The Copernican Report: 2025.Q1.
“[We divide] this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on – remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together…” Richard Feynman
Welcome to The Copernican Project's first Quarterly Report
The Copernican Project’s mission is to produce the theoretical framework and experimental results which identify how gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear dynamics are united within cell environments. We are a small but growing team of passionate scientists headquartered in Berkeley, CA, and backed by forward minded technologists. In our Q1 2025 report, I summarize our 2024 progress and outline how, together with a growing team of collaborators, we are working to bring Feynman’s vision to fruition by bringing physics notions that were divided long ago for mathematical convenience back together again within the context of cell metabolism.
Theoretical Framework Beginnings:
For over a half-century space experiments have been demonstrating that dynamics associated with Earth’s spin and gravitational environment contribute to metabolic order, and for at least twice as long there has been a growing understanding that such order depends on the creation and regulation of electric potentials across cell membranes. When combined with recent nuclear research hinting at energy levels separating nuclear isomeric states low enough to couple with metabolic processes, we believe the time is ripe to remove the artificial divisions that separate these fields and integrate their dynamics. Biology provides sufficient clues for how this can be accomplished, but mapping out the route from a physics perspective must now circumvent the waters muddied by the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation (B.O.A.) adopted by quantum mechanics a century ago. In that respect, it can be argued that order in biological systems operates at a higher level of physics than physics currently explains – and that results from biology can be used to point physics out of its malaise. Excitedly, when forced to conjecture on how cells manage their energy exchange processes within dynamically asymmetrical Earthbound environments - presently omitted by both biology and quantum mechanical modeling - there exists an incredible opportunity to provide more fundamental explanations for long-standing unexplained properties in both fields pertaining to parity, spin, periodicity and chirality. A preliminary theoretical model will be offered by mid-2025 with experimental results expected in the near future.
Progress on the Experimental Front:
We kicked off our experimental program in late 2024 with the heavy isotope search and circalunar periodicity. This will be expanded in 2025 with an intriguing new inquiry into a possible explanation for jetlag linked to a Coriolis-like effect identified by Lorand Eötvös in the early 1900’s but which never found its way into our biology books. Our experiments are intended to deliver insight into energy exchange processes conjectured to couple dynamic states internal to molecules to the large-scale periodicities and accelerations asymmetries in Earthbound rest frames. The intent is to either demonstrate that biological pathways couple to these underlying dynamics or we will place new limits on their participation. Follow the progress here.
1. Heavy Isotope Search (launched 2024): This experimental program is investigating a potential new mechanism for energy regulation within cells that naturally emerges once freed from the restrictions of the B.O.A. The intent is to find evidence for a higher frequency coupling occurring between nucleon isomeric resonance (internal to molecules) and resonance in cell electric potentials. Our initial focus is directed towards altered resonance effects caused by either heavy and light isotopes – specifical iron 58Fe & 54Fe due to the critical role it plays in cell growth, the immune system, and within enzymes regulating electron transport within mitochondria. A second focus is on altered resonance effects within iron containing structures when either heavy water (D2O) or heavy nitrogen (15N) is introduced into the cell environment. The lab work will be performed by Karl Morten’s team in Oxford, assisted by lab members Holly Tonks and Alex Silverthorne, with Hal Drakesmith, Professor of Iron Biology at Oxford, consulting. This research is also linked to a search pertaining to ATPase function outside of mitochondria, co-funded by The Guy Foundation of the UK. [Details about the isotope experiments are here].
2. Circalunar Periodicity: This program is seeking to identify a possible dynamic driver for the less well-known circalunar (~28 day) periodicity expressed in the metabolism of many species, including humans, coupled to known acceleration cycles associated with our motion around the Earth-moon barycenter. Circalunar periodicity is observed to occur at the level of gene expression and although current modeling suggests the coupling might be driven by sunlight reflected off the lunar surface, we are searching for deeper molecular cues. In 2024, our two student interns, Clayton Xavier Vanegas Aguilar from St. Petersburg University and Esin Üsküplü of Boğaziçi University, combed through existing biological literature and compiled a database of over 200 species that express such periodicity – not all of which are easily explained by light cycles. Jason Podrabsky’s lab in Portland has also provided us with over 2 decades of unexplored data pertaining to Killifish egg production. This data is unique in that these fish were raised in a basement environment absent from all normally considered environmental zeitgebers – but not, of course, to gravity-induced strain cycles. Afshin Khan, our astrobiologist team member and mathematician Hamed Chok – both affiliated with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science - are guiding the data analysis with Clayton & Esin. That analysis and the circalunar database will be available [here] in Q2.
3. Jetlag: This basis for this inquiry is the correlation between the odd east-west biological signature of jetlag (worse when traveling east than west, and mostly absent when traveling north and south) and a similar but overlooked asymmetry in energy exchange in systems which are moving either east or west relative to a spinning Earth. The effects are rarely considered when viewing cell activities under a microscope, but the dynamics are fundamentally chiral and underly all energy exchange processes in our rest frames – they must factor into cell homeostasis at some level. These experiments offer a unique opportunity to investigate whether proteins and enzymes have evolved to couple their internal geometries to this asymmetry. In 2024 we gave a presentation about these experiments to the FAA’s New and Emerging Aeronautical Technology group, and we recently formed an alliance with one of the world’s largest private jet companies who has agreed to fly our cell cultures over multiple flight windows during 2025. If such a dynamic coupling can be demonstrated, this will open up a new less expensive and quicker alternative to space-based experiments when exploring how altered gravitational effects affect living organisms. Joining this inquiry are Chris & Graca Porada from Wake Forest who will be guiding the effort to identify the how the dynamic asymmetry might affect stem cell metabolism. More details about this experimental program [here].
The Copernican Project Platform:
While early in our experimental roadmap, we envision a full spectrum of experiments to deliver insight into how gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear dynamics are united within cell environments. To achieve this, we will continue to seek partners with top research scientists and companies with shared interest in this science. If our program aligns with your particular line of research and you can envision an experiment that might deliver results within these domains, please reach out to us at contact@thecopernicanproject.org.
Before we close this report, we want to congratulate collaborating team member Agata Zupanska, an experimentalist from the University of Florida working with SETI who recently saw her own experiment chaperoned to and from the ISS by Space-X and splash down in the Atlantic ready for analysis. Her research focuses on how altered space environments affect plant metabolism (a moss nicknamed ARTEMOSS in this instance) for applications on future NASA/Artemis lunar missions [link to her research here].
Wishing everyone a productive 2025. Please reach out to us if you would like to collaborate on any of this research, have means for extending its impact, or can assist with the funding.
Steve Thorne
Director of Biophysics/The Copernican Project
Berkeley California
thorne@thecopernicanproject.org