Molly Webster (host)
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
So I was a bio major and we had to take maybe one physics class and then we never thought about it again.
And this is often how it goes in the sciences.
The environment, animals, our bodies, the kind of organic, messy physical stuff, that's on one side.
And then you have physics, all the abstract stuff, waves, energy, invisible particles, that's all on the other side.
They very much feel like two different worlds.
Can I ask you a couple questions before we get started?
But for Narosha Murugan, they go hand in hand.
What I learned from talking to Narosha and what you're going to hear in our conversation today, it is definitely a leap into the unknown.
But it starts with a very simple idea about how living things—bacteria, cactuses, humans, whatever—
And it's an idea that made me think about the kind of mark we leave on the world.
So we're going to start with Narosha as a student.
Norosha says she was standing there thinking about all the little molecules in her skin and nerves and spine, all these proteins bumping into each other, interacting and passing along a signal, burn, ow, until it reached her spine.
And then a signal goes back, more proteins bumping into each other, interacting, signaling, move, move your hand, move your hand, back down her arm, all in a split second.
Yeah, there's this shorthand that we use for talking about biology, which is that a lock and a key go together and that like makes things happen in the cell.
So something is a shape and it fits into a hole.
I'm like, wow, this is why you were a better bio student than I was.
Yeah, and with also, if you think about like the interior of a cell, it's like there's thousands of other proteins and there's, you know, trash and there's the nucleus and there's, I don't know, endoplasmic reticulum.
There's like all sorts of things inside the cell that are between the lock and the key, between the two shapes like finding each other.
It's like the janitor took the ring of keys and just threw it at a lock and somehow the right key on that ring disappeared.
Gets into the lock and like it makes it across the space, even though there's so, so much in the middle.
As Narosha kept puzzling this, she thought maybe there's something in physics, the world where particles are always zipping around really fast, maybe there's something there that could help me out.
What Narosha stumbled into was a weird little corner of biology pioneered by this Russian biologist, Alexander Gurvich.
In the 1920s, he did a series of experiments on onion roots to understand how they grow.
And I'm gonna be real with you, the original papers in Russian, it was kind of a crazily complicated experimental setup.
But basically in the process of doing these experiments,
He made a discovery that seemed to suggest that the onion cells inside the roots were making and releasing their own light.
So not only am I emitting light or cells are emitting light, they could be emitting light of different color.
So when my friends try and like drag me down to get my aura red, is that this?
Okay, so if I'm a cell and I'm giving off light and maybe we have to pick a specific cell, I don't know.
One of the structures inside the cell is the mitochondria.
It looks like a microscopic kidney bean with tiny little folds inside of it.
And it is often called the powerhouse of the cell.
It creates all of the energy that makes us run.
So that's neurons firing, muscles contracting, bodies working.
And the way that works is molecules will pass electrons back and forth to each other all along the inner folds.
Is like a high energy electron like a kid with a lot of sugar and then like a low energy electron is like when they come down off the sugar?
So you're saying that, I don't know, we're giving off life because we're doing fun things with our electrons.
There are a number of different ideas about where light could be coming from inside the cell.
It could be a buildup and release of charged particles.
It could be something having to do with fatty acids.
For Narosha, she's finding that when she interrupts that electron chain, the light changes.
Do you have a sense of how many photons a cell is emitting at any moment?
So say a million brain cells emitting 100 photons a second as a group.
I got really lost in an image of like the mitochondria just releasing like fireworks all the time.
Like I was like, oh, these little cells are popping off.
It's like after a baseball game on the 4th of July.
And is it that light that I might potentially be seeing if I had an amazingly dark space?
I wonder if some of it is like people have been like, that's bullshit.
Because it's like we've already talked about auras.
I can imagine like a lot of folks being like, no, this isn't legit.
But that's where my light interaction shuts down.
And it sounds like you're saying there's more light interactions happening.
Wait, is that the only direct interaction I have with the wavelengths from the sun that I'm like actively converting?
We as creatures have evolved with the sun for so long that there are many, many elements of our cells that are able to absorb light.
And so now the question is, if that's the case, could the light coming from inside of our cells also be absorbed?
Could it be used purposefully to trigger some processes in us?
So we really are in a lot of like theoretical ideas.
Like once we get beyond the revelation, which will be a revelation to a lot of people that
biological material cells, me, you, are emitting light, then a lot of the questions that come after that of like how, why, when.
Coming up, Narosha tries to find out what the light inside our bodies might be doing.
The cellular fireworks continue after the break.
And one of the first ones Narosha wants to tackle is how what seems like a cellular firework show might actually be more like a laser or something.
Like if there's a purpose to the light and it's directed, it's a sentinel of information, like, I don't know, isn't it a photon?
Don't they just flow through things when it just like flows?
So every cell is filled with individual little tubules.
that are help giving it its shape, little rods.
And your question was, do those things suck up some of the light?
There's a little tram system that's inside the cell.
Okay, but do you have any proof thus far that that light is not just being cast off like fireworks into the cellular night, that it is actually being moved from an A to a B?
So when there's activity in the brain, there's light in the brain.
I mean, do you have any hypotheses of like what information light might be carrying inside the brain?
There's honestly so much about this world of light inside the body that we don't know yet.
Some of the researchers describe this field as risky, like it could all add up to nothing.
But if they're right, it could change everything, or at least a lot of things.
For Narosha, even if she doesn't know what the purpose of the light is inside the body, like even if there isn't one, it might have a purpose for us outside the body.
I guess the question then is, is there a significant difference between the photon release in cancer cells versus other cells?
And we've shown that and we've published that.
So with the light coming off cancer, you guys are actually diagnosing cancer earlier?
So even if it's like, even if the light was not biologically purposeful, you're thinking maybe it could still be diagnostically useful.
So it's like basically we've walked through...
I'm just gonna make you say it again, but you've like walked through brain cells that let out photons, tumor cells that let out photons, normal body cells that let out photons.
You're saying everybody, every cell that you've looked at
Like a surgeon's just saying just for the purpose of surgery where we stop a heart and start a heart, there's like an electric explosion of light?
I don't have the scientific evidence for this, but... No, yeah, you clearly... Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, what my... I don't know how to solve that at all.
It is the fireworks that I've been talking about.
Watch fireworks explode when a human egg is fertilized.
It is like an... There's like a round egg, and then the sperm is at the edge.
And then you just see kind of this explosion come off the surface.
I mean, it is really crazy, because literally after we have this conversation, I'm going down to South Carolina, where my dad is in hospice, like near the end of his life.
you do have all these questions about just like what's happening, what's unfolding, like a notion that, I mean, I'm sure I'm not going to see like a flash of light happen.
I mean, I'll keep my eyes peeled, but you know, just like the notion of like a signal out into the world, like that's so
visual even if we can't really see it but like light is so meaningful to us you know that it could that like it is a signature of of us and that that it's like a final salute or something you're letting the energy that was patterned into this architecture that we are out back to be transformed into something else
You can find her at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
This episode was produced by Sara Khari with help from me.
For those of you who are gonna go check out that life flash video, one thing to note, you're gonna see a big flash of light in the video.
That is a fluorescent dye that researchers added to the experiment so they could see it better.
But beneath that dye, the thing that it's very much illuminating is a very quiet, gentle light.
And I'd like to dedicate this episode to my dad.
I did not see a flash of light, but I certainly felt one.