Although the phrase “negative time” seems straight out of science fiction, the expert defends its use and hopes it will spark deeper discussions about the mysteries of quantum physics, which governs the world inside out. scale of the infinitely small.
Scientists have long known that light sometimes appears to exit a material before entering it, an effect thought to be an illusion caused by the material's distortion of waves, and the Toronto team began exploring these interactions there several years ago.
When particles of light, or photons, pass through atoms, some are absorbed and subsequently re-emitted. This interaction changes the atoms and temporarily places them in a more energetic, or “agitated,” state before returning to normal.
The water present on the Moon, a cocktail from comets and the Earth?
In the final stages of the research, under the direction of Daniela Angulo, the team measured the duration of this state of agitation. “This weather turned out to be negative”explains the physicist, that is to say a duration less than zero.
To visualize this concept, we can imagine cars entering a tunnel: before the experiment, it was accepted that if, for example, the average entry time of a thousand cars could be noon, it was possible that the first cars can leave a little earlier, at 11:59 a.m. This result was then considered meaningless.
But no one claims the possibility of traveling in time, the researchers are quick to point out. “We don't want to say that something traveled backwards in time”souligne M. Steinberg. “That’s a misinterpretation.”
The explanation lies in quantum mechanics, with particles that behave in a fuzzy, probabilistic way where the
Interactions occur across a spectrum of possible durations, some of which defy intuition. This discovery does not violate Einstein's special relativity, which states that nothing can travel faster than light.
German theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, who is among the skeptics, criticized the work in a YouTube video viewed by more than 250,000 people. “The negative time in this experiment has nothing to do with the passage of time. It's just a way of describing how photons travel through a medium and how their phases change.”she stressed.
Daniela Angulo and Aephraim Steinberg countered by arguing that their research fills crucial gaps in explaining why light does not always travel at a constant speed.
