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🚨 SCIENTISTS JUST DISCOVERED THAT BACTERIA HAVE BEEN USING A QUANTUM ENERGY TRICK FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS. In a breakthrough published in Nature Chemistry, researchers from the University of Sheffield (working with IBM and international collaborators) have shown that purple photosynthetic bacteria (Rhodobacter sphaeroides) use singlet fission (SF) as a functional mechanism to enhance light harvesting. When carotenoids absorb blue-green light (via their S₂ state), the energy rapidly undergoes heterofission: the singlet exciton splits into a pair of triplet excitons shared between a carotenoid and its neighboring bacteriochlorophyll (BChl) a molecule. These triplet pairs are long-lived and weakly coupled. They then recombine via triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA), efficiently populating the BChl a Qy singlet state which then transfers energy to the reaction center. This SF-mediated pathway contributes up to ~18% of total carotenoid-to-BChl energy transfer in some complexes and introduces a temporal “buffering” effect, staggering energy arrival at the reaction center. Why this matters: • It is the clearest demonstration yet that singlet fission plays a genuine, functional role in natural photosynthesis • The heterofission mechanism (triplets on adjacent Crt and BChl molecules) explains how bacteria achieve ultrafast SF while maintaining long-lived, harvestable triplet pairs • This pathway helps organisms make better use of blue-green light and may protect the reaction center during fluctuating light conditions The deeper implication: Nature has evolved a sophisticated way to temporarily store and then cooperatively release electronic energy using spin-protected triplet states. This biological strategy offers new inspiration for designing artificial light-harvesting and energy-conversion systems that can buffer and regulate energy flow something synthetic SF materials have struggled to achieve. We are learning that evolution solved some of the hardest problems in photophysics long before we started trying. How might understanding biological singlet fission change the way we design future solar energy or quantum-inspired technologies? Follow for more frontier photosynthesis research and natural quantum biology.

TheNewPhysics

75,999 views • 4 months ago