Biological Decoherence Timescale Lab (2D)

Environment

Temperature 300 K

Superposition size Δx 200 nm

Environment coupling (collisions/s) 1e30

Presets

Live Readouts

Coherence100%

Decoherence time τ

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Rate Γ = 1/τ

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Thermal de Broglie λ_dB (environment)

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Animation clock is time-compressed for visibility — the τ readout above is the real physical value, not the on-screen speed. Drag the top canvas to rotate the orbit view.

How it works

A spatial superposition of separation Δx is destroyed once an environment particle scatters off it and "measures" which branch it hit. This uses the standard scattering (Joos–Zeh) estimate for the decoherence rate — the same order-of-magnitude model Max Tegmark applied to neurons in 2000 to test whether the brain could sustain the macroscopic quantum coherence that "quantum healing" and Penrose–Hameroff-style theories require:

λ_dB = h / √(2π m_env k_B T)      thermal wavelength of environment particles
Γ    = f_hit · (Δx / λ_dB)²        decoherence rate
τ    = 1 / Γ                       decoherence time

Temperature — raises the thermal momentum of surrounding particles, shrinking λ_dB and speeding up decoherence.
Δx — the size of the "which-path" separation. Bigger superpositions are far more fragile: Γ grows with the square of Δx.
Environment coupling — how often the system gets hit by an environment particle (photon, water molecule, ion). Vacuum + dilution cryostat ≈ 10³–10¹⁰ Hz; room-temperature air ≈ 10²⁵ Hz; warm cytoplasm/water ≈ 10³⁰–10³⁴ Hz.

Try the two presets: a genuinely isolated qubit (millikelvin dilution fridge, sub-Å superposition, best vacuum coupling) can hold coherence for seconds — a human-perceptible time. A nanometre-scale superposition inside warm, wet cytoplasm instead decoheres in roughly 10⁻³⁸ seconds — far too fast for any neural or "biofield" process to use it. That gap is exactly why claims of macroscopic quantum coherence driving healing or cognition run into trouble with mainstream physics; it does not by itself disprove such a mechanism, but it sets an extremely high bar no proposed biological shielding mechanism has cleared.

Note on this simulator's numbers: the original 3D version's own "isolated qubit" preset (4K, Δx=10nm, 10⁶ collisions/s) computes to τ ≈ 4×10⁻¹⁰ s under this exact formula — nowhere near the "human-relevant" timescale its own explanation text claims. Verified numerically (standalone script, not shipped). This 2D version keeps the formula but picks preset parameters (10mK, Δx=0.1nm, 10³ collisions/s) that actually land in the seconds range, so the on-screen contrast matches the physics.

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drag to rotate view

Superposition branches Environment particle Coherence(t) trace