WEBVTT 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'd like to introduce you to an emerging area of science. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One that is still speculative, but hugely exciting. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's certainly one that's growing very rapidly. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Quantum biology asks a very simple question. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Does quantum mechanics, that weird and wonderful, and powerful theory 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of the subatomic world of atoms and molecules 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that underpins so much of modern physics and chemistry, also play 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a role inside the living cell? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 On other words, are there processes, mechanisms, phenomena in living organisms 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that can only be explained with a helping hand from quantum mechanics. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, quantum biology isn't new. It's been around since the early 1930s. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But its only in the last decade or so, that careful experiments 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in biochemistry labs, using spectroscopy that have shown clear, firm evidence 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that there are certain specific mechanisms that require quantum mechanics 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to explain them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Quantum biology brings together quantum physicists, biochemists, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 molecular biologists. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a very interdisciplinary field. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I come from quantum physics. So, I'm a nuclear physicist. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I've spent more than three decades trying to get my head around quantum mechanics. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One of the founders of quantum mechanics, Neil Bohr said, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you're not astonished by it, then you haven't understood it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, I sort of feel happy that I'm still astonished by it and that's a good thing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But it means I study the very smallest structures in the universe. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The building blocks of reality. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If we think about the scale of size, start with something, an everyday object 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like the tennis ball, and just go down orders of magnitude and size. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 From the eye of a needle, down to a cell, down to a bacterium, down to an enzyme. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You eventually reach the nano world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, nanotechnology may be a term you've heard of. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My area is the atomic nucleus, which is the tiny dot inside an atom. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's even smaller in scale. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is the domain of quantum mechanics, and physicists and chemists have had 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a long time to get used to it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Biologists on the other hand have got off lightly, in my view. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They are very happy with their balls-and-sticks models of molecules. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Laughter) 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The balls are the atoms, the sticks are the bonds between the atoms 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and when they can't build them physically in the lab, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 nowadays they have very powerful computers that will simulate a huge model. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is a protein made up of 100,000 atoms. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It doesn't really require much in the way of quantum mechanics to explain it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Quantum mechanics was developed in the 1920s. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It is a set of beautiful and powerful mathematical rules and ideas 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that explain the world of the very small. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And it's a world that very different from our everyday world 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 made up of trillions of atoms. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a world built on probability and chance. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a fuzzy world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a world of phantoms, where particles can also behave like spread out waves. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If we imagine quantum mechanics or quantum physics, then as 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the fundamental foundation of reality itself. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's not really surprising that we say quantum physics 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 underpins organic chemistry. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 After all, it gives us the rules that tells us the rules that tell us 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 how the atoms fit together to make organic molecules. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Organic chemistry, scaled up in complexity gives us molecular biology, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which of course leads to life itself. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, in a way, it's sort of not surprising. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's almost trivial. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Say, well of course life ultimately must depend of quantum mechanics 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 -- so does everything else. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So does all inanimate matter, made up of trillions of atoms. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ultimately, there's a quantum level that we know where we have to delve 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 into this weridness. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But in everyday life, we can forget about it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because once you put together trillions of atom, that quantum weirdness 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just dissolves away.