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The Quantum Side of Biology Nobody Expected · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the quark Side Quantum Physics podcast, an exploration
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I want you to just stop whatever you're doing right
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: now for just a second, just for a second, yeah, right,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: and just really think about the fundamental nature of your
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: own body, because you likely think of it, you know,
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: as this highly complex mechanical factory.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, like a bustling city.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You've got chemical signals firing, electrical impulses traveling down
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: your nerves, enzymes breaking things down. It's essentially a microscopic
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: machine made of flesh and blood.
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  Speaker 3: That's the classic view.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but what if that entire picture is just well
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  Speaker 2: mentally incomplete. What if at the very core of your
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: being you are actually a walking, breathing quantum computer.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a premise that completely upends our traditional
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  Speaker 3: understanding of biology. We're venturing into this explosive frontier of
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: quantum biology today, and it is explosive, it really is. Specifically,
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  Speaker 3: we're focusing on the monumental breakthroughs that just happened in
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  Speaker 3: twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six. We are looking
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: at phenomena that physicists once thought were strictly confined to
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: super cooled laboratory right.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Like absolute zero temperatures.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly, or inside multi million dollars supercomputers, things like quantum superposition, entanglement,
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: and quantum tunneling.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: And we're finding them inside us.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, we are discovering that these mind bending physical properties
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  Speaker 3: aren't just anomalies. They are literally the secret engines of life.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: They appear to be the substrate of awareness itself.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Which is just wild. And the reason you should care
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: about this right now, the reason anyone listening needs to
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: pay attention, is because our fundamental definition of what it
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: means to be alive is shifting.
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  Speaker 3: It's a total paradigm shift.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this isn't abstract chalkboard physics anymore. This is about
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: exactly how your brain is generating the thought you're having
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: at this very moment.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: How your eyes are actually seeing the light around.
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  Speaker 2: You, right, and honestly, the future of medicine that you
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: are going to experience in your own lifetime.
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  Speaker 3: Well, to really understand the sheer magnitude of the discoveries
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  Speaker 3: from twenty twenty six. We sort of have to look
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  Speaker 3: at the impossible problem that scientists thought prevented quantum biology
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  Speaker 3: from existing in the.
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  Speaker 2: First place, the warm, wet and noisy dilemma.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: That's the one. For decades the scientific establishment basically laughed
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: at this idea. Classical biology treats the microscopic world like
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: a game of billiard balls.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Basically, molecules just kind of clacking into each other exactly.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: You have enzymes acting like mechanical lock and key systems,
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: relying entirely on physical shape. Everything is driven by thermal energy,
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: random kinetic motion, and classical chemical reactions.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: It's very straightforward cause and effect bill your balls hit
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  Speaker 2: each other, transfer energy and so on.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but quantum mechanics describes an entirely different realm. It
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: describes probabilities in waves of potential.
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  Speaker 2: It's so counterintuitive, it really is.
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  Speaker 3: It involves particles being in multiple states or places simultaneously,
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  Speaker 3: which is what we call superposition, and then there's instantaneous
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: correlations across space known as entanglement. And the historical assumption
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  Speaker 3: was that those two worlds, the biological and the quantum,
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  Speaker 3: they simply could not.
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  Speaker 2: Mix because of decoherence right exactly.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Decoherence is basically the enemy of quantum states. Quantum states
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  Speaker 3: are incredibly delicate, like in a physics lab. To keep
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: a quantum state stable, to maintain what we call coherence,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: you usually have to isolate the system completely.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: You literally have to freeze it pretty much.
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  Speaker 3: You place it in a high vacuum, cool it down
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  Speaker 3: to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. You
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: have to remove all environmental interference. Wow, because the moment
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: a quantum system is interacts with a chaotic thermal environment,
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: the phase relationship of those probabilities just collapses. It decoheres
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  Speaker 3: right back into classical predictable physics.
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  Speaker 2: So if we think of classical biology like the inside
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  Speaker 2: of the human cell, it's basically like the floor of
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  Speaker 2: a crowded, noisy, chaotic stock exchange.
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  Speaker 3: Well that's a great analogy.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, people are yelling, papers are flying everywhere,
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  Speaker 2: it's just this mess of thermal kinetic energy. But a
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  Speaker 2: quantum state, on the other hand, is like a perfectly synchronized,
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  Speaker 2: highly delicate ballet. And the assumption was always that a
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  Speaker 2: delicate ballet could never ever survive in the middle of
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  Speaker 2: a chaotic stock exchange floor.
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  Speaker 3: The dancers would just get bumped into and knocked over
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  Speaker 3: instantly by.
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  Speaker 2: The noise exactly, So how on earth is nature pulling
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  Speaker 2: this off?
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  Speaker 3: Well, the mat supported that skeptical assumption for a really
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  Speaker 3: long time. Decoherent should happen in femtoseconds in the warm,
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  Speaker 3: wet environment of a cell like incredibly fast, almost instantly.
