Os Segredos da Física Quântica #2/2 (Documentário)

[Music] welcome to a new and very strange World of Nature it's being taken over by the weird subatomic particles of quantum [Applause] physics as a physicist I've spent my working life studying how these particles behave in the laboratory but now I'm heading out into the natural world I'm on a mission to prove that quantum physics can solve the greatest mysteries in biology this is a real adventure for me I'm very much out of my comfort zone trying to apply the very careful ideas I'm familiar with in a Physics laboratory to the messy world of living

things I believe that quantum physics could hold many of life's secrets that deep in the cells of animals particles glide through walls like ghosts that when plants capture sunlight their cells are invaded by shimmering waves that can be everywhere at the same time and that even our human senses are tuning in to strange quantum vibr [Music] vibrations in the Fantastic world of quantum biology life is a game of chance played by Quantum rules this is what I hope to convince you of to show you that quantum mechanics is essential in explaining many of the important

processes in life and potentially that quantum mechanics may even underpin the very existence of life [Music] itself my quest begins with one of the most majestic SES in nature migration every winter bar iCal geese arrive right on Queue at the same Scottish River the end of an epic 2,000m Voyage from svalbard high above the Arctic Circle of course many birds head south for winter then back home for summer but for decades exactly how birds navigated with such accuracy was one of the greatest mysteries in biology so the most recent discovery has caused a sensation in

the past few years one species of bird has helped create a scientific revolution I was one of many physicists who were shocked to discover that it navigates using one of the strangest tricks in the whole of science it utilizes a quirk of quantum mechanics one that Bamboozled even the greatest of physicists from Richard Fineman to Albert Einstein himself so you might be surprised to discover the identity of this mysterious creature say hello to the quantum [Music] Robin this is the European Robin every year she migrates from northern Europe to the tip of Spain and back

in this laboratory in the woods biologist Henrik mortson is trying to solve the mystery of how she does it but he's found himself in my world The Strange World of quantum mechanics quantum mechanics describes the very weird behavior of subatomic particles down in this realm of the very small we have to abandon common sense and intuition Instead This is a world where objects can spread out like waves Quantum particles can be in many places at once and send each other mysterious Communications I set out to understand how the bird Finds Its way but it just

turned out that the data more and more pointed towards this as the only explanation that could bring all the different results together henrik's investigating a longstanding theory that Robin's navigate by the Earth's magnetic field his laboratory is an ingenious magnetic bird cage and these plastic cones lined with scratch sensitive paper provide the key [Music] measurements henrik's artificial magnetic field is like the earth except that he can point it in any direction he likes inside their cones the robins always respond to the field leaving scratches in a single Direction the big mystery is is how the

Earth's magnetic field is incredibly weak far too weak for any living creature to detect but Henrik has found an intriguing clue by giving the quantum Robin a mask we have a little leather Hood similar to what you put on a falcon you know but just for Robin and you have then a hole in front of one eye or a hole in front of the other eye but what we can see is that if you cover up the right eye you turn off the magnetic compass processing in the left part of the brain If you cover

up this eye you turn the compass off in this part of the [Music] brain the Robin's magnetic compass seemed to be in her eyes I can show you what's going on using my own eye now we use our eyes for vision but we also have a second light detecting mechanism if I shine this torch into my eye you can see that my pupil closes down it's basically a defense mechanism to protect my eyes my eye is responding to particles of light or photons the energy provided by the photons is clearly enough to activate chemical reactions

after all that's what controls my eye muscles light must be causing similar chemical reactions in the Robin's [Music] eyes if in fact it's the power supply for a unique form of magnetic compass inside her cells in the weird world of subatomic particles a place where only quantum physics can explain what's going on to see why imagine the chemical reactions in the Robin's eye taking place in mountains and valleys of energy to get a reaction to start you have to push molecules to the top of a mountain thanks to henrik's experiments we now know that light

