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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.
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.
or you'll end up in Hell!
That's ok, I'll just tunnel back out.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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
"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.
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.
Hell has quantum cat-poo. You don't know if it's there until you step in it.
Table-ized A.I.
...how I got her best friend pregnant.
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
"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."
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.