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Light is notoriously fast. Its speed is crucial for rapid information exchange, but as light zips through materials, its chances of interacting and exciting atoms and molecules can become very small. If scientists can put the brakes on light particles, or photons, it would open the door to a host of new technology applications.

Now, in a paper published on Aug. 17, in Nature Nanotechnology, Stanford scientists demonstrate a new approach to slow light significantly, much like an echo chamber holds onto sound, and to direct it at will. Researchers in the lab of Jennifer Dionne, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, structured ultrathin silicon chips into nanoscale bars to resonantly trap light and then release or redirect it later. These “high-quality-factor” or “high-Q” resonators could lead to novel ways of manipulating and using light, including new applications for quantum computing, virtual reality and augmented reality; light-based WiFi; and even the detection of viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

“We’re essentially trying to trap light in a tiny box that still allows the light to come and go from many different directions,” said postdoctoral fellow Mark Lawrence, who is also lead author of the paper. “It’s easy to trap light in a box with many sides, but not so easy if the sides are transparent—as is the case with many Silicon-based applications.”

“For the first time ever, we have direct experimental evidence that an external quantum efficiency above 100% is possible in a single photodiode without any external antireflection,” says Hele Savin, associate professor of Micro and Nanoelectonics at Aalto University in Finland. The results come just a few years after Savin and colleagues at Aalto University demonstrated almost unity efficiency over the wavelength range 250–950 nm in photodiodes made with black silicon, where the silicon surface is nanostructured and coated to suppress losses.

Noticing some curious effects in the UV region, Savin’s group extended their study of the devices to focus on this region of the electromagnetic spectrum. UV sensing has multiple applications, including spectroscopy and imaging, flame detection, water purification and biotechnology. While annual market demand for UV photodiodes is expected to increase to 30%, the efficiency of these devices has been limited to 80% at best. To Savin’s surprise, closer analysis of their device’s response to UV light revealed that the external quantum efficiency could exceed 130%. Independent measurements at Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) verified the results.

For the first time ever, scientists have witnessed the interaction of a new phase of matter known as “time crystals”.

The discovery, published in Nature Materials, may lead to applications in quantum information processing because time crystals automatically remain intact—coherent—in varying conditions. Protecting coherence is the main difficulty hindering the development of powerful quantum computers.

Dr. Samuli Autti, lead author from Lancaster University, said: “Controlling the interaction of two time crystals is a major achievement. Before this, nobody had observed two time crystals in the same system, let alone seen them interact.

Quantum computing requires meticulously prepared hardware and big budgets, but cloud-based solutions could make the technology available to broader business audiences Several tech giants are racing to achieve “quantum supremacy”, but reliability and consistency in quantum output is no simple trick Covid-19 has prompted some researchers to look at how quantum computing could mitigate future pandemics with scientific precision and speed Quantum computing (QC) has been theorized for decades and has evolved rapidly over the last few years. An escalation in spend and development has seen powerhouses IBM, Microsoft, and Google race for ‘quantum supremacy’ — whereby quantum reliably and consistently outperforms existing computers. But do quantum computers remain a sort of elitist vision of the future or are we on course for more financially and infrastructurally viable applications across industries?

Getting to grips with qubits How much do you know? Ordinary computers (even supercomputers) deploy bits, and these bits comprise of traditional binary code. Computer processes – like code – are made up of countless combinations of 0’s and 1’s. Quantum computers, however, are broken down into qubits. Qubits are capable of ‘superpositions’: effectively adopting both 1 and 0 simultaneously, or any space on the spectrum between these two formerly binary points. The key to a powerful, robust, and reliable quantum computer is more qubits. Every qubit added exponentially increases the processing capacity of the machine.

Qubits and the impact of the superposition give quantum computers the ability to process large datasets within seconds, doing what it would take humans decades to do. They can decode and deconstruct, hypothesize and validate, tackling problems of absurd complexity and dizzying magnitude — and can do so across many different industries.

Wherein lies the issue then? Quantum computing for everybody! We’re still a way off – the general consensus being, it’s 5 years, at least, before this next big wave of computing is seen widely across industries and use cases, unless your business is bustling with the budgets of tech giants like Google, IBM, and the like. But expense isn’t the only challenge.

Frail and demanding — the quantum hardware Quantum computers are interminably intricate machines. It doesn’t take much at all to knock a qubit out of the delicate state of superposition. They’re powerful, but not reliable. The slightest interference or frailty leads to high error rates in quantum processing, slowing the opportunity for more widespread use, and rendering ‘quantum supremacy’ a touch on the dubious side.


