The Spark of Life

Summary

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Radiolab – “The Spark of Life”

Date: September 19, 2025
Host: Molly Webster
Guest: Narosha Marugin (Applied Biophysicist, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada)
Theme/Purpose:
This episode explores the enigmatic border between biology and physics, focusing on the astonishing idea that all living things emit light—a phenomenon that may not just be a byproduct, but could have deep implications for signaling, health, and perhaps consciousness itself. Through conversation with biophysicist Narosha Marugin, the episode investigates the science, skepticism, and possible future of “biophoton” research—even touching life’s brightest beginning and its “final salute.”

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Biology-Physics Divide and the “Lock-and-Key” Dilemma

• Molly introduces the classic view that biology and physics are separate fields—biology being “messy, physical stuff” and physics as “the abstract: waves, energy, invisible particles.” (01:14)
• Narosha describes her discomfort with the prevailing “lock and key” model of cellular signaling, where proteins randomly bump into each other to activate biological processes. She questions the feasibility of such a process occurring so quickly in the chaotic interior of a cell.

  “Imagine you're one of those janitors with a big ring of keys. How do you find that right key for the right lock in that right amount of time to induce signaling?... The probability of you finding your shape in one thousandth of a second…” – Narosha Marugin (04:46)

• Molly echoes the incredulity:

  “It's like the janitor took the ring of keys and just threw it at a lock. And somehow the right key on that ring gets into the lock and, like, it makes it across the space, even though there's so so much in the middle.” (05:36)

2. The Leap: Could Light Be the Fast Messenger in Biology?

• Driven by this skepticism, Narosha asks: Could there be a faster, non-physical signaling mechanism—like light?
  • She draws an analogy to “tap card” access vs. an old school lock-and-key:

    “What can be faster that cells can use to communicate? What is the fastest signal that we know? Light.” (07:08)

• Narosha discovers research from the 1920s by Russian biologist Alexander Gurwich, who found evidence that onion roots emitted light, suggesting all biological life emits light (biophotons).

3. Biophotons: The Science of Biological Light Emission

• The conversation establishes that all living cells emit photons, though the light is extremely faint and not visible to the naked eye.

  “Every cell in your body does give off light.” – Narosha Marugin (09:12) “Heart cell, liver cell, brain cell...literally everything that is alive emits light.” – Narosha Marugin (09:33)

• The light’s wavelength (color) can vary depending on the metabolic activity of the cell.

  “Different rates of metabolism will induce different wavelengths of light. So different colors.” – Narosha Marugin (10:26)

4. Where Does the Light Come From?

• The likely source: mitochondria, the cell’s “powerhouse.”
  • As electrons get passed along the mitochondrial chain and drop to a lower energy state, a photon (light energy) is emitted.

    “In that process, the electron goes from a high energy all the way down to a low energy state…during that hop, it releases energy, which is light.” – Narosha Marugin (12:20)

• Estimates of photon emission:

  “If you take a dish of brain cells…probably get around 100 photons a second.” – Narosha Marugin (13:30) “When you activate them…signals anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 photons a second.” – Narosha Marugin (13:59)

5. Scientific Skepticism and Shifting Attitudes

• Narosha recounts professional resistance:

  “Oh, this is noise. This is not science. You're going to jeopardize your career. Stop this. Go back into cell biology.” – Narosha Marugin (15:01)

• The field has become more accepted internationally, though many scientists now see biophoton emission as “noise” rather than meaningful.

6. Biological Purpose: Is Internal Light More Than a Byproduct?

• The episode explores whether this light is merely “waste” or could serve a signaling role—perhaps carrying information like a neural “fiber optic cable.”
  • The sun’s role in vitamin D synthesis and circadian rhythms is brought up as evidence of biological light sensitivity.

    “We are essentially like energetic converters converting sunlight into energy for our life.” – Narosha Marugin (17:43)

• Narosha details ongoing research into whether internal cellular photonic emissions also play a purposeful role, noting that cells have evolved to both emit and receive light.

