A modified approach to the measurement problem: Objective reduction in the retinal molecule prior to conformational change

Abstract

A new analysis of the measurement problem reveals the possibility that collapse of the wavefunction may now take place just before photoisomerization of the rhodopsin molecule in the retinal rods. It is known that when a photon is initially absorbed by the retinal molecule which, along with opsin comprises the rhodopsin molecule, an electron in the highest pi orbital is immediately excited to a pi* orbital. This means that a measurement or transfer of information takes place at the quantum level before the retinal molecule commences the conformational change from cis to trans. This could have profound implications for resolving some of the foundational issues confronting quantum mechanics.