Jordi Tura

November 23, 2020• Physics 13, 183

Classical computers can efficiently simulate the behavior of quantum computers if the quantum computer is imperfect enough.

With a few quantum bits, an ideal quantum computer can process vast amounts of information in a coordinated way, making it significantly more powerful than a classical counterpart. This predicted power increase will be great for users but is bad for physicists trying to simulate on a classical computer how an ideal quantum computer will behave. Now, a trio of researchers has shown that they can substantially reduce the resources needed to do these simulations if the quantum computer is imperfect [1]. The arXiv version of the trios paper is one of the most Scited papers of 2020 and the result generated quite a stir when it first appeared back in FebruaryI overheard it being enthusiastically discussed at the Quantum Optics Conference in Obergurgl, Austria, at the end of that month, back when we could still attend conferences in person.

In 2019, Google claimed to have achieved the quantum computing milestone known as quantum advantage, publishing results showing that their quantum computer Sycamore had performed a calculation that was essentially impossible for a classical one [2]. More specifically, Google claimed that they had completed a three-minute quantum computationwhich involved generating random numbers with Sycamores 53 qubitsthat would take thousands of years on a state-of-the-art classical supercomputer, such as IBMs Summit. IBM quickly countered the claim, arguing that more efficient memory storage would reduce the task time on a classical computer to a couple of days [3]. The claims and counterclaims sparked an industry clash and an intense debate among supporters in the two camps.

Resolving the disparity between these estimates is one of the goals of the new work by Yiqing Zhou, of the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, and her two colleagues [1]. In their study, they focused on algorithms for classically replicating imperfect quantum computers, which are also known as NISQ (noisy intermediate-scale quantum) devices [4]. Todays state-of-the-art quantum computersincluding Sycamoreare NISQ devices. The algorithms the team used are based on so-called tensor network methods, specifically matrix product states (MPS), which are good for simulating noise and so are naturally suited for studying NISQ devices. MPS methods approximate low-entangled quantum states with simpler structures, so they provide a data-compression-like protocol that can make it less computationally expensive to classically simulate imperfect quantum computers (see Viewpoint: Pushing Tensor Networks to the Limit).

Zhou and colleagues first consider a random 1D quantum circuit made of neighboring, interleaved two-qubit gates and single-qubit random unitary operations. The two-qubit gates are either Controlled-NOT gates or Controlled-Z (CZ) gates, which create entanglement. They ran their algorithm for NISQ circuits containing different numbers of qubits, N, and different depths, Da parameter that relates to the number of gates the circuit executes (Fig. 1). They also varied a parameter in the MPS algorithm. is the so-called bond dimension of the MPS and essentially controls how well the MPS capture entanglement between qubits.

The trio demonstrate that they can exactly simulate any imperfect quantum circuit if D and N are small enough and is set to a value within reach of a classical computer. They can do that because shallow quantum circuits can only create a small amount of entanglement, which is fully captured by a moderate . However, as D increases, the team finds that cannot capture all the entanglement. That means that they cannot exactly simulate the system, and errors start to accumulate. The team describes this mismatch between the quantum circuit and their classical simulations using a parameter that they call the two-qubit gate fidelity fn. They find that the fidelity of their simulations slowly drops, bottoming out at an asymptotic value f as D increases. This qualitative behavior persists for different values of N and . Also, while their algorithm does not explicitly account for all the error and decoherence mechanisms in real quantum computers, they show that it does produce quantum states of the same quality (perfection) as the experimental ones.

In light of Googles quantum advantage claims, Zhou and colleagues also apply their algorithm to 2D quantum systemsSycamore is built on a 2D chip. MPS are specifically designed for use in 1D systems, but the team uses well-known techniques to extend their algorithm to small 2D ones. They use their algorithm to simulate an N=54, D=20 circuit, roughly matching the parameters of Sycamore (Sycamore has 54 qubits but one is unusable because of a defect). They replace Googles more entangling iSWAP gates with less entangling CZ gates, which allow them to classically simulate the system up to the same fidelity as reported in Ref. [2] with a single laptop. The simulation cost should increase quadratically for iSWAP-gate circuits, and although the team proposes a method for performing such simulations, they have not yet carried them out because of the large computational cost it entails.

How do these results relate to the quantum advantage claims by Google? As they stand, they do not weaken or refute claimswith just a few more qubits, and an increase in D or f, the next generation of NISQ devices will certainly be much harder to simulate. The results also indicate that the teams algorithm only works if the quantum computer is sufficiently imperfectif it is almost perfect, their algorithm provides no speed up advantage. Finally, the results provide numerical insight into the values of N, D, f, and for which random quantum circuits are confined to a tiny corner of the exponentially large Hilbert space. These values give insight into how to quantify the capabilities of a quantum computer to generate entanglement as a function of f, for example.

So, whats next? One natural question is, Can the approach here be transferred to efficiently simulate other aspects of quantum computing, such as quantum error correction? The circuits the trio considered are essentially random, whereas quantum error correction circuits are more ordered by design [5]. That means that updates to the new algorithm are needed to study such systems. Despite this limitation, the future looks promising for the efficient simulation of imperfect quantum devices [6, 7].

Jordi Tura is an assistant professor at the Lorentz Institute of the University of Leiden, Netherlands. He also leads the institutes Applied Quantum Algorithms group. Tura obtained his B.Sc. degrees in mathematics and telecommunications and his M.Sc. in applied mathematics from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain. His Ph.D. was awarded by the Institute of Photonic Sciences, Spain. During his postdoctoral stay at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany, Tura started working in the field of quantum information processing for near-term quantum devices.

A nanopatterned magnetic structure features an unprecedently strong coupling between lattice vibrations and quantized spin waves, which could lead to novel ways of manipulating quantum information. Read More

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Imperfections Lower the Simulation Cost of Quantum Computers - Physics

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The quantum annealing category held the largest share under the technology segment in 2019. This is attributed to successful overcoming of physical challenges to develop this technology and further incorporated in bigger systems. The BFSI category held the largest share in the quantum computing market in 2019. This is owing to the fact that the industry is growing positively across the globe, and large banks are focusing on investing in this potential technology that can enable them to streamline their business processes, along with unbeatable levels of security

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Quantum Computing Market : Analysis and In-depth Study on Size Trends, and Regional Forecast - Cheshire Media

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Global Quantum Computing Market 2020 Recovering From Covid-19 Outbreak | Know About Brand Players: D-Wave Systems, 1QB Information Technologies,...

Theres a lingering fear among crypto investors that their bitcoin might get swooped by a hacker.