  “There are many, many elements of our cells that are able to absorb light.” – Molly Webster (18:26)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “So I was a bio major, and we had to take maybe one physics class, and then we never thought about it again.”
  – Molly Webster on the bio/physics split (01:14)

• “When I burnt myself…how quickly that information of me burning my hand went into my body…Think of the probability of you finding your shape in one thousandth of a second.”
  – Narosha Marugin’s scientific epiphany (02:37, 05:25)

• “Biology emits light?”
  – Molly Webster’s disbelief (08:20)

• “Why can't I see it?”
  – Molly Webster, probing further (09:56)

• “We are essentially like energetic converters converting sunlight into energy for our life.”
  – Narosha Marugin (17:43)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Bio/physics split and the lock-and-key model – 01:14–06:57
• Light as a biological signal & the Gurwich discovery – 07:08–09:12
• Every cell emits light (biophotons) – 09:12–11:04
• The mitochondria and photon emission – 11:14–13:16
• Photon measurement and metaphor (“cellular fireworks”) – 13:23–14:26
• Scientific skepticism (“noise, not science”) – 14:38–15:20
• External vs internal light, vitamin D, sun as a source – 16:09–18:26
• Purposeful use of light in the body? The unanswered question – 18:49–19:31
• Breaking: Can the cell’s cytoskeleton guide light? – 24:18–27:02
• Microtubules as “fiber optics” – a new hypothesis – 26:28–27:02
• Biophoton links to neural activity and information transfer – 27:19–28:49
• Could biophotons be tied to consciousness? – 28:55–29:13
• Potential for medical diagnostics: cancer detection – 29:50–31:47
• Life/death as photon signature: “death flash,” hospice anecdotes – 32:34–34:40
• The “life flash” at conception (calcium influx video) – 35:05–36:33
• Personal reflection – meaning of light at start and end of life – 36:15–37:16

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Theoretical and Practical Implications

1. Diagnostics and Medical Use

• The potential use of biophoton emission to detect cancers at inception, before a tumor forms, based on their unique “light signature.”

  “With confidence, I can say as we've published papers on this now, so we can tell whether there is cancer within an animal as soon as that we've injected it... within day one there's something. There's cancer there.” – Narosha Marugin (31:11)

2. Philosophy, Life & Death

• Photons as a mark of life:

  “You can tell when an animal is alive and dead just by looking at their photon signatures.” – Narosha Marugin (32:23)

• Speculative accounts of a “death flash” as the body’s final energetic release at death; similarly, a “life flash” at fertilization (the calcium influx and photon emission).

3. Open Questions

• Is the light meaningful, purposefully used by biology, or only a side effect?
• Could the cytoskeleton or microtubules function as a “fiber optic” guidance mechanism for intracellular signaling?
• Might biophotons relate to neural function or even consciousness itself?

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Final Reflections & Emotional Note

Molly closes with a personal story, connecting the science to her father’s final days in hospice.

“I did not see a flash of light. I certainly felt one. I’m going to miss you, Pops. Thanks for always listening.” (37:53)

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Summary Table: Biophoton Concepts

| Concept | Description / Key Insight | Notable Quote / Timestamp | |----------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------| | Every cell emits light | All metabolically active cells emit photons (“biophotons”) | 09:12–09:33 | | Source: mitochondria | Mitochondrial electron chain reaction emits photons | 12:20–13:16 | | Purpose: yet unproven | Hypothesis: photons could communicate biological information | 18:49–19:31; 27:19–29:13 | | Medical application: cancer | Cancer cells have discernible light signatures | 31:00–31:47 | | Markers of life & death | Living vs. dead can be distinguished by photon emission | 32:23–33:40 | | Life's “spark” and “final salute”| Photon emission at conception and (anecdotally) death | 35:15–37:16 |

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For Further Listening/Reading

• Research on Alexander Gurwich and the “mitogenetic ray”
• Studies on biophoton emission and the mitochondria
• Research and videos on the fertilization “calcium flash”

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Radiolab, ever curious, points to the twilight zone between hard science and humbling mystery, inviting us to reconsider what it means to be alive—and perhaps, what it means to glow.

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Transcript

[Radiolab Announcer]

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[Narosha Marugin]

Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening. Listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab from wnyc.

[Molly Webster]

Wait, wait. Am I glowing right now?

[Narosha Marugin]

You certainly are. Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Molly Webster. So I was a bio major, and we had to take maybe one physics class, and then we never thought about it again. And this is often how it goes in the sciences. You've got biology, the environment, animals, our bodies, the kind of organic, messy, physical stuff that's on one side. And then you have physics, all the abstract stuff. Waves, energy, invisible particles. That's all on the other side.

[Narosha Marugin]

I know how to use these.

[Molly Webster]

They very much feel like two different worlds.

[Narosha Marugin]

Can I ask you a couple questions before we get started?

