There are many biological phenomena that cannot be explained by the current biochemical and physical models of how living organisms function. For instance, there is no convincing explanation for the precise synchrony of motion that occurs in huge flocks of birds or schools of fish. In some types of fish, the entire school seems to be "one mind." They can sense the approach of a predator and take evasive action not as individuals but seamlessly as a huge group. Or they can spontaneously form a large ?ball? to ward off the prey. If the group does scatter, then once the danger passes the individuals effortlessly and almost instantaneously reform into a group. Known forms of communication, such as sight or sound, cannot explain this simultaneity of behavior. It seems as if the fish possess a "sixth sense" that is guiding their movements or are subject to some kind of field that is helping to coordinate their behavior. Could a quantum description of biology explain this behavior?

Large flocks of birds act in a similar, unexplainable fashion. It is not uncommon for a flock to grow to as many as 100,000 birds, and yet the flock is still able to change direction almost instantaneously. Flocks are also able to navigate over extremely long distances to return to exact locations repeatedly, year after year. There does not appear to be a constant "leader" in a flock, showing the direction of travel to the rest of the group.

There is a growing amount of mathematical research into the area of coordinated behavior that concentrates on modeling the motions of individuals in a large group (e.g., birds in a flock) by a series of rules. In a number of cases, programmers have been able to encode the rules for the individual actions into the computer and receive output that simulates the observed coordinated group action. By extrapolation, mathematicians suggest that flock behavior can be explained by formulating simple rules for the individual birds, such as "don't get too close to any other bird" or "stay within a certain angle of another bird." However, these models cannot explain why and how flocks form in the first place, and how they reach specific destinations. Does one bird suddenly decide to form a flock and other birds join it? Or is there some sort of collective action at a precise time point? How is the final destination decided on, and how is it navigated toward? Therefore, although these computer models are helpful in explaining how these actions might be carried out, they are unable to explain why these biological phenomena occur in the first place.

Current biological theory is also far from clear about the how and why of basic human body functions. For example, it cannot yet explain satisfactorily how the human body functions as a heat-generating object. Cold-blooded species seem to obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but warm-blooded species do not. Heat is supposed to dissipate according to certain rules, and maintaining body heat to within 1 degree C is no mean feat, especially considering the number of cells in the body and the wide range of external temperatures to which the human body is subjected.

The current explanation of how the human nervous system functions also is not particularly satisfactory. The current thinking is that neurons are like on/off switches, and nerves act as wires connecting them. Therefore, the brain can be likened to a computer. However, if the nervous system were concerned only with ions and the transmission of electrochemical signals, surely it would have formed as a continuous unit. Instead, the nervous system is discontinuous, rather like a collection of fine fibers spreading throughout the body but not entirely connected everywhere.

There has been much research involving the close examination of these fibers and attempting to link pathways through the fibers to regions of the brain. The nervous system, it is suggested, must work via neural transmission at different speeds, varying from fast to slow in a way that is related to the diameter of the controlling axon. However, this would make any action almost impossible to coordinate. Anyone who has watched a ballet dancer or an Olympic gymnast observes that such activities require high levels of precision and extreme flexibility of movement at amazing speeds. Could this level of pinpoint precision coupled with speed really be controlled by a number of on/off switches? Or would the discontinuous nature of the nervous system be better described in terms of a quantum system that is able to transfer information instantaneously via fields? If the structures of the brain, their cavities, orientations and placement with regards to fluids are considered alongside the charges that are set up by the nervous system, it is quite easy to see that all of the elements required to set up a complex field system for transferring information are present.

These examples, and numerous others, lead to the conclusion that the current way of viewing living organisms is not completely satisfactory and that a more unifying approach is required. Many researchers are seeking holistic explanations and quantum-field mechanisms to explain phenomena that biochemistry cannot. These include Rupert Sheldrake and his theory of morphogenetic fields and William Tiller's directed intent. Most of this research, even though it is rigorous, is not widely accepted by conventional researchers. It takes time for paradigms to shift, and Fraser and Massey are among those who believe we are in the midst of a major shift in how we view the human body and what it means to be healthy. In the following sections we will mention the work of a number of researchers who have made major contributions to this field.

Nonlocal Information Transfer

A great deal of recent work in physics has shown that ?nonlocal? interactions are not only possible, but are a fundamental aspect of the subatomic world. Simply put, ?nonlocal? means that two things (such as subatomic particles) can interact and instantaneously affect each other even when they are separated. And, it doesn't matter if they are separated by nanometers or by light-years! This phenomenon is also called "quantum entanglement." An example involves two particles created together. When one has spin "up," the partner particle must have spin "down." Their attributes are correlated. So by measuring one particle, physicists know something about the other. If the two particles are separated and when one particle's spin is measured, the other must instantaneously adjust itself accordingly to maintain the spin relationship. Such "instantaneous action at a distance" defies the laws of classical physics, since it seems to imply that some kind of information has traveled between particles at a rate faster than the speed of light, which is the upper limit of motion according to classical physics.