Thats not very likely, but its not impossible either, particularly once quantum computing gets into the wrong hands. Last year Googles quantum computer called Sycamore was given a puzzle that would take even the most powerful supercomputers 10 000 years to solve and completed it in just 200 seconds, according to Nature magazine.

That kind of processing power unleashed on the bitcoin blockchain which is a heavily encrypted ledger of all bitcoin transactions is a cause for concern.

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The encryption technology used by the bitcoin blockchain has proven itself robust enough to withstand any and all attacks. Thats because of its brilliant design, and ongoing improvements by an ever-growing community of open-source cryptographers and developers.

A report by research group Gartner (Hype Cycle for Blockchain Technologies, 2020) suggests blockchain researchers are already anticipating possible attacks by quantum computers that are perhaps five to 10 years away from commercial availability. Its a subject called Postquantum blockchain which is a form of blockchain technology using quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms that can resist attack by future quantum computers.

The good news is that quantum-resistant algorithms are likely to remain several steps ahead of the hackers, but its an issue that is drawing considerable attention in the financial, security and blockchain communities.

Postquantum cryptography is not a threat just yet, but crypto exchanges are going to have to deploy quantum-resistant technologies in the next few years, before quantum computers become generally available.

Phishing is probably a bigger threat

In truth, youre far more likely to be hit by a phishing scam, where identity thieves use emails, text messages and fake websites to get you to divulge sensitive personal information such as bank account or crypto exchange passwords.

As a user, you should be using LastPass or similar software to generate complex passwords, along with two-factor authentication (requiring the input of a time-sensitive code before you can access your crypto exchange account).Most good exchanges are enabled for this level of security.

There are many sad stories of bitcoin theft, but these are usually as a result of weak security on the part of the bitcoin holder, much like leaving your wallet on the front seat of your car while you pop into the shop for a minute.

Like all tech breakthroughs, quantum computing can be used for good and bad.

On the plus side, it will vastly speed drug discovery, molecular modelling and code breaking. It will also be a gift to hackers and online thieves, which is why financial services companies are going to have to invest in defensive technologies to keep customer information and assets safe.

Most crypto exchanges invest substantial amounts in security. The vast majority of crypto assets (about 97%) are stored in encrypted, geographically-separated, offline storage. These cannot be hacked.

The risk emerges when bitcoin are moved from offline (or cold storage) to online, such as when a client is about to transact.

But even here, the level of security is usually robust. A further level of protection is the insurance of all bitcoin that are stored in online systems. They also have systems in place to prevent any employee from making off with clients assets, requiring multiple keys before a bitcoin transaction is authorised.

There have been hacks on crypto exchanges in the past (though not on the blockchain itself), and millions of dollars in crypto assets stolen. In more recent years, this has become less common as exchanges moved to beef up their security systems.

In 2014 Mt.Gox, at the time responsible for about 70% of all bitcoin transactions in the world, suffered an attack when roughly 800000 bitcoin, valued at $460 million, were stolen. In 2018, Japan-based crypto exchange Coincheck was hit with a $534 million fraud impacting 260000 investors.

As the value of bitcoin and other crypto assets increases, the incentive for hackers rises proportionately, which is why problems such as quantum-enabled thievery are already being addressed.

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Is the blockchain vulnerable to hacking by quantum computers? - Moneyweb.co.za

In this weeks podcast, Enrique Blair on quantum computing, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks talks with fellow computer engineer Enrique Blair about why Quantum mechanics pioneer Niels Bohr said, If quantum mechanics hasnt profoundly shocked you, you havent understood it yet. Lets look at some of the reasons he said that:

The Show Notes and transcript follow.

Enrique Blair: Its really quite different from our daily experience. Quantum mechanics really is a description of the world at the microscopic scale. And its really weird, because there are things that initially we thought maybe were particles but then we learned that they have wave-like behaviors. And there are other things that we thought were waves and then we discovered they have particle-like behaviors.

But thats hardly the strangest part. The strangest part is that a quantum particle does not actually have a position until we measure it, according to the generally accepted Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Robert J. Marks: Whats the Copenhagen interpretation?

Enrique Blair (pictured): Its that the quantum mechanical wave function describes measurement outcomes in probabilities. You cant predict with certainty the outcome of a measurement. Which is really shocking, because in the classical world, if you have a particle and you know its position and its velocity, you can predict where its going to be in the next second or minute or hour. Now in quantum mechanics, the really weird thing is, we say that a particle doesnt even have a position until you measure its position.

Robert J. Marks: It doesnt exist?

Enrique Blair: Not that it doesnt exist, but its position is not defined.

Dr. Marks compared quantum mechanics (QM) to one of the characters in a 1999 film, Mystery Men, featuring inept amateur superheroes, including one who says, Im invisible as long as nobodys looking at me. With QM, thats not a joke. The quantum particle doesnt have a position until we measure it. But how did we discover this? The story goes back to the early 1800s when British physicist Thomas Young (17731829) did a famous experiment with a card held up to a small window

Enrique Blair: Youngs double-slit experiment goes all the way back to 1801, where Young shot light at a couple of slits and then the light passing through the slits would show up on a screen behind them.

So light behaves like a wave, with interference patterns. But what happens when we try doing the same thing with a single particle of lighta photon? Thats something we can do nowadays.

Enrique Blair: We can reduce a beam of light so that its single photon. One photon is emitted at a time, and were shooting it at our double slit again.

What happens when each particle of light goes through these slits? Well, each particle splats up against this screen, and so you can know where the photon hits. But if you do this over a long period of time, the interference pattern shows up again. You have particles hitting the screen, so we see the particle behavior. But we also see the interference pattern which suggests that okay, weve got some wave interference going on here.

So the only way to explain both of these at the same time is that each photon, which is an indivisible packet of light, has to go through both slits at the same time and interfere with itself, and then the buildup of many, many photons gives you that interference pattern.

Robert J. Marks: A particle was hypothesized to go through both slits?

Enrique Blair: Yes, and thats the mind-blowing ramification of this thing.

Robert J. Marks: How do we decide which slit the particles go through? Suppose we went down and we tried to measure? We put out one photon and we put it through the double slit. Weve tried to measure which slit it went through. If its a particle, it can only go through one, right?

Enrique Blair: Right. That introduces this concept of measurement. Like you said, which slit does it go through? Now the interesting thing is, if we know which slit it goes through maybe we set up a detector and we say, Hey, did it go through Slit One or Slit Two? we detect that, we measure it and the interference pattern goes away because now its gone through one slit only, not both.

