bitcrafter

I agree that the article exhibits unmerited grandiosity, but, having said that, "quantum activity" is a real thing insofar as it is a shorthand for quantum coherence extending to a (relatively) macroscopic scale. However, it is really difficult for quantum coherence to exist at such a scale, especially at room temperature, so there is a high burden of evidence that I do not see as having been met to be considered "confirmed".

Additionally, although there are efficiencies that life may be able to take advantage of if it can exploit quantum effects, I am not convinced at all that these efficiencies need to be used for life or consciousness to be able to exist. This actually goes along with your underlying point, which is that it is not clear that we need fancy mechanisms as a sort of magic touch to explain all of these things.

No, XML is already a punishment.

Argue with the authors of the study. That’s what they found.

Assuming we are specifically talking about the paper on tryptophan, there is absolutely nothing about what they found that could be characterized in that way. To the contrary, they are using pretty standard physical models in their analysis.

Physics can’t explain quite a lot of things in our physical universe.

But there are a lot of things that it explains extremely well, and the things discussed in the linked article are among them.

Given that we are talking about physical processes, saying that something is happening more efficient than anything that could be done "through physics alone" is nonsensical.

I strongly disagree that this is a widely held, and therefore useful, definition of this term, especially if somehow DNA has gotten involved in this.

Yes, but most things larger than atoms and molecules behave essentially as classical objects in practice because quantum coherence does not generally extend above these scales. A big reason for this is that constant interactions with the environment act as a form of continual measurement process so it is like the wave function keeps getting collapsed, and this is especially true of systems as they get warmer (which is why quantum computers generally have to be kept so cold to have any hope of working).

In fairness, it is not completely crazy for biological systems to have evolved a kind of molecule that allows there to be quantum coherence at such relatively large scales in order to improve how well the various parts of a biological system coordinate their behavior, I just will remain incredibly skeptical that this has indeed happened until there is more solid evidence then some computational modeling.

Quantum coherence does not generally extend beyond the scale of an atom or a molecule, which is why building a quantum computer is so hard. It is not impossible that biological systems have evolved a mechanism for quantum coherence on the scale claimed at the relatively high temperatures at which living systems operate, but there is a high burden of proof to demonstrating that the barriers to achieving this have indeed been breached.

Just to be clear: the science is fine; I skimmed through the publications and they did not come across as being obviously problematic. It is the reporting that was grandiose.

Ugh, nothing has been confirmed; some interesting modeling and theoretical conjecturing was performed. The rest is grandiosity on the part of the article.

(Also, why was the link to a comment near the bottom of the article, rather than to where it began?)

How about we just skip to the one that goes around the whole Earth so that we have enough energy to unfold a proton?

No, that would be the Past Circular Collider, and it is too late to build that.