does most of the hard work but when it reaches the very Peak the molecule becomes incredibly sensitive to the slightest [Music] touch the key point here is that the Robin's chemical Compass is now balanced on an energy Peak between two valleys going one way produces one set of chemical products the other a different set now even a tiny change in the Earth's magnetic field can tip the molecule over the top but the way this happens defies Common Sense the final piece of the puzzle depends on one of the truly mindboggling ideas in physics but don't

worry if you find find it hard to understand even Albert Einstein called it spooky the idea is called quantum entanglement it involves particles that seem to communicate faster than the speed of light in 1935 Einstein published a famous paper arguing that it was impossible but Einstein was wrong in recent years extremely delicate experiments have shown that subatomic particles really are entangled it means they can subtly and instantaneously influence each other across space and now it seems the same thing is going on inside the Robin's eye when a photon enters the Robin's eye it creates what's

called an entangled pair of electrons here's how it works each electron has two possible States for Simplicity I'm choosing to call them red and green now here's the weird thing until I measure it it's neither one nor the other but both at the same time think of the electrons like spinning discs they're simultaneously red and green but by firing a dart I can force the first electron to be one or the other so far it's just a game of charts I don't know what I'll get until I try [Music] it so I know my first

electron is red suppose I now measure the second electron you'd think I'd have a 50/50 chance of getting red or green after all that's what you'd expect in the normal everyday world but you'd be wrong if in quantum entanglement the electrons are mysteriously linked for example if I get red on the first I always get red on the second it's not a game of chance [Music] anymore it's as if the first electron is telling the second one what to do that's why Einstein called it spooky the electrons seem to know that they should both have

the same color no matter how far apart they are the really important part is that the two electrons needn't be the same color they can be entangled in a different way so that if the first electron is red the second one is always green it seems that this mysterious connection is the ultimate secret of the quantum Robin's Compass because the direction of the Earth's magnetic field can influence the outcome near the equator they may be more likely to be red red but near the pole there may be more likely to be red green and that's

the vital factor that finally tips the balance of the Robin's chemical Compass tiny variations in the Earth's magnetic field change the way electrons in the Robin's eye are entangled and that's just enough to trigger her Compass now finally we can see how something as weak as the Earth's magnetic field can tip that balance one way or the other If the message changes the chemical reaction tips a different way changing the Robin's compass reading suddenly it looks like it's a fundamentally quantum mechanical phenomenon in Birds it would be one of the first if not the first

in biology biologists better get used to the weirdness of physics the Robin is navigating by spooky quantum entanglement to see subtle Quantum effects even in a controlled AER environment of a physics lab is really difficult and yet here's the robin doing it with ease these experiments are real and verifiable and yet even though I'm seeing them with my own eyes I still find it hard to [Music] believe bird navigation has brought physics and nature together as the science of quantum biology there's a whole new world to explore but its Pioneers have found that it doesn't

just affect Birds it affects every single one of us because the latest experiments say you're doing quantum physics right now and believe it or not not you're doing it with your [Music] nose hello Jim hello hello little girl Hello our sense of smell is remarkable and quite different from our other senses of sight and hearing among the thousands of scents that we can recognize many of them may well trigger very powerful memories and emotions it's as though our sense of smell is wired directly to our inner consciousness it's also different in another way the other

senses of sight and hearing rely on us detecting waves light and sound but our sense of smell involves detecting particles chemical molecules recently scientists have begun to realize that when it comes to our sense of smell something very mysterious is going [Music] on for decades biologists thought they knew exactly how our noses sniffed out different chemicals but physicists like Jenny Brooks think there could be a new ingredient in the mix and it smells like quantum mechanics a lot of people speak of the sense of smell and off action and the science of off action as

being a problem that's been solved and we know all about it and we do know a lot about it we know about the ingredients we know about the equipment that we use to smell but I would argue that there's um a little bit more to understand to understand more I need someone to help me with a smell test and Gem is going to sniff him [Music] out every human being gives off a cocktail of chemicals Gem's nose could detect a single gram of it dissolved over an entire [Music] city so she has no trouble finding

