Posted on 03/14/2023 8:15:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
Time Reflections Visualization
Illustration of the experimental platform used to realize time reflections. (Andrea Alu)
Walk through a maze of mirrors, you'll soon come face to face with yourself. Your nose meets your nose, your fingertips touch at their phantom twins, stopped abruptly by a boundary of glass.
Most of the time, a reflection needs no explanation. The collision of light with the mirror's surface is almost intuitive, its rays set on a new path through space with the same ease as a ball bouncing off a wall.
For over sixty years, however, physicists have considered a subtly different kind of reflection. One that occurs not through the three dimensions of space, but in time.
Now researchers from the City University of New York's Advanced Science Research Center (CUNY ASRC) have turned the theory of 'time reflections' into practice, providing the first experimental evidence of its manipulation across the electromagnetic spectrum.
"This has been really exciting to see, because of how long ago this counterintuitive phenomenon was predicted, and how different time-reflected waves behave compared to space-reflected ones," says physicist Andrea Alù, founding director of the CUNY ASRC Photonics Initiative.
Put aside thoughts of TARDIS-like technologies rewriting history. This kind of time reflection is even weirder. And, it seems, actually possible after all.
By the 1970s, it was becoming clear that there was an analog for spatial reflection in the time component of a quantum wave of light. Change the medium a wave is traveling through quickly enough, in just the right way, and the temporal component of the wave will change with it.
Time Reflections Diagram Circuit A control signal (in green) activates a set of switches along a metal strip. The electromagnetic impedance of the metamaterial is abruptly changed, causing a forward-propagating signal (in blue) to be partially time-reflected (in red), with all its frequencies converted. (Andrea Alu) The effect of this reflection in time isn't going to rip a hole in reality. But It will shift the frequency of the wave, in ways technology could exploit across varied fields like imaging, analogue computing, and optical filtering.
Strangely, the 'echo' of altered frequency is also a reversal of the signal. If it was an echo of your voice counting one to ten, you'd hear each number spoken backwards, from ten back to one, in a chipmunk squeak.
Equivalents in acoustics and magnetism have been experimented with before, as has a limited investigation of narrow frequencies in electromagnetic temporal reflection using a computer setup.
Exploring the phenomenon on a less-constrained level would require uniform and sudden variations across the whole electromagnetic field of a material, something experimentalists assumed would demand too much energy to make work.
Until now, it seems.
"Using a sophisticated metamaterial design, we were able to realize the conditions to change the material's properties in time both abruptly and with a large contrast," says Alù.
The team shone a mix of frequencies through a purposefully designed metal strip roughly 6 meters in length, loaded with switches and capacitors. Triggered at the same moment, the capacitors unloaded their charge, swiftly altering the impedance of the metamaterial as the signal passed through.
This shock change created an echo in the broad range of light waves, demonstrating a reflection in their temporal properties.
Metamaterials are artificial constructs that have no equivalent in the natural world. Designed with unique properties that are tasked with a particular purpose, they have been made to suit different structural, acoustic, and optical needs.
Finding a metamaterial capable of time reflection provides engineers with a whole new tool for manipulating light.
"The exotic electromagnetic properties of metamaterials have so far been engineered by combining in smart ways many spatial interfaces," says physicist Shixiong Yin, one of the study's lead authors.
"Our experiment shows that it is possible to add time interfaces into the mix, extending the degrees of freedom to manipulate waves."
This research was published in Nature Physics.
Four O’clock ... Four O’clock ... Four O’clock ... Four O’clock ... Four O’clock ... Four O’clock ...
Imagine the many mirror universe’s and a Free Republic that is far left.... ACK!
“A time machine will and can never be invented. I know this because no one from the future has ever come back here.”
Or they might not find an advantage in revealing their presence. And specifically, why would they seek out Az Joe to convince you personally that time travel works?
But that assumes that these "future" people would ALWAYS feel that way about revealing themselves, each and every one of them, eternally for many, MANY millenia, eternally, forever and ever nd ever. No one in this future, with time machines in existence, would EVER reveal themselves to those in the past? EVER?!
Seems extremely unlikely. My contention is the more likely one. There will never be a time machine because we would have already been visited by people from the future...and we have NOT!
Suppose you could travel back in time and do things. Maybe one of those things destroys your time machine. Now you have a universe with no time machines. Maybe it’s inevitable that one of the things you do destroys your time machine.
Yay!
;-)
Hope you’re doing well, al.
