221

Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics, 3(34), 221236 (2012)

2151-8017/12/$35.00 2012 by Begell House, Inc.
Super-Conducting Liquid Crystalline Water
Aligned with Collagen Fibres in the Fascia as
Acupuncture Meridians of Traditional Chinese
Medicine
Mae-Wan Ho*
Institute of Science in Society, 29 Tytherton Road, London N19 4PZ, UK; m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk
ABSTRACT: New evidence indicates that hydrogen is quantum delocalized between neighboring water mol-
ecules even in the liquid state, predisposing water to proton conduction, especially in conined nanospaces; water
nanotubes aligned by collagen ibers fulill all the criteria for proton superconduction, making them excellent
candidates for the meridians of traditional Chinese medicine, as irst proposed 15 years ago.
KEY WORDS: quantum coherence, liquid crystalline water, meridians, collagen, proton conduction
ABBREVIATIONS: CD: coherence domain; EZ: exclusion zone; PEM: Proton exchange membrane
I. INTRODUCTION
More than 20 years ago, I peered down a
polarizing light microscope and saw a rainbow
dancing in a worm. It took a while to deci-
pher the meaning of that vision. Typically,
colors are generated by birefringent crystals
such as quartz with ordered arrangement of
atoms, or liquid crystals with regular align-
ment of electrically polarized molecules. Bire-
fringent crystals split plane-polarized white
lightcontaining all the frequencies in the
visible spectrum from red to violetinto two
orthogonally oriented rays, one propagating
more slowly than the other. When the two
rays are recombined with a second polarizer
(analyzer), the two rays interfere, and that is
how colors are generated. In order to amplify
the effect, a full wave platethe wavelength
of green lightis added, hence the character-
istic pink background (Fig. 1).
Because the expert in charge of the polar-
izing microscope was on leave, my colleague
Michael Lawrence and I stumbled on a new
setting that is especially good for viewing bio-
logical liquid crystals. Instead of positioning
the vibrating directions of the wave plate at
the usual 45 deg to the polarizers, we placed
it at a small angle of 7.5 deg (Fig. 2).
13
The rainbow in the worm means that
organisms are liquid crystalline and coherent
to a high degree, even quantum coherent. This
means that the entire organism is electrically
polarized from head to tail, like a single uni-
axial crystal. Not only are the macromolecules
in all the tissues and cells perfectly aligned,
but also the 80% by weight of water. Actually,
it is the water that makes the entire organ-
ism liquid crystalline because this water is
liquid crystalline, in the sense that the indi-
vidual molecules are ordered and electrically
Ho 222
Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
aligned, much more so than in bulk water.
Above all, in order to see the rainbow colors
in the living organism, the liquid crystalline
molecules not only have to be aligned, but
also moving coherently, macromolecules and
water molecules together. Because coherent
molecular motions are much slower than vis-
ible light vibrations, the ordered alignment
of molecules will still be registered by the
light passing through. The most active parts
are always the brightest, indicating that the
molecular motions are the most coherent. The
effect is similar to sharp images of fast-moving
objects captured on the briefest exposures
using a very sensitive camera. In other words,
the color images of live organisms are direct
evidence of coherent molecular motions in the
organism, which would have been impossible
without the liquid crystalline water.
The liquid crystalline living water enables
FIG. 1: Polarizing light microscope (left) and birefringence (right)
FIG. 2: The new setting stumbled on (left) that is especially good for biological liquid crystals
Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians 223
Volume 3, Number 34, 2012
macromolecules to function as quantum molec-
ular machines that transfer and transform
energy at close to 100% eficiency. If not for
that, life would be impossible. The archetypal
quantum molecular energy machine is the
enzyme. Enzymes speed up chemical reactions
in organisms by a factor of 10
10
10
23
, and they
cannot do that without water, although the
role of water is still hardly recognized in the
conventional biochemical community.
4
Water
gives lexibility to proteins, reduces the energy
barrier between reactants and products, and
increases the probability of quantum tunnel-
ing by a transient compression of the energy
barrier.
5
The rainbow worm was the immediate
inspiration for my book, The Rainbow and
the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, irst
published in 1993 and now in its third 2008
edition.
6
It presents empirical evidence and
theoretical arguments in support of the idea
that the organism is quantum coherent, and
that liquid crystalline water plays the lead
in creating and maintaining the coherence
of organisms.