the man I'm looking [Music] for meets Colin The Gardener a man who's used to smelling the [Music] flowers right then Colin I'm going to put your sniffing skills to the test cool I've got a selection of chemicals here and I want you to tell me what what they remind you of okay I'll start you off easily oh that's like a minty minty vapor rub it is yeah yeah menth yep but it's that that Essence right here's the next one ah you should be able to recognize this one that's baking with my daughter mhm um I

see sugar sort thing vanilla vanilla yeah when our noses detect a chemical they fire a nerve signal to our [Music] brains but different chemicals create different [Music] Sensations the standard explanation for this is to do with the shape of the [Music] molecules the conventional theory that goes back to the 1950s says that the scent molecule has a particular shape that allows it to fit in to the receptor molecules in our nose if it has the right shape it's like a hand in a glove or a key in a lock in fact it's called the lock

and key mechanism with the wrong shape it won't fit into the receptor but with the right shape it fits into the receptor triggering that unique smell [Music] sensation different receptors are wired to different parts of our brains so when a menthol molecule locks into its specific receptor it triggers that minty fresh [Music] sensation but the lock and key theory has always had a problem and Colin's next test will show you why okay how about this one quite strong smell oh that's yeah what does what does it remind you of what does it conjure up what

Memories I think Christmas Christmas cake yeah Ma yeah that's it y Al very yeah Colin identified the smell of maripan or almonds in fact it's due to a scent molecule called benzal deide what I didn't give him to was this other chemical cyanide both balide and cyanide have the same smell they both smell of almonds but these molecules are both very different shapes so the lock and key mechanism as an explanation for how we smell can't be the whole story so why would two molecules with different shapes smell the same Quantum biology has a head

spinning explanation it says our noses aren't smelling chemical [Music] molecules they're listening to [Music] them it's not just the shape of a scent molecule that matters let's take a closer look at this model of a cyanide molecule the white ball here is a hydrogen atom and the gray sticks are the bonds that hold it together with the carbon and nitrogen but the the reality isn't as simple as that I can give you a better sense of what's going on if we look at this larger white ball you see atoms don't just sit still the bonds

that hold them together are like vibrating strings and that gives us a whole new way of thinking about smell the bizarre new quantum theory of smell is all about vibrating bonds [Music] chemical molecules are playing music for our noses imagine a receptor molecule in my nose it's like my guitar before it can make a sound a scent molecule has to enter my nose and when that scent molecule is in place its chemical bonds provide the strings and it's ready to be played the receptor molecules contain Quantum particles electrons as they leap from one atom to

another they vibrate the bonds of the scent molecule like my fingers plucking a guitar [Music] string what's remarkable about this theory is that it tells us how a sense of smell is about the vibrations of molecules or wav like behavior and not so much about the shape of a particular scent molecule our sense of smell may be much more like our sense of hearing a particular molecule say that of grass will vibrate at a particular [Music] frequency but a different molecule say that of mint will vibrate at a different [Music] frequency [Music] this would explain

why cyanide smells like almonds the two molecules have different shapes but their chemical bonds just happen to vibrate at the same frequency the content vibration in the Odin is almost literally like a particle of sound so yeah we're saying that the process of smell could be exactly like an acoustic resonance event it could be very analogous to um hearing and seeing actually but can we really be listening with our noses a bizarre Theory needs a bizarre experiment to test it here's how it works this molecule has a Musky Aroma like perfume but if the theory

is right then I should be able to change its smell by changing its vibrations the musky molecule contains lots of hydrogen atoms like this bonded to carbon atoms but what if I were to replace all these atoms with a different form of hydrogen called dyum now it won't change the shape of the molecule but it will change the way it vibrates and here's why deuterium is twice as heavy as normal hydrogen and so it vibrates more slowly now different vibrations mean different smells so if I were to make a new form of this chemical all

