Quantum Entanglement and Photosynthesis

medcalf writes "Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have experimentally shown that plants use quantum entanglement in photosynthesis. Researcher Mohan Sarovar said, 'The lessons we’re learning about the quantum aspects of light harvesting in natural systems can be applied to the design of artificial photosynthetic systems that are even better. The organic structures in light harvesting complexes and their synthetic mimics could also serve as useful components of quantum computers or other quantum-enhanced devices, such as wires for the transfer of information.' According to the article, 'What may prove to be this study's most significant revelation is that contrary to the popular scientific notion that entanglement is a fragile and exotic property, difficult to engineer and maintain, the Berkeley researchers have demonstrated that entanglement can exist and persist in the chaotic chemical complexity of a biological system.'"

Comments

No offense

[Anonymous Coward]

...But this is really old news, and seems to only be showing up now because Berkeley did it. Link coming soon...

Biodiversity Is Priceless

[Doc Ruby]

This research shows a broader point we should learn: every species that we extinct takes with it to oblivion some mechanisms for coping with the world that we could use ourselves. Not enough coping mechanisms to keep it fit to survive in the world we've made, but many mechanisms that go down with it.

Of course many species go extinct independent of human action (though with human action so pervasive, what species is entirely untouched by it?), but there's little we can do about them. The ones we make extinct through carelessness, wrong priorities and other waste are lost to us in our efforts to remain fit ourselves in the environment we're making.

Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless

[gregor-e]

99.999% of all species that ever existed are now extinct. Do you believe that 99.999% of all useful coping mechanisms are gone? And what does any of this have to do with the finding of quantum entanglement in photosynthetic systems?

Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless

[Anonymous Coward]

And what does any of this have to do with the finding of quantum entanglement in photosynthetic systems?

None, he is just being a sanctimonious cretin. The sad thing is someone modded him +1 insightful for it.

Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless

[Doc Ruby]

There will be variations in how photosynthesis is encoded in different species, and some species will be better models for mimicking with artificial devices. When we make those species extinct, we're losing the benefit they would bring if we had them to study.

Drugs are a good example, but they're just the most obvious ones. Humans have been using plants and animals as sources for medicine since time immemorial, probably since before we were even human, so more advanced techniques for exploiting them are second nature to us. Indeed, many medicinal species were co-evolved with humans, who survived more when cultivating them (whether or not by planning, or just eating them and excreting seeds). Humans' more abstract needs for biochemical processes are much more recent, and often too subtle for us to even notice they're available. Entanglement in photosynthesis is a good example. But photosynthesis is one of the best known plant behaviors, and one of the closest to basic modern human needs. There will surely be many others.

Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless

[maxwell demon]

And given that it's the only source of biological power (except for some exotic life forms in the deep sea), if it goes before we do, it will not be long before we go, too.

Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless

[Hal_Porter]

Humans haven't yet made as big a mess as photosynthetic plants did 2.4 billion years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event

Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless

[Alef]

I guess if you were living your entire life inside the Library of Alexandria, you would be burning books for fuel. Especially the "useless" ones written in a foreign language that you don't understand.

I think humans are blinded by the extraordinary diversity around us to the degree that we fail to realize how unique it is. And our life spans are too short for us to grasp what we are doing. We destroy things that have taken hundreds of millions of years to form in a generation without even reflecting on it. From a geological perspective, we are likely at par with some of the large impact events.

Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless

[Doc Ruby]

We like the mess photosynthetic plants made, into which we evolved.

We won't like the mess we're making, because evolution will see us less fit to inhabit the world we've changed.

Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless

[Anonymous Coward]

[1] Common fucking sense.

Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless

[jelizondo]

Please, please. I hate to see people one would suppose have a better understanding of mathematics that the average Joe Sixpack make stupid statements.

Saying X percentage of species have died because of human action assumes that we know how many total species there were at a given point in time, which is false. Even today we don’t know. Very frequently new species are found and some thought extinct are rediscovered.

What do we know of the big extinction events? Only what we can find on the fossil record. Given the constant churning of the Earth’s surface, that most of the crust is under water, that most of the crust is not conducive to fossilizing plant or animal remains, we can’t even begin to know how many species there were or how many went extinct.

Yeah, we may guess. But that’s all it is: a guess. Remember how many stars we thought there were one hundred years ago? Well, there you go, off by several orders of magnitude.

Re:Again?

[John Hasler]

> The article you cite describes how photosynthesis relies on quantum physics
> in general...

In other words, chemistry.

Re:Yet another nail in the coffin of vegetarianism

[maxwell demon]

Actually you can also eat fruits: While the fruits are from plants, they are explicitly produced by the plants to be eaten (because that way they spread). Just don't eat or destroy the seed. Throw them on earth, so they have a chance to grow.

Re:Yet another nail in the coffin of vegetarianism

[Anonymous Coward]

Or eat the seeds and poop in a garden.

Umm, actually...

[nashv]

...have experimentally shown that plants use quantum entanglement in photosynthesis.

Another Slashdot summary fail. The paper shows that entanglement can exist in photosystems of plants at high temperatures and a fundamentally noisy system, and is very exciting to note that.

It however, does not show that plants actually use the quantum entanglement in anyway. It may just be that the phenomenon is incidental and a result of the high-level organisation of the proteins in the photosystem without any implications for a plant or evolutionary pressure to select for it.

Re:Entanglement

[Alcoholist]

Boo! Who modded that down to Troll? I can understand a 0 if it wasn't funny, but a -1? Man, that's harsh. Like throwing tomatoes at a guy.

Seriously, what's the world coming to when people can't enjoy a little blue humour on a Sunday? Surely I'm not the only Slashdot reader who gets spam offering strange tech, herbs and drugs to make my 'member' bigger so I can "rock her all night long"? Quantum entanglement, I'm sure it's a interesting concept in physics, but it also sounds like a good name for a perfume.

The ubiquity of lab phenomena

[Lorien_the_first_one]

What happens in the lab is a very special situation that allows us to observe naturally occuring phenomena. What rarely is mentioned in the articles about particle physics discoveries, quantum entangled photosynthesis being the exception, is that the phenomena that has been discovered is happening all over the place, all the time. The lab allows us to see what has already been going on for a long time. A great example is the discovery of the neutrino. Giant pools of water buried deep in a mountain laced with scintillators, allow us to detect the neutrinos. Yet, neutrinos are passing straight through us and the earth all the time from the fusion process in the sun.

I think that this discovery is the first in a long series to show that quantum entanglement has common uses by life, and that life can use it to its advantage.