EVANESCENT (TUNNELING) PHOTON AND CELLULAR VISION

The existence of a rudimentary form of cellular 'vision' was discovere d experimentally by Albrecht-Buehler, He found that Swiss 3T3 cells ap proached distant infrared light spots and suggested that the most like ly explanation for this phenomenon involves the long-range processing of electromagnetic signals by the cells. In this paper, a theoretical possibility of this phenomenon is presented within the fully quantum t heoretical framework of the electromagnetic field and water. By taking into account the usually neglected interaction between the electric d ipole field of water molecules and the quantized electromagnetic field , the dynamically ordered region of water surrounding the cells up to the coherence length < 50 mu m is shown to play the role of a nonlinea r coherent optical device through which the cells receive electromagne tic signals from distant light spots. The electromagnetic signals for the cells Albrecht-Buehler found are shown to consist of evanescent ph otons (i.e. soft polaritons) tunneling through the dynamically ordered region of water between the cell and the distant light spot. In contr ast to the (normal) vision of animals realized by receiving (normal) p hotons: cellular 'vision' is found to be realized by receiving evanesc ent photons. It is also suggested that the existence of the dynamicall y ordered region of water realizing a boson condensation of evanescent photons inside and outside the cell can be regarded as the definition of life. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.