Finding. This paper does not shine a lamp on a mitochondrion. It argues that the Sun’s photon-energy peak, near 0.75 eV, sits on the same scale as the barriers that gate mitochondrial electron transfer, and that buildings have removed those infrared photons from daily life. In Marcus language, such photons could bias whether an electron hops, not pay for ATP. The authors call the idea photometabolism and note that interception of that band might scale with body mass like basal metabolic rate. Treat every sentence as a hypothesis.
Why this paper matters
Lighting engineering optimized lumens and forgot metabolism. That cultural fact is real. Whether mitochondria care about the missing infrared is unshown. A mitochondrial desk should host the hypothesis and refuse the leap to indoor-health advice.
The useful constraint they offer is energy-scale overlap plus deep tissue penetration. The missing experiment is an action spectrum on electron-transfer kinetics.
What they actually measured
Nothing biological is measured in the abstract. Spectrum comparisons, a Marcus framing, a penetration argument, a scaling analysis.
How to read the score
Low sixties as evidence, mid sixties as a prompt. Score 64. Confidence is low.
What to do with it
If you design lighting or think about non-visual photobiology, this is a testable claim list. If you cite it as showing that LEDs harm mitochondria, you are overrunning the paper. The directional implication is only that someone should measure whether IR photons change ETC barrier crossing.