The Light-Cone Event of Human Fertilization

© Courtney Hunt, MD, 2026

Transient coherence between two adult human cells as the physical origin of axis formation, developmental unity, and protection from mosaicism

Human fertilization is usually described as a calcium-driven biochemical activation event. While intracellular calcium oscillations are essential for egg activation, calcium alone does not explain how a single unified organism emerges instead of a collection of partially independent cells. It also does not explain why embryos with apparently normal fertilization and calcium signaling can still develop mosaic outcomes.

This work presents a physics-first framing that integrates developmental biology, quantum biology, and foundational physics. Fertilization is proposed to be a light-class, coherence-dependent boundary event between two adult human cells that collapses into the embryo’s first internal light cone. This collapse establishes developmental unity, locks the body axis, synchronizes early timing, and prevents mosaicism. Calcium and zinc are essential not as initiators, but as propagators and stabilizers of this transition.

Mosaicism defined clearly

In this context, mosaicism refers to the early loss of embryonic unity, in which two or more cell populations arise from divergent early physical, temporal, or signaling states rather than from regulated differentiation within a single global developmental framework. Mosaicism may involve chromosomal heterogeneity, divergent epigenetic states, asynchronous cell-cycle timing, or persistent differences in positional or bioelectric signaling among blastomeres.

Importantly, mosaicism can arise before transcription and overt differentiation, even when fertilization and early cleavage appear morphologically normal. This places its origin upstream of genetics, at the level of early physical coordination and symmetry breaking. Preventing mosaicism therefore requires an early event capable of globally coordinating the embryo before the first division.

Coherence is already established in biology

Transient quantum coherence is already accepted in biological systems at the molecular scale. In photosynthesis, coherent excitonic states bias energy flow through pigment–protein complexes before collapsing into classical chemistry.

In enzymatic hydrogen tunneling, coherence explains reaction kinetics and isotope effects that cannot be predicted by classical models. In magnetoreception, short-lived coherence in radical-pair systems enables biological sensitivity to weak geomagnetic fields.

Across these systems, coherence is short-lived, spatially confined, functionally necessary, and followed by collapse. Biology uses coherence briefly to bias outcomes, then collapses into classical behavior.

Fertilization is the only place coherence must occur between two adult human cells

Fertilization is biologically unique. It is the only event in nature in which two terminally differentiated adult human cells from different bodies and independent causal histories must transiently couple to generate a new autonomous system. Every other example of biological coherence occurs within a single organism. Fertilization alone requires coherence between two adult cells. That makes it the only place where such coherence is not incidental but required.

The IZUMO–JUNO interface as a light-class boundary event

The interaction between sperm-expressed IZUMO1 and oocyte-expressed JUNO is required for fertilization.

Beyond permitting fusion, this interaction creates a highly structured membrane interface characterized by rapid protein conformational change, charge redistribution, dipole alignment, hydration shell collapse, and altered dielectric properties. This constitutes a light-class electromagnetic boundary event involving localized electromagnetic energy redistribution at a membrane interface. Such boundary-localized energy redistribution is where transient coherence is physically plausible.

Coherence, collapse, and the embryonic light cone

Once coherence is achieved, the coupled sperm–oocyte system becomes unstable and must collapse. This collapse terminates coherence and produces a unified bioelectric ground state. This ground state corresponds directly to the embryonic light cone described in the work of Michael Levin.

Prior to collapse, geometry and timing are flexible. After collapse, causality becomes internal, development becomes irreversible, and a single body axis is selected.

This coherence–collapse transition provides a biological instantiation of the requirement articulated by Roger Penrose for nonlocal correlation followed by objective reduction.

Calcium ionomycin shows what calcium can and cannot do

The role of calcium becomes especially clear in experiments using calcium ionophores such as ionomycin. Ionomycin reliably induces intracellular calcium release and can rescue egg activation in cases of fertilization failure. However, multiple studies demonstrate that embryos activated with ionomycin show higher rates of abnormal cleavage, altered developmental timing, and increased mosaicism compared with embryos activated through physiological fertilization pathways.

These findings show that calcium signaling is necessary but not sufficient. Calcium can activate the egg, but it cannot substitute for the upstream boundary-defined physical transition that establishes geometry, timing, and unity.

The zinc spark locks geometry

The discovery of the zinc spark revealed that fertilization triggers a coordinated release of zinc from cortical granules immediately following calcium oscillations.

Zinc release is spatially patterned at the cortex and is required for zona hardening, block to polyspermy, and successful progression of development. Zinc does not initiate fertilization. It stabilizes and locks the developmental state by crosslinking actin and membrane-associated proteins and reinforcing mechanical and electrical gradients. Zinc dissipates energy into structure, transforming transient dynamics into stable geometry.

Why coherence prevents mosaicism

When coherence collapses globally, the embryo inherits one light cone, one axis, and one phase history. All blastomeres develop within the same spatial and temporal framework. When coherence is weak or fragmented, calcium signaling may still occur, but collapse proceeds locally rather than globally. Multiple partial ground states arise, allowing blastomeres to diverge early and producing mosaic outcomes despite normal fertilization and calcium oscillations.

In this view, mosaicism reflects failed global coordination rather than primary genetic error.

