Aephraim Steinberg: The Physicist Who Measured Negative Time
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal
Atoms, Photons, and Measuring Excitation Time
He explains the rubidium atom experiment measuring how long atoms spend excited while photons transmit or are absorbed.
SPONSORS: - Go to https://expressvpn.com/theoriesofeverythingyt to find out how you can get up to 4 extra months thanks to our sponsor, ExpressVPN - Accelerate your efficiency. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at http://shopify.com/theories - I subscribe to The Economist for their science and tech coverage. As a TOE listener, get 35% off! No other podcast has this: https://economist.com/TOE This conversation belongs in a category I wish were larger on this channel: the experimentalist who also thinks (deeply) about foundations. Professor Aephraim Steinberg, winner of Physics World’s Breakthrough of the Year in 2011, is that species! For basically 30 years, he’s been measuring aspects of physics that others wouldn’t touch: Bohmian trajectories, Heisenberg’s disturbance bound (he showed it was wrong), even where the photon is inside the double slit (which most textbooks will tell you is impossible). His lab measured negative time — and it keeps reappearing across completely different experiments, stubbornly suggesting it means something. FOLLOW: - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e - Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs - Crypto: https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkout/de803625-87d3-4300-ab6d-85d4258834a9 - PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4 TIMESTAMPS: - 00:00:00 - Defining Negative Time - 00:06:50 - Quantum Trajectory Theory - 00:12:44 - The Holland Tunnel Analogy - 00:18:40 - Resonant Atomic Interactions - 00:26:05 - Superluminal Energy Propagation - 00:32:00 - Eight Velocities of Light - 00:38:00 - Causality and Retrocausality - 00:44:00 - Dwell Time vs. Delay - 00:50:24 - Time: Operator or Parameter? - 00:58:21 - Bell’s Theorem and Realism - 01:04:55 - Heisenberg’s Measurement Disturbance - 01:11:26 - Weak Measurement Formalism - 01:17:37 - Time Symmetry and Entropy - 01:27:07 - Bohmian Trajectories Observed - 01:35:56 - Spin-Statistics and Indistinguishability - 01:42:14 - Quantum Computational Advantage - 01:48:15 - Many Worlds vs. Complexity - 01:54:51 - Psi-Ontic vs. Psi-Epistemic - 02:01:37 - Collapsing Tunneling Particles - 02:08:48 - Larmor vs. Atto Clocks - 02:15:24 - Locality and Information LINKS MENTIONED: - Aephraim's Website: https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~aephraim/ - Aephraim's Papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PzUyb6IAAAAJ - Photon Negative Time in Atom Cloud [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.03680 - How Much Time Does a Photon Spend as Atomic Excitation? [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.00432 - Measuring Time Atoms Spend in Excited State [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.010314 - Tunneling Atom Time in Barrier [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.13523 - Single-Photon Tunneling Time [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.708 - Traversal Time for Tunneling [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.49.1739 - Propagation of a Gaussian Light Pulse [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.1.305 - Linear Pulse Propagation in Absorbing Medium [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.48.738 - Eighth Velocity of Light [Paper]: https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/article-abstract/45/6/538/1045817/Eighth-velocity-of-light - Attosecond Ionization [Paper]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1163439 - Tunneling Optical Pulses Photonic Band Gaps [Paper]: https://attoworld.de/fileadmin/user_upload/tx_attoworld/publications/paper_PhysRevLett_Y1994_M10_D24_V73_P2308.pdf - Evidence of Negative Time [Article]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-of-negative-time-found-in-quantum-physics-experiment/ - Light Speed Reduction [Article]: https://www.nature.com/articles/17561 - On the Theory of Light and Colors [Paper]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/107113.pdf - Wave Propagation and Group Velocity [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1483253937?tag=toe08-20 - EPR Paper [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777 - Uncertainty Principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle - QBism [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1003.5209 More links at https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Guests do not pay to appear. #science
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