The Copernican Project spearheads experiments that test the limits of existing metabolic theory. Our mission is to drive a higher level of modern physics into biology for the benefit of human health on earth and human ventures beyond.
OUR EXPERIMENTAL VISION
Although NATURE coordinates energy exchange across gravitational, quantum mechanical, and nuclear domains, existing biophysical theories don’t - they divide them, then toss away gravitational effects under the belief that they are too weak to matter and the nuclear effects due to their extreme complexity. This represents a fundamental gap in our understanding. THE COPERNICAN PROJECT is looking for a higher level of physics applicable to biology that includes energy interactions across all biological scales. We produce the theoretical models then partner with experimentalists from physics, biology, and space science research labs around the globe to test the conjecture. Both positive and negative results advance the field. Our current experiments will search for a fundamental coupling between dynamics residing in our underlying (non)-inertial state and chronobiological properties. They will provide insight about how energy homeostasis is established within cells that are spinning and wobbling with the earth, how diseases linked to asynchronous metabolic conditions might emerge, and what therapeutic methods can be implemented help prevent or correct growing abnormal states.
Heavy Isotopes
Circalunar Periodicity
Jetlag
THE GRAVITATIONAL CONNECTION
Copernicus taught us over 500 years ago that our Earth is in motion - spinning, wobbling around our Earth-moon barycenter, and orbiting the solar system. This motion embeds all earthbound reference frames with accelerations and strains rich with periodicity and dynamic asymmetry - perfect for driving evolution and sustaining life. Many biological properties - from circadian and circalunar rhythms to basal metabolic rates and chirality - have the potential to be more naturally explained when Earth’s forgotten underlying dynamics are included. Mounting evidence suggests that living organisms utilize the periodicity and energy associated with circadian and circalunar motion relative to the gravitational potential to help synchronize and drive metabolic functions. This would imply that metabolic order might now depend on these dynamic characteristics and when they are absent or altered for sustained periods - such as when in orbit, living on the moon, or when traveling to mars - metabolic pathways will become desynchronized leading to biological stress, abnormal biochemical development, and disease. THE COPERNICAN PROJECT is building the theoretical model and devising experiments that will demonstrate the critical role these dynamics play in our biology and envisioning how to incorporate them into our future habitats as we venture into space.
THE NUCLEAR CONNECTION
The highest energies and highest sense of order are locked inside every atom with its nucleon configuration. Nucleons contain over 99.9% of the mass, momentum, and kinetic energy of every molecule and are directly effected by changes in the gravitational and acceleration environment. However, in 1927, quantum mechanics adopted the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation which effectively removed all the potentially ordering dynamical effects associated with Earth’s spin and orbital motion from participating in both chemical and biological events. That simplification was justifiable in 1927 but it limits 21st century biological modeling seeking to understand how energies are exchanged between scales both smaller and larger than the chemical domain. Nuclear physicists have recently identified extremely low energy isomeric states in some isotopes (under 10 eV) which places them into a domain which is biologically relevant. We are planning experiments to identify the possible participation of electroweak interactions in cell metabolism and their potential role in energy related diseases.
THE CHIRALITY CONNECTION
All living organisms on Earth require their functional molecules to possess a particular chiral handedness depending on their function in the cell. All sugars must possess a right-handed geometry while all amino acids must be left-handed. When wrong-handed molecules are used, metabolic processes break down and life fails. Chirality is a prerequisite for the origin and maintenance of life. Louis Pasteur imagined chirality was a result of a dynamic connection between magnetism and Earth’s spin. However, in the pre-quantum, pre-nuclear physics era of the mid-19th century, there were fewer modeling tools to work with and no successful model could be formulated. Our conjecture suggests that resonance in nuclear states coupled to a chiral acceleration asymmetry in Earth’s spin and orbital motion could be responsible for chirality. We are working to prove the biological connection to improve drug applications here on earth and modeling the metabolic consequences when we voyage outside of Earth’s natural chiral dynamic environment.
THE BIOLOGICAL CHALLENGES OF SPACE TRAVEL
Microgravity induces change in our genome, our epigenome, and our proteome. It causes bone demineralization, sleep and circadian clock disorders, cardiovascular and metabolic dysfunction, muscle atrophy, immune system malfunctions, hepatic damage, and ocular degeneration. These huge biological challenges must be solved in parallel with the advancement of our space hardware if we are to successfully survive on the moon or on mars. Presently, we pack our familiar air, water, atmospheric pressure, and temperature when we venture into space - but that has proven insufficient to maintain astronaut health over extended durations. Our experiments will help determine whether we need to also consider packing Earth’s wobbly strain dynamics and periodicities that have kept our metabolism in order for over 4 billion years.
