Quantum Biology and the Puzzle of Coherence

[longship]

9. This is complete and utter rubbish

One of the primary consequences of Bohm's hypothesis was the entanglement of all particles in the universe (possibly from his Buddhist philosophy). But in experiments these entanglements of "non-local" effects, the EPR experiments (Einstein, Poldasky, Rosen --- after an gedanken experiment proposed by Einstein). Needless to say the non-local effects posited by Bohm and others (i.e., faster than light) were shown to be falsified.

But don't believe me. I'm only a physics BS (and you know what those initials mean ). Rather, I'd encourage you to look beyond 1950's speculation (Bohm et al) and look at what the data since these hypotheses have been put forward.

Decoherence is rather simple. Quantum states are extremely fragile. Heisenberg showed that complementary variables (velocity vs. position, energy vs. time) are simultaneously unknowable. And it's not a problem of measurement accuracy, it's that the measurement of one restricts the accuracy of the other at the physical level. It's the second, energy/time, relation which blows Bohm's putative non-locality out of the water.

Decoherence strongly implies that the universe observes itself without any requirement for intelligence. It's just the way the universe works. It's all bottom-up emergent behavior. Complexity comes from something as simple as the uncertainty of the energy times the uncertainty of the time (that the value of the energy is known) is limited by a constant, Planck's constant (divided by 2 times Pi). Likewise, the momentum/position relationship.

If you disagree with these basic quantum principles and can demonstrate it you may be on the way to a Nobel prize.

Go for it.

In the meantime all macro behavior is emergent (bottom-up) from a basis of quantum mechanics, and all quantum behavior is random (the probability of which is given by the square of the wave equation).

There's no woo-woo in quantum physics, no matter what Chopra and other loonies, like JZ Knight, think. Bohm's hypotheses have been substantially falsified.