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Comments: 113 +- Science: Big Bang Could Be Recreated Inside a Metamaterial on Saturday August 22, @01:38PM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Saturday August 22, @01:38PM
from the never-met-a-material-i-didn't-like dept.
from the never-met-a-material-i-didn't-like dept.
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KentuckyFC writes "Metamaterials are substances with a permittivity and permeability that has been manipulated in a way that allows fine control over the behavior of light. They have famously been used to create an invisibility cloak that hides objects from view. Now Igor Smolyaninov, a physicist in the US, has calculated how metamaterials could be used for a much more profound demonstration: to reproduce the behavior of light in various kinds of spacetimes, in particular a (2+2) spacetime (one having two dimensions of space and two of time). His method is to show that there is formal mathematical analogy between the way metamaterials and spacetimes affect light. He goes on to show how a phase transition in a (2+2) spacetime leads to the creation of a (2+1) spacetime filled with photons, an event analogous to the Big Bang." Here are the abstract and the preprint (PDF).
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I misread the title... (Score:1, Funny)
... but you have to admit, "Big Bang could be recreated inside a Metamucil" is every bit as intriguing.
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metamaterials are just periodic structures (Score:3, Informative)
Re:metamaterials are just periodic structures (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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An additional consideration is water absorption spectrum [wikipedia.org] which has a big dip right where "visible" light is (in a wide sense - it extends a bit to UV and infrared). So being sensitive to Sun's rays (say for navigation) requires sensitivity to visible light, regardless of whether you live in water, air or dry land, as Suns spectrum is filtered by the atmospher
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Not to nit-pick, but how is a circular argument "perfectly valid?" A circular argument is the opposite of valid. A circular argument is an argument made in support of the proposed proof of a claim by presenting the original claim in said support. That's the opposite of valid.
Erm. The parent poster was saying that calling the metamaterials periodic is tautological, but not untrue; it wasn't implied that circular reasoning is a valid form of logic.
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Bullshit! - Anyone who calls someone an "evolutionists" is simply too dogmatic and religiously biased to contribute to a rational conversation and therefore is not worth listening to.
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The very idea of two time planes makes my head hurt. Who the hell thought this could be something that can interact with our universe, or rather, our perception thereof?
For all intents and purposes, we're firmly locked in our own time. Maybe dreams, meditation, etc. are an exception to this, but afaik science doesn't care about those.
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Perhaps two dimensions of time is like you could go not only forward and backward in time (not that you can), but also up and down, moving "within" what we now think of as a unit of time. I can imagine such a concept could come in handy to explain mysterious things like action at a distance (gravity, QM).
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Perhaps two dimensions of time is like you could go not only forward and backward in time (not that you can), but also up and down, moving "within" what we now think of as a unit of time.
I can imagine it, but I probably won't ever understand how we can interact with it if we create it. We're not even capable of altering our speed in this time plane, let alone our direction, even if nothing in quantum mechanics even hints at time being unidirectional.
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That's relative time, and relative velocity, and as the name implies, relative only to something else. Your subjective time only changes when you don't pay attention.
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Relative speed. The direction of motion is irrelevant, only the magnitude.
Re:metamaterials are just periodic structures (Score:5, Interesting)
And we can alter the perceived flow of time quite easily.
As Einstein explained: "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."
And more seriously, some people have had time "slow down" considerably under extreme circumstances. I have had that experience during a motorcycle crash at 60 mph. I have a very vivid recollection of what happened in a split second seeming like slow motion and remembering each perception and thought and action. For all intents and purposes, the flow of time from my perspective was different than normal.
If consciousness is perhaps more than a chemical reaction in a "meat machine" then perhaps there is something else going on in those situations....
Parent
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More likely, your memory of the event as you look back at it makes it seem like time was slower. As I understand it, the brain has something very much like a short buffer memory that it can use for instant replays. You notice this in situations like when someone at the table next to you say your name. It's not like you react to every word starting with 'b' or 'be'. Instead, the brain is playing it back to you (an
Perception vs. reality is a false dichotomy. (Score:2)
There is a real external world and a real internal world, and our consciousness of the flow of time occurs at the interface.
And the fun pills screw the interface up in the end.
entropy, time, and death (Score:2)
I have noticed that we can't seem to get out of the flow of time as long as we are (alive and) subject to death.
But, yeah, some (many) people seem to be able to temporarily alter their consciousness of the rate of flow. Not the direction, and not entirely stop, but slow it down or speed it up.
(I hate it when I'm trying to get something done and find myself stuck in a faster swim down the current. Sometimes I wish I could slow the rate down at will, too, of course, but I have resigned myself to the lack of u
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Are you thinking that the spirit is subject to entropy?
