Life on the Edge: Quantum thermodynamics, quantum biology and the arrow of time

Life on the Edge: Quantum thermodynamics, quantum biology and the arrow of time

Funded by a philanthropic grant by the John Templeton Foundation, our interdisciplinary research project explores how the ‘arrow of time’ manifests at the quantum scale – which has exciting implications for the understanding of time and life itself.

In ‘Life on the Edge’, we are exploring a key question in quantum biology. While time as we experience it only flows forwards, at the scale of quantum physics, time is reversible – with processes making just as much sense when viewed forward or backwards through time. However we also know that many complex processes are irreversible. How these irreversible processes emerge from smaller reversible building blocks is not fully understood, but may have implications for our understanding of life itself.

‘Life on the Edge’ is funded by a $3 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation – the largest philanthropic gift ever received by the University of Surrey. The project involves a research team drawn from across six universities in the UK and US, but hosted by the Quantum Foundations Centre at Surrey. The team is an interdisciplinary group of researchers with expertise in quantum physics, applied mathematics, computational chemistry, experimental molecular biology and philosophy.