Photonic Age - Lichtzeit

09/10/2026

"Photonic Legos" could let chipmakers combine specialized optical materials on a single silicon-based platform.

30/09/2026

Scientists are finding that mitochondria may do much more than produce energy. During normal metabolism, chemical reactions inside mitochondria can generate extremely faint particles of light known as biophotons.

These emissions are real but extraordinarily weak — typically far below anything the human eye could detect. They arise largely from oxidative reactions and reactive oxygen species produced during cellular respiration.

In experiments with physically and chemically separated mitochondria, stressing one population altered the respiration of another nearby population. The effect depended partly on light conditions, leading researchers to propose that light-based signaling may be involved.

A recent scientific review goes further, examining evidence that these ultra-weak photons might carry biological information rather than simply being waste products of metabolism. Researchers are investigating whether cells can detect and respond to these emissions.

But the idea is still developing. Scientists have not established that mitochondria routinely use photons as a communication network inside the human body, and describing humans as literal “beings of light” goes beyond what the evidence currently demonstrates.

What we can say is already remarkable: living human cells continuously produce tiny amounts of light as a consequence of their chemistry, and scientists are now investigating whether some of that light has a biological function.

Source: International Review of Neurobiology; Frontiers in Physiology

29/06/2026

https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/jan-rosenow-pakistans-solar-miracle-how-the-hell-did-they-do-it/

Faced with constant electricity blackouts and a failing grid, people in Pakistan took matters into their own hands. The result is a lesson for the rest of the world, and also a warning

10/06/2026

The Atacama Desert in northern Chile receives more solar radiation per square meter than almost anywhere else on Earth — a consequence of its altitude, extremely low humidity, minimal cloud cover, and geographic position. The Cerro Dominador II project is deploying 3,500 megawatts of solar capacity into this environment and reporting a levelized cost of electricity of 1.9 US cents per kilowatt-hour, a figure that represents among the lowest electricity generation costs ever achieved for any energy source anywhere.The addition of molten salt thermal storage is what separates this project from standard solar: molten salt storage allows the facility to store heat from concentrated solar power systems and continue generating electricity after sunset, addressing the intermittency problem that standard photovoltaic solar can't solve without separate battery storage. The combination of extremely favorable solar resources and thermal storage produces around-the-clock generation potential from a renewable source.The surplus electricity this facility produces can be exported regionally through the grids of neighboring countries, allowing the exceptional solar resource in one geographic location to serve energy demand across a broader area. The geography of renewable energy is not uniform — the best sites produce extraordinary results — and the Atacama is among the best sites on Earth.