Nature Physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cIt is very difficult to change the properties of a medium quick enough, uniformly, and with enough contrast to time reflect electromagnetic signals because they oscillate very fast,\u201d Gengyu Xu, a coauthor and post-doc student at CUNY ASRC, said in a press statement. \u201cOur idea was to avoid changing the properties of the host material, and instead create a metamaterial in which additional elements can be abruptly added or subtracted through fast switches.\u201d<\/p>\n
This time reflection also behaves differently than spatial reflections. Because this time echo reflects that last part of the signal first, the researchers say that if you looked in a time mirror, you would see your back instead of your face. To translate the experience acoustically, it\u2019d be like listening to a tape on rewind\u2014which is to say fast and high-pitched.<\/p>\n
The shift in frequency, if it could be perceived by our eyes, would look like colors of light suddenly changing to another color, such as red switching to green. This strange counter-intuitive nature of time reflection is part of what has made studying the concept so difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been really exciting to see, because of how long ago this counterintuitive phenomenon was predicted, and how different time-reflected waves behave compared to space-reflected ones,\u201d corresponding author Andrea Al\u00f9, a physics professor and director of CUNY ASRC\u2019s Photonics Initiative, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The big question: Why have scientists worked toward recreating this theoretical time reflection in a laboratory? Well, more minute control of electromagnetic waves can vastly improve wireless communications and even lead to advancements in low-energy, wave-based computers.<\/p>\n
In other words, it simply helps to know everything there is about electromagnetic waves\u2014both forward and backward.<\/p>\n
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