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I'd like to introduce you 
to an emerging area of science.

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One that is still speculative,
but hugely exciting.

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It's certainly one that's 
growing very rapidly.

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Quantum biology asks
a very simple question.

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Does quantum mechanics, that weird
and wonderful, and powerful theory

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of the subatomic world
of atoms and molecules

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that underpins so much of modern
physics and chemistry, also play

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a role inside the living cell?

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On other words, are there processes,
mechanisms, phenomena in living organisms

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that can only be explained with a helping
hand from quantum mechanics.

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Now, quantum biology isn't new.
It's been around since the early 1930s.

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But its only in the last decade or so,
that careful experiments

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in biochemistry labs, using spectroscopy
that have shown clear, firm evidence

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that there are certain specific mechanisms
that require quantum mechanics

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to explain them.

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Quantum biology brings together 
quantum physicists, biochemists,

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molecular biologists.

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It's a very interdisciplinary field.

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I come from quantum physics.
So, I'm a nuclear physicist.

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I've spent more than three decades trying 
to get my head around quantum mechanics.

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One of the founders of quantum 
mechanics, Neil Bohr said,

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If you're not astonished by it,
then you haven't understood it.

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So, I sort of feel happy that I'm still
astonished by it and that's a good thing.

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But it means I study the very smallest
structures in the universe.

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The building blocks of reality.

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If we think about the scale of size,
start with something, an everyday object

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like the tennis ball, and just go down
orders of magnitude and size.

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From the eye of a needle, down to a cell,
down to a bacterium, down to an enzyme.

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You eventually reach the nano world.

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Now, nanotechnology may 
be a term you've heard of.

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A nanometer is 
a billionth of a meter.

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My area is the atomic nucleus,
which is the tiny dot inside an atom.

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It's even smaller in scale.

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This is the domain of quantum mechanics,
and physicists and chemists have had

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a long time to get used to it.

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Biologists on the other hand
have got off lightly, in my view.

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They are very happy with their 
balls-and-sticks models of molecules.

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(Laughter)

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The balls are the atoms, the sticks
are the bonds between the atoms

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and when they can't build them
physically in the lab,

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nowadays they have very powerful
computers that will simulate a huge model.

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This is a protein made up 
of 100,000 atoms.

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It doesn't really require much in the way 
of quantum mechanics to explain it.

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Quantum mechanics was 
developed in the 1920s.

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It is a set of beautiful and powerful 
mathematical rules and ideas

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that explain the world
of the very small.

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And it's a world that very different
from our everyday world

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made up of trillions of atoms.

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It's a world built on probability
and chance.

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It's a fuzzy world.

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It's a world of phantoms, where particles
can also behave like spread out waves.

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If we imagine quantum mechanics
or quantum physics, then as

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the fundamental 
foundation of reality itself.

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That's not really surprising
that we say quantum physics

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underpins organic chemistry.

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After all, it gives us the rules
that tells us the rules that tell us

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how the atoms fit together
to make organic molecules.

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Organic chemistry, scaled up in complexity
gives us molecular biology,

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which of course leads 
to life itself.

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So, in a way, it's sort 
of not surprising.

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It's almost trivial.

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Say, well of course life ultimately
must depend of quantum mechanics

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-- so does everything else.

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So does all inanimate matter, 
made up of trillions of atoms.

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Ultimately, there's a quantum level
that we know where we have to delve

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into this weridness.

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But in everyday life, 
we can forget about it.

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Because once you put together trillions of atom, that quantum weirdness

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just dissolves away.