How Thoughts Turn to Things: Through the Lens of Quantum Biology (Part IX)
An Article Series Exploring the Quantum Science Behind the Mind-body Connection
This article series delves into the question of whether our thoughts create our personal reality. Many of the world’s most successful people are walking examples that we can achieve anything we set our minds to. To better understand how and why our minds are so powerful, we dive into the exciting field of quantum biology — the intersection of quantum physics and biology.
The marriage of these two fields of science is a relatively new concept. While its implications to the real world are infinite, one of the things it can help us understand is the power of our mental focus — including our thoughts, attention, and beliefs.
Quantum biology could be the science that finally helps us recognize how every mental act translates into our physical actions and thus directly influences the quality of our lives.
The book “Life on the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology” by scientists Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili is a wonderful introduction to the field of quantum biology. This article series follows the book, chapter by chapter, and applies its findings to the topic of how the quantum world could be responsible for our thoughts turning into things.
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE EXTENDED TO THE REALM OF THOUGTHS
In the last article in this series, we explored the neurobiology behind the mind-body connection and the mystery of consciousness to reveal how the brain translates ideas into motor impulses that get us to take action.
Today we dive into Chapter 9 of “Life on the Edge” where we take a closer look at the origins of life:
- How did life arise?
- How is it able to sustain itself?
- And what does this have to do with our ability to transform our lives through the power of thought alone?
THE STORY OF STARDUST TURNING INTO A HUMAN BODY
Before the first flower blossomed upon its surface and before the first fish swam through its oceans, our planet was a concoction of the most basic elements. Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen are known as the basic molecules of life. They make up 96% of our bodies.
Even today, all of life is still essentially made of stardust.
So how can the same molecules that once made up a meteorite combine to create something as intelligent as a human cell? And how does a human cell know how to replicate itself to create more life?
In chapter 9 of Life on the Edge, McFadden and Al-Khalili describe an experiment by American scientist Stanley Miller to shed more light on the mysterious origins of biological life. In his experiment, Miller filled up a bottle with water and topped it with gases that he thought would’ve had to be present in the atmosphere to create life: methane, hydrogen, ammonia, and water vapor.
He ignited the mixture with electric sparks to simulate lightning. It didn’t take more than a week to see some astonishing results. Out of this random mixture of just four elements (hydrogen, oxygen, ammonia, methane), the building blocks of life arose. The bottle now contained amino acids — the basis for the construction of proteins.
THE ELECTRIC POWER OF IDEAS
The first thing we can take away from this experiment is that it takes the marriage of electricity and physical matter to jolt “life” into being. When we extend this thinking to the original question in this article, we can deduct that it takes the “spark” of an idea to create new realities.
When we have an idea, the raw materials needed to bring it to life are already available. Perhaps we can’t yet see or access them, but they are there nevertheless.
It’s not until the electromagnetic power of thought and emotion stirs us to take action towards the idea that it gathers enough steam for us to bring it to life.
Turning thoughts to things is not just a metaphor. It’s a description of how anything new is created in our world. It starts with the thought which acts just like the electric current in Miller’s experiment. It jolts the existing raw materials into something that then has enough power to take life beyond what it’s been. The secret behind this power can once again be found at the quantum level.
THE ODDS OF LIFE HAPPENING BY “CHANCE”
When we seek to understand how Miller’s random mixture of water and gases turns into amino acids, we must consider the odds of such an event happening from the standpoint of classical physics.
In order to create RNA — the nucleic acid which along with DNA helps to code and regulate our genes — life would need at least 10¹⁰⁹ molecules. That’s like the odds of rolling a six 140 times in a row when you’re throwing dice.
This large number of molecules would have to be present in the “primordial soup” for the synthesis of the compounds necessary to create RNA. But there simply aren’t enough fundamental particles in the universe to do this!
As McFadden and Al-Khalili state in this chapter of Life on the Edge, there are only 10⁸⁰ particles in the entire visible universe. This means that pure chance alone wouldn’t work in order to bring “life” into existence. So what would work?
