A few years ago, Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist Robert B. Laughlin, wrote a unique paper on a topic he called “the length problem”. He wrote, “On the matter of length determination, per se, very little progress has been made beyond Thompson’s 1917 treatise on biological form.” Laughlin goes on to suggest living things can essentially “measure themselves” through a process commonly seen in electrodynamic systems.

A fucking nobel prize wrote that ? What's up, have you stopped following biology in 1917 ?

Arf... Don't you love it when physicists come in like they own the place, basically insult the entire field, but can't do two hours of bibliography and end up doing decade old experiments thinking this is a revolution...

This is work for the guy's bachelor thesis, so I guess it's pretty neat all things considered. But I'm not even in development biology and even I know of a few mechanism to stop growth when it's appropriate. As the tutor seem to have noticed, you just need a clock. Or even a chemical equilibrium. Or physical constraint... The organism certainly doesn't have to measure themselves or "know" their length, just do whatever until X is reached.

There's an entire branch of biology on time keeping in living things called chronobiology. Also the entire kinetic aspect of chemistry.

I may be overly angry and need to read the paper by this quantum physics guy. Maybe it isn't as bad as I fear.