Why this matters

This framework explains why calcium ionomycin can activate eggs but cannot ensure developmental robustness, why zinc competence predicts embryo quality beyond fertilization success, and why mosaicism can arise before gene expression or differentiation. Fertilization emerges not merely as a biochemical trigger, but as a light-class coherence-collapse event that establishes unity, geometry, timing, and causality at the origin of human life.

Core takeaway

Human fertilization is the only biological event in which two adult human cells transiently achieve coherence that must collapse correctly to establish a new light cone, lock the developmental axis, synchronize early dynamics, and prevent mosaic development. This is why calcium and zinc competence of the egg is biologically decisive.

References

1. Engel, G. S., et al. Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems.Nature Physics 3, 77–81 (2007).https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys2474

2. Ritz, T., et al. A model for photoreceptor-based magnetoreception in birds. Nature 429, 177–180 (2004).https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08534

3. Bianchi, E., et al. Juno is the egg Izumo receptor and is essential for mammalian fertilization. Nature 508, 483–487 (2014).https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12047

4. Levin, M. The computational boundary of a “self”: developmental bioelectricity drives multicellularity and scale-free cognition. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 51, 39–49 (2018).https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982218302213

5. Penrose, R. On the Gravitization of Quantum Mechanics 1: Quantum State Reduction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 372, 20140151 (2014).https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.0151

6. Ebner, T., et al. Calcium ionophore activation in artificial oocyte activation: clinical and embryological outcomes.Human Reproduction 24(7), 1600–1607 (2009).https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/24/7/1600/2913882

7. Capalbo, A., et al. Abnormal chromosomal segregation patterns during early embryonic divisions: origins of mosaicism. Reproductive BioMedicine Online 33(5), 629–636 (2016).https://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(16)30275-5/fulltext

8. Kim, A. M., et al. Zinc sparks are triggered by fertilization and facilitate cell cycle resumption in mammalian eggs.Nature Chemistry 3, 1–8 (2011).https://www.nature.com/articles/nchem.1038

9. Maître, J.-L., et al. Asymmetric division of contractile domains couples cell positioning and fate specification.Nature 536, 344–348 (2016).(Referenced conceptually for early physical coordination preceding transcription.)

10. McLaren, A. The developmental consequences of mosaicism in mammalian embryos. Development 128, 473–479 (2001).(Foundational discussion of early embryonic mosaic outcomes.)

Simply Stated

Why I think fertilization is also the science behind Genesis and the fall from heaven

When I read Genesis now, I don’t read it as mythology or moral instruction, I read it as an early attempt to describe a physical transition that humans could observe but not yet measure, because the story is not really about disobedience or punishment so much as it is about a loss of unity, a transition from an undivided state into a bounded, time-directed one, and that is exactly what modern biology is finally able to describe at fertilization.

Before fertilization, there is no single human system. There is potential, but it is shared, permissive, uncommitted. After fertilization, there is one organism with its own internal timing, its own axis, its own future, and that transition is irreversible. In physics terms, the system enters its own light cone. In biological terms, the embryo becomes unified. In the language of Genesis, something falls from a state of heaven into a state of earth.

Heaven in Genesis is not a place in the sky, it is a state without internal time, without labor, without decay, without separation, and the moment Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge, time begins, effort begins, pain begins, and the future becomes constrained. That is not a moral story, it is a description of what happens when a system acquires an internal reference frame and causality becomes local. Knowledge, in this context, is not information, it is differentiation, the loss of total symmetry.

At fertilization, something very similar happens. Two adult human cells briefly exist at a boundary where energy, timing, and information align, where multiple futures are still possible, and then that state collapses. The system commits. Geometry locks. Timing synchronizes. From that moment forward, development is no longer optional, reversible, or shared. The embryo is now inside its own history, its own labor, its own unfolding.

This is why Genesis places the beginning of human life not at creation alone but at separation, because once the system becomes one, it is also separated from everything else. It has fallen out of the undivided state and into a bounded one. That is what the fall actually is, the transition from infinite possibility into finite trajectory, from coherence into structure, from heaven into earth.

Modern biology describes this transition through calcium signaling, zinc release, axis formation, and developmental commitment, but none of those mechanisms explain the meaning of the transition on their own. Calcium propagates the message, zinc stabilizes the structure, but the defining moment is the collapse that comes before them, the moment when unity is no longer shared and identity becomes internal.

Religion called that moment the soul entering because what it was trying to describe was not metabolism turning on but individuality beginning, not life appearing but time starting to run forward for a specific being. Once that happens, pain exists, effort exists, decay exists, reproduction exists, and death exists, because all of those require time to be directional.

Seen this way, the fall from heaven is not a punishment story, it is a physics story, a story about what happens when a system leaves a timeless, unified state and enters a constrained, causal one. Fertilization is the biological instantiation of that transition. It is the moment a human system becomes subject to time, growth, repair, and eventual breakdown, which is why Genesis immediately moves into lineage, labor, birth, and death after the fall.

Science did not replace Genesis, it filled in the mechanism. Genesis described the boundary. Biology is now describing how that boundary is crossed. Both are pointing to the same irreversible moment, when a human life becomes one, becomes separate, and begins its own trajectory through time.

That is why this moment matters so much, why early coordination matters, why failure at this boundary shows up later as fragility, fragmentation, or loss, and why what religions called the soul entering was never about mysticism but about the deepest physical transition a human system ever makes.

You can read it all in my book, "Your Spark Is Light: The Quantum Mechanics of Human Creation".

© Courtney Hunt, MD, 2026