Living systems maintain information-processing architectures using photoexcited quantum degrees of freedom. (IMAGE)
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The computational capacities of aneural organisms and neurons have been drastically underestimated by considering only classical information channels such as ionic flows and action potentials, which achieve maximum computing speeds of ∼103 ops/s. However, it has been recently confirmed by fluorescence quantum yield experiments that large networks of quantum emitters in cytoskeletal polymers support superradiant states at room temperature, with maximum speeds of ∼1012 to 1013 ops/s, more than a billion times faster and within two orders of magnitude of the Margolus-Levitin limit for ultraviolet-photoexcited states. These protein networks of quantum emitters are found in both aneural eukaryotic organisms as well as in stable, organized bundles in neuronal axons. In this single-author research article in Science Advances, quantitative comparisons are made between the computations that can have been performed by all superradiant life in the history of our planet, and the computations that can have been performed by the entire matter-dominated universe with which such life is causally connected. Estimates made for human-made classical computers and future quantum computers with effective error correction motivate a reevaluation of the role of life, computing with quantum degrees of freedom, and artificial intelligences in the cosmos.
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Credit: Quantum Biology Laboratory, Philip Kurian.
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