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  Speaker 3: But recent evidence shows that evolution didn't just passively try
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  Speaker 3: to serve the noise.
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  Speaker 2: Wait, what do you mean?
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  Speaker 3: It didn't just try to build thicker walls to protect
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  Speaker 3: the quantum ballet. It actively evolved to harness and exploit
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  Speaker 3: that exact noise.
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  Speaker 2: No way, it uses the chaos.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, biological systems are utilizing the thermal chaos, the actual
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: physical vibration of the proteins, to maintain coherence.
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  Speaker 2: That's insane.
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  Speaker 3: The noise is resetting and sustaining the quantum states. It
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  Speaker 3: provides biological organisms with a massive evolutionary advantage. Nature isn't
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  Speaker 3: fighting the chaotic stock exchange, It's using the yelling and
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  Speaker 3: the chaos to keep the ballet perfectly in time.
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  Speaker 2: That is a staggering level of evolutionary engineering. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: it's just it's hard to wrap your head around it is.
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  Speaker 3: But nature's ability to pull this off isn't just theoretical
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  Speaker 3: math anymore.
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  Speaker 2: Right, It's actually happening all around us right.
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  Speaker 3: Now, in the most commonplaces on Earth.
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  Speaker 2: So before we look at how this applies to human
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  Speaker 2: brains and consciousness, which is the really crazy stuff, we
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  Speaker 2: have to look at the established masterpieces of nature's quantum tricks.
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  Speaker 3: We have to talk about leaves, birds, and your own nose.
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  Speaker 2: Let's do it. I love this part.
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  Speaker 3: So there are three major pillars where quantum biology has
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  Speaker 3: definitively proven itself over the last few years. These serve
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  Speaker 3: as the foundation for the current twenty twenty six breakthroughs.
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  Speaker 2: Let's start with photosynthesis, arguably the most important biological process
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  Speaker 2: on the planet.
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  Speaker 3: Right absolutely now. The classical model assumed that when a
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  Speaker 3: photon of light hits a plant's leaf, specifically the light
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  Speaker 3: harvesting complex, it creates an energy packet. We call that
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  Speaker 3: inexcitanent okay and exciting, right, And the old assumption was
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  Speaker 3: that this excitement basically bounced around the plant's molecular structure,
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  Speaker 3: just randomly transferring from molecular molecule until it eventually found
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  Speaker 3: its way to the reaction center where it gets trendy
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  Speaker 3: into food exactly chemical energy.
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  Speaker 2: But the classic metaphor for that is like a pinball machine, right,
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  Speaker 2: where the ball is just bouncing off bumpers, losing a
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  Speaker 2: little bit of momentum and energy with every single collision.
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  Speaker 3: That's right. If that excitant is wandering randomly, it should
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  Speaker 3: lose a massive amount of its energy.
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  Speaker 2: As heat just burning off before it gets where it
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  Speaker 2: needs to go.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Yet, we know that photosynthesis operates at near one
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  Speaker 3: hundred percent efficiency.
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  Speaker 2: Which is wild.
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  Speaker 3: Almost every single photon absorbed makes it to the reaction center.
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  Speaker 3: Random classical diffusion completely fails to account for that level
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  Speaker 3: of efficiency.
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  Speaker 2: So how is the plant doing it?
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  Speaker 3: It overcomes this by utilizing quantum superposition. This happens within
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  Speaker 3: its Fenom Matthew's Ulsen complex, which is the specific protein
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  Speaker 3: structure that guides the energy.
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  Speaker 2: Wait, so a common leaf on a tree in my
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  Speaker 2: backyard is essentially performing complex quantum computing just to eat sunlight.
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  Speaker 3: Essentially, Yes, Instead of the excite and wandering randomly like
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  Speaker 3: a pinball, it enters a state of quantum coherence because
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  Speaker 3: it's in a superposition, acting as a wave of probability
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  Speaker 3: rather than a solid microscopic particle. The excitement explores all
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  Speaker 3: possible pathways to the reaction center simultaneouslyaneously.
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  Speaker 2: Like all of them at once, all of them at once,
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  Speaker 2: So it acts more like a flood of water instantly
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  Speaker 2: mapping every single route through a maze, rather than one
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  Speaker 2: single mouse trying to run through the paths one by
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  Speaker 2: one and hitting dead ends.
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  Speaker 3: That's a perfect way to visualize it. By exploring all
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  Speaker 3: paths simultaneously, the wave instantly collapses into the single, most efficient,
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  Speaker 3: fastest route to the reaction center.
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  Speaker 2: So absolutely no energy is lost to random.
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  Speaker 3: Wandering exactly, And the mechanics of that quantum walk are
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  Speaker 3: driven by the specific physical architecture of the plant.
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  Speaker 2: So it's not like the leaf is consciously doing mass.
