Are we standing at the threshold of a New Physics?

The Rundown

“What if the most essential molecular machinery in our bodies operates quantum mechanically?”

This is the question that drives physicist and physician Dr. Anita Goel, founder and CEO of Nanobiosym Research Institute. She believes we may be standing at the threshold of a new physics—one capable of uniting quantum mechanics and relativity while also explaining life and consciousness.

Since the discovery of quantum mechanics, many of its founders — Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Erwin Schrödinger — believed that, despite its successes, the theory was incomplete. Quantum mechanics offers a framework for predicting the probabilities of all possible outcomes of an event, but it cannot explain why, ultimately, we observe only one result.

For Einstein, the problem was that quantum theory did not fit well with the principles of his theory of relativity. Relativity describes a continuous, orderly universe governed by precise and predictable laws — a universe that exists whether or not anyone is looking at it. “Quantum mechanics is very impressive,” Einstein wrote in 1926, “but an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not bring us any closer to the secret of [nature].” 

Einstein remained uneasy with the apparent randomness in quantum theory and spent the rest of his life searching for a way to reconcile it with relativity. “God does not play dice with the universe,” he later remarked, expressing his conviction that something fundamental was missing — a deeper, hidden layer of reality that would reveal the true connection between what is observed and the act of observing. 

His friend Max Planck echoed the sentiment: “Quantum theory is not yet the ultimate truth; one day it will be replaced by a theory that takes into account what now appears to us as chance.” Although Planck launched the revolution of modern physics with his discovery of energy quanta in 1900, he was uncomfortable with the idea that the universe is fundamentally random. He believed that the probabilities in quantum mechanics merely reflected our limited knowledge — that beneath the apparent disorder lay a coherent order accessible to reason.

By 1931, Planck had reached a significant conclusion: consciousness itself must be a fundamental part of reality. In an interview published that year in The Observer (London), he stated, “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” 

More than a decade later, during a 1944 lecture titled ‘The Nature of Matter’, Planck further argued that “there is no matter as such.” What we perceive as substance, he proposed, arises from an underlying field of energy and structure. This ordered reality cannot be fully understood without the mind that perceives it.

Like Einstein and Planck before him, Erwin Schrödinger grappled with the disconnect between the world described by physics and the world as we experience it. He believed that the apparent randomness of quantum mechanics concealed a deeper, underlying unity. In his 1956 Cambridge lectures, later published as 'Mind and Matter' (1958), he argued the division between the observer and the observed is a conceptual construct rather than an absolute truth: “The total number of minds in the universe is one,” he wrote. “Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular.”

Schrödinger expanded these questions into the field of biology in his 1944 book What Is Life?, proposing that the molecular foundation of heredity lies at the atomic level. He suggested that the stability of genetic structures might depend on quantum laws rather than classical physics. He described “the hereditary mechanism is a code-script written in some kind of material,” implying that genetic information is stored in stable molecular structures he called aperiodic crystals—ordered yet nonrepeating structures capable of carrying complex information.

Schrödinger’s ideas directly impacted the next generation of scientists—notably James Watson and Francis Crick—who cited ‘What Is Life?’ as their inspiration for discovering the double helix structure of DNA, the molecule that encodes genetic information.

By the mid-twentieth century, physics appeared poised to explain life itself. The new understanding of matter emerging from quantum theory suggested that the same principles that govern the atom might also drive how living systems function.

Nearly a century on, these questions at the intersection of physics and biology continue to evolve. One scientist advancing this field forward is Anita Goel. Goel is among the leading voices in the emerging field of Nanobiophysics—a discipline that bridges physics, biology, and information science to investigate the physical principles behind living systems.

Goel is pushing the boundaries of modern physics by proposing a new frontier—one that seeks to connect matter and energy with information and consciousness. Einstein’s insight that mass and energy are equivalent (E = mc²) transformed our understanding of the universe, but, as Goel observes, it doesn’t yet explain life itself. “Quantum mechanics and relativity are two ends of a spectrum. Life, through information, may be the bridge that unifies them.” 

She envisions a new framework that weaves the complexity of living systems into the very fabric of the universe. In her view, relativity must be generalized to include information dynamics — how information propagates, interacts, and organizes matter and energy. Life is the proof of concept that such an extension is possible.

“I realized that our physics hasn't come to terms with life, living systems, and consciousness,” she explains. “We have to understand, at a physical level, not only how matter and energy interact, but how matter, energy, and information — potentially consciousness — talk to each other.”

Her research centres on biological nanomachines—tiny, complex systems that work inside every cell and are responsible for DNA replication. These molecular motors “read and write the code of life,” executing countless coordinated actions each second with astonishing precision and accuracy.

“What is it thinking about?” she asks. “It’s processing a lot of information — not just from the DNA itself, but [seemingly] from the environment around it.”

Goel questions whether these living molecular machines achieve their remarkable efficiency through processes similar to quantum search algorithms. Such systems suggest that matter itself may embody information processing—governed by physical laws that current models do not yet fully understand. She proposes, “If life indeed operates at the edge between the quantum and the classical, then the molecular nanomachines that read and write genetic information might naturally exploit quantum dynamics to achieve the exquisite precision and efficiency we observe.” 

It’s an exciting time in science as physics, biology, and information theory begin to converge. Goel’s work encourages us to look again at what Einstein, Planck, and Schrödinger intuited — that something essential is missing from our understanding of the universe. Goel questions whether life itself might hold the key to a deeper, unified understanding of reality. 

“What if consciousness is fundamental to the fabric of reality—and matter, energy, space, and time emerge from it?” This, ultimately, is the question at the heart of Goel’s research.

The Record

This record includes: an interview with Dr. Goel conducted by Hans Busstra for the Essentia Foundation, her presentation at the 2025 Science of Consciousness Conference in Barcelona (skip to 47 minutes), and a video explaining how DNA-replicating nanomachines operate.

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