Folks,
Jerry Chandler's concern on encoding and decoding quantum information is
a serious matter although I am not well versed in what quantum information
is all about. Quantum information to theoretical physicists must be
something manipulative to them. In contrast, signal processing in the
biological realm is extremely daunting while all of the molecular
constituents are quantum mechanical in their origin.
For instance, photons entering our eye cornea would lose more than 50% of
their energy as passing through the aqueous humor until hitting rhodopsin
molecules on the retina. Superposition of the wavefunctions initially
present in the incident photons is lost and collapses into the individual
members of the basis set unique to the receptor molecules. Collapse of the
linearly superposed wavefunctions is an instance of measurement, whether or
not you like the Copenhagen doctrine. What the aqueous fluid present between
the cornea and the retina is doing is to encode the incident photons in
terms of the basis set unique to rhodopsin molecules. Selection of the basis
set is about what physicists call the superselection rule. What is really
surprising is that even bacteria are quite at home with how to practice the
superselection rule while circumventing the occurrence of negative
probabilities or preventing interference of probabilities from occurring by
all means. The whole evolutionary biology sit behind how the material
process of encoding and decoding (e.g., motor control) could have been
practiced in the light of the superselection rule and the collapse of the
wavefunctions.
Cheers,
Koichiro
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Received on Thu May 25 07:49:47 2006