packed with deuterium atoms instead of normal hydrogen it should smell different Quantum biologists found a unique way to carry out this [Music] experiment a smell comp comparison using the most sensitive noses they could find fruit flies first the Flies were trained to avoid the modified version of the musky molecule to be honest I haven't got a clue how you go about training a fruit fly but apparently you can in the laboratory the Flies had to pass through a kind of maze they were then given a choice go right for the nice musky smell or left

for the nasty modified [Music] version they could definitely smell the difference they always preferred the original and turned [Music] right the fruit fly experiment gives hard evidence that Quantum smell Theory really [Music] works but ultimately it works in harmony with the lock and key Theory first the scent molecule fits into the receptor then those molecular vibrations take over incredible as it seems flies humans and dogs may be smelling the sound of quantum [Music] biology our sense of smell is fascinating and mysterious as it is but to think that when I encounter a particular scent and

that sets off a whole wave of memories and emotions in my mind that it's underpinned that it's triggered by quantum mechanics I think makes it even more remarkable the mysterious influence of quantum physics reaches into every corner of the natural [Music] world in fact it inhabits the walls of every living cell on [Music] Earth because the latest experiments suggest a magical solution to one of the greatest mysteries of nature the miracle of [Music] metamorphosis the transformation of a tadpole into a frog has never been fully explained in little more than 6 weeks the tadpole breaks

down then reassembles in its adult form but the big mystery is how it happens so fast when you think about it there's nothing more extraordinary than a tadpole turning into a frog take its tail for example over a period of several weeks it gets reabsorbed into the body and the proteins and fibers that make up the flesh get recycled to form the Frog's new limbs but for this to happen trillions and trillions of chemical reactions work together breaking molecules forming new ones in a carefully orchestrated dance but the fibers that hold flesh together are very

very strong they're a bit like these ropes holding my raft together in order to dismantle the raft I'd have to un do these very tight knots you can think of it like this a tadpole is held together by long ropes of proteins knotted together by chemical bonds the bonds are so strong that they should last for years much longer than the tadpole's entire lifespan so how can it turn into a frog in just a few weeks the explanation invol evolves one of the most important molecules of Life tiny widgets in all our cells called enzymes

the enzymes are the actual Machinery of the cell they're actually the The Little Machines inside cells that do the chemical Transformations that are involved in everyday life they're absolutely crucial and the reason they're so crucial is because what they're able to do is to accelerate chemical reactions by enormous El let me show you just how quickly enzymes get to work inside this bottle is a substance called hydrogen peroxide you're probably most familiar with it as the chemical used to bleach hair in fact I obtained this sample from my local hairdressers hydrogen peroxide is also produced

in the body and it's the job of the liver to get rid of it now the way it does that is using an enzyme which breaks down hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen now to show you just how quickly this enzyme works I'm going to do a quick demonstration I've got some liver here which I've chopped up in order to release the enzyme now watch what happens when I add this liver mixture containing the enzyme to the hydrogen peroxide watch how quickly the oxygen is released [Music] just 100 G of liver fired my rocket nearly

20 ft liver enzymes make the breakdown of hydrogen peroxide incredibly efficient it happens a trillion times faster that's a million million times faster than it would otherwise in Metamorphosis it's enzymes that dismantle the tadpole's tail and that means breaking down an incredibly tough protein called collagen the collagen is one of the most important proteins for the biological world it's the protein which actually gives that resilience that elasticity to tendons to cartilage and and of course to to our skin as well and in the tail of the tadpole it provides the kind of scaffold right that's

that supports that structure now when the tadpole is transformed into the Frog what you need to do is to essentially have an enzyme collagenase which will literally snip the collagen down into small pieces and thereby take that scaffold apart but how do enzymes break chemical bonds apart so incredibly fast let me show you why it's a problem only Quantum biology can solve think of it this way all these different parts of the knot are like subatomic particles electrons protons that hold the different parts of the molecule together now to untie the knot enzymes have to

move protons about but as you can see this takes quite a bit of effort and a lot of time if there are many many knots to unpick physicists have a fancy way of saying put in effort to get something done they say you have to overcome an energy [Music] barrier okay here's my energy barrier and here's my proton to break a bond apart it needs enough energy to get get over the barrier the trouble is when we work out how long this would take it's much too slow to break down a tadpole's tail but this

