'Negative Time' Really Does Exist, New Experiments Suggest

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/gjfq-k9dv

Abstract

When a photon traverses a cloud of atoms without scattering, how much time does it spend as an atomic excitation? To address this question, we used the cross-Kerr effect to weakly probe the degree of atomic excitation caused by a transmitted resonant “signal” photon by measuring the phase shift induced on a (separate, off-resonant) “probe” beam, postselected on cases when the signal photon is transmitted. The time integral of this observed phase shift, properly normalized and averaged over many runs in which the photon is detected after transmission, is the excitation time of interest, in a weak-valued sense. We measured mean atomic excitation times ranging from (−0.82±0.31)⁢𝜏0 for the most narrow band pulse to (0.54±0.28)⁢𝜏0 for the most broadband signal pulse, where 𝜏0 is the non-post-selected excitation time, given by the scattering probability multiplied by the atomic lifetime 𝜏sp . Across a range of pulse durations and optical depths, our results are consistent with the recent theoretical prediction that the weak value of the atomic excitation time caused by a transmitted photon equals the group delay experienced by the light. Our experimental results show that negative times are not limited to describing the shift in the peak of a reshaped wave packet (as resulting from group delay), but they also provide the appropriate description of the weak-valued time the photon spends as an atomic excitation.

Atomic excitation refers to the process where an electron in an atom absorbs energy and moves to a higher energy level or orbit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_state

Tenet, here we come!

The real question is if data or matter of any kind can traverse time.

Yes, and it’s primarily gathered around Mondays.

“You destroyed the fabric of spacetime”

I read the article, i think I understand what they did (sort of)… But can someone eli5 what they did but especially what the hypothesis is that happens to explain negative time

I know - I experience it when I wake at 3AM and can’t get back to sleep.

so there is anti-space, or negative space.

So this doesn’t sound like we would be able to send people through. But information could potentially be sent back in time.

And that is a huge can of worms. We’d potentially get an actual answer on how time paradoxes get resolved.

Load up the machine with the latest lottery numbers, send the info as far back as the machine can do, and see what happens.

I’m guessing the current amount of negative timeisn’t enough. But I’m sure with enough experiments & understanding it could be pushed out a bit. Worst case it’d have to be an automated process with a computer doing the gambling.

We need to create the Robux cube ASAP

exhibit A: [gestures broadly at Lemmy and all other Social Media]