Abstract
Following recent electrical transport evidences of superconductivity in the brain, a search for the object in which superconductivity resides is extended to the nanometer scale. The criterion for the search is the Meissner effect or expulsion of the magnetic flux in the field-cooled state of the material. To provide nanometer-smooth surfaces necessary for the measurements, tubulin protein from slices of brain was dissolved in the water solution of graphene and dropped onto a smooth glass substrate. At the evaporation of water, microtubules start self-assembling in the drop. In some areas they self-assemble parallel to the surface and in others-perpendicular to it, revealing cross-sections of the microtubules. Being investigated in the magnetic force microscopy, new evidences of superconductivity in the microtubules are obtained, which include ideal diamagnetism and flux quantization. Quantized Abrikosov vortices are directly imaged, and important parameters of the superconductor, such as magnetic penetration depth (12.8 nm), coherence length (1 nm) and Ginzburg-Landau parameter (12.8 ), are estimated. Magnetic imaging of the perpendicular cross-sections of the microtubules reveals that superconductivity comes from the structured water channel inside the microtubules. The magnetic maps demonstrate development of contacts between spreading microtubules. These contacts represent Josephson junctions, and a coherent Josephson radiation is expected from a dense network of such junctions at the application of certain voltage. Such radiation is detected in a slice of brain in the long-wavelength infrared frequency range. This set of observations firmly places superconductivity in microtubules in the range of room temperature superconductors routinely operating at ambient pressure in most biological systems. The evolutional nature of room-temperature superconductivity and its link to quantum processing of information are discussed.
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