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Quantum Evolution - The New Science of Life

January 31, 2000

A clue to understanding life is the realisation that its dynamics are different than those that rule the non-living. For inanimate objects, the dynamics we see are the product of the disordered motion of billions of particles; they are a kind of average dynamics. At the macroscopic level we see patterns and order, but at the molecular level there is only chaos. But life is different. Inside living cells, there is order right down to the level of that single molecule that determines the form of every creature that lives or has ever lived: DNA. Living dynamics are not a product of chaos but of highly structured actions directed by the molecular ringmaster: DNA.

This singular dynamics brings life under the sway of that most strange of sciences: quantum mechanics. Many people are familiar with the peculiarities of Einstein's theory of relativity - bending of time and space - but it is less well known that he also helped to found that other triumph of 20th century physics - quantum mechanics. And quantum mechanics is so strange that even he could never accept its implications. In quantum mechanics, everything that can happen will happen. When an electron or proton is placed at a crossroads, where it can travel to the right or go to the left, it goes both ways. In quantum systems, fundamental particles exist as ghostly 'superpositions' where they can be in a billion different places at once or in a billion different states at once.

Physicists do not understand quantum mechanics. Nobody can really agree on what it really means for our view of reality. In some interpretations, observations by conscious beings make the world 'real'. In others, signals travel backward in time to connect every particle in the universe. Today, one of the most popular interpretations, and one that has the backing of Nobel prize-winning physicists, is that there exists a multiverse in which everything that can happen does really happen, but in parallel universes. Although our conscious self inhabits only one branch of the multiverse - our own universe - fundamental particles inhabit the entire multiverse and it is this property that allows them to occupy multiple places or states simultaneously. Each place or state is in a parallel universe.

Quantum mechanics rules the dynamics of electrons, protons and other fundamental particles but it has come as a surprise to many scientists that it also holds sway over bigger systems. German scientists have recently demonstrated that a single fullerene molecule, composed of a sphere of 60 carbon atoms (the famous 'buckyball'), can be in two places at once. Few physicists doubt that as the technology advances, bigger and more complex systems will be shown to inhabit the quantum world. Fullerene molecules have a diameter similar to that of the DNA double helix. If fullerene can enter the quantum multiverse then DNA can manage the same trick.

That the genetic code may inhabit the quantum multiverse has startling implications. Mutations are the driving force of evolution; it is they that provide the variation that is honed by natural selection into evolutionary paths. Mutations have always been assumed to be random. But mutations are caused by the motion of fundamental particles, electrons and protons - particles that can enter the quantum multiverse - within the double helix. If these particles can enter quantum states then DNA may be able to slip into the quantum multiverse and sample multiple mutations simultaneously. But what makes it drop out of the quantum world? Most physicists agree that systems enter quantum states when they become isolated from their environment and pop out of the multiverse when they exchange significant amounts of energy with their environment, an interaction that is termed 'quantum measurement'. Cells may enter quantum states when they are unable to divide and replicate and become isolated - perhaps they can't utilise a particular foodstuff in their environment. They may collapse out of the multiverse when their DNA superposition includes a mutation that allows the mutant to grow and replicate once more. From our viewpoint, inhabiting only one universe, the cell appears to 'choose' certain mutations.

That cells may be able to 'choose' advantageous mutations is heresy for Darwinian dogma. But experiments performed with bacteria demonstrate that under some circumstances, that is precisely what they do. Although these experiments are still controversial, they pose real problem for Darwinian evolutionary theory. Quantum evolution may be the answer.

Quantum evolution may also account for that greatest puzzle of biology - how life arose. Most biologists try to understand this event in terms of conventional chemistry - the random chaotic motion of billions of particles. But even the simplest living cells are extraordinarily complex, far to complex to have arisen by chance alone. The astronomer Fred Hoyle has described the likelihood of random forces generating life as equivalent to the chances that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747. The world is just not big enough to evolve life if it relied entirely on chance. But if the earliest strivings towards life were not in the conventional universe but in the quantum multiverse, then these objections do not arise. Any small primordial pond could generate life, if its denizens could slip into the quantum multiverse.

Proposing that DNA or cells choose their destiny may appear nonsensical, but it is certainly not intended to imply any kind of conscious choice in simple cells. However, even classical science has a problem with what we call 'conscious choice' or our free will. According to Newtonian mechanics, future events are entirely determined by what happened before. We may believe we make decisions but classical deterministic science tells us that we are fooling ourselves. Our destiny and every action we make are determined by a series of previous events whose ultimate source is the Big Bang. Quantum mechanics allows us an escape from this gloomy outlook. Quantum mechanics systems are not entirely deterministic; interactions affect how they evolve. Within our own brain, those same quantum mechanical dynamics that drive mutations may there be responsible for what we call 'conscious choice'. Mutations and our free will are certainly very different phenomena, but their directive force may be inherited from a common quantum mechanical source.

At its most fundamental, life is a quantum phenomenon. We may owe our existence to quantum evolution.




Surrey, University of