Robert J. Marks: Just by the act of observation, we are restricting that photon to go through one slit or the other. Observation really kind of screws things up.

Enrique Blair: Thats right. This is one of the things that is hard to understand about quantum mechanics. In the classical world that we deal with every day, we can just observe something and we dont have to interact with it. So we can measure somethings position or its velocity without altering it. But in quantum mechanics, observation or measurement inherently includes interacting with that thing, that particle.

Again, youve got this photon that goes through both slits, but then you measure it and it actually ends up going through oneonce you measure it.

Robert J. Marks: This reminds me again of Invisible Boy in Mystery Men. The photon goes through one of the two slits while youre looking at it. Unless you look away. Then it goes through both slits.

Enrique Blair: Right. Very tricky, those photons.

Next: How scientists have learned to work with the quantum world

Note: The illustration of the double-slit experiment in physics is courtesy NekoJaNekoJa and Johannes Kalliauer (CC BY-SA 4.0).

You may also enjoy: A materialist gives up on determinism. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne undercuts his own argument against free will by admitting that quantum phenomena are real (Michael Egnor)

Quantum randomness gives nature free will. Whether or not quantum randomness explains how our brains work, it may help us create unbreakable encryption codes (Robert J. Marks)

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Here's Why the Quantum World Is Just So Strange - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

In a new realm of materials, PhD student Thanh Nguyen uses neutrons to hunt for exotic properties that could power real-world applications.

Thanh Nguyen is in the habit of breaking down barriers. Take languages, for instance: Nguyen, a third-year doctoral candidate in nuclear science and engineering (NSE), wanted to connect with other people and cultures for his work and social life, he says, so he learned Vietnamese, French, German, and Russian, and is now taking an MIT course in Mandarin. But this drive to push past obstacles really comes to the fore in his research, where Nguyen is trying to crack the secrets of a new and burgeoning branch of physics.

My dissertation focuses on neutron scattering on topological semimetals, which were only experimentally discovered in 2015, he says. They have very special properties, but because they are so novel, theres a lot thats unknown, and neutrons offer a unique perspective to probe their properties at a new level of clarity.

Topological materials dont fit neatly into conventional categories of substances found in everyday life. They were first materialized in the 1980s, but only became practical in the mid-2000s with deepened understanding of topology, which concerns itself with geometric objects whose properties remain the same even when the objects undergo extreme deformation. Researchers experimentally discovered topological materials even more recently, using the tools of quantum physics.

Within this domain, topological semimetals, which share qualities of both metals and semiconductors, are of special interest to Nguyen.They offer high levels of thermal and electric conductivity, and inherent robustness, which makes them very promising for applications in microelectronics, energy conversions, and quantum computing, he says.

Intrigued by the possibilities that might emerge from such unconventional physics, Nguyen is pursuing two related but distinct areas of research: On the one hand, Im trying to identify and then synthesize new, robust topological semimetals, and on the other, I want to detect fundamental new physics with neutrons and further design new devices.

My goal is to create programmable artificial structured topological materials, which can directly be applied as a quantum computer, says Thanh Nguyen. Credit: Gretchen Ertl

Reaching these goals over the next few years might seem a tall order. But at MIT, Nguyen has seized every opportunity to master the specialized techniques required for conducting large-scale experiments with topological materials, and getting results. Guided by his advisor,Mingda Li, the Norman C Rasmussen Assistant Professor and director of theQuantum Matter Groupwithin NSE, Nguyen was able to dive into significant research even before he set foot on campus.

The summer, before I joined the group, Mingda sent me on a trip to Argonne National Laboratory for a very fun experiment that used synchrotron X-ray scattering to characterize topological materials, recalls Nguyen. Learning the techniques got me fascinated in the field, and I started to see my future.

During his first two years of graduate school, he participated in four studies, serving as a lead author in three journal papers. In one notable project,described earlier this yearinPhysical Review Letters, Nguyen and fellow Quantum Matter Group researchers demonstrated, through experiments conducted at three national laboratories, unexpected phenomena involving the way electrons move through a topological semimetal, tantalum phosphide (TaP).

These materials inherently withstand perturbations such as heat and disorders, and can conduct electricity with a level of robustness, says Nguyen. With robust properties like this, certain materials can conductivity electricity better than best metals, and in some circumstances superconductors which is an improvement over current generation materials.

This discovery opens the door to topological quantum computing. Current quantum computing systems, where the elemental units of calculation are qubits that perform superfast calculations, require superconducting materials that only function in extremely cold conditions. Fluctuations in heat can throw one of these systems out of whack.

The properties inherent to materials such as TaP could form the basis of future qubits, says Nguyen. He envisions synthesizing TaP and other topological semimetals a process involving the delicate cultivation of these crystalline structures and then characterizing their structural and excitational properties with the help of neutron and X-ray beam technology, which probe these materials at the atomic level. This would enable him to identify and deploy the right materials for specific applications.

My goal is to create programmable artificial structured topological materials, which can directly be applied as a quantum computer, says Nguyen. With infinitely better heat management, these quantum computing systems and devices could prove to be incredibly energy efficient.

Energy efficiency and its benefits have long concerned Nguyen. A native of Montreal, Quebec, with an aptitude for math and physics and a concern for climate change, he devoted his final year of high school to environmental studies. I worked on a Montreal initiative to reduce heat islands in the city by creating more urban parks, he says. Climate change mattered to me, and I wanted to make an impact.

At McGill University, he majored in physics. I became fascinated by problems in the field, but I also felt I could eventually apply what I learned to fulfill my goals of protecting the environment, he says.

In both classes and research, Nguyen immersed himself in different domains of physics. He worked for two years in a high-energy physics lab making detectors for neutrinos, part of a much larger collaboration seeking to verify the Standard Model. In the fall of his senior year at McGill, Nguyens interest gravitated toward condensed matter studies. I really enjoyed the interplay between physics and chemistry in this area, and especially liked exploring questions in superconductivity, which seemed to have many important applications, he says. That spring, seeking to add useful skills to his research repertoire, he worked at Ontarios Chalk River Laboratories, where he learned to characterize materials using neutron spectroscopes and other tools.

These academic and practical experiences served to propel Nguyen toward his current course of graduate study. Mingda Li proposed an interesting research plan, and although I didnt know much about topological materials, I knew they had recently been discovered, and I was excited to enter the field, he says.

Nguyen has mapped out the remaining years of his doctoral program, and they will prove demanding. Topological semimetals are difficult to work with, he says. We dont yet know the optimal conditions for synthesizing them, and we need to make these crystals, which are micrometers in scale, in quantities large enough to permit testing.