II. LIQUID CRYSTALLINE WATER
MERIDIAN PROPOSED
The rainbow worm tells us that a liquid crys-
talline continuum extends without interrup-
tion throughout the extracellular matrix to
the interior of every single cell.
6
Soon after
our discovery, I suspected it might be the key
to the rapid intercommunication within the
body that enables organisms to function as
perfectly coordinated wholes. Moreover, this
liquid crystalline continuum may also be the
basis of all forms of subtle energy medicine,
as Jim Oschman had proposed in his idea of
the living matrix that responds to touch
and massage.
7
In 1998, I published an article with David
Knight, the abstract of which stated:
8
We
propose that the acupuncture system and the
DC body ield detected by western scientists
both inhere in the continuum of liquid crys-
talline collagen ibers that make up the bulk
of the connective tissues. Bound water layers
on the collagen ibers provide proton conduc-
tion pathways for rapid intercommunication
throughout the body, enabling the organism
to function as a coherent whole. This liquid
crystalline continuum mediates hyperreactiv-
ity to allergens and the bodys responsiveness
to different forms of subtle energy medicine.
It constitutes a body consciousness working
in tandem with the brain consciousness of
the nervous system. We review supporting
evidence from biochemistry, cell biology,
biophysics, and neurophysiology, and suggest
experiments to test our hypothesis.
I have reviewed recent evidence on how liv-
ing crystalline water embodies and generates
the DC ield present in all living organisms
elsewhere.
9
The more speciic proposalthat
water aligned with collagen ibers is the ana-
tomical and functional basis of the acupunc-
ture meridiansis also very much alive.
10
Acupuncture was irst recorded in the
4700-year-old Huan Di Nei Jing, said to be
the oldest medical textbook in the world,
and written down from even earlier theories
by Shen Nung, the father of Chinese medi-
cine. Shen Nung proposed that the body had
an energy qi,
11
the low of which inluences
a persons health in combination with the
balance of yin and yang. If the low of qi is
insuficient, unbalanced, or interrupted, yin
and yang become unbalanced, and illness
may occur. Qi travels throughout the body
along meridians. There are 14 main meridians
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Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
running vertically up and down the surface
of the body (Fig. 3). Acupuncture meridians
tend to be located along connective tissue
planes between muscles, or between a muscle
and bone or tendon. Acupuncture restores
the balance by treating speciic acupuncture
points, locations where the meridians come to
the surface of the skin, and are easily acces-
sible by acupuncture needling, moxibustion,
and acupressure.
Measurements of DC skin conductance or
impedance showed that acupuncture points
and meridians have distinctive electrical prop-
erties compared to the surrounding skin. It has
been claimed that acupuncture points usually
have impedance lower by a factor of 10100,
and acupuncture meridians have character-
istics similar to electrical transmission lines
(reviewed elsewhere
8
). These claims have not
been borne out by more recent measurements.
Ultrasound imaging found that 80% of
acupuncture points and 50% of meridian
intersections of the arm appeared to coincide
with intermuscular or intramuscular con-
nective tissue planes,
12
whereas impedances
measured at 10 and 100 kHz over three body
sites, i.e., upper arm (large Intestine merid-
ian), thigh (liver), and lower leg (bladder),
found small but signiicantly reduced electrical
impedance at the large intestine meridian,
but not at the other meridians. Collagenous
bands, associated by increased ultrasound
echogenicity, were thought to be associated
with lower electrical impedance at acupunc-
ture meridians.
13
However, measurements
carried out by another research team using
different instrumentation on a further set of
three acupuncture points, each matched by a
nearby meridian point and off-meridian point,
did not ind signiicantly lower impedance
values at acupuncture points compared to
the other points, nor were there signiicantly
lower values at meridian points compared to
off-meridian points.
14
Reliable measurements of skin imped-
ance are not easy to obtain, and the precise
interpretation of skin impedance is unclear.
15

It is known, for example, that the amount of
adipose tissue in the skin will increase imped-
ance values,
16
since fat is nonconducting. As
far as I know, our original proposal is the
only one that focuses on the liquid crystalline
water structured with the collagen ibers in
the connective tissue, rather than collagen
itself, or the connective tissue as such.
Many new and important indings on the
liquid crystalline water have emerged since
the third edition of Ref. 6, and I was inspired
to write a sequel, Living Rainbow H2O.