[Molly Webster]

You can ask me so many questions, but for Narosha Marugin, they go hand in hand.

[Narosha Marugin]

I'm Narosha Marugin, an applied biophysicist from Waterloo, Canada. And most biophysicists look at mostly bio. I'm on the other end. Who likes to be 50, 50.

[Molly Webster]

What I learned from talking to Neurosha and what you're going to hear in our conversation today. It is definitely a leap into the unknown. But it starts with a very simple idea about how living things, bacteria, cactuses, humans, what. How they do what they do. And it's an idea that made me think about the kind of mark we leave on the world. So we're gonna start with Narosha as a student.

[Narosha Marugin]

I mean, I can tell you a very specific moment in grad school that. Tell me when I was living in the dorms and I was making mashed potatoes and I burnt myself. And then I don't know why I thought this, but I thought it was really exciting. Yeah. How quickly that information of me burning my hand went into my body. For me to move my hand, like that signal had to go up my arm. Things had to change and move all the way back down my arm for me to remove it. Think of the molecular interactions.

[Molly Webster]

Neurosha says she was standing there thinking about all the little molecules in her skin and nerves and spine, all these proteins bumping into each other, interacting and passing along. A signal burn.

[Radiolab Announcer]

Ow.

[Molly Webster]

Until her reached her spine, and then A signal goes back, more proteins bumping into each other, interacting, signaling. Move. Move your hand, move your hand back down her arm. All in a split second. And suddenly it just seemed impossible.

[Narosha Marugin]

When we think about a protein, proteins have a very specific shape, and that shape determines their function. So when you think of a cell doing what it needs to do, on the surface of a cell, there are other proteins, which is what we call receptors. And those receptors have a shape to them, and for them to interact, there needs to be a physical interaction of that protein into the receptor.

[Molly Webster]

Yeah, there's. There's this shorthand that we use for talking about biology, which is that a lock and a key go together, and that, like, makes things happen in the cell.

[Narosha Marugin]

Correct.

[Molly Webster]

So. So something. So like, something is a shape and it fits into a whole.

[Narosha Marugin]

It's as simple. That's the fundamental basis of biomolecular interactions. But thinking about all that, for that one specific molecule to find that perfect receptor just seemed like it was too easy.

[Molly Webster]

Really? Yeah, like, wow, this is why you were a better bio student than I was. Because I was like, I don't know. There's a lock, there's a key. Like, one of them is the lock shape, one of them is the key shape. The key goes into the lock. It's just floating along. It finds it.

[Narosha Marugin]

So that's exactly. That's the model that didn't sit well with me. So imagine you're one of those, like, janitors with, like, a big ring of keys. How do you find that right key for the right lock? In that right amount of time to induce signaling, you gotta go through all those keys. You gotta try iterate through random probability and get the right shape in the right space.

[Molly Webster]

Yeah. And with. Also, if you think about, like, the interior of a cell, it's like there's thousands of other proteins and there's. And there's, you know, trash, and there's the nucleus and there's, I don't know, endoplasmic reticulum. There's, like, all sorts of things inside the cell that are between the lock and the key, between the two shapes, like, finding each other.

[Narosha Marugin]

Correct. This is what I was, like, uncomfortable with, is think of that time and think of the probability of you finding your shape in one thousandth of a second.

[Molly Webster]

Damn.

[Narosha Marugin]

It's pretty fast.

[Molly Webster]

It's like the janitor took the ring of keys and just threw it at a lock. And somehow the right key on that ring gets into the lock and, like, it makes it across the space, even though there's so so much in the middle.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah, exactly. And that's just like one interaction. And so if you kind of break it down that way, and that's what I learned in school, things weren't adding up. There's something missing. There had to be something else to induce signaling inside of a cell. So my advanced immunology teacher in grad school, I, after class went up to him and I was like, well, how does that lock and key model make sense? Think of the time and the probability. And I asked him that question and he said, I don't know, but this is how it works. And I'm like, no, but how? Like, you know, I'm that annoying crash student was like, but like, can you tell me a little bit more? Like, where does the time fit in? And he said, this is just the way it is. I don't know how it works. And that, I don't know was enough for me to figure out, maybe I can go find out that I don't know.

[Molly Webster]

As Neurosha kept puzzling this, she thought, maybe there's something in physics, the world where particles are always zipping around really fast, maybe there's something there that could help me out.

