-Everyone has heard of photosynthesis - a process used by green plants to convert sunlight into electrochemical energy at an efficiency of nearly 100%.
-Although the overall pathway and major players are known for this process, the nitty-gritty details have eluded scientists, until now.
-Physical chemists at UC Berkeley observed 'entanglement' (a distinctive property of quantum mechanical systems) in the light harvesting complex in plants.
-Importance: huge step towards developing (a) artificial photosynthesis systems as renewable, non-polluting electrical energy sources and (b) quantum-based technologies e.g. quantum computers which are potentially thousands of times faster than conventional computers.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2010/05/10/untangling-quantum-entanglement/
That is pretty sweet. I read an article on Wired a while ago about the possibility that birds navigate by taking advantage of the effects of quantum entanglement in order to detect magnetic field lines.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/birdcompass/