Rodeo

Negative Time on @rodeodotclub 

“A negative time delay may seem paradoxical, but what it means is that if you built a ‘quantum’ clock to measure how much time atoms are spending in the excited state, the clock hand would, under certain circumstances, move backward rather than forward,” Sinclair says.  In other words, the time in which the photons were absorbed by atoms is negative.

Even though the phenomenon is astonishing, it has no impact on our understanding of time itself—but it does illustrate once again that the quantum world still has surprises in store.

“[Angulo] and the rest of the team have accomplished something really impressive and produced a beautiful set of measurements. Their results raise interesting questions about the history of photons traveling through absorptive media and necessitate a reinterpretation of the physical meaning of the group delay in optics,” Sinclair says.

The creative social network. ✳︎ rodeo.club