Pollack's findings and quantum model of cell membrane using square root of thermodynamics
Zero energy ontology (ZEO) is one of the basic differences between TGD and standard quantum theory based on positive energy ontology. One can say that TGD is as quantum theory square root of thermodynamics. Density matrix is replaced with its hermitian square root multiplied by unitary S-matrix same for all states. The general formalism is very beautiful but application has been lacking.I have now first real life application of TGD as square root of thermodynamics.
The existing model of cell membrane is thermodynamical: Coulomb energy differences and chemical potentials over the cell membrane play a key role in the description of osmosis, which is essential element but regarded as the "dirty" part of biophysics. I remember when I was something 20 +something and read in library about osmosis and felt disgust. Osmosis is however a real phenomenon: only its description is ugly, not the phenomenon.
Osmosis means the presence of pumps and channels - various transmembrane proteins. Pollack's findings about fourth gel-like phase of water and many other discoveries challenge this model, and it is not consistent with macroscopic quantum coherence. For instance, the description of metabolism requires that the chemical potential - a purely thermodynamical notion - is considerably larger than Coulomb energy for proton and dominates in metabolic energy of about .5 eV to be compared with Coulomb energy which is smaller by a factor .1-.2. This makes the skeptic inside me very alert.
Could it be that chemical potential could correspond to genuine energy: say cyclotron energy difference as suggested by TGD inspired quantum biology?
Even more, could one see osmosis as a gate to a new physics - maybe that involving magnetic body, dark matter and hierarchy of Planck constants, ZEO, etc... In TGD framework the thermodynamical description of cell membrane should be replaced with a quantal description using square root of thermodynamics. It would go roughly like follows.
- Transmembrane proteins become generalized Josephson junctions. What is new is that chemical potential, which dominates over the Coulomb energy for proton in the model for production of ATP from ADP, is replaced with the difference of cyclotron energies over the Josephson junction. Therefore the purely thermodynamical notions of proton gradient and protonmotive force become more concrete.
- Thermodynamical distibutions are replaced with their complex square roots - essentially Schroedinger amplitudes but proportional to the square root of Boltzmann weight so that ensemble property becomes single particle property and temperature has quantum mechanical meaning at single particle level as in p-adic thermodynamics too (about which one must also take square root to be be consistent).
The model can be applied to improve the earlier model of EEG: the energy of dark Josephson photon identifiable as EEG photon (say) is replaced with generalized Josephson energy including the difference of cyclotron energies for flux tube portions outside and inside the cell membrane and arriving from DNA (this was assumed already in the model of model DNA as topological quantum computer). Also the model of nerve pulse will become more detailed: the phase transitions changing the Planck constant at either or both sides of membrane introduce change of ion distributions as happens in nerve pulse. The new physics model for life is becoming more and more detailed and quantitative.
I have now a CMAP representation of TGD at my homepage. It gives kind of cognitive maps about basic ideas, notions, and arguments appearing in TGD. My hope is that they might help to get an idea about what TGD really is.