[Narosha Marugin]

The gap that I was trying to fill is that how can the chemistry, how can the physical interactions occur so quickly? Why can't we have the same thing but through non physical interactions? So the way that I kind of like picture it is maybe if you had a door with a tap card access versus an actual old school lock and key, you can open the door both ways. Either the proteins can do it, that will take a longer time to do the behavior, or like a wireless tap where you can just kind of put a card against a key receiver and there's a, you know, a signal or a door opens. So, okay, what, what can be faster that cells can use to communicate? What is the fastest signal that we know? Light. It is the fastest modality that exists in our universe. And then you go out or. What I did was went out to research to see if anyone else has asked those questions and what, how and how they test them. And through my research, I found the original papers that showed that biology emits light.

[Molly Webster]

Biology emits light?

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

What Neurosha stumbled into was a weird little corner of biology pioneered by this Russian biologist, Alexander Gurwich. In the 1920s, he did a series of experiments on onion roots to understand how they grow. And I'm going to be real with you. The, the, the original papers in Russian. It was kind of a crazily complicated Experimental setup. But basically in the process of doing these experiments, he made a discovery that seemed to suggest that the onion cells inside the roots were making and light.

[Narosha Marugin]

It was the very first instance that someone thought, hey, biology emits light. That was the first experiment. What we now know is every cell in your body does give off light.

[Molly Webster]

Every cell? Every cell, any kind. Heart cell, liver cell, brain cell, cheek.

[Narosha Marugin]

Cell, skin cell, liver, everything. And the how kind of comes down to the part of the cell that's actually giving off light, which is involved with metabolism. So if anything can metabolize. Plants give off light, Shrimp give off light. Literally everything that is alive emits light.

[Molly Webster]

So I'm glowing right now?

[Narosha Marugin]

You sure are.

[Molly Webster]

You're glowing right now?

[Narosha Marugin]

Absolutely.

[Molly Webster]

Why can't I see it?

[Narosha Marugin]

Because that's a good question.

[Molly Webster]

So finally we get to one.

[Narosha Marugin]

No, that's we physically can't see it. It's because the intensity of light is so weak and, you know, it has to come and go through all this tissue to come outside so that we could see it. And so if you take a cell in a dish, any cell in a dish, it will give off light. And we now know very confidently that it's wavelength specific.

[Molly Webster]

What does that mean?

[Narosha Marugin]

Different rates of metabolism will induce different wavelengths of light. So different colors.

[Molly Webster]

So not only am I emitting light, or cells are emitting light, they could be emitting light of different color. Correct. Wait a second. So when my friends try and like drag me down to get my aura red, is that this?

[Narosha Marugin]

So the intensity of light is definitely not as bright as some of the aura pictographs that you might see. Okay. For us to detect it, we have to have an ultra dark room and use these high sensitive detectors to even detect one photon.

[Molly Webster]

Okay. So if I'm a cell and I'm giving off light, and maybe we have to pick a specific cell. I don't know. How does that actually work?

[Narosha Marugin]

So let's dig into that a little bit. We know that light gets emitted from cells. The question now is, where exactly is it coming from? That's the question that I get all the time. What's the mechanism? My hypothesis is that most of it kind of comes down to the mitochondria.

[Molly Webster]

So you probably know this. One of the structures inside the cell is the mitochondria. It looks like a microscopic kidney bean with tiny little folds inside of it. And it is often called the powerhouse of the cell. Pay Internet. It creates all of the energy that makes us run. So that's neurons firing, muscles contracting, bodies working it all comes from the mitochondria. And the way that works is molecules will pass electrons back and forth to each other all along the inner folds. And that process of passing releases energy.

[Narosha Marugin]

So in that process, the electron goes from a high energy all the way down to a low energy state is.

[Molly Webster]

Like a high energy electron, like a kid with a lot of sugar. And then like a low energy electron is like when they. They come down off the sugar.

[Narosha Marugin]

That's one way to look at it. Yes. Yeah. So during that hop, it releases energy, which is light.

[Molly Webster]

Hmm. That this part is, like the juicy part. So you're saying that, I don't know, we're giving off life because we're doing fun things with our electrons?

[Narosha Marugin]

Because we're alive.

[Molly Webster]

We're.

[Narosha Marugin]

Because. Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

There are a number of different ideas about where light could be coming from inside the cell. It could be these electrons. It could be a buildup and release of charged particles. It could be something having to do with fatty acids. It could be a combination of things. For Neurosha, she's finding that when she interrupts that electron chain, the light changes.