With the right materials in hand, he hopes to develop a qubit structure that isnt so vulnerable to perturbations, quickly advancing the field of quantum computing so that calculations that now take years might require just minutes or seconds, he says. Vastly higher computational speeds could have enormous impacts on problems like climate, or health, or finance that have important ramifications for society. If his research on topological materials benefits the planet or improves how people live, says Nguyen, I would be totally happy.

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Cracking the Secrets of an Emerging Branch of Physics: Exotic Properties to Power Real-World Applications - SciTechDaily

In the fall of 2009, I finally gave in and signed my life over to Facebook. I figured it would be a great way to reconnect with friends and family.

Over time, I began to enjoy sharing my thoughts on theology, politics and sports. I was a conservative evangelical, Calvinist Republican in those days. And so were most of my friends. It was fun to share pithy, humorous statuses about how totally depraved everyone is, but how God chose to save a few of us, mostly Republicans, for his glory while burning the rest forever for his glory.

As I sharedin my recent articleabout my introduction toward healing through self-awareness that led me out of that world, I had a lot of suppressed trauma that was fueling my theology and consequently my use of social media that I was totally unaware of. But as my doubts and questions began to pile up, there came a point where I wanted to share some of them.

When I shared that article on Facebook, my entire experience of social media changed.

In 2018, I wrote arelatively tame blog articlewhere I wondered why I had listened to about 10,000 sermons in my life from mostly white, conservative, fundamentalist, Reformed, evangelical men, while never being given the opportunity to listen to women share much of anything. And when I shared that article on Facebook, my entire experience of social media changed.

Suddenly, I went from being the hilarious, theologically deep, politically informed friend to being on the witness stand having to defend myself, amidst hundreds of comments, against the charges of denying inerrancy, ignoring the clear teaching of the Bible and falling down a slippery slope. Then once I started questioning young earth creationism and the global flood, I was branded on my own Facebook wall as a false teacher and a wolf.

As weve spent most of 2020 dealing with COVID-19, socially distancing from one another, and experiencing a presidential election featuring Donald Trump, our stress on social media has intensified to unprecedented levels.Conservatives are threateningto leave Facebook for Parler due to Facebooks flagging of their conspiracy theories. And as we approach the upcoming holidays after spending this year arguing with family on social media about these conspiracy theories, were facing even more strife over whether or not to get together.

In her bookAlone Together, psychologist Sheri Turkle argues that computer technology has invaded our relationships, rewired our understanding of friendship and authenticity, and left us feeling alone. In a 2012 article forThe Atlantic,Stephen Marche saysthat the loneliness and depression that Facebook fuels has revealed that a connection is not the same thing as a bond, and that instant and total connection is no salvation, no ticket to a happier, better world or a more liberated version of humanity.

We need to look at the timeline of our story to grow in our awareness of who we are as relational beings.

While I agree with much of their observations, I believe social media has a power worth saving toward a more liberated version of humanity. But to discover the social crossroads we find ourselves at, we need to look at the timeline of our story to grow in our awareness of who we are as relational beings.

Our story began around 13.8 billion years ago when the universe was condensed into the wholeness of a dimensionless point of energy called the singularity. After the Big Bang, particles began to draw toward one another in a circular dance and bond together. As they bonded, their convergence transcended to create atoms. Then as atoms began to draw together in their circle dance, they bonded and transcended to create molecules.

From the formation of quantum physics to the unimaginably vast worlds of galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets, our story is an unfolding of wholeness transcending toward more complex wholeness. When we look inside our bodies, we can quite literally see this 13.8 billion-year-old story of coming together to transcend as one toward greater wholeness. The universe and our bodies are essentially a wholeness of energy in relationship.

As our story began to be written on earth, we evolved from reptiles to mammals and intoHomo sapiens, transcending toward greater complexity while bearing the marks and behaviors of our past. Our minds reveal this complexity through our anxiety-fueled reptilian brain that keeps us alive by sensing threats, our hunger-fueled mammal brain that drives desire and pleasure, and our primate brain that builds our social, cognitive, linguistic and creative connections.

Every individual contains within the mind and body a complex network of relationships. When individuals come together as families, co-workers, churches or social groups, these complex networks of relationships interact with one another to create even more complex relationships. As a result, new consciousness emerges.

As humans began to emerge, we initially developed a consciousness that was mythic, tribal and ritualistic. Our fascination with the fertility cycles of nature created a mythic vision of reality as sacred. Yet our experience of community was generally limited to our tribes. In order to restore any disorder in nature, we developed rituals and sacrifices that were meant to bring reconciliation and healing. Within this consciousness, the seeds of religion and politics began to grow.

As our tribes began to interact, we gradually became aware of the ideas of neighboring tribes. This interaction led individuals to question their own tribes ideas, which led to a consciousness that was more individualistic and rational. These individualistic, rational theologies and politics set within the hierarchical structures of power were the world that the church and eventually the American culture grew up in.

The more Christianity became separated from our growing awareness of universal wholeness, the more it shifted its theology of salvation to focus on the next world rather than this one. The 20th century devolved into the most violent, deadly century in world history. So culturally, the desires for salvation and immortality began to shift away from religion to technology.

Every time I log onto Facebook, Im faced with the question in the Create Post box, Whats on your mind, Rick? Most of us will click on the box and start typing away whatever were thinking about at the moment. Yet we have no idea how infinitely complex the subconscious web of relationships is in our minds and bodies that has been unfolding toward that Create Post moment for 13.8 billion years.

In his bookThe Future of Man, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, Just as Earth once covered itself with a film of interdependent living organisms so humankinds combined achievements are forming a global network of networked mind, a new intersubjectivity.

While social media has been revealing a splintering apart of American society along the lines of religion and politics, it also has been evolving a more global consciousness by connecting individuals across the religious and political divides unlike ever before in history.

What we are really seeking is a bond that leads to salvation as a more liberated version of humanity.

In her bookRe-Enchanting the Earth, Ilia Delio explores how social media has led the individual to transcend into a networked consciousness that is fundamentally reshaping human relationships. Whether we are aware of it or not, the individual is transcending to become more tribal, while the religious and political tribes of the earth are becoming more global. Technology such as social media, Delio says, arose as natures cry for connectedness and wholeness, an effort to transcend our crippled individualism. As Stephen Marche said inThe Atlantic, what we are really seeking is a bond that leads to salvation as a more liberated version of humanity.

