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Nobel Prize Winner Says DNA Performs Quantum Teleportation
HJED writes "TechWorld is reporting that the joint winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2008, Luc Montagnier, is claiming that DNA can send 'electromagnetic imprints' of itself into distant cells and fluids which can then be used by enzymes to create copies of the original DNA. This would be equivalent to quantum teleportation. You can read the original paper here [PDF]."
I am no geneticist, biophysicist, or organic chemist, but...this sounds wacky, even by Nobel laureate (who tend to go for the fringe ideas after they win) standards.
God sent his seed into Mary via Quantum Teleportation! That's how Jesus came to be! But don't give in to Quantum Temptation...or you'll end up in Hell!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Winning a Nobel Prize does not give you a lifetime immunity from saying anything idiotic. It doesn't even prevent you from putting idiotic things into the arxiv. One might think there were a negative correlation between being smart enough to win a prize and stupid enough to say something idiotic in public, but the data suggests otherwise. Winning the Nobel seems to give some of these guys the confidence they need to make complete asses of themselves.
I am a particle physicist, and needless to say, the theory proposed in this paper is laughably stupid. The authors have no understanding of quantum field theory, and their observations are a sad combination of wishful thinking and poor experimental design.
From the freaking paper: "Some bacterial and viral DNA sequences have been found to induce low frequency electromagnetic waves in high aqueous dilutions. This phenomenon appears to be triggered by the ambient electromagnetic background of very low frequency. We discuss this phenomenon in the framework of quantum field theory."
/rantover
In other words, scientists observed something that makes them say "hmm... that's strange," which leads them to say "hmm... I wonder what could be causing this?" These researchers tried to explain the phenomenon using the best tools that they thought that had: quantum mechanics. (classical EM theory is pretty useless for fields this weak) The linked article is behind a wall, but the title seems to start with "Scorn over claim of teleported DNA"
Again from the paper: "In this paper we have described the experiments showing a new property of DNA and the induction of electromagnetic waves in water dilutions. We have briefly depicted the theoretical scheme which can explain qualitatively the features observed in these experiments." Crazy observed phenomenon explained by theories that aren't fully accurate? No way!
The current scientific media seems to increasingly favor sensationalist titles that enable their readers to go "hah, those stupid eggheads, I know better than them that X/Y/Z is impossible! I are smarts!" and this seems to be no different. There is not, has not, and likely will not, be any claims that DNA teleports. However, there has been, is, and likely will be, evidence that DNA interacts with factors beyond easy and simple comprehension. These interactions seem to resemble "phase-locking regime[s]" observed in "two superconducting samples or in the arrays of Josephson junctions," which is pretty far from quack science.
Signatures are the new names.
Quite honestly, I don't possess the science background to really critique the paper and have to rely on the man's credentials to find this believable.
I do have the background. It is unbelievable. Even IgNobel Prize winners are laughing at this.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
they figure out a way to connect my WiFi to my DNA so I can use my body to connect to the internet and stop paying these ridiculous 3G prices.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
"Honest! My DNA teleported into her. I never touched her. I swear it."
I am anarch of all I survey.
My background is strictly biology, so a lot of the physics stuff goes over my head, but I can decipher the sciencey jargon well enough to read the paper. Anyway, here's what they saw:
bacterial DNA in tube 1 -> water tube surrounded by 7hz field -> tube 2 containing PCR ingredients minus template -> recovery of bacterial DNA sequence from tube 2
The explanation, as you may have guessed, is super complicated. It involves the hypothetical creation of so-called water nanostructures (water memory anyone?), but apparently the ~7hz field is important and recapitulated in the math somehow that's opaque to me.
So that's the paper for dummies, so to speak. If anyone can elaborate or correct in simple terms I'd be happy to read it; this is cool stuff.
The paper is in Arxiv, and has not been peer-reviewed. They refer to Craig Venter as "G. Vinter." I won't hold my breath until these results are replicated by third parties.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I just read the original article, and it is not claiming quantum teleportation.
It is claiming that electromagnetic resonances are set up around polymers in water solution, and if the water contains the right building blocks (monomers), then the resonances can reconstruct copies of the original polymers. This apparently occurs even if there are physical barriers separating the polymers from the monomer solution.
The article relies on quantum mechanics only to the extent that certain quantum mechanical models of water molecule behavior (coherence domains) are used, since "classical" models that rely on energy levels are not sufficient. There is no claim of teleportation that I could see.
When I first read this story I misread the first line and though the scientist had won the Nobel Prize for this research. Later I realized I recognized his name. Luc Montagnier, FWIW, won the Prize in 2008 for being the first to isolate HIV (at a time when its exact role in AIDS was unknown). He's since remained pretty prominent in HIV/AIDS research.
This other research, however, seems a lot more fringe-y and questionable, and now that I know the Nobel Committee has not endorsed it I will view it with a serious dose of skepticism until his findings can be repeated.
Breakfast served all day!
If you want to make sense of the Unified Field and you want to know who John Hagelin is
...then you need to read more James Randi and less new age crackpottery.
