1mo ago

Physicists confirm the incredible existence of "time mirrors"

www.earth.com

This sort of time flip has been described as looking into a mirror and spotting your back instead of your face...By carefully adjusting electronic components on a strip of metal, they introduced a sudden jump that reversed the direction of incoming signals...The outcome was a time-reversed copy of the original wave, appearing just as predicted but never before seen with clarity...A wave that can jump to a new frequency and then rewind might open new possibilities for data transmission at different ranges of the spectrum. It could also reshape how certain sensors and imaging systems are designed.

Time Traveller Guide @lemmy.ca

LillyPip @lemmy.ca

4w ago

Physicists confirm the incredible existence of "time mirrors"

www.earth.com /news/physicists-confirm-the-incredible-existence-of-time-mirrors/

18 comments

Reading that article just left me with more questions :/
- And here are some answers:
  https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/982119
  (a) Conventional spatial reflections: A person sees their face when they look into a mirror, or when they speak the echo comes back in the same order. (b) Time reflections: The person sees their back when they look into a mirror, and they see themselves in different colors. They hear their echoes in a reversed order, similar to a rewound tape. (c) Illustration of the experimental platform used to realize time reflections. A control signal (in green) is used to uniformly activate a set of switches distributed along a metal stripline. Upon closing/opening the switches, the electromagnetic impedance of this tailored metamaterial is abruptly decreased/increased, causing a broadband forward-propagating signal (in blue) to be partially time-reflected, (in red) with all its frequencies converted. (Adapted from Nature Physics)
  So kinda like running a sound wave through a flip/reverse filter in audacity and having it switch along the “time” axis.
  
  So thats creepy.. yep..
  
  An upvote wasn't enough.
  Thank you!
  I have only skimmed the eureka alert article, but already on the surface it's so much better than... whatever the fuck that originally-linked thing is.
  
  So basically you can see your bald spot better. I'm unimpressed.
Now that we have time crystals and time mirrors we will be able to create time lasers!
- You get hit by the laser weapon before it fires!
  
  Han never shot?
- Don’t forget Time Cube!
Hey! Hey, I've seen this one! I've seen this one; this is a classic!
- What you mean? It's brand new
To achieve this, the group used an engineered metamaterial designed to control electromagnetic wave behavior in unusual ways. Metamaterials allow scientists to manipulate waves far beyond ordinary mirrors or lenses.
By carefully adjusting electronic components on a strip of metal, they introduced a sudden jump that reversed the direction of incoming signals. They filled the strip with electronic switches hooked to capacitor banks.
That arrangement supplied the necessary burst of energy to force the wave to flip direction in time, an effect that used to be considered nearly impossible with accessible power.
I don't fully comprehend, but that's not a problem. Science is so effing cool.
I'm stealing this concept for my TTRPG usage!
You mean we could have read this news a dozen times already?
- A dozen, a hundred, there's no way to tell.

18 comments