For centuries it has been thought that time is linear, and positive: seconds add up. But researchers at the University of Toronto They have managed to measure negative timeusing photons of light within an “atomic excitation.”
They are very advanced concepts, difficult to understand and explain in simple words, but let’s try. What is “negative time”? How is it possible for a photon of light to leave a material before entering?
“If a quantum clock were built to measure how much time atoms spend in the excited state, the clock hand would, under certain circumstances, move backwards instead of forwards,” he says. in X Aephraim Steinberg, experimental quantum physicist and co-author of the study.
Measuring negative time
Things get very strange on a quantum level. Everything happens so fast that the linearity of time is called into question. And they have managed to demonstrate it for the first time.
A team of quantum physicists from the University of Toronto (Canada) has been studying the behavior of light photons, in a specific state called “atomic excitation”according to explains the middle Independent.
A photon of light is the elementary particle of light, which can behave as a particle and as a wave.
When passing through a material, light photons experience an atomic excitation stategenerating a temporary delay when they interact with said material.
These scientists have studied for years how photons interact, by shooting them against ultracold atoms, to measure this atomic excitation.
During these experiments, they have observed that some photons leave the material before the atomic excitation ends, creating a value of negative timeand the feeling that the photon leaves the material before enteringbecause of how quickly everything happens.
In fact, if a quantum clock measured the time that these atoms spend in excitation, the clock hand, under certain circumstances, will move backwardsnot forward.
They are phenomena that until recently could not be measured, because there were no sufficiently advanced instruments.
Is this proof that you can travel back in time? Not really, because they are experiments at the atomic level, with the fastest particles in the universe (light), which are produced under specific conditions.
But it is a demonstration that negative time is possibleand plays an important role in quantum physics. The results are collected in this study published on Arxiv.
Negative time exists: photons that leave a material before entering. Now experimental quantum physicists have a huge job ahead of them, to interpret these results, and see what can be done with them.
Get to know how we work in ComputerHoy.
Tags: Viral, Curiosities