This interaction could help explain both why quantum processes can occur within environments like the brain and why we lose consciousness under anesthesia.
Category: quantum physics
Unexpected oscillation states in magnetic vortices could enable coupling across different physical systems
Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have uncovered previously unobserved oscillation states—so-called Floquet states—in tiny magnetic vortices. Unlike earlier experiments, which required energy-intensive laser pulses to create such states, the team in Dresden discovered that a subtle excitation with magnetic waves is sufficient.
This finding not only raises fundamental questions in basic physics but could also eventually serve as a universal adapter bridging electronics, spintronics, and quantum devices. The team reports the results in the journal Science.
Magnetic vortices can form in ultrathin, micron-sized disks of magnetic materials such as nickel–iron. Within these vortices, the elementary magnetic moments—tiny compass needles—arrange themselves in circular patterns.
Quantum-enhanced interferometry amplifies detection of tiny laser beam shifts and tilts
A quantum trick based on interferometric measurements allows a team of researchers at LMU to detect even the smallest movements of a laser beam with extreme sensitivity.
Precisely measuring minute shifts or slight tilts of a laser beam is crucial in many scientific and technological applications, such as atomic force microscopy. So-called weak value amplification (WVA), a method that grew out of thinking about the foundations of quantum mechanics, has already shown that under certain conditions the output signal of an interferometer changes markedly when the beams inside it are altered only minimally. An interferometer is a measuring device that can detect such tiny differences by comparing overlapping light waves.
LMU physicist Carlotta Versmold and her colleagues, all members of the MCQST Cluster of Excellence, working together with researchers at Tel Aviv University, have now extended this type of measurement. The team recently developed a trick that also amplifies changes in the incoming beam. This makes it possible to carry out far more precise measurements that were previously difficult to achieve. A laser beam reflected from a distant window, for example, could pick up vibrations in the glass caused by conversations inside the building, allowing those conversations to be overheard.
Replication efforts suggest ‘smoking gun’ evidence isn’t enough to prove quantum computing claims
A group of scientists, including Sergey Frolov, professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh, and co-authors from Minnesota and Grenoble have undertaken several replication studies centered around topological effects in nanoscale superconducting or semiconducting devices. This field is important because it can bring about topological quantum computing, a hypothetical way of storing and manipulating quantum information while protecting it against errors.
In all cases, they found alternative explanations of similar data. While the original papers claimed advances for quantum computing and made their way into top scientific journals, the individual follow-ups could not make it past the editors at those same journals.
Reasons given for its rejection included that, being a replication, it was not novel; that, after a couple of years, the field had moved on. But replications take time and effort and the experiments are resource-intensive and cannot happen overnight. And important science does not become irrelevant on the scale of years.
Quantum phenomenon enables a nanoscale mirror that can be switched on and off
Controlling light is an important technological challenge—not just at the large scale of optics in microscopes and telescopes, but also at the nanometer scale. Recently, physicists at the University of Amsterdam published a clever quantum trick that allows them to make a nanoscale mirror that can be turned on and off at will.
The work is published in the journal Light: Science & Applications.
Scientists capture first-ever high-resolution images of topological quantum Hall edge states
Read more here.
By Tom Garlinghouse
Physicists have long known that some materials behave strangely at their edges, conducting electricity without resistance even as their interiors remain insulating. These boundary phenomena, called topological edge states, form the basis of quantum technologies and exotic “topological phases” of matter. But despite decades of study, scientists could only infer how these quantum edges behave—no one had actually seen their microscopic structure in action.
Now, a collaborative team of researchers have achieved a remarkable first: they directly imaged the internal structure of these edge states in monolayer graphene, using one of the most precise tools in modern physics—scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Their results, published last week in Nature, reveal how fundamental interactions between electrons reshape the very edge of a quantum material, upending long-held theoretical assumptions and opening a new window onto quantum topological behavior.