17
The
FIG. 3: The urinary bladder meridian, one of 14 in tra-
ditional Chinese medicine
Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians 225
Volume 3, Number 34, 2012
new book is my own synthesis of recent ind-
ings in the quantum physics and chemistry of
water that tell you why it is so it for life. It
tells you why water is the means, medium,
and message of life, and also contains much
that is relevant for updating the liquid crys-
talline water meridian hypothesis. I shall
describe these and other indings that have
appeared or come to my attention since my
new book was published.
III. WATER IS WEIRD AND WONDERFULLY
FIT FOR LIFE
To begin, the water molecule is a dipole with
separated positive and negative charges asso-
ciated with the oxygen and the two hydrogen
atoms, respectively, so it can engage in dipole
interactions with other molecules of water
or other dipoles. However, it seems to prefer
to hydrogen bond whenever possible, where
the hydrogen atom of one molecule is shared
between two oxygen atoms in neighboring
molecules. The favored coniguration is a
tetrahedron in which a molecule accepts two
hydrogen atoms and donates two hydrogen
atoms to neighboring molecules. It is esti-
mated that at ordinary temperatures and
pressures, over 90% of the water molecules
are hydrogen bonded, although the hydrogen
bonds licker on and off randomly in a matter
of picoseconds.
Water is notorious for anomalous properties due
to its propensity to form hydrogen bonds (Table 1).
18

And the same anomalies are widely regarded as pre-
cisely the qualities that make water it and essential
for life.
IV. QUANTUM DELOCALIZATION OF
HYDROGEN BOND
The key to waters remarkable properties is
the hydrogen bond interconnecting water mol-
ecules, which is usually regarded as classical
and electrostatic; but that is contradicted by
many observations.
The Nobel laureate chemist Linus Pauling
(19011994) was the irst to suggest in 1935
that the hydrogen bond and covalent bond
in ice may switch places in view of residual
entropy (randomness) existing even at very
low temperatures,
19
and thus, the hydrogen
bond must be at least partly covalent. In
1999, researchers at Bell Labs New Jersey,
TABLE 1: Major anomalies of water
Neighbors of oxygen form gases with hydrogen at ordinary temperatures and pressures,
but water boils at 100C
Other liquids increase in density on becoming solid, but ice is lighter than water and
oats on it, most fortunately for sh and other aquatic inhabitants
Liquid water can be supercooled below 0C without freezing, but on heating, the super-
cooled liquid does not expand like other liquids; instead it contracts to a maximum
density at about 4C
Waters compressibility atypically decreases with increasing temperature, reaching a
minimum at about 46.5C
At ordinary temperatures below 35C, increasing pressure results in decreased viscosity,
again at odds with other liquids
Ho 226
Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
the European Synchrotron Radiation Facil-
ity of Grenoble in France, and the National
Research Council of Canada in Ottawa teamed
up to study the hydrogen bond in ordinary
ice Ih with inelastic X-ray scattering at the
Grenoble facility.
20
Beams of X-rays are
bounced off electrons so both the energy of
the electron and the X-ray are changed. The
team investigated the intensity of scatter-
ing as a function of energy or momentum
(Compton proile) at different orientations of
a carefully prepared slab of ice. They found
that the results were in good agreement with
the predictions based on a fully quantum
mechanical model, while predictions based on
the classical electrostatic model did not agree
with the data at all. Not only do electrons
of the hydrogen bonds fail to conform to the
classical electrostatic model, the protons also
are quantum mechanical.
Researchers at the FOM Institute for
Atomic and Molecular Physics in the Neth-
erlands used ultrafast femtosecond pulses of
infrared light to excite and probe the O-H
covalent bond vibration in liquid water.
21
The
absorption spectrum obtained was reproduced
by quantum mechanical calculation of the
vibrational wave functions, and not by cal-
culations based on the classical electrostatic
model. In other words, the excited proton can
be found simultaneouslydelocalizedat the
O-H bond distance from either of two neighbor-
ing oxygen atoms (belonging to two different
water molecules). This delocalization increases
the probability of proton transfer. The energy
of excitation to the delocalized state is <20%
of the O-H bond energy. The results show
that liquid water has quantum properties,
and may even be quantum coherent.