The question of faster-than-light "communication" really began to be explored when Einstein questioned the fundamental principles of quantum theory in the 1930s. He believed that the quantum theory developed by Niels Bohr and others, now the accepted way of viewing quantum theory, was incomplete and would be improved upon in the future. Along with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, in 1935 Einstein proposed a thought experiment that became known as the EPR paradox (after the initials of the three scientists). We will not explain the thought experiment here, but suffice it to say, it caught the attention of many scientists, who attempted to prove that "action at a distance" (nonlocality) was either possible or not.

In 1982 a remarkable experiment was performed in Paris by a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect. This ingenious experiment, based on the EPR paradox and an inequality principle derived by John Bell, verified the principle of quantum entanglement and nonlocal interactions. The results of Aspect's experiment clearly showed that subatomic particles once coupled and then separated are still connected at some fundamental level. A more recent experiment into quantum entanglement, as reported in the June 2003 edition of New Scientist , was carried out by researchers in Austria , led by Marcus Aspelmeyer. They successfully sent entangled photons to opposite sides of the Danube River without the use of optical fibers. Every year more scientific evidence appears supporting the theory of the quantum interconnectedness of the universe.

David Bohm and his research student, Yakir Aharonov performed an experiment back in 1959 that supported this view. Now described as the Bohm-Aharonov (AB) effect, they found that in certain circumstances, electrons are able to ?feel? the presence of a nearby magnetic field, even though they are traveling in regions of space where the field strength is zero. This example of quantum interconnectedness and others led Bohm to develop his theory regarding an "implicate order" in the world of matter and, by extension, in biological systems. The implicate order is a fundamental, underlying unity that pervades the material world and connects all of matter.

More recent research has probed for quantum processes in the human body, including electromagnetic processes that could explain aspects of physiology that have long stumped biologists. One of the electromagnetic phenomena being explored is light emissions from cells in the body, or biophotons. Professor Fritz-Albert Popp, vice president of the International Institute of Biophysics, has been a pioneer in biophotonic research.

In 1976, Popp and Ruth developed very sensitive experimental equipment that could measure the extremely weak (400-800 nm) emissions of light in human cells. They coined the term "biophotons" to express the biological origins and the quantum character of this radiation. Since this discovery, sound experimental evidence has been published to show that DNA is one of the sources of biophotons, and that there is structure to the biophotonic field. In addition, there is evidence to support the idea that biophotons are responsible for triggering some biochemical reactions in and between cells. The Popp research group has also recorded biophoton measurements from the whole human body over a period of many months. These measurements reveal that the biophoton field reflects all the biological rhythms as well as left-right symmetry of corresponding points on the body in healthy people.

Cyril W. Smith, a British biomedical engineer and physicist, has been conducting experiments in this area since the early 1970s. His background as a senior lecturer in electronics and electrical engineering led him to develop radiaesthetic techniques, specifically to investigate "subtle" electromagnetic fields and radiations. Since 1973, he has led studies of the interaction of coherent electromagnetic fields with living systems and biological materials. He concludes that living systems produce a characteristic pattern of frequencies as an expression of their electrochemical activities. These frequencies are strong enough to induce observable synchronization in tadpoles in the presence of yellow light. Smith is proposing biocommunication between organisms in the presence of light and a weak electromagnetic field. He suggests that this unseen information transfer is accomplished by the macroscopic systems relying on photon exchange in the presence of magnetic vector potentials. His theory has clear links to Popp's concept of biophotons.

Matti Pitkanen, a Finnish theoretical physicist, has proposed that many principles of quantum physics can be applied to biological systems. He suggests that information transfer in biology takes place via superconductive pathways, and that electrons and photons are the carriers of this information. This work was supported by experiments performed by Freeman W. Cope in the 1970s. Cope produced pivotal work linking physics and biology, and developed a solid-state theory of biological processes. He deduced that the activity in the cell is not just electrochemical, and looked at the cell function as if the organelles were three-dimensional semiconductors. His theory suggests that all the structures within the cell can be considered to be in a field in which there is constant interaction between all subatomic particles, not just between the charges on electrons. Cope published a paper in 1978 showing that hydrated nucleic acids or dry melanin produce low-frequency sound in measurements of electrical conductivity when exposed to magnetic fields at room temperature. From this, he concluded that superconductivity, analogous to superconductivity in metals at very low temperatures, was occurring in living systems in the presence of a magnetic field. His overall view was that superconductive pathways play a controlling role in biological functions.

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