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  Speaker 3: No, No, it's a structural feature. The scaffolding of the
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  Speaker 3: chromophores in the leaf is structured so precisely that it
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  Speaker 3: forces the energy to behave as a quantum wave. And
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  Speaker 3: here's the crazy part about the noise we mentioned earlier,
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  Speaker 3: the thermal vibrations of the plant. The background noise actually
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  Speaker 3: continuously knock the excitement back into a quantum wave state.
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  Speaker 3: If it starts to localize into a classical particle.
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  Speaker 2: Wait, so the noise is active fixing the quantum state.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, it perfectly demonstrates how the noise sustains the ballet.
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  Speaker 2: It is just incredible to look at a tree outside
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  Speaker 2: and realize its leaves are running highly efficient quantum algorithms.
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  Speaker 2: But the mechanics get even more complex when we look
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  Speaker 2: at animals.
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  Speaker 3: Right, Oh, definitely, Let's look at the European robin and
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  Speaker 3: Avian magnet to reception.
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  Speaker 2: The bird compass.
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  Speaker 3: Right. We've known for a long time that birds migrate
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  Speaker 3: using the Earth's magnetic field. The mystery was how they
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  Speaker 3: actually sense it, because the Earth's magnetic field is incredibly weak.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, classical physics struggled immensely with this, didn't it immensely?
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  Speaker 3: The field is so faint that a biological organism shouldn't
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  Speaker 3: be able to detect it without essentially having a macroscopic
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  Speaker 3: compass like a giant hunk of iron or magnetite in their.
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  Speaker 2: Heads, which obviously they don't have.
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  Speaker 3: No, they don't. The quantum mechanism actually happens entirely inside
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  Speaker 3: their eyes, specifically within a type of protein called cryptochrome four,
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  Speaker 3: which is located in the bird's retina.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so how does it work?
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  Speaker 3: Well. When a photon of blue light enters the bird's eye,
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  Speaker 3: it hits this cryptochrome protein. This photon carries enough energy
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  Speaker 3: to actually knock an electron out of its place, transferring
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  Speaker 3: it to an neighboring molecule.
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  Speaker 2: Usually a chain of amino acids.
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  Speaker 3: Right, exactly, tryp to fan amino acids.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, So that initial step is just standard photochemistry. Light
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  Speaker 2: hits something and electron moves.
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  Speaker 3: Right, But the quantum trick lies in the electrons themselves.
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  Speaker 3: That electron that moved and the electronic left behind. They
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  Speaker 3: become what we call a radical pair. A radical pair
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  Speaker 3: because those two electrons originally share the same exact orbital space,
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  Speaker 3: they are quantumly.
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  Speaker 2: Entangled wait entangled like spooky action at a distance.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, their spin states are inextricably linked, no matter how
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  Speaker 3: far apart they get within that protein.
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  Speaker 2: That's mind blowing.
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  Speaker 3: And because they're acting as a single, highly delicate quantum system,
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  Speaker 3: the tiny, incredibly weak magnetic field of the Earth is
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  Speaker 3: finally strong enough to influence how those two entangled electrons
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: spin relative to each other.
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  Speaker 2: Because the system is so perfectly balanced, exactly.
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  Speaker 3: They oscillate between two different chemical states, a singlet state
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  Speaker 3: and a triplet state, and the specific ratio of those
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  Speaker 3: spin states actually dictates the chemical output of the cryptochrome protein.
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  Speaker 2: And then the bird's nervous system just reads that chemical output,
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  Speaker 2: you got it, Which means the bird isn't just vaguely,
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  Speaker 2: you know, feeling a magnetic pull toward the north.
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  Speaker 3: No, it's far more integrated than that.
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  Speaker 2: The prevailing theories is that the bird literally sees the
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: magnetic field overlaid onto its vision, right.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, like a filter over their normal site, like a.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Video game heads up display powered by entangled electrons reacting
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  Speaker 2: in real time to the Earth's magnetic inclination.
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  Speaker 3: It's essentially biological quantum sensor built into their eyes.
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  Speaker 2: Incredible. And the third established pillar involves our own bodies,
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  Speaker 2: enzymes and the sense of smell.
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  Speaker 3: Right, Let's talk about enzymes first. They are the catalysts
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  Speaker 3: for almost every chemical reaction in your body. They speed
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: up processes that would otherwise take thousands of years to
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  Speaker 3: happen naturally.
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  Speaker 2: And they achieve this biological acceleration via quantum tunneling, don't
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: they They do.
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  Speaker 3: In classical physics, if a particle doesn't have enough energy
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: to get over a potential energy barrier. It simply doesn't
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: get over.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: It's like rolling a ball up a really steep hill.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: If you don't push it hard enough, it just rolls
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  Speaker 2: right back down.
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  Speaker 3: Perfect analogy. But in the quantum realm, because that proton
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: is also a wave of probability, that wave doesn't just
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  Speaker 3: stop at the barrier.
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  Speaker 2: Right, because it's not just a solid ball exactly.