is where protons turn into ghosts I wouldn't blame you for thinking that this is an idea that a clever theoretician has come up with that it's just mere speculation something that we have no proof of but we do it takes place all the time in the quantum World protons don't have to go over [Music] barriers they can tunnel straight through tunneling strikes at the very heart of what is most strange about quantum mechanics it's like nothing we see in our everyday World a Quantum particle can tunnel from one place to another even if it has

to pass through an impenetrable barrier they're not solid objects like balls in our everyday World they have spread out fuzzy wav likee behavior that allows them to leak through an energy barrier a particle can disappear on one side of the barrier and instantaneously reappear on the other in nuclear physics this effect is a proven fact without Quantum tunneling the sun simply wouldn't shine but I never thought I'd see it in a tadpole it's hard to stress just how weird this process is it's as though I would approach a solid brick wall and like a phantom

disappear from one side and reappear on the other the most important of advantage of tunneling is its speed it happens incredibly quickly much faster than if protons go over the barrier as a nuclear physicist Quantum tunneling is my bread and butter subatomic particles like protons do it all the time but what has this Got to Do With [Music] Biology the answer answer is that without Quantum ghosts the metamorphosis of a tadpole would be impossible remember chemical bonds are basically knots tunneling unties them fast have a look at these two knots now on the face of

it they look identical but there's a subtle difference this knot has the two short ends of the Rope on the same side whereas this one has the two short ends on opposite sides now you think that wouldn't make a difference but it does you see this knot is very hard to break whereas this one is easy Quantum tunneling turns strong knots into weak ones so in a tad pole the entire collagen scaffold breaks apart easily and finally other enzymes rebuild it in the shape of a frog the quantum tunneling of particles is one of those

weird features of the subatomic world that a physicist like me is very familiar with after all it's responsible for radioactive decay and it goes on inside the sun it's the reason why the Sun and all stars shine but to discover that it's going on inside every cell of every living organism on the planet because every cell contains enzymes now that I find truly amazing Quantum biology casts its spell over every living creature we've seen that birds mammals insects and amphibians are governed by the strangest laws in science [Music] but the most dramatic recent breakthrough concerns

the single vital process on which all these forms of life depend the conversion of air and sunlight into [Music] plants this fine specimen is a lar decidua or european Larch it's about 100 ft high and right at this moment passing just this side of the planet Venus is a bullet with this tree's name on it the bullet is a photon nearing the end of its long journey from the Sun its ultimate Destiny is to Kickstart a series of chemical reactions that underpins all life on Earth photosynthesis every second of every day six 16,000 tons of

new plant life are created on Earth and for me it's incredible to think that our existence on this planet depends on what happens in the next trillionth of a [Music] second The crucial first stage of photosynthesis is the capture of energy from the Sun it's nearly 100% efficient vastly Superior to any human [Music] technology but the way that every plant on Earth achieves this is one of the great puzzles in biology when it turned out that Quantum weirdness might hold the answer physicists could hardly believe it it was like a revelation it was very exciting

uh because I was used to work on problems that were quite abstract experiments it was I'm a theoretician but I always related my theory to experiments that were very clean in the lab things that you can control but now finding out that the things that I knew can help me to understand better how nature works really I don't know scientifically it was like a a new inspiration to My Life as a scientist so I I really as I would say I fell in love with this field textbook biology says the color of green plants comes

from chlorophyll molecules inside the living cells they absorb light from the sun this energy is then transferred incredibly quickly to the food making factory at the heart of the cell the entire event takes just a millionth of a millionth of a second when the photon hits the cell it knocks an electron out of the middle of a chlorophyll molecule this creates a tiny packet of energy called an exiton the exiton then bounces its way through a forest of chlorophyll molecules until it reaches What's called the reaction center now that's where it's energy is used to