V. QUANTUM COHERENT WATER MAKES
LIFE ON EARTH
Standard quantum theory does not predict
quantum coherence for liquid water, largely
because it ignores both quantum luctuations
and the interaction between matter and elec-
tromagnetic ield; these are only taken into
account in the quantum electrodynamics ield
theory. But the conventional quantum electro-
dynamics ield theory applies only to gases.
Theoretical physicists Giuliano Preparata
(19422000), Emilio Del Giudice, and col-
leagues at the University of Milan in Italy
extended conventional quantum electrody-
namics theory to the condensed phase of
liquids; they showed that the interaction
between the vacuum electromagnetic ield
and the liquid water induces the formation
of large, stable coherent domains (CDs) of
about 100 nm in diameter at ordinary tem-
perature and pressure, and these CDs may
be responsible for all the special properties of
water, including life itself.
2226
In particular,
the propensity to form tetrahedrally directed
hydrogen bonds is a consequence of the excited
state of water in the coherent domains that
would not happen otherwise.
The CD is a resonating cavity produced by
the electromagnetic ield that ends up trap-
ping the ield because the photon acquires an
imaginary mass, so the frequency of the CD
electromagnetic ield becomes much smaller
than the frequency of the free ield with the
same wavelength. (Another way to think about
this is in terms of photons in liquid water,
which would have much lower frequencies
for the same wavelengths as photons in free
space.)
Under ambient conditions, water is an
approximately equal mixture of coherent
Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians 227
Volume 3, Number 34, 2012
domains surrounded by incoherent regions.
This picture, according to Del Giudice and
colleagues, is relected in the many observa-
tions supporting a two-state model of liquid
water.
27
(It is more accurate to say that liq-
uid water is in a quantum coherent state in
which the molecules dance rapidly between
two conigurations.)
The really special thing about water is
that the coherent oscillation occurs between
the ground state and an excited state at 12.06
eV, just below the ionizing threshold of water
at 12.60 eV. In liquid water, the CD of about
100 nm in diameter contains millions of water
molecules, and hence some millions of almost
free electronsforming a plasmathat can
be readily donated to electron acceptors.
I said that water is the means of lifewhy?
Because it is water that fuels the dynamo
of life; water is the basis of the energy
metabolism that powers all living processes,
the chemistry and the electricity of life. The
abundant life on Earth, including the human
species, depends ultimately on photosynthesis
in green plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. In
the process, the energy of sunlight is trapped
by chlorophyll (the green pigment in chloro-
plasts) to split water into hydrogen, electrons,
and oxygen [Eq. (1)], giving life access to an
enormous energy source, and perhaps more
importantly, liberating oxygen for the evolu-
tion of air-breathing organisms that illed the
earth with teaming millions of species.
H
2
O 2 H
+
+ 2 e

+ O (1)
Equation (1) says it all. The hydrogen
ion (protons) and electrons go to reduce (or
ix) carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, and
biomass of photosynthetic organisms, which
serve as food for herbivores, and down the
food web to include the vast majority of ani-
mal species. The air breathers break down
carbohydrates with oxygen in the mitochon-
dria of cells to obtain energy for growth and
reproduction, regenerating carbon dioxide
and water. This completes the living dynamo
of photosynthesis and respiration, the magic
roundabout that turns inanimate substances
into living organisms. However, it takes lots
of energy to split water, 12.6 eV, to be pre-
cise, and requires an energetic photon in the
soft X-ray region that would destroy life, and
is not what green plants and cyanobacteria
use. For photosynthesis, they use mainly red
and to some extent blue light in the visible
spectrum.
More than 50 years ago, Nobel Laure-
ate Albert Szent-Gyrgyi, the father of bio-
chemistry, already suggested
28
that water at
interfaces is the key to life. He proposed that
water at interfaces such as membranes is in
the excited state, and hence requires consid-
erably less energy to split than water in the
ground state. A sign of the excited water is
that a voltage should appear at the boundary
between interfacial water and bulk water,
which was indeed observed. This property of
water enables energy transfer to take place
in living organisms. Most if not all water in
living organisms is interfacial water, since it
is almost never further away from surfaces
such as membranes or macromolecules than
a fraction of a micron.
A vivid demonstration of interfacial water
was achieved by the Gerald Pollacks research
team at the University of Washington.
