title: Comments on Musha's theorem that an evanescent photon in the microtubule is a superluminal particle.
abstract: Takaaki Musha's research of high performance quantum computation in living systems is motivated by the theories of Penrose and Hameroff that microtubules in the brain function as quantum computers, and by those of Jibu and Yasue that the quantum states of microtubules depend upon boson condensates of evanescent photons. His work is based on the assumption that the evanescent photons described by Jibu et al. are superluminal and that they are tachyons defined and discussed by well-known physicists such as Sudarshan, Feinberg and Recami. Musha gives a brief justification for the assumption and sometimes calls it a theorem. However, the assumption is not valid because Jibu et al. stated that the evanescent photons have transmission speed smaller than that of light and that their mass is real and momentum is imaginary whereas a tachyon's mass is imaginary and momentum is real. We show here that Musha's proof of the "theorem" has errors and hence his theorem/assumption is not valid. This article is not meant to further discuss any biological aspects of the brain but only to comment on the consistency of the quantum-physical aspects of earlier work by Musha et al.
authors.forename: Syamala D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Hari
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D008870:Microtubules / Q000737:chemistry*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D017785:Photons; D011789:Quantum Theory
keywords: Evanescent photon; Quantum brain theory; Superluminal; Tachyon