Scientists Punch a Hole in the Fabric of Time with a "Time Cloak"

Physicists have created a "hole in time" using the temporal equivalent of an invisibility cloak:

Researchers at Cornell have designed, built and demonstrated the first "cloak" that hides events in time. The process relies on similar methods of distorting electromagnetic fields as invisibility cloaks, but it exploits a time-space duality in electromagnetic theory: diffraction and dispersion of light in space are mathematically equivalent. Scientists have used this theory to create a "time-lens [that] can, for example, magnify or compress in time."

The time cloak takes two of those lenses and arranges them so that one compresses a beam of light while the other decompresses it. That leaves the beam seemingly unchanged, but the diffraction and dispersion actually "cloak" small events in the beam's timeline. Right now, the cloak can only last for 120 nanoseconds, and the theoretical max for the current design measures just microseconds. But the prospect of being able to exist outside of time, even for just a few microseconds, should be enough to make even the most jaded tech nerd giggle at the possibilities.

Source
Source2

From the abstract :

here's the relevant bit:

Alternatively, it may be desirable to cloak the occurrence of an event over a finite time period, and the idea of temporal cloaking was proposed in which the dispersion of the material is manipulated in time to produce a "time hole" in the probe beam to hide the occurrence of the event from the observer. This approach is based on accelerating and slowing down the front and rear parts, respectively, of the probe beam to create a well controlled temporal gap in which the event occurs so the probe beam is not modified in any way by the event.

Source3

I'd like to see what happens when the cloak lasts longer. Imagine in 50 years what this technology could do. But this bring me a question: How you would observe an occurrence where some object cloaked from time?

I'm not sure that i understand it correctly, the "cloak" occurs because there is no light during the event as it has either moved on or is lagging behind. It's the recombination at the second lens that does the trick, giving a false sense of continuity to the observer after the lens?

Well, Let me now when people from the future starts to show up.

Actually a guy named john titor predicted that we will have time travel tech. en.wikipedia.org...

here you go : Time Traveller caught in photo

The first invisibility cloaks worked only at microwave frequencies but in only a few years, physicists have found ways to create cloaks that work for visible light, for sound and for ocean waves. They've even designed illusion cloaks that can make one object look like another.

You can cloak sound and light? I can imagine the military in the future creating ghost-soldiers that are undetectable. Illusion cloaks that make one object look like another immediately made me think of Inception, when that guy is acting like the rich guys assistant or right-hand-man or whatever. For some reason the only uses that come into my mind are military related, such as disguising yourself as a 12 year old kid walking down the street and then BAM, you turn into a 240 pound man spraying bullets.

Or maybe some perverted peeping Tom would take it to a whole new level by sitting right next to somebody and breathing on her to freak her out

What are some good things that could come from this?....

I got one: there are those people that are so annoying that you wish you had a mute button like on Xbox, so you could mute people that piss you off instead of having to listen to them talk.

Illusion cloaks would take plastic surgery to a whole new level, we wouldn't really know who is attractive and who is cloaking themselves to be attractive. However make-up wouldn't be needed anymore for the ladies, so that would save like 30 minutes out of their day. Reminds me of the Futurama episode where everybody got $300, and Professor Farnsworth spent his on stem cells to make him look young, and he met a girl who turned out to be really fat and used hers to make herself look skinny.

Originally posted by starwarsisreal
Actually a guy named john titor predicted that we will have time travel tech. en.wikipedia.org...

But he predicted this too:

The most immediate of Titor's predictions was of an upcoming civil war in the United States having to do with "order and rights".[7] He described it as beginning in 2004,[8] with civil unrest surrounding the presidential election of that year. This civil conflict that he characterizes as "having a Waco type event every month that steadily gets worse"[8] will be "pretty much at everyone's doorstep"[7] and erupts by 2008.

wiki

so...

Originally posted by TupacShakur

The first invisibility cloaks worked only at microwave frequencies but in only a few years, physicists have found ways to create cloaks that work for visible light, for sound and for ocean waves. They've even designed illusion cloaks that can make one object look like another.

You can cloak sound and light? I can imagine the military in the future creating ghost-soldiers that are undetectable. Illusion cloaks that make one object look like another immediately made me think of Inception, when that guy is acting like the rich guys assistant or right-hand-man or whatever. For some reason the only uses that come into my mind are military related, such as disguising yourself as a 12 year old kid walking down the street and then BAM, you turn into a 240 pound man spraying bullets.

What are some good things that could come from this?....

I got one: there are those people that are so annoying that you wish you had a mute button like on Xbox, so you could mute people that piss you off instead of having to listen to them talk.