THE QUANTUM ALGORITHM OF LIFE
If we enter the quantum world, we glimpse the possibilities for how the limited number of elements that do exist can be combined in a way that gives birth to organic life. Here’s what McFadden and Al-Khalili suggest happens on the subatomic level inside our genes — namely in those nucleic acids we call DNA and RNA:
The electrons and protons in our enzymes are loosely held together. Thanks to quantum superposition, these protons and electrons can exist in a countless number of potential states at one time. This allows them to quantum tunnel to different positions — without having to try out millions of combinations to find the “right spot” within the molecular structure.
Like a computer that uses a quantum algorithm to help us find what we’re looking for, life uses quantum mechanics to enhance the efficiency of biological processes.
ENERGY AND MATTER ARE ONE AND THE SAME
Quantum mechanics is beautiful in that it doesn’t separate matter from energy. The two are really one and the same as Einstein so elegantly showed through his E=MC² equation. Quantum mechanics takes into account how electromagnetism and the other forces of nature (gravity, weak and strong nuclear force) influence the behavior of matter.
Just as it took that spark of lightning to create the amino acids necessary for “life,” it takes the spark of a thought to bring those *only imagined* aspects of our lives into existence. Electricity causes molecules to start synthesizing into proteins.
Our bodies are full of electricity — from the electric currents in our brains to the electricity that runs up and down our spinal cord from one nerve cell to another.
There is no denying that the human body is a teeming field of electric currents.
- Emotions can be measured objectively by looking at readings of brain activity (EEG, fMRI) and heart rate (ECG), for example.
- The mental activity in our brains — our thoughts — can be measured as brainwaves oscillating at different frequencies.
- Memory (which boils down to thoughts about the past) has also been linked to electricity and magnetism. Scientists, have for example, found ways to retrieve lost memories by delivering a pulse of magnetic stimulation to the brain.
Is it a coincidence that so many metaphors compare great ideas to “sparks” or the “light” going off in our head? Perhaps science should peer even deeper into studying the electrical nature of the body to shed “light” on the power of our thoughts and emotions.
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”– Albert Einstein
YOUR THOUGHTS GIVE BIRTH TO *YOUR* NEW LIFE
If our mental creations — our thoughts, ideas, memories, and the resulting emotions — are indeed electromagnetic in nature, then through the process of deduction we can see how applying the rules of quantum biology could help us further understand the link between our thoughts and our lives.
Every thought is a creative because it channels our attention in a particular direction.
If you think about your dream life and believe that it’s possible to make it a reality, you will take the physical steps needed to move in that direction. If your thoughts make you think that it is not possible to start that company or to have the body you’ve been dreaming of, you will not even take the first step to making these things happen.
“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.” – Douglas H. Everett
Life is a process through which all of nature’s forces interact with existing matter to create more of life. Your life is a process through which the force of your attention interacts with the existing elements of life to create your personal reality which you feel through emotions.
Change the seed thought, change the focus of your attention, and you inevitably change the physical outcome of your own life.
PREVIOUS ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES
SOURCES
“Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology” by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili, 2016, Broadway Books
https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1728-the-essential-elements
https://imotions.com/blog/difference-feelings-emotions/
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-03-brain-electricity-boost-memory.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_physics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition
RECOMMENDED READING if you’re interested in the science behind the mind-body connection: The Dancing Wu Li Masters — Gary Zukav The Tao of Physics — Fritjof Capra Evolve Your Brain — Dr. Joe Dispenza Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself — Dr. Joe Dispenza The Biology of Belief — Bruce Lipton Buddha’s Brain — Rick Hanson, Ph. D The Universe in a Single Atom — Dalai Lama The Divine Matrix — Gregg Bradden Finding Flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The Physics of God — Joseph Selbie No Self No Problem — Chris Niebauer, Ph.D