Seriously - this is a guy who claims that if enough people in a city do TM meditation, crime rates will fall and a Vedic Defense Shield will prevent them from war.
John Hagelin appeals to people who think What the Bleep Do We Know and The Secret were science documentaries.
Advice: on VPS providers
To put it simply, this is BS, on all levels. The summary is just wrong, teleportation doesn't even appear in the article on arXiv. But then the arXiv article is ridiculous. It's a thinly veiled attempt to play with homeopathy: "high dilutions", "mechanical agitation between each dilution", and low frequency EM taking the place of "concussing", "water nanostructures" formed on the DNA which can be used to recreate the DNA sequence? And the paper is totally amateur hour. In summary: It's BS.
Seriously - this is a guy who claims that if enough people in a city do TM meditation, crime rates will fall
This could easily be true. The criminals are too busy meditating to be able to commit the crimes...
That's an interesting claim. Most of the DNA molecules would somehow have to be in sync to get audio-frequency waveforms out. How's that supposed to happen?
I can't speak for the physics, but the experimental setup seems bogus. See Fig. 1. They have a coil with a test tube inside it. The coil is connected to an audio amplifier and then to the audio input on a laptop, where some frequency analysis takes place. They claim that a solution of DNA in water emits signals which can be read by that setup.
A setup like that is enormously sensitive to any electric or magnetic fields in the vicinity, mechanical vibration, and even mechanical motion of conductive objects, like fan blades. Like most low-level RF experiments, something like that has to be conducted in a electrically and mechanically quiet area. (RF engineers use either RF-shielded rooms or wooden boxes/sheds in open fields.)
The history of "polywater" is relevant here. There, it was for a while thought that water could somehow polymerize and change properties. It turned out to be a contamination problem. Here, the authors talk about previously unknown "nanostructures" in water.
John Hagelin appeals to people who think What the Bleep Do We Know and The Secret were science documentaries.
Hey now. Scoff all you like, but The Secret helped me manifest a twelve inch pianist.
Hey now. Scoff all you like, but The Secret helped me manifest a twelve inch pianist.
I believe that is spelled penis, and I doubt it.
But if you stop and think about it, the 12" pianist claim does seem a lot more believable, doesn't it?
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
...how I got her best friend pregnant.
...as if a million bat-scat crazy homeopaths and refused to be silenced.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
A lot of people laughed at Tesla too. Only took 100 years to prove the man right, for the most part.
No, it only took a few years to prove him right on the things he was right about. They're still working on the things he was wrong about.
Except the point is that if enough people meditate regularly -- the original idea was 20 minutes, twice a day -- then you can live an otherwise normal life, but it'll lower crime.
I grew up in Fairfield, IA. I was somewhat disappointed when I checked out the skepdic entry on TM only to find that the strongest debunk was James Randi calling up the Fairfield Police Department and asking whether the influx of meditators had reduced crime. Nope, crime rates had increased if anything, but were pretty typical either way.
It's a good argument, but I'm kind of disappointed. I'm going to have to deconstruct it sometime. It seems to get either respected or ignored, never seriously challenged other than people saying, "You think people can fly?" and laughing hysterically. It's not really a threat, so I can see why other absurdities would be a bigger target, but it also means the meditators themselves never have to really think hard about why they believe what they do.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
A lot of people laughed at Tesla too. Only took 100 years to prove the man right, for the most part.
So... basically you're saying that anyone who gets laughed at because of their theories must be right, because Tesla got laughed at and he ended up being right?
I think you'll get laughed at if you try to present that correlation as being meaningful. But, on the bright side - they laughed at Tesla, so you must be right!
#DeleteChrome
So... erm... Let's see the evidence. Having skimmed the paper, I just don't see it claiming what Hagelin claims.
I was a meditator for years. I grew up in it. I'm better off without it now, but I'd still very much like to be proven wrong, if only because it'd be really cool to know how humans can levitate, if, in fact, they can.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- Carl Sagan
arXiv is NOT peer-reviewed, and anyone can put anything up there. (Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it lacks the intrinsic rigor of a peer-reviewed journal.) It's the Wikipedia of science papers.
While arXiv is filled with some neat (and some not-so-neat) ideas for science fiction writers, I'd be reluctant (to put it mildly) to give credence to anything that sounds weird that resides there. Seriously, I know some cool stuff appears there, but we've been through this before. When is /.'s staff going to stop citing arXiv papers as being somehow more plausible than the Dean drive?
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Noone can know who's right and who's wrong without doing the work to check it. That's just how it is; simple.
Emotions! In your brain!
Quite honestly, I don't possess the science background to really critique the paper and have to rely on the man's credentials to find this believable.
Welcome to the state that 98% of humanity is always in regarding anything beyond highschool science. Remember that magicians are only respected when they produce fantastic results or are feared. Otherwise, wizards are reviled, pitied, and laughed at.