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We're not even capable of altering our speed in this time plane
Of course we are. In an uncomfortable or boring situation, time goes slow. If you're having fun it speeds up. Einstein said "When your hand is on a hot stove, a second seems like an hour. When you're with a pretty girl, an hour seems like a minute. That's relativity."
Time is nothing but the measure of entropy.
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Metamaterials don't need to be periodic. They are made up of small (compared to the wavelength of light they work with) nano-fabricated structures, but even if they are randomly distributed it will have the desired effect. Just like both periodic structures (crystals) and amorphous ones (glass) have "normal" dielectric constants, so can metamaterials.
Some people say "periodic" when they just mean "made up of small stuff". If that was your complaint, then I challenge you to find something with any index of r
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Or, how about anything at all that isn't made up of small stuff?
Typical Bad Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Analogus To is not the same is Identical To. This article's title is badly in need of an accuracy correction.
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Yes but now if only we could simulate the Big Crunch [wikipedia.org] we don't have to build a restaurant at the end of the universe [wikipedia.org]. What a saving in resources!
Transition appears to be a kind of toy "big bang" (Score:2, Funny)
Batteries not included.
The experiment will be performed in 2012... (Score:4, Funny)
Somebody will probably experiment with this sometime in December, 2012...
Big Bang or Bust.... (Score:2)
So....is somebody saying the Big Bang was a bad thing?????
Re:Big Bang or Bust.... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it has make a lot of people very angry.
Parent
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That's what she said, too!
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Yes, I am. And a new one won't be a bad thing. We need to be replaced by a security update.
Re-created, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
The analogy between the physics of superfluid helium and general relativity is well known. The mathematics that describe these systems are essentially identical so measuring the properties of one automatically tells you how the other behaves.
A caveat is that if either general relativity or our science's understanding of the physics of superfluid helium have issues, or if there are other factors involved that don't have a direct equivalent comparison, then the analogy may have issues.
Our lack of unders
Amazing graphene flake (Score:5, Interesting)
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Creating a new big bang? (Score:2)
Wouldn't this be a universally bad idea?
Thanks you, thank you! I'll be here all week! ...unless they create a new big bang...
2+2 spacetime? (Score:2)
My brain hurts!
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Well, my favorite way to think about 3+1 spacetime as a relatively inexperienced student is as a "loaf" of bread (a la The Elegant Universe [wikipedia.org]). If a "slice" of the loaf contains the 3 conventional space dimensions, and different slices represent different placement in time, then you have a basis for any particular event (4 coordinates that allow you to locate it perfectly).
Perhaps a second dimension of 'time' (which is a slightly incorrect notion, as far as I understand) allows another degree of freedom (lik
Re:2+2 spacetime? (Score:5, Informative)
It probably just means the spacetime metric has two positive terms and two negative terms. Instead of
ds^2 = dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 - dt^2
you have
ds^2 = dx^2 + dy^2 - dt^2 - du^2
Can a real physicist speak to this?
Parent
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It probably just means the spacetime metric has two positive terms and two negative terms
That is correct. The paper points out that "due to causality restrictions the analogy is purely formal" or words to that effect.
As someone else pointed out above, the /. article title, which uncritically apes the title of the linked article, is false. A correct title would be "Toy Model Analog of Big Bang Could Be Created Inside Metameterials." As it stands the title is as correct as "Supertanker can float in bathtu
The outcome predicted long ago (Score:2)
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/donald-a-wollheim/edge-of-time.htm [fantasticfiction.co.uk]
Ok, i know its sci-fi, but its a great book, and you know what they say about sci-fi... todays sci-fi is tomorrows tech.
And by analogy... (Score:2)
you'd have a flashlight...
"moving through time" with two time dimension (Score:2)
I don't know whether it's possible for a conscious mind to exist in a spacetime with more than one macroscopic time dimension. If it is possible at all, such a mind certainly would not experience consciousness in the same way we do.
My Misconception (Score:2)
Somehow I always labored under the idea there were 3 dimensions of space. The Big Bang only creates 2 dimensions?
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Sure!
Imagine time as a line. Now imagine that the line is actually 2-dimensional.
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Imagine being on a spot in spacewise 2-dimensional universe. One kind of time could be like moving within this area, time passing, the other like not moving spacewise but only timewise, so that you'd walk through the "absolutely" same spot, but through time, not space. Imagine popping from frame to frame in the Game of Life-simulation, not moving sideways but only to the next frame, and the next. I dunno if this was clear though...?
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What we mean by formalism (Score:2)
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