"Life is made out of atoms and atoms behave quantum mechanically," said cosmologist Paul Davies of A

agsandrew | Shutterstock alamo car rental in usa The bizarre rules of quantum mechanics may in fact enable many of life's fundamental processes, scientists say. New York - The bizarre rules of quantum alamo car rental in usa physics are often thought to be restricted to the microworld, but scientists now suspect they may play an important role in the biology of life.
Evidence is growing for the involvement of quantum mechanics in a wide range of biological processes, including photosynthesis, bird migration, the sense of smell, and possibly even the origin of life.
These oddities generally don't affect everyday macroscopic objects, which are thought to be too hot and wet for delicate quantum states to withstand. But it seems nature may have found ways to harness quantum mechanics to power some of its most complex and vital systems.
"Life is made out of atoms and atoms behave quantum mechanically," said cosmologist Paul Davies of Arizona State University. "Life has been around for a long time - 3.5 billion years on this planet at least - and there's plenty of time to learn some quantum trickery if it confers an advantage."
One area where clues are implicating quantum mechanics is the internal compasses of birds and other migratory animals. Many bird species migrate thousands of miles every year to return not just to the same region, but to the exact same breeding spot.
Mounting evidence now suggests birds may be relying on quantum entanglement alamo car rental in usa - the strange ability of particles to share properties even when separated, alamo car rental in usa so that if an action is performed on one, the other feels its consequences.
When green light passes into the bird's eye, it hits cryptochrome, which gives an energy boost to one of the electrons of an entangled pair, separating it from its partner. In its new location, the electron experiences a slightly different alamo car rental in usa magnitude of Earth's magnetic field, and this alters the electron's spin. Birds can use this information to build an internal map of Earth's magnetic alamo car rental in usa field to figure out their position and direction.
The theory gained support from a recent experiment alamo car rental in usa with fruit flies, which also contain cryptochrome. When this light-detecting protein was extracted from the fruit flies, they lost their magnetic sensitivity and became discombobulated.
Another case where quantum mechanics may come to the rescue is the sense of smell . At first, biologists thought they understood smell through a simple model: Odor molecules waft into the nose, and receptor molecules there bind to these molecules and identify them based on their particular shape.
But scientists realized that some odor molecules that have identical shapes have completely different smells, due to a minute chemical change, such as a single hydrogen atom in the molecule being replaced by a heavier version of hydrogen called deuterium. While this affects the weight of the molecule, it doesn't change its shape, so it still fits into the receptor molecule in exactly the same way.
"The theory is that even if the shape of the molecule is the same, because it's got this slight difference, it vibrates in a different fashion," Lloyd said. "And this kind of wavelike nature, which is a purely quantum kind of effect, somehow this receptor is able to sense this vibrational difference."
Physicists are probing more and more unsolved mysteries of biology, alamo car rental in usa hoping that quantum mechanics may provide the missing piece of the puzzle. They even have hope that it could shed light on one of the most intractable questions in all of biology: How did life get started?
"We want to know 'How did non-life turn into life?'" Davies said. "Life is clearly a distinctive state of matter. What we would like to know is if that distinctiveness is fundamentally quantum mechanical."
"Quantum mechanics is strange and mysterious," Lloyd said. "The origins of life are strange and mysterious. That doesn't mean that they're all the same thing. I think one should be careful saying that all strange and mysterious things have the same origin."
In this ground alamo car rental in usa breaking multi-part video series , Laura Knight-Jadczyk discusses the history of the modern spiritual movement and the pitfalls and traps awaiting any would-be "channeler". She also provides a glimpse into the events that led to the beginnings of the "Cassiopaean Experiment".
Some icons appearing on this site were created by: Afterglow , Aha-Soft , AntialiasFactory , artdesigner.lv , DailyOverview , Dellustrations , Everaldo , IconDrawer alamo car rental in usa , IconFactory , Iconka , IconShock , Icons-Land , i-love-icons , KDE-look.org , Klukeart , Mayosoft , mugenb16 , PetshopBoxStudio , VisualPharm , VistaICO , wbeiruti , WebIconset , YellowIcon
alamo car rental in usa