In their bookHow to Think Theologically, Howard Stone and James Duke discuss how Christians have anembedded theologythat is handed to us from within our communities. It is the unquestioned, natural theology that we simply assume is reality. They then discussdeliberative theologyas the process of becoming aware of, reflecting on and reconsidering our constructs of reality that we had long taken for granted.

This journey of self-awareness is the beginning of a more liberated version of humanity. We must do the difficult work of facing our wounds, of naming and grieving them so deeply until we are moved with compassionate love for ourselves.

Delio says we need to reimagine Christianity in light of the cosmos to discover both the depths and complexities of who we are within and the opportunities for convergence and transcendence that lay before us to expand without.

Over the past few years in particular, there has been a growing fear amongst conservative evangelical white men about what they perceive to be the dangers of liberation theologies. Twitter is full of these men attacking even other conservative Black men for bringing this supposedly dangerous theology into the church.

InLift Every Voice, liberation theologians Susan Thistlethwaite and Mary Engel frame liberation theologies within the eschatological cosmic story of God bringing the cosmos together into greater wholeness through restorative justice and love. Liberation theologies begin from the perspective of oppressed communities and address the systemic structures that are causing their suffering. According to C.S. Song, liberation theologies see that reality is a world of multiplicities stamped with the One, and that we are in nature and nature is in us, and together we and nature are in God.

The reason conservative evangelical white men are against liberation theologies is that they have promoted a gospel that is fundamentally against the reality of universal, unfolding wholeness. They promote a gospel that says we are fundamentally separate individuals, separate from God, making separate decisions, with separate eternal destinies. They embrace a theology that uses the individualistic, rational interpretation of mythic, ritualistic tribalism within an ancient hierarchical power structure of the cosmos. And they are its power brokers on the earth.

So when I post a status about liberating communities they have oppressed, they deny the existence of systemic evil, label me as dangerous, and threaten everyone with the judgment of separation from neighbor and God.

Part of my growing self-awareness has led me to realize I also have been oppressed by these men. I bear the wounds of their words in my bones. But I also bear the unfolding story of the cosmos as transcending wholeness in my bones.

To post a Facebook status or share a tweet is ultimately a cry toward wholeness.

To post a Facebook status or share a tweet is ultimately a cry toward wholeness. To have those who have benefited from systemic power tell you that you are wrong and a threat is trauma.

We have only begun to explore through astrophysics, quantum physics and neuroscience the depths of our story, the complexities of our minds and bodies, and the opportunity for liberation or separation that social media gives us. As Delio says, Technology is extending the outreach of the human person into global domains.

Perhaps by discovering our story of unfolding wholeness by exploring the cosmos within ourselves, well be able to use social media to name and bring justice to the traumas of separation as we transcend toward the bond of a more liberated version of humanity.

Rick Pidcockis a stay-at-home father of five kids. He and his wife, Ruth Ellen, have started Provoke Wonder, a collaboration of artists that exists to foster child-like worship through story and song. Provoke Wonders first album,Consider the Stars, was released in March 2020. Their first childrens book,What If, will be released in 2020. Rick is pursuing a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary.

This article was made possible by gifts to the Mark Wingfield Fund for Interpretive Journalism.

Original post:
What the Big Bang and wholeness have taught me about Facebook - Baptist News Global

Louis Ren Beres, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Purdue, recounts the grave mistakes made by Donald Trump during his tenure, and analyses how they can be resolved going forward in order to reinstate American self-respect...

ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump Rally, because those people aggressively fought back..DC Police, get going do your job and dont hold back!!! US President Donald Trump, November 14, 2020

Whoever can dominate the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship run state has its roots in the street. Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich Minister of Propaganda, Party Rally at Nuremberg, 1934

I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they dont play it tough until they go to a certain point and then it would be very bad, very very bad. Donald Trump, March 15, 2019

In the fashion of his de facto mentor in 1930s Germany, Donald J. Trump remains gleefully a man of the street. This fearful resemblance is many-sided, and exists at different intersecting levels. Like Hitler, Goebbels and Goering, American President Trump thrives amid chaos, violence and general lawlessness. As an evident corollary, he remains stubbornly crude and disingenuous in his every gesture.

Some of this Presidents derelictions are more egregious than others. The worst, by far, is his orchestrated disinformation campaign against accepted medical science. Also unsettling and injurious is his steadfast insistence upon a rigged election. Though not supported by a scintilla of tangible evidence, Donald J. Trumps incessant claims of voter fraud simultaneously undermine US dignity and national security.

Plausibly, after Trump, we are even more apt to concur with Irish poet W.B. Yeats, There is no longer a virtuous nation, and the best of us live by candle light.

When Donald Trump is finally compelled to leave office on January 20, 2021 and no doubt, shrieking with indignation about unfairness the United States will have reached a nadir of epic proportion. This once-unimaginable low point will reveal not only greatly expanded American weakness on all legal fronts, but also a pandemic-created body count exceeding earlier compilations of national war dead. In specifically jurisprudential or legal terms, it would not be unreasonable to call these American Covid-19 fatalities the victims of a de facto genocide.

Donald J. Trump made all the wrong calls on controlling this disease, many of them based on deliberate and conscious manipulations of truth and law. These catastrophically wrong calls cannot be ascribed to predictive error.

Its finally time for candor. The only tangible difference between the Trump-assisted mass dying and a true genocide lies in the presumed absence of criminal intent or mens rea. From the flesh-and-blood standpoint of the dead Americans and their surviving families, of course, this law-based absence is simply immaterial.

Expecting this defiling Presidents behavior to change on its own has always been a core mistake in the United States. Merely hoping against hope that such persistently barbarous behavior can change was always about as credible an expectation as awaiting a sudden change in the earths gravitational tides. Today, on account of our refractory unwillingness to call things by their correct name, Americans are living (and dying) in a self-created desert of pervasive despair.

This demeaning creation will have ubiquitous long-term consequences. After all, as we may learn from 20th century European thinker E.M. Cioran, a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought; and tears always have deeper roots than smiles.

What do we do now, when even the normal prospect of a peaceful transfer of US presidential power can no longer be assured? To begin with, it is essential that we consciously reject the atavistic insights of mass man, and begin, with apt seriousness, to embrace Reason. Going forward, American national policies ought no longer be based upon unchallenged and boorish gibberish.

After Trump, it will be high time for competently gathered facts and a closely corresponding corpus of science-based theory.

And for jurisprudence, it will be very high time.