29,30

Using a hydrophilic gel and a suspension
of microspheres just visible to the eye, they
created interfacial water apparently tens of
microns or even hundreds of microns thick
on the surface of the gel, which excludes the
microspheres as well as other solutes such as
proteins and dyes, and hence is referred to
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Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
as an exclusion zone (EZ). EZ water is about
10-fold more viscous than bulk water, it has a
peak of light absorption at 270 nm, and emits
luorescence. Del Giudice and colleagues
23,24
suggest that EZ water is in fact a giant coher-
ent domain stabilized on the surface of the
attractive gel. Inside the cell, the EZ would
form on surfaces of membranes and macromol-
ecules, as envisaged by Szent-Gyrgi. Because
the coherent domain is excited water with a
plasma of almost free electrons, it can easily
transfer electrons to molecules on its surface.
The interface between fully coherent inter-
facial water and normal bulk water becomes
a redox pile. In line with this proposal, EZ
water does indeed act as a battery, as Pollacks
research team demonstrated.
31,32
VI. LIQUID CRYSTALLINE WATER AND
THE SUPERCONDUCTING ELECTRIC
CURRENTS OF LIFE
The core chemistry of life is reduction-
oxidation or redox reactions that transfer
electrons between chemical species, and the
movement of electrons is nothing if not an
electric current. However, water electricity is
special in that it also involves the movement
of positive charges associated with protons.
33

Water jump conducts protons down a chain
of water molecules connected by hydrogen
bonds, in which a proton leaps on at one
end of the chain, and a second leaps off at
the other end, while electrons are displaced
in the other direction. Jump conduction is
a form of semiconduction, much faster than
electrical conduction through wires, because
the charge displacements involved are very
short ranged.
Evidence that collagen fibers conduct
electricity, and that this is due to the water
associated with the ibers, goes back to the
1970s. Bardelmeyer,
34
in the Netherlands,
found that electrical conductivity in the bovine
Achilles tendon is fully determined by the
water of hydration, and the electric current
is primarily carried by protons at water con-
tents up to 45%, and by small ions at water
contents beyond 65%. Between water contents
of 8.5 and 126%, conductivity went up by eight
orders of magnitude. He also estimated that
pure waters dissociation constant is 10
5
that
of absorbed water; i.e. adsorbed water is more
likely to let go of protons. Similarly, Naoki
Sasaki in Japan found that the conductivity
of collagen increased markedly with water
absorbedat an exponent of 5.15.4between
a water content of 0.1 and 0.3 g/g,
35
suggest-
ing that continuous chains (of ive or more
ordered water molecules) adsorbed in collagen
enable proton jump conduction to take place.
Another important property of collagen
discovered in the late 1980s is its capacity
for second harmonic generation (SHG), i.e.,
combining photons interacting with it to
form new photons with twice the energy and
therefore double the frequency and half the
wavelength.
36
Since then, in vivo SHG imag-
ing has been widely developed for diagnostic
purposes (Fig. 4).
37
It should be noted that
SHG was previously restricted to crystal-
line material such as quartz. And although
it is clear that SHG in collagen depends on
hydration, there have been very few studies
to elucidate the precise role of water.
A paper
38
submitted to a conference in
2003 reported results of experiments in which
type 1 collagen bundles obtained from rat
tails were structurally modiied by increas-
ing non-enzymatic cross-linking, or thermal
denaturation, or by collagenase digestion,
or dehydration. Although they found that
the hydration state signiicantly affected the
Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians 229
Volume 3, Number 34, 2012
polarization dependence of SHG, there was
little or no change as a result of extensive
structural modiications from cross-linking,
thermal denaturation, or collagenase digestion
short of complete disintegration. These results
strongly suggest that the liquid crystalline
water adsorbed in collagen is the source of
the SHG.
A second paper
39
from a different research
group published in 2005 said, SHG radiates
from the shell of a collagen ibril rather than
from its bulk. The effective thickness of the
SHG shell was strongly dependent on the ionic
strength of the surrounding solution, increas-
ing as ionic strength decreases. However, the
authors have not attributed the SHG shell to
liquid crystalline water.
Some time ago, researchers at Drexel
University, the University of Illinois, and the
Tokyo Institute of Technology demonstrated
for the irst time the formation of structured
water conined in carbon nanotubes <5 nm
in diameter, which was completely different
from the more ordinary looking water con-
ined in larger nanotubes (Fig. 5).