New evidence for a particle system that ‘remembers’ its previous quantum states
In the future, quantum computers are anticipated to solve problems once thought unsolvable, from predicting the course of chemical reactions to producing highly reliable weather forecasts. For now, however, they remain extremely sensitive to environmental disturbances and prone to information loss.
A new study from the lab of Dr. Yuval Ronen at the Weizmann Institute of Science, published in Nature, presents fresh evidence for the existence of non-Abelian anyons—exotic particles considered prime candidates for building a fault-tolerant quantum computer. This evidence was produced within bilayer graphene, an ultrathin carbon crystal with unusual electronic behavior.
In quantum mechanics, particles also behave like waves, and their properties are described by a wave function, which can represent the state of a single particle or a system of particles. Physicists classify particles according to how the wave function of two identical particles changes when they exchange places. Until the 1980s, only two types of particles were known: bosons (such as photons), whose wave function remains unchanged when they exchange places, and fermions (such as electrons), whose wave function becomes inverted.
Scientists use string theory to crack the code of natural networks
For more than a century, scientists have wondered why physical structures like blood vessels, neurons, tree branches, and other biological networks look the way they do. The prevailing theory held that nature simply builds these systems as efficiently as possible, minimizing the amount of material needed. But in the past, when researchers tested these networks against traditional mathematical optimization theories, the predictions consistently fell short.
The problem, it turns out, was that scientists were thinking in one dimension when they should have been thinking in three. “We were treating these structures like wire diagrams,” Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) physicist Xiangyi Meng, Ph.D., explains. “But they’re not thin wires, they’re three-dimensional physical objects with surfaces that must connect smoothly.”
This month, Meng and colleagues published a paper in the journal Nature showing that physical networks in living systems follow rules borrowed from an unlikely source: string theory, the exotic branch of physics that attempts to explain the fundamental structure of the universe.
The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution: Tuynman PhD, Antonin, Vikoulov, Alex M: 9781733426145: Amazon.com: Books
Celebrating a 7-year anniversary of the first edition of my book The Syntellect Hypothesis (2019)! I can’t help but feel like I’m watching a long-launched probe finally begin to transmit back meaningful data. What started as a speculative framework—half philosophy, half systems theory—has aged into something uncannily timely, as if reality itself had been quietly reading the manuscript and taking notes. In those seven years, AI has gone from clever tool to cognitive co-actor, collective intelligence has accelerated from metaphor to measurable force, and the idea of a convergent, self-reflective Syntellect no longer feels like science fiction so much as a working hypothesis under active experimental validation.
Looking back, the book captured a moment just before the curve went vertical. Looking forward, it reads less like a prediction and more like an early cartography of a terrain we’re now actively inhabiting. The signal is stronger, the noise louder, and the questions sharper—but the core intuition remains intact: intelligence doesn’t merely grow, it integrates. And once it does, history stops being a line and starts behaving more like a phase transition.
Here’s what Google summarizes about the book: The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution by Alex M. Vikoulov is a book that explores the idea of a future phase transition where human consciousness merges with technology to form a global supermind, or “Syntellect”. It covers topics like digital physics, the technological singularity, consciousness, and the evolution of humanity, proposing that we are on the verge of becoming a single, self-aware superorganism. The book is structured around five paradigms: Noogenesis, Technoculture, the Cybernetic Singularity, Theogenesis, and Universal Mind.
Key Concepts.
Syntellect: A superorganism-level consciousness that emerges when the intellectual synergy of a complex system (like humanity and its technology) reaches a critical threshold. Phase Transition: The book posits that humanity is undergoing a metamorphosis from individual intellect to a collective, higher-order consciousness.
Five Paradigms: The book is divided into five parts that map out this evolutionary journey: Noogenesis: The emergence of mind through computational biology. Technoculture: The rise of human civilization and technology. The Cybernetic Singularity: The point of Syntellect emergence. Theogenesis: Transdimensional propagation and expansion. Universal Mind: The ultimate cosmic level of awareness.
Themes and Scope.