Month: September 2022

LETTUCE QUANTUM COMPUTERS. "In the 2007 experiment, University of California, Berkeley, chemist Graham Fleming and colleagues ran experiments on green sulfur bacteria that appeared to suggest this quantum approach. These were jaw-dropping experiments...Physicists had been battling for years to build a quantum computer — and now it seemed that all that time they may have been eating quantum computers for lunch, in the leaves in their salad!” http://discovermagazine.com/2014/dec/17-this-quantum-life View in LinkedIn

QUANTUM CONTROL BY ALGAE. "Algae evolved to switch quantum coherence on and off." This leads to more efficient photosynthesis; this is achieved by a mutated protein changing the structure of a protein complex, turning on and off coherence. Go green slime! https://lnkd.in/e7bYH5r View in LinkedIn

BIOMAGNETIC COMPASS. "Approximately 50 species, including birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, crustaceans and insects, are known to use the Earth’s magnetic field for orientation and navigation. Birds in particular have been intensively studied, but the biophysical mechanisms that underlie the avian magnetic compass are still poorly understood." https://lnkd.in/eyZrP9c View in LinkedIn

"MAGNETORECEPTION is the ability of some migrating species to navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field. The precise mechanism used, and its features, seem to vary greatly from animal to animal." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

BIRD MIGRATION. "How does a robin know to fly south? The answer might be weirder than you think: Quantum physics may be involved. Jim Al-Khalili rounds up the extremely new, extremely strange world of quantum biology, where something Einstein once called “spooky action at a distance” helps birds navigate, and quantum effects might explain the origin of life itself." http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_al_khalili_how_quantum_biology_might_explain_life_s_biggest_questions?language=en View in LinkedIn

COMPASS. "European robins have a magnetic sense that acts as an inclination compass insensitive to polarity, whereas most (although not all) magnetite-based compass models operate as a polarity-sensitive sense." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

LIGHT AND MAGNETISM. "In European robins (and some other species) the navigation sense was shown to be photoreceptor based, that is, dependent on the presence of certain frequencies of ambient light. It was also shown to be sensitive to changes in the intensity of the external magnetic field, but that it readjusted over time to these changes." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

EUROPEAN ROBINS. "It has been shown that the navigation sense was disrupted by magnetic pulses, and very weak external oscillating magnetic fields." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

RADICAL PAIRS. "Schulten et al., proposed the radical-pair mechanism as a plausible biological chemical-compass. It was already well known that radical pairs can mediate magnetic-field-sensitive and light-activated chemical reactions, but up to that point only with external fields much stronger than the Earth’s." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

COMBINED EFFECT. "A radical pair is (typically) a pair of bound molecules that each has an unpaired electron. These pairs are created, by a photochemical process, in spin-correlated states; that is, singlets or triplets. The state of these spins then evolves under the combined effect of the Earth’s weak magnetic field and internal nuclear hyperfine interactions with the host nuclei. Finally, the rate of charge recombination depends on the spin of the separated charges, directly influencing the reaction products of these radical pairs." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn