This morning you discovered a bit of news on BBC that may help show how the brain has a sense of the quantum.
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24 March 2011 Last updated at 09:58 ET
Quantum physics explanation for smell gains traction
By Jason Palmer, Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
The theory that our sense of smell has its basis in quantum physics events is gaining traction, say researchers.
The idea remains controversial, but scientists reporting at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, are slowly unpicking how it could work. The key, they say, is tiny packets of energy, or quanta, lost by electrons. Experiments using tiny wires show that as electrons move on proteins within the nose, odor molecules could absorb these quanta and thereby be detected.
If the theory is right, by extending these studies, an "electronic nose" superior to any chemical sensor could be devised.. . .
Room to move
The difficulty is demonstrating a physical system where this kind of detective work can be accomplished - to show a start and an endpoint to the process. Dr Horsfield and his collaborators have demonstrated nanowires - wires just billionths of a metre across - that can act as the "room" of the analogy. They showed how electrons could arrive at on end of these nanowires and give away what molecules they had encountered along the way. Jennifer Brookes, a University College London researcher based at MIT, carries out computer simulations on the quantum physics at work in the process, in order to put it on a firmer mathematical footing. "It's a very interesting idea; there's all sorts of interesting biological physics that implement quantum processes that's cropping up," she told BBC News. "I believe it's time for the idea to develop and for us to get on with testing it." Her presentation suggested that the vibrational theory of smell, at least as quantum physics is concerned, is a reasonable one. "Mathematically, the theory is robust, and even if it's not happening in smell, it's interesting to think it might be a discriminatory process in nature in other ways," she said.
BBC News
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This is really interesting. I like the line by Brooks: "It's a very interesting idea; there's all sorts of interesting biological physics that implement quantum processes that's cropping up,"
Time has slipped away, boy. Carol has been cleaning for the last few minutes and you are sitting in the chair having done nothing since straightening up the bedroom.
Indeed it has. I thought it was about twelve and it’s more than an hour later than that. I am partly timid about tackling today because I know next to nothing and still can’t imagine where you are going with the dark matter and gravity. I would rather ease into it, which I guess is the reason for the delay.
The BBC material on quantum mechanics and the sense of smell shows you can move into these things as far as general hypotheses are concerned. It makes the fiction more plausible to those with like interests.
You need to take the material from Doug’s letter on the day before yesterday and put it in the edited document on the Wiki-universe.
What we’ll do here is do one more editing that will be used in this next scene, then I will show you how the scene goes. – Amorella.
I can live with that. Thank you.
Time for lunch. Post. Amorella.
Earlier today, upon awakening, you found you had a delightful message from one of your former AP students, Chizoba U. She is the epitome of the many independent thinking students you have had in your career. What made the message so delightful? She has a broad world background with a degree in aerospace engineering, working for a large well-established oil field service company. (You envy her ‘beginning at a young age’ world travel). The delight? She is, as a fully responsible adult citizen of the world, still an independent thinking person.
A respectful tip of the old black beret to Chizoba, and all those like her around the world. You people know who you are.
This is delayed as you were waiting for permission to use her first name and initial. Post. – Amorella.
The notes on dark matter and gravity have been reduced to three pages from which material will be drawn for scene six of chapter seven. Scene five ended thusly:
“Takis sensed his mindanheart strewn about by Gloama’s angry words directed solely at him. He found himself without the friction of his soul as a striking board and knew what she did not, [that] his soul had flown unattached to her own. The old shaman’s soul had its own business to attend to.”
Yes, I forgot this; I have not glanced at the scene for some time. This is lending itself up to a scene on metaphysics it seems to me not dark matter and gravity. I assume the Supervisor is going to talk.
Yes, SheanHe has an ‘understanding’ of how things work but not why. No one knows the why and that is the point. His association is with the ‘reasoning science’ not the metaphysics. SheanHe does not see and cannot see purpose beyond ‘existential being and setting’ just as the other characters. The scene setting is as a multiverse. Break. Post. – Amorella.
The notes on dark matter and gravity have been reduced to three pages from which material will be drawn for scene six of chapter seven. Scene five ended thusly:
“Takis sensed his mindanheart strewn about by Gloama’s angry words directed solely at him. He found himself without the friction of his soul as a striking board and knew what she did not, [that] his soul had flown unattached to her own. The old shaman’s soul had its own business to attend to.”
Yes, I forgot this; I have not glanced at the scene for some time. This is lending itself up to a scene on metaphysics it seems to me not dark matter and gravity. I assume the Supervisor is going to talk.
Yes, he has an ‘understanding’ of how things work but not why. No one knows the why and that is the point. His association is with the ‘reasoning science’ not the metaphysics. SheanHe does not see and cannot see purpose beyond ‘existential being and setting’ just as the other characters. The scene setting is as a multiverse. Break. Post. – Amorella.
Close to twenty-one hundred hours. Supper out earlier at what you call “the rocking chair place”. Prices are the same for lunch and dinner, plus the food is always good, reminds of your grandmas cooking, both of them. Tomorrow you are up to Cleveland and returning Sunday morning after breakfast out. Jadah doesn’t know she is going to be left and you both feel bad, but like Kim says, she’ll be fine, she will just miss the close attention she has at a home with retired, Jadah adoring people in it. The cat will have Ellie however to keep her company during the day.
Will this scene six have a sense of foreboding or any other sixth sense that makes the Supervisor realize he is not alone here?
I’ll throw in a subtle hint or two for the reader, only humans can pick up on these things not supervisors.
That’s strange. It doesn’t seem realistic to me. What do humans have that supervisors don’t?
Strains of humanity that are buried deeper than that monolith on the moon in Clarke’s 2001 Space Odyssey.
There is little we don’t know about our species, Amorella. I don’t want to go out on a limb here and suggest that there is.
Well, that in the metaphysics of the book boy and it will be further played out in this scene also.
I am thinking of the Stage Manager in Wilder’s Our Town.
Been done, boy.
Who is going to represent the Higher Power?
The Dead, boy. Who else?
But they lose the rebellion in book five.
They win in book six. Just like in chess, you don’t learn much unless you lose.
I thought the Living are going to win in book six; you know, go off hand in hand.
That is so, but the Dead get their lives back.
I will have to think on this. You keep adding layers of things. I really don’t know I can write all this. I can’t keep up with all the layering.
As long as you write it all down you will keep up. Relax. Errands tomorrow before the trip north. Post. – Amorella.
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