[Narosha Marugin]

If the electron doesn't make it, there should be no light. Right. That's the logic, and that's what we're starting to find.

[Molly Webster]

Do you have a sense of how many photons a cell is emitting at any moment?

[Narosha Marugin]

Yes. So when we've measured it. So if you take a dish of brain cells from a ratio, if it's just at rest, just doing nothing, really, you probably get around 100 photons a second.

[Molly Webster]

When you add a dish of brain cells, like, how many brain cells?

[Narosha Marugin]

About a million.

[Molly Webster]

So say a million brain cells emitting 100 photons a second. As a group.

[Narosha Marugin]

As a group.

[Molly Webster]

Okay.

[Narosha Marugin]

And then when you activate them, we get signals anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 photons a second.

[Molly Webster]

Okay. Okay, wait. I got really lost in an image of, like, the mitochondria just releasing, like, fireworks all the time. Like, I was like, oh, these little cells are popping off. It's like after a baseball game on the Fourth of July.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah, that's probably accurate.

[Molly Webster]

And is it that light that I might potentially be seeing if I had an amazingly dark space?

[Narosha Marugin]

That's exactly it. Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

Okay. Why did I not learn about this?

[Narosha Marugin]

That's an excellent question. That's something that I would like to change. I think there's a lot of resistance to trying to understand this. About, like, 10 years ago, when I first started this stuff, I had my first backlash when I presented this as a graduate student. At a conference. Oh, it was awful.

[Molly Webster]

Wait, what happened?

[Narosha Marugin]

I presented our first because I was really excited about this. So I wanted to incorporate this into my graduate thesis. And oh, boy, did I get it. Oh, this is noise. This is not science. You're going to jeopardize your career. Stop this. Go back into cell biology.

[Molly Webster]

I wonder if some of it is like, people have been like, that's bullshit. Because it's like, we've already talked about auras. I could imagine, like, a lot of folks being like, no, this isn't legit.

[Narosha Marugin]

I think there's a lot of that. But within the last decade, it's not just me, there's several other researchers across the globe. So now there's an acceptance of, okay, we'll believe it. There's light coming off of biology. Now, the resistance is, okay, we accept that there's light coming off, but it's noise, it's not meaningful. Light that's used in biology. So what I'm looking into now is, okay, light's being generated from the mitochondria. Does that light carry some form of information that the cell can use to do what it needs to do?

[Molly Webster]

Is it purposeful and then being utilized by the body?

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah. So I was thinking, okay, we're sitting in a bath of light that's coming from this big ball of fire which we call the sun. Does this light have any impact on our physiology? Like, you know, okay, before I understand internal light, what does external light do?

[Molly Webster]

I see, you were just like, how are we interacting with external light? Does any of that apply to the internal. To the internal light we're making?

[Narosha Marugin]

The light's the same, the photon is the same. For example, there are these proteins called opsins in your eyes that help convert different wavelengths of light that help regulate circadian rhythms.

[Molly Webster]

I guess that makes sense to me because the eyeball is a light sensing organ. Light sensing organ. And so it senses light. But that's where my light interaction, like, shuts down. And you're sounds like you're saying there's more light interactions happening.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah, I mean, if you go to any literature, the first thing that will come up is vitamin D synthesis. Is that, okay, the sun hits your skin and your skin processes vitamin D. And, you know, that does a lot of things for metabolism.

[Molly Webster]

So you're saying, like, my skin is working with the sun?

[Narosha Marugin]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[Molly Webster]

So, like, sun hits me.

[Narosha Marugin]

Correct.

[Molly Webster]

And then what does my body do?

[Narosha Marugin]

The vitamin D precursors absorb a certain wavelength from the sun.

[Molly Webster]

They're absorbing wavelengths.

[Narosha Marugin]

There's wavelength, yeah. There's information in that light and they convert shape. That shape is what we can absorb.

[Molly Webster]

Oh, my God. I never thought of us as so plant.

[Narosha Marugin]

Like, yeah, yeah, we are. We are essentially like energetic converters converting sunlight into energy for our life.

[Molly Webster]

Wait, is that the only direct interaction I have with the wavelengths from the sun that I'm like, actively converting?

[Narosha Marugin]

No, we have light receptors in our brain.

[Molly Webster]

Seems so dark in there.

[Narosha Marugin]

Exactly. Our pigment cells, like, you know, the melanocytes, hemoglobin that carries the oxygen within your red blood cell, absorbs light. Okay, there are a lot more. And we're starting to see more and more as, as people start to look at interactions with light, we can see that molecules have inherent abilities to absorb light.

