In early 2025, a team of physicists from the Universities of Oxford and Zurich announced the creation of the world’s first stable quantum node capable of controlling the local flow of time. This isn’t a Hollywood time machine, but a device that slows down temporal processes at the microscopic level with an accuracy of 10⁻¹⁵ seconds. The essence of the invention lies in a quantum “feedback loop,” where entangled particles create a closed causal loop, allowing an event to be temporarily “isolated” from the external flow of time.
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This discovery was made possible by a new type of quantum memory based on diamond vacancies. The scientists were able to maintain a quantum state for more than 10 minutes—a record previously thought impossible. This stability made it possible to conduct an experiment in which photons “returned” into the past for several nanoseconds to interact with themselves. The effect was confirmed by independent laboratories in Tokyo and California.
Practical applications are already emerging in medicine: quantum sensors based on this technology can detect the smallest changes in neural activity in the brain, predicting epileptic seizures up to 30 seconds before they begin. For patients, this offers the opportunity to stop a seizure early with a neurostimulator. In the future, such systems could prevent strokes and heart attacks at the incipient stage.
In computing, the new approach opens the way to “temporal algorithms”—programs that can “look into” their own execution and correct errors before they occur. This radically reduces the energy consumption of quantum computers and increases their reliability. IBM has already announced plans to integrate such algorithms into its processors by 2027.
What’s particularly striking are the philosophical implications. If a quantum system can interact with its own past, then the concept of “cause and effect” loses its absoluteness. This doesn’t violate the laws of physics, but it does force us to reconsider the fundamental logic on which science is built. Nobel laureate Roger Penrose called this “the most important discovery since general relativity.”