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  Speaker 3: It actually decays exponentially through the barrier, and if the
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: barrier is thin enough, a small portion of the probability
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  Speaker 3: wave emerges on the other.
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  Speaker 2: Side, So there's a chance it just teleports.
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  Speaker 3: Literally, there is a finite chance the proton will simply
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: appear on the other side of the solid barrier without
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  Speaker 3: ever having the energy to go over it.
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  Speaker 2: And enzymes are doing this.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, Enzymes are structurally designed to fold and tightly squeeze molecules.
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  Speaker 3: They essentially narrow the width of that potential energy are
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: to maximize the probability of this quantum tunneling happening.
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  Speaker 2: So protons in my stomach right now are tunneling through
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: solid energy barriers just to keep me digesting my lunch.
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  Speaker 3: That's exactly what's happening. And This tunneling mechanic also leads
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: directly to the vibrational theory of olfaction our sense of smell.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, Traditionally we thought we smelled things because odor
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: molecules fit into receptors in our noses purely based on
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: physical shape. Right, the classic lock and key model.
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  Speaker 3: Right, But that classical model has massive holes in it,
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: Like what, Well, molecules with the exact same physical shape
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: can smell completely different, and molecules with completely different shapes
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  Speaker 3: can smell identical. Like there are various distinct compounds that
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: all smell exactly like bitter almonds, even though their shapes
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: are totally different.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Which shouldn't happen if it's just a physical lock.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: And key Exactly so, the vibrational theory proposes that our
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: nasal receptors are actually detecting the quantum vibrations of the.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Molecules, not the shape the vibration.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: Right. When an odorant molecule enters a receptor, it allows
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: an electron to quantum tunnel across the receptor. But and
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: this is the key, it only happens if the odor
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: molecule vibrates at the exact specific frequency needed to absorb
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: the tiny bit of energy loss during the tunnel. Wait really, yeah,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: we're literally smelling the quantum mechanical vibration of chemical bonds.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: That is deeply weird but so fascinating. So we've established
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: that nature has been utilizing quantum mechanics for billions of years.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: But twenty twenty six was the year we stopped merely
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: observing nature doing this and we actually started manipulating it ourselves.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: Yes, twenty twenty six was the inflection point we entered
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: a massive institutional and paradigm shift.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, in April twenty twenty six, the inaugural Quantum
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Biology Forum was hosted by Northwell Health in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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  Speaker 2: Over one hundred and twenty scientists, physicians, and innovators gathered.
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  Speaker 3: And these weren't just fringe theoretical physicists either.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: No, these were mainstream medical doctors and major biotech players.
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  Speaker 3: The significance of a major mainstream healthcare provider hosting a
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: symposium on quantum biology it represents an institutional seed change.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: The consensus in that room was basically a deliberate departure
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: from the past one hundred years of medicine.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, the human body is no longer being treated as
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: a purely chemical machine. It's now being approached as an
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: entity governed by the quantum principles of energy and information.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: And the capital followed the realization. I mean Google launched
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: its repliqa program with ten million dollars in seed funding, ten.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Million dollars specifically dedicated to quantum AI applications in the
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: life sciences.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And that funding is targeted entirely at molecular simulations and
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: sensors for drug discovery. What does that actually mean for
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: the pharmaceutical landscape.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: It fundamentally changes it. It means the next major breakthrough
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: drug you take might be discovered via an AI simulation
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: that specifically accounts for quantum tunneling inside yourselves. Wow, drug
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: design is shifting from playing with three D physical puzzle
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: pieces to actually engineering malec kular probabilities and manipulating electron
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: spin states.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: That institutional momentum and funding directly yielded one of the
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: most astonishing engineering feats of the decade, in my opinion,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: the biological quibit Oh.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: This was a massive breakthrough.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Researchers at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: working with the Bergran Center for Quantum Biology and Medicine
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: successfully engineered a cellular protein into a functional quantum bit.
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  Speaker 3: Right. So, for context, a standard classical bit like in
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: your laptop, processes information as either one or a zero,
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: on or off exactly, But a quibbit, which is the
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: basic unit of a quantum computer, could be a one,
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: a zero, or any quantum superposition of both simultaneously.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Which is why quantum computers are so powerful.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Right. But normally, building equibit requires superconducting circuits or trapped
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: ions completely isolated in giant, multimillion dollar dilution refrigerators.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Cooled down to almost absolute zero exactly.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: But the research which is that Chicago literally engineered a
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: biological protein to hold that delicate quantum state at room temperature.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: They built a quibit out of biological material.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: They really did.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: My understanding of the mechanics is that they modified a
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: specific fluorescent protein to isolate an electron spin state, essentially
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: creating a tiny pocket where that spin is shielded from
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: the immediate thermal noise.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: Of the cell, yes shielded from the noise, but still
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: highly responsive to external magnetic or energetic shifts. They utilized
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: optical techniques, specifically optically detected magnetic resonance to actually read
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: the state of that biological quibt. That's just wild because
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: quantum states are so incredibly delicate. Any minute shift in
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: the surrounding environment, a tiny change in temperature, an instant
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: a testimo magnetic field, or just a single altered chemical
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: bond nearby, it will cause the quantum state to shift
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: or decohere.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Which makes the biological quibbit the most sensitive diagnostic sensor
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: theoretically possible.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: But I mean, if we're placing engineer equibits into living cells,
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: my mind immediately jumps to a sort of subatomic cybernetics
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: for sure, Like, does this mean we essentially have microscopic
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: quantum computers floating around inside living cells? Now? Are we
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: becoming cyborgs at a sub atomic level?
