ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

146 Protein Conformational Dynamics
blood cells tend to array themselves in stacks called “Rouleaux formation.”
Rowlands (1983) has studied Rouleaux formation and found that attractive forces
begin when the red cells are about four microns (4 thousand nanometers) apart, a
distance several orders of magnitude greater than the range of attractive chemical
forces. Rowlands views this behavior as consistent with Fröhlich’s coherent
excitations and long range cooperativity. Rowlands also projects the significance
of Fröhlich’s theory to communication in the nervous system.
Rowlands (1983) notes that
A communication band extending from 10 10 to 10 11 Hz ... could pack
over a million FM radio stations ... or 150,000 television broadcasts
... the action potential may be just a crude fast transmitter of urgent
messages ... . Fröhlich vibrations might be transmitted along the
membrane of the nerve fibers, but they would be interrupted by
action potentials. It is more likely that microtubules in the axon are
used.
6.9 Massless Bosons, Cytoskeletal Self-Focusing
The complexity of biological systems has attracted the interest of
nonbiologists who possess mathematical tools useful for “many body problems.”
In addition to Fröhlich, these include a group of scientists from the University of
Milan (Del Giudice, Doglia, Milani and Vitiello, 1986). Viewing living matter as
a sea of electric dipoles, they have taken advantage of mathematical and computer
tools used to keep track of the countless particles involved in nuclear reactions.
Using a mathematical approach called quantum field theory, the Milan group
considers electret states and the consequent ordering of water around
biomolecules as sets of dipoles whose states, order and symmetry have collective
properties. In a typical nonbiological system, component dipoles are random and
disordered, resulting in an overall symmetry.
Such a system would look the same when viewed from any angle
(“rotationally invariant”). In living systems, order is induced by reduction of
tridimensional symmetry to a rotational alignment along filamentous electrets
such as cytoskeletal structures. According to the Milan group quantum field
theory and the “Goldstone theorem” require that the symmetry breaking (“Bose
condensation”) results in long range interactions among system components
(dipoles) conveyed by massless particle/waves (“Goldstone bosons”). The Milan
group argues that the energy required to generate massless bosons is invested in
the electret states of biomolecules and correlated fluctuations of their surrounding
water and ions.
Celaschi and Mascarenhas (1977) showed that electret activation energy of
biomolecules (0.2–0.4 electron volts) is equivalent to the hydrolysis of one ATP
or GTP molecule and what Davydov predicted for initiation of solitons.
Consequently solitons, massless bosons, and Frolich’s coherent polarization
waves may be synonymous.
Pursuing their quantum field approach, Del Giudice and his colleagues came
to an astounding concept of self-focusing of electromagnetic energy within
cytoskeletal filaments. Electromagnetic energy exceeding a threshold and
penetrating into cytoplasm would be confined inside filaments whose diameters
depended on the original symmetry breaking (“Bose condensation”) of ordered
dipoles. Any electric disturbance produced by thermally fluctuating dipoles or by
any other source would be confined inside filamentous regions. Ordering is
preserved outside the filaments and is disrupted only inside where energy
becomes concentrated (the “Meissner effect”). The diameter of the self focusing