Something else will also be necessary. To wit, certain acts that were once merely wrong or harmful have recently become murderous or prospectively murderous. In large measure, this is because the Covid-19 pandemic mandates more substantially far-reaching patterns of serious cooperation, domestically and internationally. These patterns concern densely intersecting elements of world order.

Quo Vadis? Where should we go from here? To start the list, the conspicuously shallow and degrading Trump vision of America First ought never be allowed to outlast his corrupted presidency. Such a retrograde allowance would only lead the United States toward endlessly Darwinian global struggles and to an even larger worldwide chaos. Here, amid fiercely escalating competitions between nation-states, we could then expect more and more refractory global conflicts.

There is more. The failed standard of everyone for himself can produce only more and more intense levels of human suffering. Ipso facto, such bitter results would reflect discernibly wide deviations from Americas assorted legal obligations. Most notable, in this regard, would be certain statutory and customary obligations of both national and international law.

We are all obliged to inquire: Where should we be headed from such an inauspicious decisional precipice? In our war and disease-ravaged world, a synergy-exacerbated planet now teetering at the most vertiginous heights of despair, only a law-based expansion of human empathy could possibly save us. This suggests, among other things, that any such expansion by the United States would represent not just some generous or one-sided act of charity that is, a mistakenly altruistic species of traditional American benevolence.

Instead, we are speaking here of a determinedly positive and self-serving expression of rational US policy.

The reasons are easily identifiable and abundantly clear. In brief summation: US national interests can no longer be served at the calculably deliberate and zero-sum expense of other states and nations. As we ought already to have learned from the grievously debilitating Trump years, America First really means America Last.

It has been a lethal oxymoron.

There is more. At every crucial level of evaluation military, economic, biological and legal American security is integrally linked with a wider human soul. For the United States, any further misplaced confidence in embarrassingly vacant presidential witticisms or allegations could fatally undermine this unhappy countrys overall security. Although, until now, any open reference to US national morbidity would have seemed a hyperbole, or a gross exaggeration; but this is no longer the case.

Prima facie, we Americans are in grievously mortal danger, individually and collectively.

What we have been witnessing during the dissembling Trump Era, hour by hour, minute by minute, is the incremental dismantling of a once decent and law-respecting nation. Now, an immutable element of transience has become tragically self-evident. Its not that such transience or impermanence can ever be fixed, but rather that still-aspiring great nations ought not to take witting steps to hasten their collective disappearance.

Trump did not make America great again.

In continuous candor, during its Trump-based and pandemic-hastened decline, the American mass could not possibly cling convincingly to this Presidents contrived promises of greatness. At best, the childishly-inscribed red hats and related paraphernalia expressed a dangerously thin parody of high thinking. They were a demonstrably hideous caricature of legitimate thought. For the foreseeable future, lest we should forget the immutable lessons of change and transformation in world affairs, America will need to settle not for greatness, but only for elementary physical survival.

All this is hardly reassuring or comforting. Nonetheless, truth is necessary, and exculpatory, not just in law, but in national life generally. Trumpian false reassurance is not something we should ever seek or accept. Already, this deception has cost tens or hundreds of thousands of American lives, fellow citizens who foolishly believed in an elected leader who said treacherously, again and again, We have everything under control and We are rounding the corner on this virus.

Always, truth excuses candor. This particular truth about Americas mortal vulnerabilities is not subject to any captivating metaphors or credible contradictions. US President Donald J. Trump is personally responsible for uncountable American disease fatalities. Even if he meant well (a problematic assumption in its own right), his decision to distribute pertinent health supplies on the basis of presumed political loyalty was morally and legally inexcusable.

There is still more. For the United States, todays national and geopolitical truth is expectedly grim and undeniably sobering. Even worse, there are no discoverable correctives visible anywhere on this bewildered administrations determinable policy horizons. On the contrary, the medicine offered by a still-lingering (and still-limping) Trump administration is just more and more of the same.

This medicine remains toxic.

From the White House, nothing seriously remediating has been offered, whether on matters concerning war, genocide, terrorism or planet-wide pandemic. Of course, if we can somehow manage to hold out until January 20, 2021 and if the increasingly violent street fighters backing Donald Trump can be prevented from obstructing a peaceful transfer of presidential authority the incoming Biden administration ought to quickly supply some authentic and law-supporting solace.

The finding of regularities constitutes the beginning of any scientific inquiry. Apropos of this core understanding, there is a common problem here. Most fundamentally injurious and ominous about Donald Trumps studied indifference to human interconnections and properly codified legal rights has been his willful destruction of empathy. For still-thinking Americans, the palpably dreadful consequences of such destruction ought to have already become obvious.

The unmistakably monstrous global consequences of Germany First a readily recognizable antecedent of Trumps America First should have immediately exhibited certain stinging historical resonances.

For any necessary expansions of empathy to become sufficiently practical would first require a president and a citizenry at least minimally versed in history and law. At this moment, there is precious little evidence of any such learning. Even worse, we have been witnessing an American political process wherein learning and intellect are ridiculed and count only as liabilities.

Donald J. Trump did not create this countrys stultifying disinterest in history, law and learning. There are other much deeper roots to the correlative American deficiencies of empathy and cooperation. Divided into thousands of hostile tribes, almost two hundred of which are called nation-states, too many human beings still find it easy or even pleasing to slay others. As for any remediating considerations of compassion, that indispensable sort of sentiment is typically reserved only for those who live well within ones own previously-delineated tribe.

Looking ahead, any needed expansion of empathy to include outsiders remains a basic condition of law-based peace and more viable global cooperation. Without such a needed expansion, our entire species will remain inconveniently dedicated to its own protracted debasement and, by extrapolation, its own incremental disappearance. Hopefully, with the advent of a new President on January 20, 2021, Joe Biden will take useful note of this urgent human obligation.

Ironically, however, the essential expansion of empathy for many could become dreadful, improving human community, but only at the prohibitive costs of private sanity. This potentially insufferable consequence is rooted deeply in the way we humans were originally designed, that is, as more-or-less hard-wired beings, as individuals with distinctly recognizable and largely impermeable boundaries of personal feeling. Were it otherwise, an extended range of compassion toward too many others would inevitably bring about our own emotional collapse.

As an easy to understand example, we may consider how difficult it would be if all of us were suddenly to feel the same compelling pangs of sympathy and compassion for certain others outside our primary spheres of attachment that we customarily maintain only for family and friends inside these spheres.

