{"id":165100,"date":"2023-06-04T02:23:41","date_gmt":"2023-06-04T07:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/quantum-physics-could-explain-nearly-all-the-mysteries-of-how-life-works"},"modified":"2023-06-04T02:23:41","modified_gmt":"2023-06-04T07:23:41","slug":"quantum-physics-could-explain-nearly-all-the-mysteries-of-how-life-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/quantum-physics-could-explain-nearly-all-the-mysteries-of-how-life-works","title":{"rendered":"Quantum Physics Could Explain Nearly All the Mysteries of How Life Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Quantum effects are phenomena that occur between atoms and molecules that can\u2019t be explained by classical physics. It has been known for more than a century that the rules of classical mechanics, like Newton\u2019s laws of motion, break down at atomic scales<\/a>. Instead, tiny objects behave according to a different set of laws known as quantum mechanics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For humans, who can only perceive the macroscopic world, or what\u2019s visible to the naked eye, quantum mechanics can seem counterintuitive and somewhat magical. Things you might not expect happen in the quantum world, like electrons \u201ctunneling\u201d through<\/a> tiny energy barriers and appearing on the other side unscathed or being in two different places at the same time in a phenomenon called superposition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I am trained as a quantum engineer<\/a>. Research in quantum mechanics is usually geared toward technology. However, and somewhat surprisingly, there is increasing evidence that nature \u2013 an engineer with billions of years of practice \u2014 has learned how to use quantum mechanics to function optimally<\/a>. If this is indeed true, it means that our understanding of biology is radically incomplete. It also means that we could possibly control physiological processes by using the quantum properties of biological matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quantum effects are phenomena that occur between atoms and molecules that can\u2019t be explained by classical physics. It has been known for more than a century that the rules of classical mechanics, like Newton\u2019s laws of motion, break down at atomic scales. Instead, tiny objects behave according to a different set of laws known as [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}