Think Beyond: Monthly Live Breakout Sessions & Scientific Q&A with William Brown

About the Event

Something is happening inside the cell that classical biochemistry was never designed to explain.
Over the past two decades, a quiet revolution has been building at the intersection of quantum physics and biology. Experiments across diverse systems — from bird navigation to stem cell differentiation to microtubule assembly — have revealed that weak magnetic fields and isotope substitutions can alter biological outcomes in ways that defy classical thermodynamic explanations. The energies involved
are a million times smaller than the thermal noise at body temperature. And yet the effects are real, reproducible, and statistically overwhelming.

The mechanism behind these observations is quantum spin chemistry — specifically, the radical pair mechanism, in which transient pairs of molecules with unpaired electrons oscillate between quantum spin states whose interconversion is sensitive to external magnetic fields and nearby nuclear spins through a quantum interaction known as hyperfine coupling.
In this live presentation, ISF researcher William Brown surveys the latest breakthroughs in quantum biochemistry and explores what they reveal about the deep architecture of living systems:

• A landmark 2026 study published in Science Advances (Zadeh-Haghighi, Siguenza, Smith, Simon & Craddock) demonstrating that the nuclear spin of magnesium-25 directly influences microtubule polymerization — one of the most fundamental self-organizing processes in cell biology — with effects amplified by a weak applied magnetic field and quantitatively consistent with a radical pair model.
• The pioneering work of Buchachenko and colleagues on magnetic isotope effects in enzymatic phosphorylation — including the original proposal that magnesium isotopes influence ATP synthesis through spin-selective radical pair chemistry — and the ongoing reproducibility challenges (including the Crotty et al. null result) that have shaped the field’s standards of evidence.
• Emerging evidence from mitochondrial bioenergetics, including weak magnetic field effects on membrane potential and ATP output, and how the geometric architecture of the mitochondrial inner membrane may shape the quantum dynamics of spin-active chemistry occurring there.
• The broader question: are these isolated curiosities, or nodes of a deeply integrated quantum-biological signaling layer — a network in which spin-active biomolecular sites across the cell synchronize through shared physical substrates rather than acting as independent quantum events?

Whether you are a physicist curious about biology, a biologist curious about quantum mechanics, or simply someone who wants to understand the cutting edge of what we know about how life works at its most fundamental level, this presentation offers a rigorous, accessible, and deeply fascinating window into one of the most exciting frontiers in modern science.
No prior background in quantum physics is required.