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Name: Jayme D Mancini
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Question:
How can the electron that vibrates in microtubules in neurons be immobilized?


Replies:
Ah, sounds to me like you're talking about Roger Penrose's wild candidate for the quantum genie in the bottle that allows creative thought. In that case, I should say the existence of this mechanism is complete speculation at this point which many folks --- me for example --- find pretty silly. But as for immobilizing an electron, I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean stopping it from fulfilling its purpose in there, i.e. wrecking the machine? Presumably that can be done by some chemical damage to the tubule. If you mean actually stopping an electron in its tracks, so far as we know that can't be done at all. The problem is it's such a bitty little thing, an electron, quite the smallest thing we know of, so there's no way to leave it motionless by applying any kind of force to it. It would be like trying to stop exactly motionless a rolling baseball by bumping it with twenty-ton dump truck.

Christopher Grayce


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