Krugman's economic views are coherent, not terribly deep, and potentially wrong, yet he does a more credible job of putting his ideas forward than the people who hate his ideas most (of putting their own ideas forward).
In this context, "potentially wrong" is a merit point, as distinct from ideological views, which are never wrong.
I see no reason to lump Krugman in with a flagrant quack. One of his least deep observations is that "fiscal restraint" in government does a lot more to serve the mid to long term interests of the financial elite than it does to help out a family having trouble paying their mortgage during a recession caused by excesses of the aforementioned elite. Or maybe this is so obvious it can only be seen with bifocals.
Unfortunately, the rhetorical temperature in Washington permits a dancing gorilla to wander around the basketball court without the general public cluing in. Krugman speaks against this, which makes him dumb by association.
This is pretty nonsensical. At 7 Hz the wavelength for sound in water would be hundreds of meters and light would be many order of magnitude more. How would such an em field be involved in forming nanometer resolution structures in water?
This is yet another case of wild extrapolation from measurements that are at or beyond the limits of the tools being used.
Errrm. You're joking right? How is that teleportation? It actually goes beyond "quantum teleportation" and hits the definition of the classic sci fi molecular teleporter that takes matter on one end sends information about it as a signal and reconstructs the object molecule by molecule from other atoms at the other end.
I would have more faith in this experiment if the genetic testing of the "receiving tubes" was done by a person other than the one who ran the experiments on them. Maybe he found what he was looking for because he expected it to be found.
This Hagelin fellow is intruiging.
He used to work on pretty sophisticated and legitimate science where he did some valuable research and now he working for the Maharishi trying to link things like meditation with actual physics.
What has caused such a dramatic change?
Seems that after he joined the Maharishi movement, he still did some things that were actually scientific and his approach to politics is still a lot more scientific than the ruling political parties in the US.
I'd just like to know how he can combine these two polar opposites in his mind.
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Well, people can levitate. To understand how, a separation of mysticism, mythology, and technology must be maintained.
You can watch a magician (mysticism) make a human float, and he/she will have the audience believing exactly what they saw.
You can hear and read about how a religious figure (mythology) floated.
And then you can be taught (technology) hundreds of ways to make a person levitate. theatrical flying harnesses, forced air, glass floor/ceiling and perspective. How about not just a person, but an entire train full of people? Even something as simple (and expensive, and stupid) as hanging from a rope under a helicopter (ala Robert Downey Jr in Air America).
Illusionists by a variety of names have been making people believe in impossible things. All it takes is an audience to believe the mysticism or mythology, before asking to understand the technology. Too many people are willing to believe the "miracle" answer, without understanding the technological answer.
If I read your comment right, you've grown beyond the mysticism answers. If we can only drag a few billion other people past the threshold, humanity would be in good shape.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
there are no flies in the vicinity when you try it
They laughted at Columbus, and with good reason. The fool have wrong calculations all around, and only plain luck saved him.
More to the point, Tesla's ideas for wireless transmission of energy miss the reality by orders of magnitude. They don't hold up to simple electromagnetic propagation calculations (path loss, for one).
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
When I see a real guru fly in a way unexplainable by technology, magic carpet or otherwise, I'll agree with you. There are plenty of people who have dedicated their lives to such pursuits. Most of them say that they aren't worthy, therefore were not able to accomplish it, or they'll tell you that it happened.
I've been around quite a bit, and I have yet to see anyone floating without a technological method to accomplish it. And no, saying "it doesn't work because you don't believe" doesn't hold water. I am open minded. I would love the opportunity to observe all the factors related to such an action. Just like a stage magician, any such performance is well controlled, if not a completely fabricated tale.
I'll leave it up to you to prove me wrong. And no, online videos don't cut it. I've watched Superman withstand being shot, blown up, vehicles being thrown at him, and turning back time by countering the rotation of the Earth. I've watched Bruce Willis blow up an asteroid. I've seen the dead walk, the vampires fly, werewolves morph. I've seen countless alien invasions devastate the Earth. I've even seen the stones of Stonehenge move and control the annihilation of the earth (BTW, don't bother watch "Stonehenge Armageddon"). On more simplistic methods, I've seen "proof" of "ghosts" through tricks of the camera (many YouTube videos) and less convincing methods (the numerous Ghost Hunter shows, which are purely theatrical presentations with no special effects).
Any and every "impossible" feat has a rational explanation. Well, unless you give in to the idea that you must have faith. Faith works well for con men and cults. It has no place in rational society.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I do meditate (not daily), but I don't believe in any of the supernatural benefits either. I was prescribed yoga lessons by a physician for spinal arthritis about thirty five years ago, and it was the only prescription I ever got that was better than over the counter analgesics. But it isn't magic. Yoga is about relaxing, stretching, breathing. Nothing supernatural about its effects on arthritis.
As to levitating and that other nonsense, I can't figure out how people can possibly believe any of it. Although I can see how yoga or non-yoga meditation might be beneficial for some mental illnesses, and perhaps even some physical ailments. Yoga does in fact work on arthritis, although simple meditation doesn't.
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