a very long lived wavelike electronic quantum coherence. Regardless of what everyone on /. thinks, this is a pretty big deal. Suggesting something is likely or even almost certain is not the same thing as proving it.

Re:100% efficiency

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I am not arguing that the research is worthless or that it might some day create Organic photocell. Infact I tried to make a joke about Organic Light Absorbing diodes yesterday in the LED thread and mangled it and got modded down as troll. It would be great if we could unlock the secret of photosynthesis and understand why its efficiency is so low ( less than 2%) so that we can develop more efficient organic cells. My only complaint was that, the summary is very misleading, talking about 100% efficiency.

But one thing we should also realize is that, nature has not produced a more efficient photosyntesis process. Plants do not use their energy for mobility. Just to grow. Growth is limited by other resources like minerals and water. So there might not be additional survival value in developing a more efficient photosynthesis process. But still we should be open to the possibility that 2% efficiency is probably the maximum for photosynthesis, using water+co2, producing C12H22O11 (sugar) and oxygen.