Posted on 01/04/2012 1:36:15 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Pentagon-supported physicists on Wednesday said they had devised a "time cloak" that briefly makes an event undetectable.
The laboratory device manipulates the flow of light in such a way that for the merest fraction of a second an event cannot be seen, according to a paper published in the science journal Nature.
It adds to experimental work in creating next-generation camouflage -- a so-called invisibility cloak in which specific colours cannot be perceived by the human eye.
"Our results represent a significant step towards obtaining a complete spatio-temporal cloaking device," says the study, headed by Moti Fridman of Cornell University in New York.
The breakthrough exploits the fact that frequencies of light move at fractionally different speeds.
The so-called temporal cloak starts with a beam of green light that is passed down a fibre-optic cable.
The beam goes through a two-way lens that splits it into two frequencies -- blueish light which travels relatively fast, and reddish light, which is slower.
The tiny difference in speed is then accentuated by placing a transparent obstacle in front of the two beams.
Eventually a time gap opens up between the red and blue beams as they travel through the optical fibre.
The gap is tiny -- just 50 picoseconds, or 50 millionths of a millionth of a second.
But it is just long enough to squeeze in a pulse of laser at a different frequency from the light passing through the system.
The red and blue light are then given the reverse treatment.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
True, just don’t make me wear that red shirt!
“Beam me up Scottie....they’re beginning to learn our secrets!”
That’s not what I’m being skeptical about. It’s easier to believe that they’ve set up the experiment in such a way as to elicit a new behavior from photons rather than believe they’ve actually created a pocket of static time in the universe.
It’s possible, but I won’t believe it until a couple other labs have reproduced and confirmed the finding.
It’s an incredible claim and that requires some serious proof.
“Kind of like how, from an absolute scintific wall against any habitable planets besides Earth, they no “find” a couple a day. What a coinkydink. “
I haven’t seen any credible astronomer make that claim. There are a few exoplanets that have been discovered in the habitable zone of their stars - just a few. And no one is actually claiming they’re habitable.
Good find - thanks for sharing.
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