Quantum Entanglement May Hold DNA Together, New Study Says
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A new research paper brings new meaning to the joke that all science is just physics. A team of scientists at the National University of Singapore suggests that it is quantum entanglement that holds our DNA together.
It's hard to prove, but it would be a potentially explosive finding, as Technology Review explains.
In quantum entanglement, two objects are connected by an invisible wave, like an umbilical cord, that allows them to essentially share the same existence. When something happens to one object, it immediately happens to the other, no matter how far apart they are.
Elisabeth Rieper and colleagues at the National University of Singapore say this entanglement might prevent the DNA double helix from shaking itself apart.
Technology Review's blog provides a nice description of some complex physics. Here's a breakdown:
Rieper and colleagues used a theoretical model of DNA in which each nucleotide consists of electrons orbiting a positively charged nucleus. The movement of the negative cloud is a harmonic oscillator.
When the nucleotides bond to form a base pair, the clouds must oscillate in opposite directions or the structure won't be stable. Rieper and colleagues asked what would happen to those oscillations when the base pairs are stacked in a double helix.
The helix should vibrate and fall apart, but it doesn't. Rieper and co. say this is because the oscillations occur as a superposition of states — meaning they oscillate in all possible states at once. That effectively holds it all together.
The question is how to prove all this, as Tech Review notes. Rieper and co. say that in a standard analysis, there's not enough energy to hold DNA together, but their quantum theory makes it work. Still, that's not enough experimental evidence to prove that biology, too, is really just physics.
http://www.popsci.com.au/2010/06/quantum-entanglement-may-hold-dna-together-new-study-says/
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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And it's so much fucking cooler than religious dogma.
Wow, that kinda blew my mind.
I remember Venter saying last month that when creating a large strand of DNA, it's hard to keep it together. Is this just an 'upper limit' of this proposed force he was running into? Or am I just thinking of a Y axis where this only applies to the X axis?
Also, makes me wonder about what exactly is taking place during mutation and DNA replication if all of a sudden two elements that were existing in all states went suddenly to separate states. W...T...F
Wtf !!1 that just entangled my mind
Now that's something to be said.
*Waits for the Religous groups to say that force is God holding DNA together.*
All bow down to Pac-Man-Jesus
You are such an asshole. Why cant I believe in Santa for adults? Killjoy!
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So go buy a powerball ticket. (That's the muti-state lottery, folks.) When I win powerball, it will be proof positive Santa exists. And I have it all planned out how I'm going to spend it.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
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Signature ? How ?
I thought this was the about the neatest potential thing I'd heard in years. The idea QT is not out there somewhere but in there somewhere - brilliant. I guess it makes sense given we are part of the universe ourselves.
Be interesting to see where this goes. You often get a sniff of something like this and hear no more. It'd be nice to know what the universe is made of and how it all hangs together.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I understand DNA substantially less than I understand QM, so without really seeing the model, I can't really comment on this much.
I can say, if this is true, it may provide for a very hopeful path of improvement for DNA synthesis. I, for one, demand a DNA printer in my living room by 2020.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100702092200.htm discusses 'quantum Darwinism'
and
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100630132740.htm discusses the interaction between the quantum and classical worlds.
hmm.......I think you must mean this:
Hebrews 1:3
Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high:
'It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man, than by this: that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted it within themselves and would be glad to be strengthened by the consent of others.' Francis Bacon.
Yep, that seems to be equivalent to saying goddidit.
Just need to get to the bottom of this mysterious 'word of his power' stuff and we're sorted, eh?
"And when I win the lottery, gonna buy all the girls on my block
Silver-plated six shooters and a quart of the finest highland scotch"
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"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers