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From smell to navigation, it seems that some of the hardest problems in biology could be solved with the insights from theoretical physics.

The physicist Erwin Schr枚dinger wrote a book in the 1940s called 鈥淲hat is Life?鈥� in which he speculated on the role of quantum mechanics on the life sciences. Almost 70 years later, both quantum mechanics and biology have moved on a long way.

But are the two fields converging?

Avian navigation, light harvesting in photosynthesis and even olfaction 鈥� the science of smell, all provide hints that nature may have been making use of some of quantum mechanics鈥� weirder tricks for quite some time.

Jason Palmer looks at the emerging field of quantum biology.

(Music: 漏Will Lenton @Mu_Mech)