https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3860&context=masters_theses
http://www.log24.com/log/
Its first volume, in 1971, contained a paper based on the dissertation of quantum chemist Andrew Cochran, concerning the “Relationships Between Quantum Physics and Biology.” Consolidating earlier work of Schrödinger, de Broglie, Margenau and others (including Einstein, who created the first quantum theory of heat capacities in 1907), he made a compelling empirical case, based on Kopp’s tables of specific heats, for viewing the feature distinctive to life as its minimization of quantum heat capacity. Not just the building blocks chosen – carbon and other standard “organic compound” ingredients – but, even more, the composites built from them – amino acids, and (to an even greater extent) proteins. Indeed, “the heat capacities of proteins are amazingly low – so low that it is very difficult to imagine any substance as complex as proteins that could have lower heat capacities.”[38] So low, in fact, that even were they nearly thrice as high, quantum mechanical effects would still have to be invoked to explain why.
The heat capacity of the handle of an iron cooking pot is obviously quite different from the zarf in which you insulate your coffee cup. In substances where most of the atoms don’t participate in energy exchanges with their surroundings, much less heat is needed to raise their temperature by a degree: they have low heat capacity. [39] The low heat capacity of organic materials tells us that almost all atoms of living substances are in the same energy state they would be in at the absolute zero of temperature.
“Because of their low heat capacities, proteins are largely unaffected by the pelting hail of quanta and thermal disorder that constantly bombard them, and this is one reason that they are able to maintain their high degree of order and organization over long periods of time.”[40] Put another way, “wave” (as opposed to “particle”) “preponderance” typifies living things. This leads Cochran to imagine quite novel forms of life based on bizarre “superconducting” substances like Helium II (residing, perhaps, in the Oort Belt past Pluto?), whose natural state is only observed near absolute zero. And this also leads him to see consciousness as a built-in feature of matter, exhibited to maximum extent when matter is in its lowest quantum states:
When thermal disorder is not present to batter matter about, matter should exhibit its intrinsic properties to the greatest extent. Since classical physicists believed that atoms and the fundamental particles of matter had no degree of consciousness, they believed that all atomic motions would cease near absolute zero, when thermal disorder was absent, and atoms would be like billiard balls at rest. Instead, when matter is cooled nearly to absolute zero, it not only still has energy, but it exhibits unusual properties that are completely alien to the axioms of classical physics…. As a particle with a degree of consciousness would have causal factors arising from within, it is apparent that the new hypotheses are consistent with the modern concept of causality. It is also apparent that the classical concept of atoms and particles with no degree of consciousness is not consistent [with] the modern concept of causality.[41]
Andrew A. Cochran, “Relationships Between Quantum Physics and Biology,” Foundations of Physics, 1 (1971), p. 238.
Various bizarre effects of the quantum realm, such as the Pauli exclusion principle, the internal twitter or “Zwitterbewegung” of the electron, and the double-slit experiment (about which, more later) are rendered far more comprehensible – even commonsensical -- by Cochran’s viewpoint, as much of his article goes on to demonstrate. Readers interested in understanding such phenomena should go to the source and read his paper.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3860&context=masters_theses
"In chlorophyll (the green pigment of plants that is of great importance in photosynthesis) and in the very similar heme group in the red blood cells of mammals, there are ring systems of conjugated double bonds in which resonance occurs. In these conjugated rings the pi electrons can not only oscillate, in a straight chain conjugated system, but they can also circulate around the ring.... In the modern concept of photosynthesis, energy-rich pi electrons are led away from the chlorophyll molecule by electron carrier molecules and are handed around a circular chain of reactions, where they give up their energy bit by bit. Then they return to the chlorophyll molecule, which is now ready to absorb another photon. In the same way that the wave-function of a pi electron in the benzene molecule is spread over the entire ring, the wave-functions of large numbers of pi electrons in protein molecules could be spread over the vast extent of these much more complex molecules. Such resonance phenomena may be the quantum mechanical basis of the extension of biological phenomena into macroscopic dimensions. "
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