An ordinary cell has a diameter of about 10-3 cm. Inside this cell there is in general a rather high metabolic activity of about 105 reactions per second. For every reaction the suitable activation energy (in the range from microwaves to ultraviolet) is necessary to establish the formation of the transition state complex7 which decays finally into stable chemical product(s). As Cilento has shown,8 some (if not all) biochemical reactions take place in the way that a photon is borrowed from the surrounding electromagnetic bath, then it excites the transition state complex and finally returns to the equilibrium states of the surroundings, becoming thus available for the next reaction. Whatever the detailed mechanism may be, a single photon may suffice to trigger about 109 reactions per second, since the average reaction time is of the order of 10-9 s, and provided, in addition, that it is directed in a way that it delivers the right activation energy as well as the right momentum at the right time to the right place. This means that a surprisingly low photon intensity may suffice to trigger all the chemical
reactions in a cell in the case of a rather refined dirigent who is permanently controlling the whole field. That this dirigent is not a thermal field in a living system (where the dirigent would be a perfect chaot) can be readily seen in Fig. 1. One has to note that despite the low intensities, at any instant at least 1010 to 1040 more photons are available than under thermal equilibrium conditions. This explains for instance the well-known fact9 that in a cell some of the reactions are much faster than under thermal equilibrium conditions. Note that a temperature increase of 10 degrees doubles already the photon density of a thermal field under physiological conditions, resulting consequently in a doubling of reaction rate. The spectral intensities of the biophoton emission have to be assigned to the excitation temperatures of Fig. 1 which are much higher than physiological temperatures. This shows clearly that with respect to biophotons
- the biological system is far away from thermal equilibrium and
- biophotons may well provide the necessary activation energy for triggering all biochemical reactions in a cell at the right time at the right place.
Concerning the coherence of the biophoton field which could explain as well the presence of the "dirigent" and its high efficiency, it is worthwhile to note that a photon in a cell displays always a significant partial degree of coherence in the ordinary sense. Take as an example an allowed optical transition of a life time (coherence time) of say 10-9 s. In this time the emitted electromagnetic wave packet travels over a distance or 10 cm which is 104 times longer than the diameter of a cell.
Therefore it is rather unrealistic to believe that the phase information gets lost over the space of a cell or even to speak generally of single photons in a cell and to assign to them to single small molecules from which they might originate. In reality we are faced with a biological situation where a probability field of electromagnetic wave amplitudes may localize and delocalize in a spatio-temporal manner in a highly flexible but probably even rather deterministic interaction with the surrounding matter. Instead of single photons we have to take account of rather refined interference patterns of electromagnetic fields where the spatio-temporal resolution may range over many orders, from nanometers to meters and more, and from nanoseconds to seconds and even longer time intervals. In view of the permanent electromagnetic interaction of radiation and matter in the optically dense medium of a cell, it cannot be ruled out that an electromagnetic field of a surprisingly high degree of coherence may accumulated to such an extent that each molecule in the system is connected or has the capacity to get connected to every other one. The conditions under which this can happen have to be carefully investigated as soon as the evidence of coherent electromagnetic fields in biological system appears.
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1 Introduction