drive chemical processes that create the all important biomolecules of Life the problem is the exiton needs to find its way to the reaction Center in the first place textbook biology can't explain how the exiton does this because of course it doesn't know where it's going it just bounces around like a pinball in a process called a random walk sooner or later it'll pass through every single part of the cell but this isn't the most efficient way to get around because when the exiton eventually does reach the reaction center it's by pure chance if the exiton

just blindly and randomly hops between the chlorophyll molecules it would take too long to reach the reaction Center and would have lost its energy as waste heat but it doesn't something very different must be going on the vital clue comes from recent experiments that stunned the world of science chemists fired lasers at plant cells to simulate the capture of Lights from the Sun they confirmed the exom wasn't bouncing along a haphazard route through the cell this original understanding didn't explain what we were observing in the lab so the mystery relies in okay so then what

is the explanation for what we are observing in the lab the solution is that plants obey the most famous law in all of quantum mechanics the uncertainty principle it says you can never be certain certain that the exiton is in one specific place instead it behaves like a Quantum wave smearing itself out across the [Music] cell the exiton doesn't simply move from A to [Music] B in a bizarre but very real sense it's heading in every direction at the same time it's spreading itself out as a wave so that it can explore all possible routes

simultaneously this strikes at the very heart of what's so strange about quantum mechanics the exiton wave isn't just going this way or that way it's following all paths at the same time that's what gives it such incredible [Music] efficiency [Music] the beauty of it is if the exiton is trying every route to the reaction Center at once it's bound to find the fastest possible way to deliver its energy it's hard to express how incredible this discovery seems to physicists like me biological cells are full of the the random jiggling of billions of atoms and molecules

but somehow exons maintain their form as beautiful perfect Quantum waves transporting the energy that guarantees life on Earth it opened a whole new scientific path for me and I I really enjoy the fact that to be able to understand fully what is happen happening there or in the plants you have to interact with scientists that have completely different approaches like biologist and chemists uh but we we all have to come together to actually understand what is the relevant of this the relevance of this so for me this is one of the most exciting parts of

this field real scientific experiments leave no [Music] doubt the strange hand of quantum mechanics has shaped the entire living world it's not a surprise that you should find Quantum tricks being used in biological systems the reason is because they're better quantum entanglement is normally seen in the tightly controlled conditions of the physics lab but now we know that Robins use it to navigate with extraordinary precision Quantum vibrations mean our noses listen to chemicals enhancing our perception of the world around [Music] us the living cells of all animals depend on protons that vanish and reappear like

ghosts speeding up the vital processes of life and photosynthesis reveals the big picture A shimmering world where Quantum waves capture the sun's energy in an instant sometimes people say ah but physicists have been looking for this for decades well biology has had millions of years the ultramodern science of quantum mechanics is an ancient fact of life for the end of my journey I want to take these ideas to their logical conclusion of course as a scientist any speculations I have have to be backed up by careful experiments so I want to concoct a thought experiment

that helps me to answer the biggest biological question I can think of does quantum physics play any role in the mechanism of evolution itself in 1859 Charles Darwin stunned the world with his theory of evolution by natural selection he went on to explain the differences between humans and other Apes 150 years later there's no doubt that Darwin's theory accounts for every living organism on land and sea but I'd like to explore the latest extraordinary interpretation of his ideas could there be a quantum theory of [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] evolution can Quantum Evolution explain how the

snail got its shell the snails I'm used to seeing in my back Garden tend to have rather Bland boring shells so have a look at this beauty the patterns on it shell very perfectly match the lines on the stem it's called a banded snail superp nemoralis and the pattern isn't there by accident come and have a look at this less well adapted snails are more likely to be found here this stone is called a thrush's Anvil the song thrush is the snail's Main Predator it catches a snail and smashes its shell against the stone to

get to the snail now what I can see here is that there aren't many banded snail shells suggesting that its colors camouflage it very well hiding it from the bird Darwin's theory says that Evolution depends on variation within a species snails with camouflage are more likely to survive and reprod produce passing on their shells to the Next Generation so that the species as a whole becomes better adapted so variation the random differences between snails is the driving force behind their evolution now all species evolve and adapt to their environment but the question I'd like to

