There's an article over at Aeon on Quantum Biology, the interaction between Quantum Mechanics and Biological processes.
...as the attention of 21st‑century biology is now turning to the dynamics of ever-smaller systems – even individual atoms and molecules inside living cells – quantum mechanics is once again making its presence felt. Recent experiments indicate that some of life’s most fundamental processes do indeed depend on weirdness welling up from the quantum undercurrent of reality.
The article is written by Johnjoe McFadden, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey. He's written on the same subject last week in a related article at The Guardian, and over at YouTube there's a video of a keynote presentation from back in July.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @12:05AM
"Quantum" is an academic code-word used to indicate "bullshit".
An academic who says his or her research involves "quantum " is probably just fishing for grants by trying to sound smart, without actually having to engage in research that produces useful results.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 03 2014, @01:11AM
Quantum Secrets of Photosynthesis Revealed [lbl.gov]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday November 03 2014, @01:53AM
and in every eyeball...!! You should google the bacterial light receptor PDB structures, which are huge candelabrar type affairs with >60 proteins....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @02:54AM
Well, then I retract what I wrote.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 03 2014, @08:46AM
Ah, I see, your computer is still using vacuum tubes. Or is it relays? Because without quantum physics there would not be transistors, let alone integrated circuits.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 03 2014, @12:29PM
You could have them without having as perfect of a theory for why they work. At least for simple bipolar transistors. Obviously tunnel diodes would be spooky (actually, they are kind of spooky anyway) but no one uses them for anything and they're very hard / impossible to buy today (other than the obvious NOS and used and collectors items). I have some 50 year old tunnel diodes in a dark corner of my basement lab, I should try to find them and fool around with them.
If you want to explain the weirdest factors of emitter voltage dependance on temperature, yes you'll need some quantum physics (I think so anyway) but you can get away with pretty simple classical if you just want a working bipolar transistor.
Amusingly most of the popular electronics type books usually explain the physics of bipolar transistors using pre-quantum pictures of "solar system atoms" instead of real orbitals which would just confuse the concept even if they are more true.
I know the hall effect precedes quantum mechanics by decades and maybe you could make a Very hand wavy explanation of FET transistors.
A good SN automobile analogy is you're trying to claim you can't have a car without an automatic transmission. Well, in 2014, in the USA, you can't really sell a manual to about 99% of the population, and there are models of cars that are only currently made with autos so technically you could claim there do exist some cars that can't exist without autos.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday November 03 2014, @07:36PM
Transistors are not something that you can find in nature, or stumble upon by accident. Transistors were invented, and that invention could not have happened if the people who invented them had no idea about quantum mechanics. Indeed, without that knowledge, semiconductors would probably be considered a curiosity, useful possibly for temperature sensors, but mostly useless otherwise.
No, that would not even be a bad analogy, that would not be an analogy at all. Automatic transmission is just a convenience which doesn't greatly increase the power of a car. A good analogy would be that without the knowledge of metallurgy, you could not build anything like a car motor. Which of course doesn't mean you couldn't build a vehicle. But it will be nothing like our cars.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by Gearloose on Monday November 03 2014, @10:54AM
Where does this impression of yours come from? Is it first-hand experience? Did you ever apply for research grants? Can you cite a specific case where you feel the use of the word "quantum" was successfully employed to obtain a grant for research that had no substance to begin with?
I can see the word "quantum" impressing journalists and laypeople, but I have a hard time believing that any scientists would feel that you "sound smarter" by using it.
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Monday November 03 2014, @12:42PM
I don't know about the use of "quantum" but I do know that scientists indeed do try to impress eachother or funders by using flowery jargon or the hip word of the day. My friends in material science told me that the word "nano" is often used in this way because of its association with nanotechnology. So if anyone is studying something on the nanometer scale, the word nano will be over-used to describe it. In biology we are now suffixing random words with "ome" or "omics" in order to make it sound more awesome. Neuroanatomy is now becoming "connectomics", for instance. The list of genes transcribed by a cell is the "transcriptome."
(Score: 2) by jcross on Monday November 03 2014, @04:48PM
I don't know about scientists, but it's common enough in other fields of thought. I haven't read it, but "Quantum Healing" by Deepak Chopra comes to mind reeking of bullshit. New-age spiritual types just love stuff that sounds cutting-edge and scientific, but that is still poorly understood enough to give it an air of mystery. "Animal magnetism" as an explanation for mesmerism (i.e. hypnosis) would be a historical example that looks silly now. By the same token, if Insane Clown Posse had written the lyric "Gluons, how do they work?" they would have attracted far less derision, because while many people think they know how magnets work, most people are willing to admit they don't know much about what a gluon is. I think it would be naive to assume that all this has no effect on scientists, but not being one I can't really say.