But maybe someone had previously traveled back before that point in time and changed things so it would not happen.
Yes, I have a bunch of them..................
Then it would be Democrat Underground!...................
Maybe there is no future.
“But that assumes that these ‘future’ people would ALWAYS feel that way about revealing themselves, each and every one of them, eternally for many, MANY millenia, eternally, forever and ever nd ever. No one in this future, with time machines in existence, would EVER reveal themselves to those in the past? EVER?!”
Your premise is flawed. You assume that if time travel will be or has been invented then you must have personal knowledge and awareness of time travelers from the future. What if it exists but is too expensive to be ubiquitous? What if it is highly dangerous?
Look at human travel. Walking is built in. A bicycle is more efficient. A horse is more so. A train has advantages. Cars using combustible engines offer more. Then comes planes. Then jets. How about breaking the sound barrier?
Have you ridden on an aircraft capable of doing Mach 3? Would you know if they exist from personal experience? How about craft capable of reaching outer space? Landing on the moon? Mars? Interstellar?
Notice how these all require greater technology, efficiencies, and money?
What if time travel is invented a year from now but costs a billion dollars per second to transport one person? No one on earth can afford to return to today. And even if they could why would they? And why would they make their presence known to anyone, let alone you or me?
What if time travel requires great precautions to avoid creating things like feedback loops that can become highly destructive? When we put a man on the moon it was not a suicide mission. We brought the crew back. We didn’t allow them to be killed by radiation on the journey. See how a time travel mission could become far more complicated than your binary choice allows for?
I met a missionary to New Guinea who was there and received news of our successful mission to put a man on the moon. The primitive natives he lived with said he was lying because they looked at the moon and didn’t see anyone. They said however that he was a great liar (storyteller) who was worth coming to hear.
No one was trying to hide this event from the natives. They just weren’t prepared to grasp how it was possible. The average person enjoys many advanced technologies that they have no understanding of in terms of the underlying functionality. They just know they work. They don’t know how.
There might even be the possibility of time travel which only works with a combination of transmitter and receiver. In this scenario, it is only possible to go back in time to the point where a receiver has been invented and built. Perhaps this combination will be invented in the future.
I’m not arguing that humans have or will ever time travel. I have no firsthand experience to support this, just like you. I’m just saying that your argument against it is too simplistic.
The mere fact you have to go to such great verbal lengths in an attempt to disprove my point disproves your theory.
I stand correct.
Just showing the MANY ways your premise is wrong.
Believe what you want to believe.
Your difficulty with reading comprehension in no way supports your logic. Or lack of it in this case.
No way. And your ad hominin attack is my final killer evidence. You lose schmuck
We are well and you ?
“No way.”
Wow. Hadn’t thought of that argument. Did you have to work very hard to come up with it?
“And your ad hominin attack”
I didn’t make one. But you did. Avoid using terms you don’t understand and can’t spell.
Your initial argument is a textbook case of ad ignorantiam. I was polite enough to not point this out directly. The second fallacy of your original argument is dicto simpliciter. If you want to explore logic and logical fallacies, look them up.
“is my final killer evidence.”
You have no evidence or logical argument, killer or otherwise. That’s the point.
“You lose schmuck”
This is ad hominem. Not all attacks are personal, and not all personal attacks are ad hominem. Ad hominem applies when a person tries to draw a logical conclusion based on a criticism of his or her opponent. That’s EXACTLY what you did. I did not.
When a person has to resort to name-calling and is unable to rely on logic, reason, and facts, it demonstrates a lack of intelligence and poor character.
As long as a person only understands things that can be explained with a sound bite, that person will remain forever ignorant.
If reading or thinking through an issue is too painful for you, I suggest leaving the heavy lifting for others who actually enjoy these things.
I come here to learn things and stay informed. It’s very difficult for me to respect people who imagine they are leading the race when they missed the starting gun.
You, like everyone on this forum, have the opportunity to contribute something meaningful to the conversation so that everyone can benefit. Try taking advantage of that opportunity going forward.
“Brevity is the soul of wit”
FAIL!
Learn to read.
Clowns and mentally ill people don’t belong on a forum with normal, healthy adults.
Put on your big girl panties, and get literate.
“Brevity is the soul of wit”
You are brief but have demonstrated neither wit nor basic reading and writing skills.
Not something to be proud of.
No one on this entire forum is impressed.
If you went away, would even one person notice or miss you?
Even your mother hates you, thats what she told me last night
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