This daunting challenge presents a challenging paradox. It has already been examined in the ancient Jewish legend of the Lamed-Vov; this is a Talmudic tradition that scholars generally trace back to Isaiah. Here, the whole world is said to rest upon thirty-six Just Men, the Lamed-Vov. Along normal criteria of differentiation, these figures are otherwise indistinguishable from ordinary mortals. Still, instructs the legend, if just one of their number were absent, the resultant sufferings of humankind would become staggering, poisoning even the purest souls of the newly-born.

This Talmud-explained paradox has some useful contemporary legal meaning for the United States. The modernized signification reveals that a widening circle of human compassion is indispensable to civilizational survival and yet, represents a source of private anguish. According to the Jewish legend, such overwhelming anguish would be unimaginable.

Still more questions must be raised. How shall President Trump or President Joe Biden begin to deal capably with a requirement for global civilization that is both essential and unbearable? Newly informed that empathy for many is a precondition for any decent and functioning world legal order, what could create such care without producing intolerable emotional pain? Recalling Ralph Waldo Emerson and the American Transcendentalists, remaining high-thinkers in the United States now ought to duly inquire: How can we be immediately released from the misconceived ideology of America First, a deranging posture that has been increasing the prospects not only of aggression, terrorism and genocide, but also of our now-uncontrolled disease pandemic?

There is more. The whole world, the world in toto, is a system. The existence of system in the world is at once obvious to every observer of nature, says the Jesuit philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, no matter whom.Each element of the Cosmos is positively woven from all the others. Above all, this dissembling Presidents soon-to-be-installed successor should fully and finally understand that the legal state of Americas national union can never be any better than the state of the world as a whole. This key truth now obtains not only in traditional reference to the enduring issues of war, peace and human rights, but also to patently critical matters of epidemic disease management.

Always, for the imperiled United States, the overarching presidential objective must be to protect the sacred dignity, safety and law-based rights of each and every individual human being. It is exactly this high-minded and ancient goal that should now give preeminent policy direction to a bewildered and bewildering President Trump and incoming American President Joe Biden. Such indisputably good counsel could represent a law-based corrective to Trumps consistently misleading endorsements of America First.

Naturally, it will be easy for many to dismiss any such seemingly lofty recommendations for human dignity and legal obligation as silly, ethereal or academic. But, in reality, there could never be any greater American presidential naivet than to insistently champion the patently false extremities of everyone for himself.

Among Trumps other egregious misunderstandings and falsifications, America First represented a sorely blemished presidential mantra. Devoid of empathy, intellect, and absolutely all principal obligations of human legal cooperation, it could only have led toward distressingly new heights of strife, disharmony and collective despair. Left intact and unrevised, America First would have pointed us all toward a potentially irreversible vita minima; that is, to badly corrupted personal lives emptied of themselves meaningless, shattered, rancorous, unfeeling and radically unstable.

Here, located among so many other melodramas and misfortunes, we would find it impossible to battle not just the usual adversaries involving violence, but also our increasingly fearful biological/pathogen-centered enemies.

There is more. Without a suitable expansion of empathy, we Americans will remain at the mercy not just of other predatory human beings, but also of certain exceedingly virulent pathogens. Progressively, the harmful synergies created by such dangerous combinations would sometime likely become too much to bear. And we could not count upon the Lamed-Vov to rescue us.

For all who would still value clear thinking, the cumulative legal lesson should be unassailable. We are all part of the same planetary whole. Only by placing Humanity First can an American president make America First. The latter placement, which must now include the capacity to combat disease pandemic as well as war, terrorism and genocide, is not possible without the former. Today, as America hopes to survive the closing days of Donald J. Trumps unraveling presidency, the driving reason behind this conclusion remains cosmopolitan and essentially unchanged.

Is it an end that draws near, asks postwar German philosopher Karl Jaspers in Man in the Modern Age (1951) or a beginning? To reply usefully, our national and international preparations must lie not in the warring streets of Donald J. Trump and Joseph Goebbels, but in the verifiable intellectual truths of history, science and jurisprudence. These basic truths are unhidden and ascertainable.

Americans now ought to embrace them together with other still-promising elements of the incoming Biden presidency. Inevitably, American security, global security and world law will remain intertwined. In the end, they must all become one.

Louis Ren Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Law at Purdue. He is the author of twelve major books and several hundred journal articles in the field. Professor Beres writings appear in many leading newspapers and magazines, including The Atlantic, The Hill, U.S. News & World Report, The National Interest, The Jerusalem Post, The New York Times and Oxford University Press. In Israel, where his latest writings were published by the BESA Center for Strategic Studies, the Institute for Policy and Strategy and the Institute for National Security Studies, he was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon, 2003). Dr. Beres strategy-centered publications have been published in such places as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; JURIST; Special Warfare (Pentagon); Infinity Journal (Israel); The Strategy Bridge; The War Room (USA War College); Modern War Institute (West Point); The Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Modern Diplomacy; Yale Global Online; The International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Parameters: Journal of the U.S. Army War College, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); World Politics (Princeton); International Security (Harvard) and the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs. Professor Louis Ren Beres was born in Zrich, Switzerland, at the end of World War II.

Suggested citation: Louis Ren Beres, Dominating the Street: President Trump Recycles Lawlessness from the Gutter, JURIST Academic Commentary, November 25, 2020, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/11/louis-rene-beres-trump-dominating-the-street/.

This article was prepared for publication by Akshita Tiwary, JURISTs Staff Editor. Please direct any questions or comments to her at commentary@jurist.org

Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.

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Dominating the Street: President Trump Recycles Lawlessness from the Gutter - JURIST

Photo: Anastasiia Krivenok | Getty Images

How Podcasting Can Help You Grow Your Online Course Business And Sell More Digital Products

Podcasts are one of the most powerful ways to build rapport with your audience and one of the best ways to build a brand and market and sell digital products, especially online courses.

Once you have figured out how to create an online course that sells and you are ready to set it on autopilot, you need to make a decision on how to drive consistent traffic to your core piece of content.Podcasting is a great way to do that.

Podcasts are a place where youll find people with long attention spans, who interested in your niche and are craving more information. Why would they be subscribed if they werent? Podcasting is the ultimate place to sell digital products, because theres an engaged audience and you get to network with other awesome people in your space.

Related:3 Effective Marketing Strategies For Selling Digital Products Online

Your listeners spend some of their most intimate time with you while they are either driving their car, going for a walk, getting ready for work, working out at the gym or before they head to bed. This builds what Joel Brown, the founder of the Addicted2Success podcast calls "the best friend effect."Most course creators are fighting to be seen and heard on social media, and this can be an expensive and exhausting game to play. In an email interview, Brown wrote that All you need is to record an ad for your course, which will be placed at the start of each episode. As each listener gets to know you and becomes familiar with your voice, they will remember you next time they are looking for a course to join. Not to mention if they are listening to a lot of episodes back-to-back they will hear your ad multiple times, which in turn makes it more likely they will eventually purchase your course if they believe you have a solution for them."

