What would you say if we took a few moments to think about what quantum physics is?

Many might reply that these are complex formulas that describe the very complex processes involved. subatomic particles, gravity, energy, motion of galaxies, black holes and everything to do with space-time and the size of the universe.

Kind of like Albert Einstein. And it wouldn’t be an answer too far from reality.

After all, the father of the Theory of Relativity laid the foundations for it. Statistical Physics and Quantum Mechanics, It’s part of modern physics, and it’s very different from what was proposed by Isaac Newton centuries ago.

But there is a less researched branch that doesn’t require us to go very far to understand what it’s all about.

It’s actually here, on our planet, among us.

Iraqi-British theoretical physicist Jim Al Khalili raised this with a question during a talk in 2015: What if the quantum world played an important role in the functioning of a living cell?

Can something so small help us understand why we live?

For many years, the scientific community was outspoken: biology was such a complex science that it had nothing to do with the quantum world.

An idea seen as wrong today. In fact, quantum mechanics plays such an important role in biological processes that it is vital for plant photosynthesis or cellular respiration.

This branch of science is known as quantum biology.

And understanding it, from understanding it, will open the door to countless answers and information that we still cannot fully manage. how mutations work until created new drugs or improvements in quantum computing.

“We’re solving an important mystery in a certain episode,” he says. BBC World Vladimiro Mujica is a chemist from the Central University of Venezuela and a doctor of Quantum Chemistry from the University of Uppsala, Sweden.

Most recently, Arizona State University, where Mujica currently works, received a $1 million grant from the Keck Foundation, along with the University of California at Los Angeles and Northwestern University in Chicago, to study quantum biology for the next three years.

The idea is to understand as much as possible the scope of this branch, which is revolutionizing the way we understand the relationship between quantum processes and life itself.

But what is quantum biology?

Let’s start from the beginning. Quantum mechanics:

Modern physics draws mainly on two branches that study relativity and the quantum world. Early studies, fields such as the motion of galaxies and planets; and the second atomic and subatomic systems They are so small that we cannot see them with the naked eye.

A giant world and a small world.

The obvious thing is that chemistry, biology and biochemistry are part of the subject. And this matter is made up of atoms and molecules.

So, if quantum physics studies this atomic world, it will also be describing biology.

“Biological processes are essentially quantum systems because (quantum) physics describes the behavior of matter at the microscopic level,” explains Mujica.

It is a very simply read result. But it wasn’t always so obvious.

And there’s a compelling reason: biological processes are actually very complex. Quantum systems, on the other hand, need “stability,” something scientists are familiar with. wave coherence.

The conclusion of the scientific community was that biological processes were so “noisy” that they didn’t have that stability. Basically, they destroyed consistency.

This is why throughout the 20th century scientists separated quantum mechanics from biology. They didn’t pay much attention to him.

But perhaps something was missing that scientists didn’t fully understand or fully fit in. Perhaps there was a method in which all this was applied within biological processes.

Isn’t it unimportant?

It is already known that matter consists of particles. Some are protons and neutrons.and others are known as elementary particles, for example electrons and photons.

These particles work on a biological level. For example, photosynthesis in plants is carried out by the transfer of electrons in molecules.

But there is a problem here: How does this electron move? If we had a light bulb, the electron would go through a copper wire that gets very hot and causes the light to “burn out”.

But plants do not have this copper wire. Actually, biology “bad” energy conductors, In Mujica’s words, the sudden increase in temperature causes the cell to simply die.

Then the electron would need something that scientists couldn’t understand. It’s a simple process that doesn’t require a lot of energy to allow the particle to move without killing the cell.

This process actually exists and is called that. tunnel effect.

Example: If we have a tennis ball on one side of a court and we need to get it to the other side, we just need to throw it from one end to the other.

However, if there is a very high wall in the middle of the court, the ball must be thrown too high and thrown over the wall or it will bounce. This is how classical physics works.

But in quantum physics the situation is different. If the tennis ball were actually an electron, there is a way for the electron to go through the wall and not the wall. And this happens because the particles move in the form of waves.

The tunnel effect is like “If you make a hole in the barrier and you slide through it”. And the advantage is that it is simple and inexpensive enough to be used by biological systems to use the least possible amount of energy.

Scientists like this “insignificant”. It’s basically how quantum mechanics changes biological processes.

This is nothing new. Physicists like the Austrian Erwin Schrödinger tackled this and other issues in quantum physics in the first half of the 20th century, laying the groundwork for someone else to make new discoveries.

different processes

But the tunneling effect is not the only quantum mechanism that acts within biological processes.

There are others, such as the direction of rotation of the particle. rotate. And all these influences act in different ways at different stages of biological processes.

For example, photosynthesis consists of three stages. The first is the capture of the photon (the carrier particle of electromagnetic radiation such as sunlight) by the plant.

The second is when electrons absorb the energy of photons and move to a higher energy state. traveling between molecules and the tunnel effect.

Finally, the electron is used for a chemical reaction that results in the release of oxygen. This is what allows beings like humans to breathe.

Quantum mechanics is present in all these steps.

But now imagine that the electron is spinning on its axis (spin) and that this movement can be right or left. Depending on the direction of rotation, the electron may or may not pass through the tunnel.

To make it simpler, think of it as a screw, it can only be screwed in the right direction when inserted into the slot. But if you try otherwise, it doesn’t work or you hurt.

This is known as chirality, from the Greek kheir, meaning hand. When an object is chiral, it has another object that is reflection, such as left hand and right hand.

This means that rotation goes hand in hand with chiral.

“So you now have a privileged mechanism that protects the electronic transport from any external noise. So an effect that shouldn’t matter because it matters now,” Mujica summarizes.

And understanding this is crucial to science. Tunneling, rotation and chirality are now known to be associated not only with photosynthesis but also with photosynthesis. protein synthesis, the way organisms breathe, or the connection between neurons.

Even with mutations, transformations of genetic material that occur by the random change of a molecule in our body.

different applications

But then, what is all this for?

Scientists are just trying to understand the true extent of quantum biology. After all, for a long time it was considered unimportant, and until about a decade ago this field of science began to re-emerge.

A branch that can benefit pharmacologyHere chirality plays an important role.

Another is quantum computing. “At this point, we’re trying to find good systems for doing quantum processing,” Mujica says. “There are already quantum computers, but they are very limited. They are very advanced and extremely expensive toys,” he adds.

But most of these applications won’t happen in the three years that Mujica and other colleagues will be working on quantum biology. They see it more as a science that will have more significant implications. long-term.

The crucial role of quantum physics in helping us understand the crucial biological processes that make life possible is now obvious.

So it’s not about looking for other planets, it’s also about looking deeply at what we have on our own.