You mean like this?

reply to post by RUSSO


the civil war is delayed for some reason though

reply to post by RUSSO


Incredible!

I'm not sure what practical purposes this could serve, but it's amazing what mankind can achieve when we try.

Imagine what we could accomplish if our resources were all directed toward the advancement and technology and evolution instead of war?

I suppose ironically enough however, many of our advances are a direct result of military R&D.

Originally posted by nightbringr
reply to post by RUSSO

 

Incredible!

I'm not sure what practical purposes this could serve, but it's amazing what mankind can achieve when we try.

Imagine what we could accomplish if our resources were all directed toward the advancement and technology and evolution instead of war?

I suppose ironically enough however, many of our advances are a direct result of military R&D.

Many of our advances are a direct result of military, no doubts about that. But they could put some more efforts to cure the cancer for example.

Maybe some more educated member could enlighten us about this, but I think the video I put above is a good example of what they can do.

Nope. Doesn't work. And I ruined a good pair of eyeglasses proving it empirically. Still saw my watch between my two removed lenses.



Seriously though -- I'm s&f'ing even though I am too tired to even begin to understand what this really means... Hopefully my crack staff of ATS geniuses will have it figured out by morning...

BUMP

This is a quote from there that maybe bring some light about this :

I found the MIT Tech Review's summary confusing. I didn't understand the article it was based on fully, but the idea seems to be covered in the following paragraph:

Time-space duality represents the analogy between diffraction and dispersion that arises from the mathematical equivalence between the equations describing the diffraction of a beam of light and the one-dimensional temporal propagation of a pulse through a dispersive medium [17,18]. Similar to a spatial lens that imparts a quadratic phase in space, a time-lens can be implemented that produces a quadratic phase shift in time [19[21]. This time-lens can, for example, magnify [22] or compress [23] signals in time and has an equivalent of the lens law. Time-lenses can be created with an electro-optic modulator [18] or via a parametric nonlinear optical process such as four-wave mixing (FWM) with a chirped pump wave [19,20]. In the latter case the signal wave is converted to an idler wave with a linear frequency shift in time (i.e., a quadratic phase in time) [21,22].

I understand this to mean that the passage of time in observed space can be slowed down relative to an observer, rather as happens when observing a body falling into a black hole.

So exactly how would this work? Would it be just like an edit in a movie? Would we know there was a hole punched, like being on one side of the room and then suddenly on another?

Originally posted by Yukitup
Nope. Doesn't work. And I ruined a good pair of eyeglasses proving it empirically. Still saw my watch between my two removed lenses.

Seriously though -- I'm s&f'ing even though I am too tired to even begin to understand what this really means... Hopefully my crack staff of ATS geniuses will have it figured out by morning...

BUMP

edit on 14-7-2011 by Yukitup because: thought adding my watch (instead of "everything") was a hiccup funnier.

Of course this work or how we could explain something like this:

Originally posted by Daughter2
So exactly how would this work? Would it be just like an edit in a movie? Would be know there was a hole punched, like being on one side of the room and then suddenly on another?

I think this would be like an edit in a movie.

the idea of temporal cloaking was proposed in which the dispersion of the material is manipulated in time to produce a "time hole" in the probe beam to hide the occurrence of the event from the observer.

Maybe I'm tired, or that I'm a visual and hands on learner. I am having trouble wrapping my mind around this.

Originally posted by AMANNAMEDQUEST
Maybe I'm tired, or that I'm a visual and hands on learner. I am having trouble wrapping my mind around this.

Abstract of the original paper makes this a little bit easier to understand for me.

Maybe this can help to:

Illusion Cloak Makes One Object Look like Another

Link

Cloaking objects at a distance

Link

"Time-lenses can be created with an electro-optic modulator [18] or via a parametric nonlinear optical process such as four-wave mixing (FWM) with a chirped pump wave [19,20]. In the latter case the signal wave is converted to an idler wave with a linear frequency shift in time (i.e., a quadratic phase in time) "

This makes me think of HAARP

reply to post by RUSSO


That vid is awesome! Maybe they'll end up with something like this soon?
I never thought I'd live to see cloaking tech be developed.

Warning: Violent content.
Cloak engaged...

Thats sounds so cool! Hey just for fun Some one explain it to me like i don't understand.
I guess this will be good enough untill x ray glasses

This method of time distorting wouldn't be classed as time travel i don't think. More of a freezing capsule i guess?

Time around would move at normal speed But time to the occupant or object would be lagged. So if i got this right, there wont be no one from the future. But the occupant would arrive in the future being milliseconds older But everything else years or what have you.

I suppose, it would have to be constantly watched and constantly run, also guessing its expensive with power to run for countless years.