Edge of Tech: How nature uses quantum mechanics

Edge of Tech: How nature uses quantum mechanics

Preston Callicott

Beekeepers and scientists have long been puzzled by a honeybee’s strange vibrating waggle dance ritual on top of a honeycomb upon returning to the hive loaded with nectar (think “Saturday Night Fever” with John Travolta dancing in a bee costume). A crowd of bee groupies, known as recruits, watch — or feel the vibrations in the dark — and then dash off to the exact spot where the bee dancer found the bounty. The bee was passing on key information regarding the site: quantity via the dance length, quality by the smell of its nectar load, distance by the shape of the dance, direction by the angle of two intersecting lines in the dance : one depicting a line from the hive to the site and a second from the hive to the sun’s location on the curve of the horizon.

Physicists studying subatomic particles use flag manifold mathematical models to solve quantum-level problems, specifically with subatomic particles called quarks. In 1997, Barbara Shipman, a mathematician whose father was a bee researcher, recognized the exact pattern of a honeybee’s dance while translating a 6th dimensional flag manifold onto a two-dimensional drawing. Shipman posited bees can sense quarks in a “quantum field” and mentally process a flag manifold calculation to choreograph and communicate the dance routine.