[Molly Webster]

We as creatures have evolved with the sun for so long that there are many, many elements of our cells that are able to absorb light. And so now the question is, if that's the case, could the light coming from inside of our cells also be absorbed? Could it be used purposefully to trigger some processes in us?

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah, that's a good question. And we don't know. My hypothesis is that the cell generating light is purposeful, but we don't have the evidence to strongly say yes or no.

[Molly Webster]

Interesting. So we really are in a lot of theoretical ideas. Once we get beyond the revelation, which will be a revelation to a lot of people, that biological material cells, me, you are emitting light, then a lot of the questions that come after that of, like, how, why, when?

[Narosha Marugin]

What does it mean?

[Molly Webster]

What does it mean? That's tbd.

[Narosha Marugin]

Those are all next steps. So I think, yeah, there's some, like, a lot more questions to be asked.

[Molly Webster]

Coming up, Neurosha tries to find out what the light inside our bodies might be doing. Like, what are those little photons up to? The cellular fireworks continue after the break.

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[Lulu Miller]

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[Molly Webster]

Hey, I'm Molly Webster. We are back. We're stepping into a world of questions. And one of the first ones Neurosha wants to tackle is how what seems like a cellular fireworks show might actually be more like a laser or something.

[Narosha Marugin]

I mean, and then the next question, if this light that's coming off of these mitochondria, if it's purposeful, how is it getting from point A to point B in the cell?

[Molly Webster]

Like if there's a purpose to the light and it's, it's directed and it's directed, it's a sentinel of information. Like, I don't know, isn't it a photon? Don't they just flow through things when.

[Narosha Marugin]

It'S like photon scatter?

[Molly Webster]

Right.

[Narosha Marugin]

So like photons, when it gets released, it's not like I'm going this direction.

[Molly Webster]

It'Ll be scattered, I'm not going north, I'm just an explosion of photons.

[Narosha Marugin]

And if, if we are going to say that it's purposeful, it needs to be guided into a destination.

[Molly Webster]

So then your question is how does it get from A to B without going off course in a photon like manner?

[Narosha Marugin]

Correct. And like, what is the biology that would support that? And there is some evidence suggesting that maybe the cytoskeleton is a means to guide photons.

[Molly Webster]

What's that?

[Narosha Marugin]

Cytoskeleton? Yeah, it's the skeleton, the scaffolding of the cell.

[Molly Webster]

Okay.

[Narosha Marugin]

It's specifically made up of various proteins. And the one of our interest within this scaffold is called microtubules that form in a long rod like structure. They're the ones that help create that shape of the cell.

[Molly Webster]

So every cell is filled with individual little tubules, little rods that are help giving it its shape.

[Narosha Marugin]

Little rods.

[Molly Webster]

And your question was, do those things suck up some of the light?

[Narosha Marugin]

Correct. Because if you look at images of a cell, you can actually see mitochondria really, really close to these cytoskeletal rods and they get moved along the cytoskeleton like little train tracks to physically move within cells.

[Molly Webster]

Oh, mitochondria themselves will attach onto these microtubules and move around.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yes. I mean, and that's how things move within the cell. It's not just like random blobs floating around.

[Molly Webster]

I don't know. I mean, it sounded like everything was floating. There's a little tram system that's inside the cell.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

That's so cute. And like, things hop on and off. Okay.

[Narosha Marugin]

Exactly. They're called kinesins and dinesins, but.

[Molly Webster]

I'm going to stick with tram.

[Narosha Marugin]

Sure. But so, you know, if the mitochondria are in close proximity to these railway tracks or these. These microtubules, the light that's being emitted could be absorbed by that microtubule and be propagated down that. That tract like a fiber optic cable. Huh. And so what we're testing right now is a series of experiments to see if the microtubule is that biological fiber optic cable.

[Molly Webster]

Okay, but do you have any proof thus far that that light is not just being cast off like fireworks into the cellular night, that it is actually being moved from an A to a B?

[Narosha Marugin]

We are working on that currently, right now. But we do have strong evidence to show that the light that's being generated from. From neural cells, your brain cells, they are not random, that they are tied to purposeful activity of those neurons.

[Molly Webster]

So when there's activity in the brain, there's light in the brain?

[Narosha Marugin]

That's correct.