Quantum computing (QC) has been theorized for decades and has evolved rapidly over the last few years. An escalation in spend and development has seen powerhouses IBM, Microsoft, and Google race for ‘quantum supremacy’ — whereby quantum reliably and consistently outperforms existing computers. But do quantum computers remain a sort of elitist vision of the future or are we on course for more financially and infrastructurally viable applications across industries?

Getting to grips with qubits

How much do you know? Ordinary computers (even supercomputers) deploy bits, and these bits comprise of traditional binary code. Computer processes – like code – are made up of countless combinations of 0’s and 1’s. Quantum computers, however, are broken down into qubits. Qubits are capable of ‘superpositions’: effectively adopting both 1 and 0 simultaneously, or any space on the spectrum between these two formerly binary points. The key to a powerful, robust, and reliable quantum computer is more qubits. Every qubit added exponentially increases the processing capacity of the machine.

“A neuron in the human brain can never equate the human mind, but this analogy doesn’t hold true for a digital mind, by virtue of its mathematical structure, it may – through evolutionary progression and provided there are no insurmountable evolvability constraints – transcend to the higher-order Syntellect. A mind is a web of patterns fully integrated as a coherent intelligent system; it is a self-generating, self-reflective, self-governing network of sentient components… that evolves, as a rule, by propagating through dimensionality and ascension to ever-higher hierarchical levels of emergent complexity. In this book, the Syntellect emergence is hypothesized to be the next meta-system transition, developmental stage for the human mind – becoming one global mind – that would constitute the quintessence of the looming Cybernetic Singularity.” –Alex M. Vikoulov, The Syntellect Hypothesis https://www.ecstadelic.net/e_news/gearing-for-the-2020-vision-of-our-cybernetic-future-the-syntellect-hypothesis-expanded-edition-press-release

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Ecstadelic Media Group releases the new 2020 expanded edition of The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution by Alex M. Vikoulov as eBook and Paperback (Press Release, San Francisco, CA, USA, January 15, 2020 10.20 AM PST)

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Named “The Book of the Year” by futurists and academics alike in 2019 and maintaining high rankings in Amazon charts in Cybernetics, Physics of Time, Phenomenology, and Phenomenological Philosophy, it has now been released as The 2020 Expanded New Deluxe Edition (2020e) in eBook and paperback versions. In one volume, the author covers it all: from quantum physics to your experiential reality, from the Big Bang to the Omega Point, from the ‘flow state’ to psychedelics, from ‘Lucy’ to the looming Cybernetic Singularity, from natural algorithms to the operating system of your mind, from geo-engineering to nanotechnology, from anti-aging to immortality technologies, from oligopoly capitalism to Star-Trekonomics, from the Matrix to Universal Mind, from Homo sapiens to Holo syntellectus.

The Universe or any other phenomenon or entity contained therein is not objectively real but subjectively real. Patterns of information emerging from the ultimate code are what is more fundamental than particles of matter or space-time continuum itself all of which is levels below the Code. Nature behaves quantum code-theoretically at all levels. It’s hierarchies of quantum networks all the way down and all the way up. Being part of hierarchical quantum neural networks, a conscious observer system possesses a strange quality: collapsing quantum states of entangled conscious entities and having a privileged interpretation of that. From this perspective, entangled conscious agents would be a mirror conscious environment, whereas the quantum observer would be a central node of the entangled network.


“If we accept that the material universe as we know it is not a mechanical system but a virtual reality created by Absolute Consciousness through an infinitely complex orchestration of experiences, what are the practical consequences of this insight?” –Stanislav Grof

Just like absolute idealism, solipsism certainly defies our common sense but the deeper layer of truth is not what first meets the eye. Here’s what Richard Conn Henry and Stephen Palmquist write in their paper “An Experimental Test of Non-local Realism” (2007): “Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.” One can extend their line of reasoning by arriving at pantheistic solipsism as a likely revelation to ponder about.

Our minds operate in the domains of subjectivity, intersubjectivity and supersubjectivity. In the domain of intersubjectivity, minds create a reality by sharing “mindspace,” i.e. shared belief systems and ways of communication, minds then inhabit the reality which they have created. At the level of your individual mind, i.e. local consciousness, you play a multi-level virtual reality game of life but we all invariably converge at the Omega Singularity by forging our own discrete pathways to the ultimate divine. As you’re reading this right now, you’re now in your own subjective reality tunnel leading to the Source and back where you’re now all of which is definable as a parallel evolutionary feedback process within non-local holistic consciousness patterning this virtual multiverse.