The QEB Files: The Decoherence Question and Reflections on Quantum Panspermia - Was the Big Bang Actually the Big Entanglement?
The most challenging aspect of any quantum computational system is the problem of maintaining coherence. Briefly stated, coherence means that the superposition of quantum information states between its quantum-bits (q-bits) precisely models the problem the computer is tasked to solve.
Any interfering state information, however slight, changes the relationship between the q-bits, sending the system into a condition in which the computer no longer accurately models the problem. This is called decoherence. When applied to a properly entangled quantum information state, it harvests a meaningful result. When accidentally applied to a system before it has fully entangled the information state of the problem, it yields nonsense.
While conventional computers are also subject to various types of errors, these can be easily checked and, if appropriate provisions have been made, detected and/or corrected. In a quantum computer, because every facet of the net information state influences the characteristics of every other facet, this is not possible to accomplish in the same way. Investigators of biological quantum computing, including Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, invest a great deal of effort and ingenuity in postulating how organic structures may protect themselves from unwanted, premature decoherence, thereby allowing parts of the body to function as a quantum computer. From the perspective of Quantum EcoBiotics (QEB), these considerations are unnecessary. Why? There are two interlocking reasons:
First, QEB starts with the premise that the quantum information state of an organism's environment is not really "outside" or separate from the environment. That is, the superposition of the information state of an organism's biological quantum computer invariably considers both the state of the organism and the state of its environment as a single system.
Second, building upon this same point, QEB recognizes that these two facets of the organism's quantum information state - the inner and the outer - are, and have always been, adaptively entangled. There has never been an instant of separation between the organism and its environment, no matter its biological complexity - from the fissioning of a bacterial daughter cell to the fertilization and development of a mammalian embryo.
Furthermore, this entangled relationship is self-regenerating and unbroken throughout life through the continual exchange of information between the "inner" aspect of the biological organism and the "outer" aspect of its environment. The two are connected in exactly the same way that the head and tail side of a coin are connected. They comprise a single system with two aspects and those two aspects are immersed in a ceaseless, fluid movement of entangled information. It's somewhat like a quantum "corpus callosum" connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The cessation of this fluid exchange marks the condition of death - the removal of the adaptive relationship between the organism and its environment. It's interesting to note that subtle bioenergetic exchange is clearly measurable for about 72 hours after brain death - the same figure cited in most spiritual traditions for the length it time the "soul" remains in contact with the physical body.
There are some very interesting corollaries to this observation, one of which is particularly challenging:
This picture suggests that the evolution of an adaptive proto-consciousness may have been able to proceed through coherent quantum level organizations of inorganic matter and only later move onto a matrix of self-replicating molecules in an appropriate environment. In our case, this environment can be thought of as a carbon-based, DNA/RNA molecular computer network. The realization that coherent and even self-organizing non-organic matter may have preceded the evolution of self-replicating molecular computers could solve the "chicken and egg" riddle of the emergence of organic life forms.
As Richard Dawkins is fond of pointing out, the origins of life may be mysterious and improbable - but not improbable enough not to have happened at least once! But once you have the fact of life, as we clearly do, Darwinian principles work to organize it very nicely [but see the discussion above]. Recognizing that coherent, informational self-organization through non-organic quantum computers can exist separately from the organic, self-replicating matter of living organisms, allows the improbability of organic life to be broken down into smaller steps that, once conjoined, add up to the enormous leap of a perfectly tuned system of molecular information storage, adaptation and replication.
This discussion begs another, even more speculative hypothesis: If quantum information state entanglement is inherently independent of space and time - leading to Einstein's famously edgy observation of "spooky action at a distance" - then couldn't it be possible for a previously organized system to leave an informational imprint on the physical matter of the young Solar System? This imprint, which would manifest as a set of coherent, self-organizing quantum information states, could become established in the sub-atomic architecture of whatever matter was available and, in time, allow the transition to whatever appropriate molecular matrix emerged in the newly forming world.
In our case, that turned out to be the matrix of DNA/RNA/ribosomes in a carbon and mineral rich aqueous environment. On other planets and objects, it could be something totally different - perhaps even as strange as nucleonic matter as some science fiction authors have speculated. But the implication remains that the quantum information "seed" of life may be present everywhere, waiting patiently to "evolve" into a material expression whenever conditions present themselves. This is Crick's idea of "panspermia" without the extreme improbability of little green men in spaceships flying around, limited by the speed of light but nonetheless planting DNA on every suitably yeasty planet.
In a nutshell, this idea suggests that the potential for life may lay dormant in the local coherence of quantum information fields throughout the cosmos and that the legacy of the "Big Bang" may not only be the spreading of physical matter into an ever widening gyre. The Big Bang may also be the "Big Entanglement" in which the quantum information state of everything got linked. Dense enough, coherent enough patches of that linkage then manifest almost like a "projector" unbound by space, time and Einstein's traffic laws - sending out the impetus and the ability to run the "movie" of quantum state coherence on any suitable "screen" that develops. The organization of stars, galaxies and planets may be the expression of the original material coherence and the nanoscopic development of coherence manifesting as life on Earth may be another.