[Molly Webster]

I mean, do you have any hypotheses of, like, what information light might be carrying inside the brain?

[Narosha Marugin]

Well, it's the same. I. It's the same kind of question. We can. What kind of information does electricity carry?

[Molly Webster]

I don't know, Roshan. I just ask the questions. I'm not.

[Narosha Marugin]

No, no. But the information in this case is that the fact that, you know, maybe the wavelength, the. The. The oscillations of these light, the fact that they. They could carry biological information itself would be meaningful because if you look into your brain, between your two brain cells or, you know, things that carry information in from one part of your brain to the other, we call that the white matter or the axons. The white matter we're starting to see can carry photons. So maybe each of those bundles of nerves act like a fiber optic cable. And the same fiber optic cable that we see in telecommunication, they carry pulses of light that, you know, that we use to carry information. Why can't our brain do that.

[Molly Webster]

Hmm. And this could be like memories. Is it like signals, A thought?

[Narosha Marugin]

Why can't a thought be transported in the form of light? And it kind of, you know, if we're really thinking far ahead, are these photons involved in trying to help us understand consciousness? Oh.

[Molly Webster]

There'S honestly so much about this world of light inside the body that we don't know yet. Some of the researchers describe this field as risky. Like, it could all add up to nothing. But if they're right, it could change everything, or at least a lot of things for Neurosha, even if she doesn't know what the purpose of the light is inside the body, like, even if there isn't one, it might have a purpose for us outside the body.

[Narosha Marugin]

What myself and a few other people are doing is the photons are there. Can we use it to discriminate between things? If they're at the very least tied to metabolism, are they photonic biomarkers?

[Molly Webster]

Like, can I say, I know that's a heart. I know that's a tumor.

[Narosha Marugin]

Exactly.

[Molly Webster]

I know that's a kidney.

[Narosha Marugin]

That's it. At the very least, can we do that? And so what I'm trying to do is use that for cancer. So for cancer use, we know that cancer have dysfunctional mitochondria or non normal. So from there, can you imagine if, when, at the very beginning, inception, we can pick up that early change as soon as they happen, as soon as they're different from their healthy counterparts. If we can pick up that using photons, that means we can pick up cancer as early as the inception point. We don't need to have an accumulation of molecules and mutations. We don't have to wait that long.

[Molly Webster]

Yeah, you need like a whole tumor.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah. You need a sizable mass basically, to.

[Molly Webster]

Say, oh, hey, your body's growing cancer.

[Narosha Marugin]

Right.

[Molly Webster]

I guess the question then is, is there a significant difference between the photon release in cancer cells versus other cells?

[Narosha Marugin]

Yes. And we've shown that and we've published that they have two different light signatures.

[Molly Webster]

So with the light coming off cancer, you guys are actually diagnosing cancer earlier?

[Narosha Marugin]

Yes. Yes. With confidence, I can say as we've published papers on this now, so we can tell whether there is cancer within an animal as early as that we've injected it. So in these experiments, we'll take a rat and we have injected underneath its skin, melanoma, and on day one, after injection. And we did this in a double blind way where a grad student has come with detectors to look at animals that were injected Versus not injected. You can tell within day one there's something. There's cancer there.

[Molly Webster]

Wow. So even if it's like. Even if the light was not biologically purposeful, you're thinking maybe it could still be diagnostically useful. So it's like, basically, we've walked through. I'm just gonna make you say it again, but, you know, you've, like, walked through brain cells that let out photons, tumor cells that let out photons, normal body cells that let out photons. You're saying everybody, every cell that you've looked at is letting off photons.

[Narosha Marugin]

Absolutely. And there was a paper that was published that showed that you can tell when an animal is alive and dead just by looking at their photon signatures.

[Molly Webster]

Oh, my God. This is the question I want to ask you.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

Like, when does the light start? And then does it truly go away?

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah. So in that paper, they. I think they're. The initial study was to just look at these different kinds of detectors when an animal was alive and dead. And the photon signatures obviously dissipate when the animal dies. What that study didn't look at, which you alluded to, is when. When in that timescale does this signature end? And that would be really cool. When does the glow stop? When you're. When you're. When you're dead. For example, in, like, hospice care, people report this death flash.

[Molly Webster]

What's that?

[Narosha Marugin]

I originally heard about this when I went to a consciousness conference, and there was this cardiothoracic surgeon. He would say that, you know, he's seen it, or his. His staff in the OR has seen this, like, very sudden flash of light. And I'm like, you have, like. Or lights everywhere. Like, how. That's where I initially heard it. And I, like, looked into it a little bit. And there's hospice nurses that have anecdotally mentioned this. Like.