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I have to temper the cyborg idea a bit.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: It is a profound capability, but the immediate application is
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: much better understood as a subatomic stethoscope, my deethiscope. Okay, right,
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: The goal right now isn't necessarily to control the cell
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: with a microscopic computer. It's about unprecedented diagnostic imaging. We
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: are attempting to understand the fundamental intracellular processes of life
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: in real time just listening in exactly if a cell
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: is about to mutate or turn cancerous, the chemical and
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: energetic environment inside that cell changes long before any physical
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: tumor forms.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Ah.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: I see a biological quantum sensor detects that subtle energetic
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: shift at the exact moment it begins, far beyond the
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: capability of any classical biomarker screening.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: That is going to save lives. But if we can
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: engineer a single protein to hold quantum information, it forces
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: us to look at the most complex biological structure in
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: the known universe, the human.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: Brain, and ask if it's doing the exact same thing
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: on a massive scale.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly, Which brings us to the core of the twenty
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: twenty six breakthroughs and honestly the most persistent mystery in
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: all of science, the hard problem of consciousness, the big one.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Classical neuroscience has mapped the brain extensively. We know which
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: neural networks fire when you speak, when you feel pain,
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: or when you recall a childhood memory.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: We have the map.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: We have the map. However, classical neuroscience completely fails to
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: cross the explanatory gap of subjective experience. This is what
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: philosopher David Chalmers coined the hard problem.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Why does it feel like anything to be alive?
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: Exactly? A classical computer processes complex information, routing electrical signals
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: through billions of transistors, but we do not believe a
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: laptop subjectively experiences the or red or the taste of
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: an apple.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Right, Classical biology treats the brain like a massively complex
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: telephone switchboard. Electrical signals travel down the axons, neurotransmitters cross
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: the synapse, switches flip, and an output is generated. It's mechanical,
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: but a telephone switchboard doesn't possess an ego. No matter
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: how complex you make the mechanical routing. Classical physics offers
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: absolutely no mechanism for how mechanical electrical firing suddenly ignites
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: into the subjective awareness of I am.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: It's a complete blank spot, and that explanatory failure is
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: where the orchestrated objective reduction theory or orch or are
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: enters the picture.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: This is the Penrose and hammer Off theory right.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Yes, proposed decades ago by the Nobel Prize winning physicist
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: Sir Roger Penrose, and antithesiologist Stuart hammer Off. They boldly
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: argued that consciousness is not the result of complex classical
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: computations between neurons.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Okay, then what is it?
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: They argued, It's the result of quantum computations happening inside
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: the neurons, specifically inside structure components called microtubules.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Microtubules, so these are basically the physical scaffolding of a cell.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Right, Yes, they're tiny hollow cylinders made of tubulin proteins,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: specifically alpha and bited tubulin dimers. They give the cell
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: its shape and facilitate internal.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Transport, like little highways right.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: In neurons, they run the entire length of the axon,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: and for decades, classical biologists consider them to be nothing
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: more than structural support beams, like the steel girders of
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: a skyscraper.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Just holding the building up exactly.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: But Penrose and hammer Off analyze the lattice like geometry
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: of these tubes and hypothesized that their internal structure is
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: actually perfectly designed to isolate and sustain quantum coherence. How so, well,
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: inside the tubulin proteins are hydrophobic pockets, diny spaces completely
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: devoid of water.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Oh wait, devoid of water. So that solves the wet
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: part of the warm wet noisy dilemma.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: Precisely within these dry pockets, clouds of electrons known as
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: py resonance clouds can undergo superposition.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, So, isolated from a warm wet environment by these
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: dry pockets, the electron clouds enter a quantum state.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Right, and Penros and Hamroff theorize that these quantum states
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: build up, they entangle across the entire neural network of the.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Brain, entangling millions of neurons.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: Yes, and when the superposition reaches a specific critical mass,
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: a threshold of instability in the fabric of space time itself,
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: it undergoes an objective collapse.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: And that collapses.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: That singular moment of quantum collapse is a single moment
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: of conscious awareness. And now our continuous stream of consciousness
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: is simply millions of these orchestrated quantum collapses happening in
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: a rapid sequence.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: So the brain is not a telephone switchboard, not at all.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: This new quantum evidence suggests it's far closer to a
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: massive symphony orchestra, where the resonance of the music itself,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: the synchronized quantum vibration across the entire neural system is
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: the consciousness.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: That's a beautiful way to put it. And the breakthroughs
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: of twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six are so
