Quantum Physics In Plants?

Quantum physics might have more to do with simple garden-variety plants than it may seem on the surface. New research indicates that plants utilize far more advanced electrical processes than previously thought during the first stages of photosynthesis.

"If you think of photosynthesis as a marathon, we're getting a snapshot of what a runner looks like just as he leaves the blocks," said Argonne biochemist David Tiede. "We're seeing the potential for a much more fundamental interaction than a lot of people previously considered."

To gather this snapshot, researchers from U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Notre Dame University used an ultrafast spectroscopy. A spectroscopy is a process through which radiative energy is studied according to its wavelengths or frequencies. A simpler way to think of this is splitting visible light through prism so that one can observe its different frequencies.

Photosynthetic life such as plants, algae, and bacteria vary greatly but all contain a photosynthetic center. It is in this area that pigments and proteins play a key role in converting sun light into usable energy.

"The behavior we were able to see at these very fast time scales implies a much more sophisticated mixing of electronic states," Tiede said. "It shows us that high-level biological systems could be tapped into very fundamental physics in a way that didn't seem likely or even possible."

This shows that the actual process of photosynthesis may be more complicated than our current level of understanding.

Current artificial photosynthetic processes can only make the pigments and bind them. The scientists from this study hope that by understanding the quantum level interactions taking place, photosynthetic processes can be improved by simply creating the right environment for these phenomena to occur.

The quantum level phenomena observed take place in less than a trillionth of a second, so some further research is needed, but it is clear that they are an integral part of photosynthesis.