[Molly Webster]

Like a surgeon's just saying, just for the purpose of surgery, where we stop a heart and start a heart, there's like, an electric explosion of light.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Molly Webster]

No, yeah.

[Narosha Marugin]

These are reports. Are there any experimental evidence? I'm not sure. They're anesthesiologists.

[Molly Webster]

Why would there be a big explosion of light you could suddenly see.

[Narosha Marugin]

I don't have the scientific evidence for this, but.

[Molly Webster]

No, yeah, you clearly. Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, what my. I don't know how to solve that at all.

[Narosha Marugin]

Well, when. When things die, there is a sudden release of these electrons. They're not being propagated into certain proteins. Right. These electrons have nowhere to Go. And so when you have high energy, photons dissipating releases light. So that's my hypothesis.

[Molly Webster]

Wow.

[Narosha Marugin]

When the system. Yeah, it goes back to, like, physics, when there's no organization from biology, that energy has to go somewhere.

[Molly Webster]

The energy has to go somewhere, so it just is released. It is the fireworks that I've been talking about.

[Narosha Marugin]

I think so. I think biology, these biomolecules, the membrane, all of these stuff inside of cells help organize that energy into meaningful process. So that's why I was saying way back when, our beginning of our conversation is when we reframe our understanding of cells being these energetic bodies, I think the physical dimension makes a lot more sense.

[Molly Webster]

Hmm. Do we have any idea of when, like, the light first turns on?

[Narosha Marugin]

Well, there's a. There's a really cool video that I can send to you where someone showed us the life flash. As soon as a sperm enters the egg, there's a huge calcium influx. Have you seen that video?

[Molly Webster]

No.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

Wait, can I see this video?

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Molly Webster]

You think it's just around.

[Narosha Marugin]

You should be able to Google it. Type in, I don't know, calcium life flash.

[Molly Webster]

Let's try. I'm getting so excited. Watch fireworks explode when a human egg is fertilized. All right, I'm hitting play. It's stat news, so I believe it. What? Whoa.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

It is like an. It's like a. There's like a round egg, and then the sperm is at the edge, and then you just see kind of this explosion come off the surface.

[Narosha Marugin]

A flash? Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

Wow. I mean, it is really crazy because literally, after we have this conversation, I'm going down to South Carolina where my dad is in hospice, like, near the end of his life. And you do have all these questions about just, like, what's happening, what's unfolding, like a notion that. I mean, I'm sure I'm not gonna see, like, a flash of light happen. I mean, I'll keep my eyes peeled, but, you know, just like, the notion of, like, a signal out into the world, like, that's so visual, even if we can't really see it. But, like, light is so meaningful to us, you know, that it could. That, like, it is a signature of us and that it's like a final salute or something.

[Narosha Marugin]

You're letting the energy that was patterned into this architecture, that we are out back to be transformed into something else.

[Molly Webster]

Yeah, it's like. Yeah, it's really pretty.

[Narosha Marugin]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Molly Webster]

Thank you To Neurosha Marugin. You can find her at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. This episode was produced by Sara Kari with help from me. It was fact checked by Natalie Middleton. For those of you who are going to go check out that Life Flash video, one thing to note, you're going to see a big flash of light in the video that is not the biophotons. That is a fluorescent dye that researchers added to the experiment so they could see it better. But beneath that die. The thing that it's very much illuminating is a very quiet, gentle light. And I'd like to dedicate this episode to my dad. I did not see a flash of light. I certainly felt one. I'm going to miss you Pops. Thanks for always listening. This is Radiolab. We will be back next week.

[Bridget]

Hi, I'm Bridget and I'm in Chatham Strait in Southeast East Alaska on a fishing boat and here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrads and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of Sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Rebecca Lacks, Maria Paz, Gutierrez, Sindhu Nanasambadam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Car, Sarah Sandak, Anise Fietz, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, Jessica Young, with help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anab Pujol, Matini, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Celeste calling from Utah. Leadership support for Radiolabs science programming is provided by the Simons foundation and the John Temple Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

[Radiolab Announcer]

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[Narosha Marugin]

Thanks.

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[Molly Webster]

How can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs. Huh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this? Yeah, I do.

[Narosha Marugin]

Now, where did I put my keys?

[Molly Webster]

You will find them where you left them.

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