{"id":166045,"date":"2023-06-19T17:23:04","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T22:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/quantum-light-experiment-proves-photosynthesis-starts-with-a-single-photon"},"modified":"2023-06-19T17:23:04","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T22:23:04","slug":"quantum-light-experiment-proves-photosynthesis-starts-with-a-single-photon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/quantum-light-experiment-proves-photosynthesis-starts-with-a-single-photon","title":{"rendered":"Quantum Light Experiment Proves Photosynthesis Starts with a Single Photon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/quantum-light-experiment-proves-photosynthesis-starts-with-a-single-photon.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The process that powers much of life on Earth, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/the-science-of-springs-green-show\/\">photosynthesis<\/a>, is so finely tuned that just one photon is enough to kick it off.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long suspected that photosynthesis must be sensitive to individual photons, or particles of light, because despite the way it dominates our days, the sun\u2019s light is surprisingly sparse at the level of individual plant cells. But only now, with the help of quantum physics, have researchers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-023-06121-5\">been able to watch a single packet of light begin the process<\/a> in an experiment described on June 14 in the journal <em>Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt makes sense that photosynthesis only requires a single photon, but to actually be able to measure that \u2026 is really groundbreaking,\u201d says Sara Massey, a physical chemist at Southwestern University in Texas, who was not involved with the new research. \u201cBeing able to actually see that hands-on with the data from these experiments is very valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The process that powers much of life on Earth, photosynthesis, is so finely tuned that just one photon is enough to kick it off. Scientists have long suspected that photosynthesis must be sensitive to individual photons, or particles of light, because despite the way it dominates our days, the sun\u2019s light is surprisingly sparse at [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166045","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\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}