Submitted via IRC for Bytram
"Schrödinger's Bacterium" Could Be a Quantum Biology Milestone
The quantum world is a weird one. In theory and to some extent in practice its tenets demand that a particle can appear to be in two places at once—a paradoxical phenomenon known as superposition—and that two particles can become "entangled," sharing information across arbitrarily large distances through some still-unknown mechanism.
[...] Coles and company sequestered several hundred photosynthetic green sulfur bacteria between two mirrors, progressively shrinking the gap between the mirrors down to a few hundred nanometers—less than the width of a human hair. By bouncing white light between the mirrors, the researchers hoped to cause the photosynthetic molecules within the bacteria to couple—or interact—with the cavity, essentially meaning the bacteria would continuously absorb, emit and reabsorb the bouncing photons. The experiment was successful; up to six bacteria did appear to couple in this manner.
[...] There are many caveats to such controversial claims, however. First and foremost, the evidence for entanglement in this experiment is circumstantial, dependent on how one chooses to interpret the light trickling through and out of the cavity-confined bacteria. Marletto and her colleagues acknowledge a classical model free of quantum effects could also account for the experiment's results. But, of course, photons are not classical at all—they are quantum.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @11:00AM
From the article:
So we have:
Now the argument is that photons are well-known to behave quantum in other experiments, which means the third option is more plausible than the first. Which is certainly a scientific argument. If it is a good argument is a different question (which to answer would require looking at the exact argument in the actual scientific article).