By Seth Lloyd, that quantum physicist who participated in that silly BBC documentary about intelligence. So in the spring of 2007 when the New York Times reported that green sulphur-breathing bacteria were performing quantum computations during photosynthesis, my colleagues and I laughed. We thought it was the most crackpot idea we had heard in a long time. Closer examination of the paper, published in Nature, however, showed that something decidedly non-crackpot was going on. ... By zapping complexes of photosynthetic molecules with lasers, the authors of the paper were able to show that the excitons use quantum mechanics to make their journey through the photocomplex more efficient. The experimental evidence was strong and compelling. The authors also speculated that the excitons were performing a particular quantum computation algorithm called a quantum search, in which the wave-like nature of propagation allows the excitons to zero in on their target. As it turns out, the excitons were performing a different kind of quantum algorithm called a quantum walk, but the “crackpot” fact remained: Quantum computation was helping the bacteria move energy from point A to point B.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Apr 2014 01:35:21 +0000
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