You become a well-versed speaker when you commit to a high volume of episode creation. If you are a coach,a podcast is a powerful value exchange you get to offer other coaches, speakers and authors, which will allow you to build a network of friends in your industry.

Related: The 3 Most Common Mistakes Online Course Creators Make

Podcasts are a place where you can establish yourself as an expert through the power of hijacking other peoples audiences, as Russel Brunson would say.Using the power of other peoples audiences by getting influential guests on your show can instantly build your credibility and authority in the industry.

Brown managed to get huge namessuch as Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Jay Shetty, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, Grant Cardone, Gabrielle Bernstein, Lisa Nichols, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Brendon Burchard, Bob Proctor, John Assaraf and more through a combination of perseverance and luck. His podcast has been downloaded more than fourmillion times, and the YouTube videos of his podcast episodes have more than two million views.

I messaged Gary Vaynerchuk and told him I would purchase25 copies of his book Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hookand give them away as a competition on my social media channels in return for a quick 20-minute video interview," Brown wrote to me. "He loved the idea and said yes."

"I set a calendar reminder in my phone on the 21st of each month for 12 months straight to remind me to try another way to get in touch with Tony Robbins," he wrote."It took nine months and nine attempts until I finally got a yesfrom Tony. By the time he agreed, he had heard my name and Addicted2Success mentioned to him a few times from a few gatekeepers. It was perfect timing as his new book Money: Master The Gamehad just come out."

"John Assaraf, who was in the hit movie The Secret, was running a Masterclass to promote one of his courses," Brown told me."I put myself in his shoes and knew that he would need support to get as many subscribers as possible to fill his course. I offered to promote his course to my social media followers and email list, which at the time had 30,000 subscribers. He said yes."

For Addicted2Success, traction picked up very quickly once it hit 10,000 downloads per month. That kind of success isachievable when you have a solid game plan and strategy to consistently get all-star guests on your platform and are promoting each episode to your audiencemultiple times. It helps even more when you ask and encourage people to share your episodes with their friends, fans and followers too.

This more quickly you grow and the more listeners you have, the more you'll be picked up by podcast algorithms. That helps you rank in the top charts on Apple's podcast app and get featured on the main page of Soundcloud, for example.

Lets take the closer look at Scot Chrismanspodcast, The Athletic Stance,which focuses on mindset, nutrition, fitness and more for skiers.I was blessed to see a lot of traction quickly," Chrisman wrote in an email."It was the top podcast in sports on iTunes within 90 days. I was able to interview a lot of the best skiers and influential minds in skiing think of the Tony Hawks or the Michael Jordans of the skiing world including two-time Olympic gold medalist and six-time world championDavid Wise and 16-year-old bronze medal winner Nico Porteous. Getting these athletes on the show was a matter of persistence and passion. I sent out lots of requests, and I literally only got one no. The rest just ignored me if they didnt want to be a part of it. It helped that I was an up-and-coming pro, but it didnt mean it was always easy.

Coaches, consultantsand course creators can hugely benefit from starting a podcast, because it encourages them to create "Gary Vee-style" content that can then be broken down, multipliedand posted across social media platforms and blogs. To be able to keep selling online courses consistently, you need as much content as possible.

Podcasting is a great practice for speaking about your topic, diving into your expertise, creating content regularlyand systematically syndicating it out through multiple mediums.

So, when are you starting your podcast?

Related:4 Crucial Things To Consider Before Creating An Online Course

Related: How to Grow Your Entrepreneurial Superpower Why Family-Owned Businesses Need Specialized CFO Services 5 Productivity Rules to Keep You Focused When Working From Home

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How Podcasting Can Help You Grow Your Online Course Business And Sell More Digital Products - The Advocate

They say money can't buy happiness, but when it comes to retirement,a little extra cash never hurts.

Retirement is becoming more and more expensive, and the average U.S. adult is expected to outlive their savings by around eight to 10 years, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. If you run out of money later in life, it can be tough to enjoy your senior years.

While everyone will have different financial needs and goals in retirement, a new study shows there may be a dollar amount tied to happiness. Here's how much it costs to retire happy.

Image source: Getty Images.

In a study conducted by Audley Villages, a retirement home community based in the U.K., researchers ranked the happiest cities in the world, and determined how much the average person in those cities needs to retire comfortably.

The results revealed that it costs, on average, $288,240 to retire in the world's happiest cities. The city scoring highest on the "happiness index" was Helsinki, Finland, where it costs approximately $252,599 to retire. The least expensive city on the list was Wellington, New Zealand, with retirement costing $206,228.

Among U.S. cities, Honolulu was revealed to be the happiest. Researchers found that it costs around $304,591 to retire there.

While there's nothing wrong with seeing how much retirement costs on average, it's important not to base your retirement plan around these numbers alone.

Everyone's retirement will look different, and each retiree will also have a different definition of "happiness." Some retirees will be perfectly happy staying home and spending very little outside of their basic necessities. Others, though, may want to travel the world or take on expensive new hobbies in order to be happy in retirement.

As you're saving for retirement, it's important to think about your expectations for your senior years. Ask yourself what type of retirement lifestyle will make you happy, and consider how your future costs will compare to what you're spending now. You may find that your expenses will decrease in retirement, but they could just as easily skyrocket. By thinking about these expenses now, you'll have a better idea of how much retirement will cost.

Because everyone's retirement needs will differ, it's wise to calculate your retirement goals based on your unique situation.

Once you've determined approximately how much it will cost each year for you to enjoy a happy retirement, plug that information into a retirement calculator. Be sure to consider Social Security benefits as well, because although they likely won't cover all your expenses, they can reduce the amount you'll need to save.

As you're inputting your information into the retirement calculator, be honest with yourself about factors such as your retirement age and the amount of time you expect to spend in retirement. If you're battling health issues, for example, it may not be realistic to assume you'll be able to continue working into your 70s or spend several decades in retirement. The more accurate your inputs are, the more accurate your results will be as well.

Enjoying a happy retirement is a goal nearly everyone can strive for, but it takes strategic planning to achieve this target. By calculating your retirement needs and preparing accordingly, it will be easier to enjoy your senior years to the fullest.

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Report: This Is How Much It Costs to Retire Happy - The Motley Fool