Lifeboat Foundation

A team of researchers from Jülich in cooperation with the University of Magdeburg has developed a new method to measure the electric potentials of a sample at atomic accuracy. Using conventional methods, it was virtually impossible until now to quantitatively record the electric potentials that occur in the immediate vicinity of individual molecules or atoms. The new scanning quantum dot microscopy method, which was recently presented in the journal Nature Materials by scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich together with partners from two other institutions, could open up new opportunities for chip manufacture or the characterization of biomolecules such as DNA.

The positive atomic nuclei and negative electrons of which all matter consists produce electric potential fields that superpose and compensate each other, even over very short distances. Conventional methods do not permit quantitative measurements of these small-area fields, which are responsible for many material properties and functions on the nanoscale. Almost all established methods capable of imaging such potentials are based on the measurement of forces that are caused by electric charges. Yet these forces are difficult to distinguish from other forces that occur on the nanoscale, which prevents quantitative measurements.

Four years ago, however, scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich discovered a method based on a completely different principle. Scanning quantum dot microscopy involves attaching a single organic molecule—the quantum dot—to the tip of an atomic force microscope. This molecule then serves as a probe. “The molecule is so small that we can attach individual electrons from the tip of the atomic force microscope to the molecule in a controlled manner,” explains Dr. Christian Wagner, head of the Controlled Mechanical Manipulation of Molecules group at Jülich’s Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-3).

Nothing lasts forever. Humans, planets, stars, galaxies, maybe even the Universe itself, everything has an expiration date. But things in the quantum realm don’t always follow the rules. Now, scientists have found that quasiparticles in quantum systems could be effectively immortal.

That doesn’t mean they don’t decay, which is reassuring. But once these quasiparticles have decayed, they are able to reorganise themselves back into existence, possibly ad infinitum.

This seemingly flies right in the face of the second law of thermodynamics, which asserts that entropy in an isolated system can only move in an increasing direction: things can only break down, not build back up again.

To date, more than 110,000 users have run more than 7 million experiments on the public IBM Q Experience devices, publishing more than 145 third-party research papers based on experiments run on the devices. The IBM Q Network has grown to 45 organizations all over the world, including Fortune 500 companies, research labs, academic institutions, and startups. This goal of helping industries and individuals get “quantum ready” with real quantum hardware is what makes IBM Q stand out.

SF: What are the main technological hurdles that still need to be resolved before quantum computing goes mainstream?

JW: Today’s approximate or noisy quantum computers have a coherence time of about 100 microseconds. That’s the time in which an experiment can be run on a quantum processor before errors take over. Error mitigation and error correction will need to be resolved before we have a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

What we perceive as our physical material world, is really not physical or material at all, in fact, it is far from it. This has been proven time and time again by multiple Nobel Prize (among many other scientists around the world) winning physicists, one of them being Niels Bohr, a Danish Physicist who made significant contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory.

“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet. Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” – Niels Bohr

At the turn of the nineteenth century, physicists started to explore the relationship between energy and the structure of matter. In doing so, the belief that a physical, Newtonian material universe that was at the very heart of scientific knowing was dropped, and the realization that matter is nothing but an illusion replaced it. Scientists began to recognize that everything in the Universe is made out of energy.

Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle is put to the test to see if things really are uncertain in the quantum world.

This review article extends previous scientific definitions of the biofield (endogenous energy fields of the body) to include nonclassical and quantum energy fields. The biofield is defined further in terms of its functional property to act as a resonance target for external forms of energy used as treatment modalities in energy medicine. The functional role of the biofield in the body’s innate self-healing mechanisms is hypothesized, based on the concept of bioinformation which, mediated by consciousness, functions globally at the quantum level to supply coherence, phase, spin, and pattern information to regulate and heal all physiologic processes. This model is used to explain a wide variety of anomalies reported in the scientific literature, which can not be explained by traditional biophysics and bioelectromagnetics.

The particle known as a Majorana fermion is as mysterious and uncontrollable as it is unique. It’s the only known particle that is also its own antiparticle, and has properties that make it an alluring candidate for qubits, the basic unit of information in a quantum computer.

Harnessing that potential, however, is easier said than done — Majorana fermions are slippery little suckers. But a team of particle physicists now reports they’ve found a way to control them.

“We now have a new way to engineer Majorana quasiparticles in materials,” said physicist Ali Yazdani of Princeton University. “We can verify their existence by imaging them and we can characterise their predicted properties.”

Continue reading “Wild New Discovery Shows How We Can Switch Majorana Fermions On And Off” »

An intriguing experimental result, known as “the phantom leaf effect,” if fully verified, may be an example of some or even all of these biofield processes. In these experiments, coronal discharge or the Kirlian photographic effect reveals a field effect in the morphological form of an intact living leaf even after part of the leaf is severed. This suggests an analogy to the subjective experience of a phantom limb reported by patients after the limb has been amputated. There might be a persisting biofield that represents the amputatedlimb. First described by Adamenko and reported by Tiller and by Ostrander and Schroeder, more recent validating experiments have been performed with detection methods of greater precision; these are summarized in Hubacher. In his most recent publication, Hubacher performed the experiment with highest definition photographic samples using the largest number of samples to date. Of 137 leaves severed and imaged, 96 (70%) demonstrated clear phantoms.

This article briefly reviews the biofield hypothesis and its scientific literature. Evidence for the existence of the biofield now exists, and current theoretical foundations are now being developed. A review of the biofield and related topics from the perspective of physical science is needed to identify a common body of knowledge and evaluate possible underlying principles of origin of the biofield. The properties of such a field could be based on electromagnetic fields, coherent states, biophotons, quantum and quantum-like processes, and ultimately the quantum vacuum. Given this evidence, we intend to inquire and discuss how the existence of the biofield challenges reductionist approaches and presents its own challenges regarding the origin and source of the biofield, the specific evidence for its existence, its relation to biology, and last but not least, how it may inform an integrated understanding of consciousness and the living universe.

Key Words: Biofield, quantum mechanics, physics.

Continue reading “Biofield Science: Current Physics Perspectives” »

As mysterious as the Italian scientist for which it is named, the Majorana particle is one of the most compelling quests in physics.

Its fame stems from its strange properties—it is the only particle that is its own antiparticle—and from its potential to be harnessed for future quantum computing.

In recent years, a handful of groups including a team at Princeton have reported finding the Majorana in various materials, but the challenge is how to manipulate it for quantum computation.

Continue reading “Mysterious Majorana quasiparticle is now closer to being controlled for quantum computing” »