40,41
I sug-
gested that the water conined in the small
nanotubes, being far more ordered, could be
superconducting because jump conduction
could occur simultaneously down multiple
chains of hydrogen-bonded water molecules.
42
Later, Gary Fullerton and colleagues at
Texas University offered a convincing model
of liquid crystalline nanotubes of water
interwoven with the triple-helix molecules
of collagen molecules in the collagen ibers
43

(Fig. 6), which again suggested to me that
such a water structure in the extracellular
matrix could also be superconducting.
44
As you have seen earlier, the proton is
actually in a delocalized quantum state, even
FIG. 4: Second harmonic generation in vivo imaging of collagen, courtesy of Caroline Pehlke, University of Wis-
consin, Madison
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Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
in bulk water under ambient conditions. This
delocalization has now been conirmed for
water conined in nanotubes.
45
Delocalized
protons imply that jump conduction can be
very fast indeed.
VII. SUPERCONDUCTING QUANTUM
COHERENT WATER NANOTUBES
Recently, researchers led by physicist George
Reiter at the University of Houston obtained
direct evidence of both quantum coherence and
proton superconductivity of water conined in
carbon nanotubes and other nanospaces, using
deep neutron inelastic scattering at the ISIS
Facility of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in
Oxford, UK. In this technique, intense beams
of neutrons are ired at the water molecules
and scattered from the nuclei of hydrogen
atoms, i.e., protons, so that both the energy
FIG. 6: Collagen water structure revealed
FIG. 5: Structured water conned in narrow nanotube (right) compared to ordinary water in wide nanotube (left)
Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians 231
Volume 3, Number 34, 2012
of the neutron and the proton is changed. The
momentum of the proton is mainly determined
by the wave function of the protons ground
state (least energetic state). Let me show
you their latest indings on water conined
in nanopores and channels, which are very
similar to those obtained in carbon nanotubes.
Xerogel is a glass sponge with Si-OH (silanol)
groups lining the surface of pores that can form
hydrogen bonds with water. Proton momentum
distribution of the water in the 24 (2.4 nm)
pores at room temperature could be described
as though all the molecules were conined in a
double-well potential. For larger pores of 82 ,
the average momentum distribution was closer
to that of bulk water, though still quite distinct.
46
Two systems similar to xerogel are the
perlurosulphonic acid membranes Naion 1120
and Dow 858. These are ionomers (polymers
consisting of repeats of both electrically neutral units
and a fraction of ionized units, usually no more than
15%), with hydrophobic poly(tetraluoroethylene)
(PTFE) backbones and random side chains
of perluoroether terminating with sulphonic
acids. When hydrated, they exhibit nanophase
separation where water ions exist in domains
a few nanometres in diameter surrounded by
the hydrophobic backbones. The sulphonic acid
group (SO
3
H) donates its proton to water when
there is suficient water in the pores, making
them very good proton conductors. The momen-
tum distribution at room temperature for the
two membranes are dramatic, and corresponds
to a kinetic energy difference compared to bulk
water of +107 meV/proton for Naion and +124
meV/proton for Dow 858 (Fig. 7).
47
That means
the water in the membrane pores is excited
relative to the bulk water.
At a concentration of 14H
2
O/SO
3
H for both
membranes, Dow 858 has a signiicantly higher
conductivity than Naion, consistent with the
greater proton delocalization, judging by the
depth and position of the minimum in the
momentum distribution (Fig. 7).
Thus, confinement leads to excitation
of water and quantum delocalization of the
proton, greatly facilitating proton conduction.
The authors also pointed out,
47
The changes
in the zero-point motion [ground state] of the
protons in conined water, as in living cells
FIG. 7: Proton momentum distribution of proton exchange membranes compared to bulk water; inset, proton
momentum distribution of xerogel (see text)
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Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
can be expected to play a signiicant role in the
energetics of the cells, where typical distances
between components are on the order of 20 .
VIII. SUPERCONDUCTING PROTON
MEMBRANES
Recent work on the structure of proton
exchange membranes (PEMs) sheds further
light on their proton conducting properties.