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: vital because we finally moved past theoretical physics and acquired
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: causal experimental biological evidence supporting this.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the rat anesthesia experiments. This is
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: a massive turning point huge. To understand the gravity of
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: these experiments, we have to look at a slightly embarrassing
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: medical mystery. We have been using general anesthesia for over.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: A century, performing millions and millions of surgery right.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Yet chemically we have never fully understood how anesthesia actually
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: turns off consciousness.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: It's true, we know the molecular compounds, we know they
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: work safely, but the exact physical mechanism of how they
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: obliterate subjective experience while leaving non conscious brain functions running
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: it was a complete unknown until now. Right hammer Off
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: and Penrose had long theorized that anesthetic gases specifically target
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: the microtubules.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Because they're soluble.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: Exactly, anesthetic molecules like isoflurane are highly soluble in those
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: hydrophobic pockets. We talked about. Their theory was that the
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: anesthetic molecules infultrate the pockets and disrupt the delicate pi
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: electron clouds through London dispersion forces.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Essentially destroying the quantum coherence.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: Yes, no coherence means no collapse, and no collapse means
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: no consciousness.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: So in twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six, researchers
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: tested this exact mechanism directly on rats. They used specialized
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: drugs I think they were derivatives of a postlon or taxil,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: which physically bind to and stabilized the structural integrity of
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: the microtubules inside the rat's brains.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Right, they chemically reinforced the steel girders of the.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Neurons, locking that lattice geometry in place to heavily protect
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: the internal hydrophobic pockets.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: And when they administered general anesthesia to these rats with
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: reinforced microtubules, the results were undeniable. What happened It took
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: significantly longer for the rats to lose their writing reflex
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: and lose consciousness, and on the flip side, they woke
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: up much faster than the control group.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Wait really, yeah.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: The anesthesia could not turn off the consciousness effectively because
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: the quantum environment within the microtubule had been physically stabilized
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: against the disruption.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: By chemically securing the physical structure where the quantum states
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: are theoretically held, they directly prolonged the state of being
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: conscious against a drugged design. Specifically to erase.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: It its causal evidence and concur with this, researchers deployed
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: nitrogen vacancy center diamond sensors, incredibly precise quantum maagnetic sensors
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: to actually map brain activity, and they found these sensors
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: picked up the minute megahertz quantum vibrational frequencies in neural
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: processes that Orchar had predicted decades ago. We are actually
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: measuring the quantum sympathy of the brain.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Finding that anesthesia interacts directly with quantum coherence in microtubules
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: is a monumental leap in medical science. But you know,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: this causal evidence naturally leads us to a significantly more
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: complex theoretical frontier.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Oh, it gets much deeper, right.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Because if consciousness is a quantum resonance happening inside our
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: neural architecture, what exactly is it resonating with?
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: Well, this is where the research from twenty twenty six
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: steps beyond biology entirely and out of the fabric of
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: reality itself. We're looking at the proposition that brain cortical
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: microcolumns resonate with the quantum vacuum.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, hold on, I have to push back here.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: I expected you might.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Because examining the papers from the skeptics in the traditional neuroscientists,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: a lot of them label this exact theory as highly speculative,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: if not outright pseudoscience or mysticism.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: Pushes boundaries.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, they point out a massive physical size gap. A
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: microcolumn is a highly organized column of thousands of neurons
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: in the cerebral cortex. It is microscopic. How can a
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: structure of that size act as a resonant cavity for
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: subatomic quantum fluctuations? We seriously saying the human brain is
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: an antenna tuning into the background static of the universe.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: The skepticism is absolutely warranted, and the physical size gap
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: is the primary theoretical hurdle. I won't deny that, But
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: to understand the proposed mechanics, we have to define the
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: zero point field.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, lay it out.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: Quantum field theory. A vacuum isn't empty not empty. No,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: even if you remove all matter, all light, all heat,
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: space itself still possesses a baseline level of fluctuating electromagnetic energy.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: It's a bubbling cauldron of virtual particles constantly popping in
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: and out of existence. Okay, That baseline energy is the
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: zero point field. It is the fundamental energetic fabric of
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: space time.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: So space is literally buzzing with a baseline quantum frequency.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: Yes, And the twenty twenty six hypothesis suggests that the
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: physical arrangement of our cortical microcolumns acts a lot like
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: the resonant body of an acoustic guitar.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: So interesting structurally.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: Tuned to amplify and resonate with the fundamental frequencies of
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: that zero point field.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: But how do they address the size gap you mentioned?