explore is whether quantum mechanics plays a role in this the only way to find out is by scientific experiments so my adventures in Quantum biology finally bring me home to the University of su here in the Laboratories I'm planning a new analysis of the most celebrated molecule in science deoxy ribonucleic acid or DNA it's double helix holds the genetic code for every living organism it's a remarkable fact that Darwin himself had no idea what created variation in the species the structure of DNA wasn't discovered until 1953 by Francis Crick and James Watson the most famous

feature of DNA is of course its beautiful double helix structure but that's just scaffolding the real genetic secret lies in between the four different colored molecules are called bases the color code on one side say blue red blue forms a gene that parents pass on to their offspring a gene is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle it fits together like this a full strand of the double helix forms a colored pattern but the other strand always pairs up the same way a blue base always goes with yellow and green always goes with red because only

those colors have the right shape to fit together what Crick and Watson realized was that this provides a mechanism for passing on the genetic code when cells reproduce the two strands of DNA separate ready to be copied but red still goes with green and yellow still goes with blue so bit by bit the cell creates two new strands two perfect copies of the entire genetic code so far there's no genetic variation this new copy is identical to the original but here's the interesting bit during the copying process something very important can happen sometimes mistakes creep

in they're called mutations let's have a look at these two bases here the two prongs that hold them together are subatomic particles they're protons they're basically the bonds between the strands of DNA these protons can jump across to the other side if the Strand split when the protons have jumped across they find themselves in the wrong position now this red base will no longer bind to a green base instead it has to bond to a Yellow base slotting this back in we see that now this copy is no longer identical to the original because I

have a yellow base here instead of a green one we've brought in a genetic mutation jumping protons would change the snail's DNA it could make a new Gene for camouflage shells the question is how do pro phons jump it's my belief that Quantum spookiness can take over now for these mutations to take place the protons have to overcome an energy barrier and if you remember what happened with enzymes well you can probably guess what's coming next protons can behave as if barriers don't exist they tunnel straight through but does this ghostly effect really happen my

colleagues in biology are already looking for the very first evidence of quantum mutations biologists didn't really even know about quantum mechanics so when you tell them that you know particles can be in two places at once they kind of say well not in my cells they can't our experiment involves samples of bacteria the first sample is prepared in normal water containing hydrogen nuclei or protons when the bacteria reproduce we simply count the mutations but if our theory is correct then we should be able to change the rate at which mutations occur remember how we tested

the quantum theory of smell what if I replace the proton with its Big Brother the duton this is the nucleus of an atom of dyum now crucially A deuteron is twice as heavy as a proton and this should influence how easy it is for the duton to Quantum tunnel quantum mechanics is full of surprises protons tunnel easily deuterons don't these heavier particles are much more likely to bounce straight back so the second sample of bacteria is prepared in heavy water which is full of deuterons our Theory says you should get far fewer mutations and so

far the results are extremely encouraging the preliminary experiments that we've done um gives us a a hint that the mutation rate is indeed depressed in deuterated water we find that it is lower up so uh my hunch is that we're right uh but um we'll have to wait a little while before we're sure final proof lies in the future even if we're right Quantum tunneling is a rare form of mutation but our results promise hard evidence for a new explanation of one of the most fundamental processes of life even the mest possibility of a new

Quantum mechanism for evolution itself is tremendously exciting in fact the story of quantum biology is only just beginning what the frog the robin the fruit fly and the tree have shown us Is that real Quantum effects are going on in nature all the time and if there's anything we've learned from the history of quantum mechanics it's this we can never be certain where new discoveries will take us [Music] next Quantum biology is a revolution in science but it's time I got back to the physics department [Music] higher than the tallest building higher than the biggest

plane James May goes to the edge of space that's available now on BBC I player next here on BBC 4 though we're uncovering the truth about meteors with Horizon