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X-WR-CALNAME:Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: Noise in Nature: Nathaniel G
 abor
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Pacific Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260815T013424Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_52559383669811
DTSTART:20260409T224000Z
DTEND:20260410T000000Z
DESCRIPTION:Light harvesting and light-sensing biosystems are fraught with 
 noise. Despite this\, biosystems operate at the extremes of temporal respo
 nse\, single-quanta sensitivity\, and light conversion efficiency. Perhaps
  unsurprisingly\, a complete physical understanding of Nature's striking p
 erformance is lacking. In this talk\, I present new physics of biological 
 vision and light-harvesting systems\, with a particular focus on the funda
 mental aspects of statistical noise. As a first application\, I explore th
 e infrared vision in pit vipers. I show that a vision system optimized to 
 assess thermal fluctuations at each pixel in space is remarkably efficient
  at finding boundaries between regions of differing temperatures. Beyond e
 xplaining several long-standing questions in the pit viper community\, thi
 s work has the potential to expose new understanding in biological vision 
 systems\, many of which show evidence for single photon sensitivity. I the
 n present a quantum physicist's perspective on photosynthesis\, as first l
 aid out by several pioneers including Erwin Schrödinger and George Gamow.
  By understanding the connection between light harvesting network structur
 e\, noise\, and power conversion\, I show how photosynthetic antennas can 
 be finely tuned to maximize light harvesting efficiency. If\, as on Earth\
 , photosynthetic life on exoplanets evolved to optimize its light harvesti
 ng quantum efficiency\, then the colors of reflected light from such a sur
 face biosphere may be detectable as a surface biosignature. Based on this 
 key premise\, I give an update on our active work in identifying photosynt
 hesis on the surface of distant exoplanets. The work presented in this tal
 k - which identifies general principles of noise in Nature - promises to h
 ave applications across various disciplines ranging from quantum nanoscien
 ce and computing to bionanoscience and astrobiology.
LOCATION:Winston Chung Hall\, Room 138
SUMMARY:Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: Noise in Nature: Nathaniel Gabor
URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.ucr.edu/event/physics-and-astronomy-colloquium
 -noise-in-nature-viper-vision-photosynthesis-and-the-search-for-exoplaneta
 ry-life-prof-nathaniel-gabor
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations
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