Another discussion thread for January's podcast, this time on quantum biology. This item also deserves a thread of its own because its been in the news quite a bit over the past few weeks.
To recap, in last May's podcast, I chatted to Luca Turin, who has proposed a controversial quantum model for our sense of smell. The idea is that the our nose differentiates smell based on a molecule's vibrations, rather than (as conventionally believed) its shape. In that interview, Turin alluded to some tests he was running on humans to see if their noses could pick out a difference in the smell of two molecules with the same shape, but different vibration frequencies. Last week, his work was published in PLoS ONE. The answer is "yes".
I just want to point you to some nice coverage of Turin's work, as well as of quantum biology in general, over at the BBC, by Jason Palmer. Here's his article on the new smell result, and another, co-written by Alex Mansfield, on the whole emerging field of quantum biology. The article also describes models that suggest that some birds use quantum effects to navigate. You can also hear the researchers talking to reporter Carinne Piekema about quantum birds in our own January podcast.
For those of you that enjoy listening to scientists speaking in their own words, I must also draw your attention to this nice edition of the BBC World Service's Discovery programme (here: January 28 edition) because it opens with a snippet from Erwin Schroedinger. We can't compete with that on the FQXi podcast!