All basic condensed matter physics phenomena and notions mirror in biology — A hypothesis,two examples and a novel prediction |
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Authors: | G Baskaran |
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Institution: | (1) Institute of Mathematical Sciences, C.I.T. Campus, 600 113 Chennai, India |
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Abstract: | A few billion years of evolutionary time and the complex process of ‘selection’ has given biology an opportunity to explore
a variety of condensed matter phenomena and situations, some of which have been discovered by humans in the laboratory, that
too only in extreme non-biological conditions such as low temperatures, high purity, high pressure etc., in the last centuries.
Biology, at some level, is a complex and self-regulated condensed matter system compared to the ‘inanimate’ condensed matter
systems such as liquid 4He, liquid water or a piece of graphite. In this article I propose a hypothesis that ‘all basic condensed matter physics phenomena
and notions (already known and ones yet to be discovered) mirror in biology’. I explain this hypothesis by considering the
idea of ‘Bose condensation’ or ‘momentum space order’ and discuss two known example of quantum magnetism encountered in biology.
I also provide some new and rather speculative possibility, from light harvesting in biological photosynthesis, of mesoscopic
excition condensation related phenomena at room temperature. |
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Keywords: | Condensed matter physics magnetic crystals in biology excitons and photosynthesis |
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