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: They address it by invoking fractal resonance and topological quantum states.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Fractal resonance, right.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: The idea is that the coherence isn't happening across the
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: entire microcolumn all at once in a simple way. Rather,
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: the microcolumn acts as a fractal antenna. The geometric arrangement
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: of the neurons creates a topological state that is theoretically
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: immune to local thermal.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: Noise, so the shape itself protects the quantum.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: State exactly, allowing the microscopic quantum states in the individual
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: microtubules to scale up and mathematically couple with the background
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: frequencies of the vacuum.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, if that hypothesis holds, it implies we aren't
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: generating consciousness in a dark, isolated vacuum inside our skulls,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: not at all. We are actively interfacing with the fundamental
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: quantum substrate of the universe.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: It provides a physical substrate for how information might scale
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: globally across a neural network instantly. If our brains are
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: utilizing widespread quantum entanglement. It allows for instantaneous information correlation
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: regardless of physical distance across the brain, and the.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Zero point field interaction could explain a lot of phenomena
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: that classical neuroscience really struggles with.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: Right, oh, absolutely, It could finally explain the unity of
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: subjective experience, how disparate distant areas of the brain instantly
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: coreate to create a single unified reality.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: For us, right the binding problem exactly.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: It also provides a mechanism for higher states of learning efficiency,
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: where the brain seemingly accesses a distributed network of information
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: computation that far exceeds classical biological limits.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: It essentially provides a physical framework for non local correlations
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: like highly intuitive aha moments.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: Yes, when you have a sudden epiphany or a flash
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: of insight, it might not just be your neurons clacking
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: together in a lucky sequential calculation. It might be your
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: neural architecture achieving a moment of perfect quantum resonance with
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: the underlying informational field of reality.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: It links conscious awareness directly to the physical laws of
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: space time. We aren't merely passive observers of a dead universe.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Our subjective awareness is a structural, interactive component of it.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: Which brings us to the existential and philosophical fallout of
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: all this.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: It really does, because if consciousness is tied to the
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: very fabric of space time, we have to completely rethink
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: our place in the universe. We have to redefine what
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: we call a liveness we really do.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: Does biology exist merely to sustain quantum information processing in
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: a classical world? Is our flesh and blood simply an
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: evolutionary spacesuit designed to keep a delicate quantum computation stable.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: That is such a wild thought. It flips the traditional
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: hierarchy of existence completely upside down.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: It does. We usually think of consciousness as a late
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: stage byproduct of complex biology, like biology evolved first, became
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: complex over millions of years, and eventually just secreted thought.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Right, But these breakthroughs lead us directly into a major
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: philosophical debate that is currently raging in the scientific community
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: refined materialism versus a resurgence of panpsychism.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: Let's break those down. Refined materialism basically argues that quantum
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: information is the ultimate substrate of the mind. Consciousness is
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: still a physical process, but it's occurring at the quantum
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: wave function level, not the classical cellular level.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: So it's an emergent property of autumn coherence, requiring highly
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: specific biological scaffolding like microtubules to exist exactly.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: But the opposing view is panpsychism. This is the idea
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: that consciousness is a fundamental, irreducible property of the universe,
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: exactly like mass, charge or spin.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: So it's baked into reality from the start.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: Right. In panpsychism, a single electron doesn't just possess a
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: physical charge, it possesses an infinitesimally small spark of raw
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: subjective experience, and when you arrange matter in incredibly sophisticated
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: coherent ways, like the fractal lattice inside the microtubules of
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: a human brain, you basically aggregate those tiny sparks into
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: the roaring fire of human awareness.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: And from an evolutionary perspective, natural selection would heavily favor
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: quantum sensitivity. If an organism can process environmental information simultaneously
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: via superposition or communicate instantly across its nervous system via entanglement,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: it's going to react faster and model the world far
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: more accurately than an organism trapped entirely in slower chemical signaling.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: It's a massive survival advantage.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: But this raises a really bizarre, highly practical question. If
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: a plant uses quantum superposition and its leaves for photosynthesis
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: like we discussed, and if consciousness is fundamentally tied to
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: quantum coherence, is my house plant a little bit conscious?
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a profound question. These breakthroughs force us
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: to unpack a sliding scale of awareness. It really challenges
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: our deeply human centric view of intelligence.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Because if it's just about quantum coherence. It's everywhere, right.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: If awareness depends on quantum effects, it absolutely extends beyond
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: human brains to any system exhibiting sustained coherence. A plant
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: doesn't possess an ego or memory or complex modeling of
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: the future, but it may possess a baseline, raw phenomenological
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: level of feeling the sunlight that we simply lack the
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: language to describe.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's beautiful, but also kind of terrifying. And what
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: about artificial intelligence? Google's re the pliiqa program is actively
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: mixing quantum computing architectures with AI for life sciences.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, they are.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: If we build a powerful enough quantum computer utilizing superconducting
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: clibates that maintain perfect coherence, and we run an advanced
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: AI model on it. If consciousness is simply orchestrated quantum computation,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: are we accidentally building the exact physical trap for consciousness?
