A recent posting on 'http://physicsworld.com' revisits a topic - quantum coherence in "messy", warm, environmentally coupled systems - which until several years ago was dismissed as very impossible --- until "decoherence-protected subspaces" were discovered.
See: "Proteins boost quantum coherence in bacteria" http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/jan/11/proteins-boost-quantum-coherence-in-bacteria EXCERPT: [[Until recently, living systems were thought to be "too wet and warm" to rely on delicate quantum properties such as entanglement and coherence. The problem is that these properties decay rapidly via random interactions with things in the outside world, such as vibrating molecules. However, over the past decade physicists have begun to suspect that quantum properties play important roles in biochemical processes including photosynthesis.]] Nearly twenty years ago, I had a quasi-friendly disagreement with a well known physicist on a local talk radio show who resolutely maintained that quantum coherence could not possibly play any role in the brain (while he was belittling Roger Penrose's writings), or any biological system - and that it was nonsensical "new age" pseudo-science. The enforcers of science orthodoxy can occasionally be very wrong. -- Lou Pagnucco