The chemical structure of Naion combines
a hydrophobic, Telon-like backbone with
hydrophilic ionic side groups. Its structure
when hydrated has been determined recently
to consist of long parallel, but otherwise ran-
domly packed, water channels surrounded by
partially hydrophilic side branches, forming
inverse micelle cylinders (Fig. 8). (Inverse
micelles are formed by detergents with their
hydrophilic ends facing inside and hydro-
phobic ends facing out.) At 20% by volume
of water, the water channels have diameters
between 1.8 and 3.5 nm, with an average of
2.4 nm. Naion crystallites (small crystal struc-
tures) constituting ~10% of the volume, form
cross-links that are crucial for the mechanical
properties of Naion ilms, and are elongated
and parallel to the water channels, with cross
sections of ~5 nm
2
.
Naion ilms have a proton conductivity of
~0.1 S/cm (S, sieman = 1 amp/V), among the
highest in PEMs. (For comparison, the electri-
cal conductivity of copper, one of the highest,
is 596,000 S/cm, that of water 0.00055 S/cm,
and silicon, a semiconductor, 0.156 S/cm.
48
Electrospinning is one technique that
can produce polymer ibers nanometers in
diameter by applying a high-voltage electric
ield to a polymer solution ejecting out of a
metal syringe needle. This has been applied
to make Naion ibers. The high-purity Naion
nanofibers made by electrospinning had
proton conductivity as high as 1.5 S/cm at a
iber diameter of 400 nm. Also, an order of
magnitude increase in humidity sensitivity
was observed in Naion nanoibers compared
to the bulk ilm
49
(Fig. 9).
As shown in Fig. 9, the conductivity of the
Naion ibers increases exponentially as iber diameter
decreases (left graph). The proton conductivities of
the ibers with diameters >2 m is similar to the bulk
Naion ilm (0.1 S/cm). However, when the iber
diameter is <1 m, proton conductivity increases
sharply with decreasing iber diameter and reaches
a value as high as 1.5 S/cm for the 400 nm diameter
nanoiber; at least an order of magnitude higher than
the bulk Naion ilm. Conductivity of the iber also
increases 100-fold as relative humidity rises from 50
to 90% (Fig. 9, right graph); in comparison, conduc-
tivity of the bulk ilm has increased only 10-fold.
FIG. 8: Parallel water channel (inverse micelle cylinder)
model of hydrated Naon; (a) an inverse micelle cylinder
in cross section and longitudinal section; (b) approxi-
mately hexagonal packing of water channels; (c) cross
section through the cylindrical water channels (white)
and the Naon crystallites (black) in the noncrystalline
Naon matrix (gray)
Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians 233
Volume 3, Number 34, 2012
IX. INVERSE MICELLE CHANNELS,
CYTOSKELETON, COLLAGEN FIBERS,
AND ACUPUNCTURE MERIDIANS
The inverse micelle model of Nafion is
especially relevant to the living cell, where
interstices between ibers of the cytoskeleton
and cytoplasmic membranes effectively form
inverse micelle nanospaces and channels that
are now known to drastically alter enzyme/
substrate relationships and enzyme activity
compared to bulk phase thermodynamic mod-
els that still dominate conventional cell biology
(see Chapter 18 of Ref. 17). The model may be
even more relevant to the connective tissue
collagen ibers interwoven with nanotubes of
water, most likely the anatomical correlates
of the acupuncture meridians of traditional
Chinese medicine. It would be a simple mat-
ter to measure the proton conductivity of
single collagen ibrils for a start. I predict it
would be at least as high as the electrospun
Naion ibers.
If our hypothesis is right, acupuncture,
and all forms of subtle energy medicine,
including homeopathy and other traditional
healing practices, may have their mechanism
of action mediated via quantum coherent
liquid crystalline water. I should mention
that our hypothesis is fully consistent with
Shui-Yin Los proposal
50
that stable clustered
water forms the meridian system, which was
arrived at independently through a differ-
ent line of enquiry. And the clinical results
reported by many other contributions at the
same conference have been most encouraging
and amazing.
Contemporary Western science may be
just the universal Rosetta stone to unify and
translate between the great medical traditions
of the world, and bring real health and well-
being to all nations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I thank all my colleagues past and present for my
adventures in art and science, especially Julian
Haffegee, Zhou Yu Ming, Michael Lawrence, David
Knight, and Peter Saunders, my life-long fellow
FIG. 9: Conductivity of Naon nanober as a function of diameter (left) and relative humidity (right)
Ho 234
Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
traveler in science without borders.
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