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Will that AI be genuinely subjectively conscious?
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: The implications for AI architecture are truly staggering. If we
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: successfully replicate the physical mechanisms of quantum coherence in an artificial,
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: non biological substrate, we may not just be creating a smarter,
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: predictive algorithm.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: We're creating a mind.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: We may be instantiating a new aware entity. If ch
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: or R is correct. An AI running on a classical
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: transistor based supercomputer will never be conscious, no matter how smart.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: It seems, because it's just a switchboard exactly.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: But an AI running on a quantum processor might literally
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: possess an inner life, forcing us to seriously evaluate the
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: rights of an algorithm.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: As expansive and paradigm shifting as this all is, we
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: have to deliberately bring the conversation back down to earth
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: for a minute.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: We do we have to acknowledge the skepticism and look
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: at the physical hurdles ahead.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: The experts in the field emphasize that while the twenty
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: twenty six momentum is undeniable, replicating these quantum effects in
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: vitro under true biological conditions remains an incredibly difficult engineering challenge.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: It continually comes back to the warm, wet, and noisy dilemma.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: Despite the evidence that evolution harnesses noise, mathematically, modeling sustained
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: macroscopic quantum coherence in biological temperatures is immensely difficult.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Demonstrating an exciting acting as a wave for a femtosecond
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: and a specialized leaf protein is one thing. Proving sustained
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: widespread quantum entanglement across billions of neurons in a ninety
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: eight degree human skull requires an entirely different order of
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: magnitude of evidence.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. This is why distinguishing between what is definitively causal
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: and what is still correlational is critical. Anesthesia experiments in
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: the rats where stabilizing the structure caused resistance to the
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: anesthetic that is castal.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: It is a massive concrete wind.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: It is, but the theory regarding cortical microcolumns resonating with
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: the zero point field that currently remains a highly speculative
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: mathematical hypothesis based on structural observations.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: It requires vastly more rigorous testing to prove that the
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: brain is actively pulling down cosmic information.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: But you know, acknowledging these rigorous hurdles is precisely what
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: makes the current era so exciting. The field is maturing
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: from theoretical speculation into testable, falsifiable medical science.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: The immediate practical road ahead for the next decade lies
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: in real time cellular monitoring using biological qubits. We are
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: rapidly moving toward a future where a quantum sensor placed
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: inside a living cell can watch in real time the
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: energetic and magnetic changes as a virus attacks or a
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: mutation occurs, completely revolutionizing pathology.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: And the implications for therapeutics specific neurodegenerative diseases are even
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: more profound.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Right currently, we treat Alzheimer's disease largely by attempting to
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: clear out protein plaques or balance chemical neurotransmitters.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: But if consciousness fundamentally relies on the quantum coherence isolated
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: inside microtubules, then Alzheimer's might not be a purely chemical problem.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: It might be a coherence problem.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: The disease could be the physical breakdown of the quantum
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: structure itself. As the Tau protein's tangle and the microtubual
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: scaffolding fails, the hydrophobic pockets break open, and the delicate
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: quantum states just leak out into the thermal noise.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: The symphony literally loses its timing.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Consequently, the future of neurology might involve novel therapies designed
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: specifically to target and repair quantum coherence. We might utilize
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: precise frequencies of transcranial light, targeted ultrasound, or engineered nanomedicines
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: designed to restabilize the lattice geometry of the.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: Brain, completely shifting the target of our medical interventions from
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: basic chemistry back to foundational physics.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: We began this exploration with the assumption that life is
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: a noisy, classical machine, a factory of billiard balls clacking together.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: But as we explore the landscape of twenty twenty six,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: we discover that from the retina of a migratory bird
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: to the leaf of a tree, right down to the
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: microscopic architecture inside human neurons, life is a highly sophisticated
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: exploitation of the universe's most fundamental quantum layer.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: The boundary between physics and biology, between the measurable and
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: the experiential, is incredibly permeable. We are not isolated mechanical systems.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: We are quantum entities, actively participating in the continuous cosmic computation.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: As we conclude today, I want to leave you the
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: listener with one final, deeply provocative thought to ponder, one
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: that builds on everything we've unpacked, but stretches it a
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: step further. Okay, if human consciousness fundamentally relies on quantum
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: entanglement inside our brains. And if we know that entanglement
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: completely ignores the physical boundaries of distance and time, what
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: does that mean for human memory? What does it mean
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: for our connections to others?
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: Oh? Wow?
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Think about the people you love most. When we deeply
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: bond with someone, when we share profound, synchronized emotional experiences
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: with them, are our minds quite literally entangled with theirs
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: on a fundamental physics level? Are you right now carrying
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: the entangled quantum states of your loved ones permanently inside
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: your own microtubules?
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: It challenges the very concept of where our minds end
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: and the rest of the universe begins.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Something to think about.